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.

Camp 3 14,200 ft

Camp 3 in stormy weather

They were able to move to 14,200 ft yesterday! They climbed up the 3,000 feet, and around the notorious Windy Corner and on up to the social headquarters of Denali at Camp 3.

Camp 2 at 11,000 ft

A view looking up at the West Buttress and Camp 2 from about 10,500 feet.

The weather has changed on Denali. The crew is settled in to their camp at 11,ooo now, as the clouds and snow(and smoke from forest fires) have moved into the Alaska Range. They hope to be able to stay on schedule, which means spending 3 nights at this camp before moving up to 14,000ft. We hope to hear from them later today and see if this weather is going to hold them up at all. We'll let you know if we hear anything new later today.

Camp 1 and Blue Skies

The team has experienced some sunny warm summer weather. It makes for some beautiful days, but can be a bit hot(believe it or not) on the glacier. The reflecting snow and ice, and no shade to be found can make it an oven during the day on the glacier. They avoided this heat by travelling at night, and early morning on the lower glacier. They moved the 5 miles up the glacier yesterday with all of their gear, including food and fuel for 20 days.

Today they will start "double carrying" meaning that they will haul a load of food, fuel, and some extra gear up a couple of thousand feet. They will dig a hole in the snow, pile the gear in, pile snow back on top, and head back down to camp 1. T0mmorow they will be able to move on up to Camp 2 at 11,200 ft with lighter loads, having carried half of it the day before. This will be the strategy for the rest of the trip, it allows them to carry reasonably sized loads, and it allows them to acclimate to the increasingly thin air at a good rate.

Webcam views of Denali

You can see live feeds of views of the mountain at Talkeetna Air Taxi's webcam!

Check it out:

http://www.talkeetnaair.com/webcam/index.html

Heading North to Talkeetna!

The crew assembled in Anchorage yesterday and had a pre-trip meeting and gear check. The airlines did a pretty good job in getting everyone's bags all the way to Alaska. The only person to feel the frutration of lost bags was Ania Lichota, whose bags did arrive this morning.

The team consists of:

Ania Lichota from Enland (and Poland)
Paul and Denise Fejtek from California
Charles Haller from Alaska
Mike Stocklosa from Rhode Island
Chad Stegeman from California
Cheryl Marfia from New Mexico
Jens Neilsen from Denmark
Bill Mendenhall from Washington

Guides:

Zach Schlosar from Alaska
Jacob Schmitz from California
Roanna Wick from Alaska
David Dietzgen from California


The team has driven to Talkeetna, alaska where the National Park Service briefed them on what they might expect in the coming weeks. Theyt are currently at the airstrip and will board ski planes to fly to the glacier in a few minutes.

Welcome to The June 17th Denali Expedition Updates!

When the trees turn green in the lower 48, a certain breed of climber begins to feel the tug to head north. The siren song of Alaska rings down and makes some of us long for a surreal landscape in which we feel very, very small.

The Alaska Range is a magical place and the crown jewel of the north is Denali. At 20,320 feet high, Denali is the highest mountain on the North American continent and is a beacon for climbers who wish to test their strength and perseverance by attempting to ascend "The Great One".

Mountain Trip began helping climbers achieve their Denali ambitions in 1976. We love what we do. We take great pride in believing that we do the best job of guiding Denali and we work very hard to continually earn the trust that our climbers place in us.

Welcome to the dispatch page for our June 17th West Buttress Expedition.