Everyone is off the mountain!

The whole team flew out of Base Camp to the green, fragrant town of Talkeetna, Alaska. It is an amazing sensation to leave the dry air of the Alaska Range and descend into the moist air of Talkeetna. The scents of trees and flowers are very intense, and you suddenly become aware that you and your climbing partners really stink as well!

Some of the crew hopped aboard a private shuttle service and headed into Anchorage yesterday. The rest of the team decided to decompress in Talkeetna for a night and will head back in our van today. It is a pretty big sensory overload sometimes to go from the glacier to Anchorage in a push. It can result in a sort of out of body experience as your soul takes a day or so to catch up.

I hope you've enjoyed these posts and hope that it helped you feel a bit more connected to your friends and loved ones who were climbing with us. Thanks for your trust and hopefully we'll see them in the mountains in the future.

Todd- out.

They made the summit and are heading down!

Well, the rumors of two days ago were indeed correct. The team made the summit on the 1st of July and descended to Camp 3 at 14,200' yesterday. They left Camp 3 in the evening and were going to try to push all the way to Base Camp. They are hoping to fly this morning, but a quick check of Talkeetna Air Taxi's Webcam of the Range does not look too favorable for getting out anytime soon.

Everyone made the summit except Cheryl and Mike. Cheryl stayed back at Camp 3 and Mike descended from High Camp with the sick climber from the other team that I mentioned in a previous post. Don't fret, Mike is fine. Sometimes spending a long time on a big, challenging mountain gives one pause for reflection and a reconsideration of one's priorities. They both flew off the glacier a couple of days ago.

Hopefully the team had an uneventful hike down the lower glacier. I heard that conditions on the Kahiltna have improved a bit from what they were like a week ago. I'll make one last post when we hear that they all flew off the mountain.

Congratulations to everyone for a hard worked, well earned summit.

A Probable Summit!

I received a call from one of our other teams on the mountain that Zach's group left high camp at about 1 pm yesterday for the summit. We didn't get confirmation, but our other guide said it looked like a good summit day and figured that they made it.

I think they are having trouble with their satellite phone. Sorry for the vague posts, but all my information is second hand.

No News from the Summit

Hi Everyone,

I haven't heard anything from the team since the brief and cut-off message of their assisting with a rescue the other day. I hope I was clear: the HAPE victim was not a climber from this team.

I do have some disappointing news, however. Cheryl is currently descending from 14,200' camp with one of our guides, Roe. They are in traveling in the company of another Mountain Trip Guide and another guided team led by a friend of ours. This will enable them to have a bigger safety net as they travel the heavily crevassed lower Kahiltna Glacier.

A summit bid and a rescue

The team made a bid for the summit today, but called it short when they aided a climber from another expedition who was demonstrating symptoms of High Altitude Cerebral Edema.

As I understand it, they got to Denali Pass at about 18,200' when another climber passed out. Upon awakening, he began to vomit, so everyone rallied to his assistance. I don't have all the details, but the climber recuperated enough back at High Camp so that he was ambulatory for his further descent down to Camp 3 at 14,200'. To the best of my knowledge our crew helped get him down to High Camp and thereby postponed their own summit attempt.

The mountains have the ability to bring out the the very best and the very worst in people. This sounds like a case of Denali bringing out the selflessness and team spirit in all our climbers up there. I'm proud of all of them and they are definitely to be commended.

At High Camp

I heard that the team was safely entrenched at high camp for certain and that they will hopefully go for the top tomorrow, weather permitting. High camp is an unforgiving place when the weather is rough, but is stunningly beautiful when there is no wind. You can walk out to the edge of the camp and look down 3000 feet at Camp 3. It feels like being on the edge of the world as the lower Kahiltna sweeps away, 13,000 feet below!

The team carried up to the Ridge

The view looking up at the headwall (left side) and at High Camp (right side) from 14,200'

The team carried loads up the fixed lines to 16,400 feet yesterday. This is a really tough day as you really begin to feel the elevation gain and negotiating the fixed lines can really beat you up. The fixed lines consist of about 600' of rope that is fastened to the icy slope every 80-100 feet or so. You clamp ans "ascender" (rope grabbing device) to the fixed line as a form of self belay. This will catch you should you lose your footing on the 45 degree pitch and prevent you from...well...pitching! The climbers are still roped up and it just ends up being pretty slow going as you make your way uphill.

The ridge that runs from the top of the fixed lines at 16,200' to high camp at 17,200' offers some of the most spectacular climbing on the West Buttress route. It is knife edged in spots and has some big air to either side as you make your way along its length, winding between rocks and up steep sections of snow.

The team is planning to move to high Camp today. I'll post more when I hear it.