We elected to move our rest day up so we'd have a day to watch the weather patterns, and get more beta from other climbers. We knew that this meant dropping our plans for the Mountaineers Route, but all three of us had climbed Mt. Whitney at least once in the past, and had all done talus filled chutes many times. We were all looking forward to the Mt. Russell climb because we'd heard a lot about the fun, beauty, and exposure of Mt. Russell's East Ridge. That was what we were really there for.

On Wednesday we stayed in camp, resting, further acclimatizing, and watching the weather. It rained with hail for over two hours in the early afternoon. We knew then that we'd have to get off the mountain and back to camp relatively early.

From our reading, and some beta we got from other climbers we estimated that our climb would only take about eight hours round trip. We started out at 6:00 AM expecting to get back (or at least well down the mountain) before the rain started.