We woke up early packed up our Granite Gear packs and hiked hour to our advanced base camp where we quickly put on harnesses and climbing gear.

The weather was surprisingly mild and we felt that summit was within our reach. It was so warm that we quickly shed our extra layers - I even took off one pair of my Helly Hansen base layer bottoms.

There were still a few (surprisingly tall) moraines to get over before we got to the glacier at the base of Jabo Ri. We put on our crampons, roped up and continued on.

Ryan deserves the lion's share of the credit as he led for the entire morning up several pitches of steepening snow and ice. The clouds that were completely absent earlier blew slowly in and eventually the skies turned over cast. By the time we reached the ridge at roughly 18,000' the conditions were total whiteout. I don't know about you but I don't really consider walking along a two foot wide ridge on an unknown route in a whiteout very safe. It was snowing hard now and we made the decision to turn around and head back down. It was simply the right thing to do.

After an hour, we were back in our MSR tent at advanced base camp and resting for another attempt tomorrow.