As of the April 11 meeting/staging date there were 6 of us. This group consisted of two people from the 2005 Fairy Meadows trip, two friends of one of them, and one friend of a friend. This was all from word of mouth so very little promotion was ever done. In addition to myself there was one man from Colorado, two women together from Idaho, and a man from Oregon who arrived along with a woman from Washington. (I used to list participants but eventually it led to one person being found by an ex-partner, even though no email or contact info was ever posted. So even though it is a rare an unlikely issue I no longer list names for privacy reasons.)

The group appeared to have a pretty strong mountaineering and ski touring background, with various members having climbed the Mexico volcanoes, climbed or attempted Mt Waddington, skied the NW volcanoes, and been on an expedition in some medical capacity.

We ended up with four flying in. When we met Friday night and discussed personal gear weight and size (primarily size) one person had far too much, and a second probably did too. Each persons gear was supposed to be in a pile on the floor of the Super 8 suite, but I think there was more still in a car or two despite the oversized piles. I put out my three bags as a guideline for what to take - my touring pack with everything I need to travel in any expected terrain, a larger pack with overnight supplies (tent, bag, pad), and a duffle bag with personal utensils, a book, mp3 player, and a few misc camp items. The person with the largest pile simply said that wasn't going to work for them. Well, it didn't work for the helicopter either as we managed to overflow the Bell 212 even with 6 people. In addition to the space issue one person got in some kind of heated argument with Don, the base pilot. Ultimately two people decided to deal with their baggage overflow and personal disputes by packing up and going home . Leaving us with four people in camp. (The trip write-up covers this and a bit more of the fall-out from it that resulted from frantic re-organizing on the runway. This fall-out was manageable and the trip went off fine by most measures, but there will need to be a few firm policies introduced on future trips to handle this kind of thing. This was a first and the trip is at least my eighth one.)

So we ended up with four - myself, one man from Colorado, and two women from Idaho.

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