About our Guides and Fellow Climbers (Part Two)

The other four members of our climbing expedition were Sandra (from Canada), Laine (from South Africa) and Alex and Sam from UK. Here’s a bit of memories of each:

Sandra

Sandra and I had communicated prior to the climb on email and via our Facebook accounts. She had put together a nice piece on Denali that I used on this site (and cited her) and we shared our hopes and fears for the expedition trip. Sandra was a very strong climber on the trip and very competitive in the Name the Alphabetical Global City game that she ran I think it’s accurate that one of her favorite quotes on Facebook is:

That’s the beauty of argument: If you argue correctly, you’re never wrong. (Thank You For Smoking)

She has lived in a number of places around the world including Indonesia (like me) so we talked about that. She was mostly on the rope team with Nate and Sam/Alex and shared a tent with Sam & Alex where we heard a lot of laughing (more on this later). I never heard her complain about anyone or anything and seemed to be mostly injury free. I admired her tenacity and will and strength and she was a totally additive member of the team. I’m sorry we had a bit of an issue with the tent that one time, these kinds of things happen on the mountain and there sure could have been worse things. PLUS – and this is Very Important – Sandra smartly brought at least 4 rolls of toilet paper on the trip (where they told us only two – which is Not Enough). When I ran low pretty early, she unselfishly gave up a Full Roll (THANKS!) and later in the trip, another half roll (THANKS SOME MORE). After the trip I told a friend that “… it was like gold, only softer!” Oh, and also thanks to her for linking this site from her FB front page (Thanks). That’s Sandra on the right and I assume it’s some gatorade in the nalgene and not something else