This is my second trip down memory lane, and this one goes way back. In the summer of 2012, my brother and I attemped to climb Denali (formerly Mt Mckinnley) in Alaska. While we ultimately didn’t make it, it was an epic trip that changed the way I thought about the world. To be dwarfed by a mountain that big is truely awe inspiring.
We started our trip in Talkeetna - a fun little mountain town where most of the climbing/hiking expeditions that go into Denali NP start from. We spent most of our time at the Alaska Mountaineering School (AMS) HQ (the mountain guide group we used for the trip) - but our climbing hotel/hostel was also worth note. It’s called the “House of Seven Trees Hostel” and it was run by this lady who lives on the premises. She had bunk room for probably 24 people - with a combination of bunks in a separate building out back and rooms in the building proper. There were communial breakfasts most mornings (cooked by whichever climber got up first) and lots of stories flying around about climbing challenges by this group or that. A few seemed like they were almost permenant residents - using it as their base for adventure for the summer. We met one guy who founded a “low pressure tent” that artificiality simulated high altitude while you slept. Kinda a weird guy and I don’t know how much of his story was true…
We did our gear layouts and packed up our bags in the AMS HQ as well as doing some pre-trip practice - which I found surprisingly lax looking back on it. I started and finished the trip not knowing how to do a z-pulley, and didn’t learn until I did Mt Rainier the second time. We did, however, spend a lot of time talking about and mocking what traveling with sleds would look/feel like, how to manage spacing and the rope, and the general packing strategy for sled vs pack and for what gear to cache on the off days. The way most people climb big mountains is they do each segment 2-3 times, once to bring gear half way up to the next camp and cache it, the second time to move the remaining gear all the way to the next camp, and the third to go back to get the gear you cached halfway. Some groups will skip the last day and just cache the gear at camp the second day. They reason for this is acclimatization (touch an altitude, then sleep at the lower altitude before moving up entirely). Given I’m writing this ten years after the fact, I lumped these 3 days into one trip - so the move from 10k camp to 14k camp is one slide show. Just know, that this wasn’t one day, it was actually 3…
Most expeditions fly onto the glacier to climb Denali. The reason is that there is no road service all the way to the base of the mountain and there are about 50 miles of swamp in any direction from the base of the glacier to the nearest civilization. The planes fly regularly from Talkeetna to the start of the climb at 6k feet. The runway is this specific stretch of glacier just off of a the main glacier that is stable with few crevasses. They probe for crevasses all the way down the runway before they open for service and they have a team of NPS rangers that clear off the runway after every big storm so the planes don’t land on powder. Just keeping the runway open is a fully time task for several people!!
The flight was breathtaking on the way in. I got some amazing pictures of the most beautiful and forbidding landscape imaginable. Our two guides (Todd Pasey and I forgot the female’s name) were great - both very professional and willing to impart knowledge. Todd was an IFMGA certified guide - an international certification at the highest level for guides. He had done expeditions in the arctic, Antarctic, Himalayas - and basically moved between the northern and southern continents to climb alpine peaks year round. The female guide was just starting her career, guiding hiking expeditions in Montana somewhere (I think).
We landed on the glacier in the late evening (must have been 8 or 9 pm), but as our guide put it - “from here on out, time doesn’t matter”. Basically, the sun never sets this time of year - it fades a little around 1-2am, but it’s fully sun for the rest of the day. With the exception of storms, it was sunny they entire time we were on the mountain. This made solar panels work great for charging things but make it so you needed to wrap your face in a buff everytime you wanted to go to sleep.
In my opinion, day 1 was our hardest day (of the 21 days we spent on the mountain). This was primarily because 1) this was the only day we carried all our gear (my brother and I each had around 160 lbs of gear - 100 lbs in the sled and 60 lbs in our packs) and 2) we were not used to this type of travel. The combination of slow pace (you can only go as fast as the slowest person on the rope team), managing a giant sled dragging behind you (making sure it doesn’t hit the back of your legs and, since you have some control over the sled in front of you, the sled doesn’t hit the person’s legs in front of you).
We finished our trip into our first camp at 7.8k feet altitude (all of the camps on this trip are reffered to by their altitude) after 3-4 hours of moving. I didn’t even realize that we were off-cycle until we were in our sleeping bags - time truly didn’t matter here. I took a picture during the darkest part of the day later in the trip - even at 1:30a, I could still see my watch and the surrounding mountains without a flashlight. Note that this first day started with ~500 foot descent out of the southeast fork of the Kahiltha glacier before climbing back up to camp on the main glacier - it was a relatively flat day.
The second leg of our journey was from 7.8k camp to 9.7k camp. This was a much easier leg and it was where we started to get into a rythm - Carry day, move day, retrieve day. The carry day was the most fun, our bags weren’t quite as heavy and we got to see new terrain for the first time. The move days were exciting, actual progress up the mountain. The retrieve days were usually short, which meant mostly a rest day.
I’ll pause here for a quick note on food. We burned a lot of calories up here - lots of activity combined with high alititue and cool weather meant our bodies were always working. I’m sure my caloric intake was easily 8000 calories per day, probably more. I remember several occasions where I would wake up in the middle of the night ravenous and eat a massive snack (eg two snickers bars) and fall right back asleep. My favorite snack was dried bananas - they were delicious, despite their appearance of pefectly shaped turds. :)
Cooked meals were also amazing - and would probably kill you with any lower level of activity. We would eat poptarts fried in butter, drop a quarter stick of butter into our coffee in the morning, etc. I think I remember that we brought over a pound of butter per person and we used most of it. There were also some great bacon dishes and pasta with butter sauce.
Ultimately, I lost ~20 pounds when I weighted myself back in civilization afterwards. Gained 10 back within the first week or so (so I imagine it was water weight) but the rest took me months to gain back - so that part was actual weight. Given I was in pretty good shape starting this trip, I was in amazing shape at the end of it.
The third leg of the trip was from 9.7k camp to 11k camp. On this leg, I remember caching our gear and then making the final trip to camp the following day. We got caught in some weather this day, which meant we were breaking trail for a good part of the trip. Both Mark and I fell into different parts of the same cravasse as we climbe up motorcycle hill - The first time I had fallen into a crevasse and not as scary as I imagined. We were well spaced so I only feel a foot or two before I was caught and could climb out on my own. The average cravasse depth on Denali is 200-300 feet vs the average 50 foot depth on Rainier - so looking down was almost like peering into the abyse…
The last leg of the lower glacier was from 11k camp to 14k camp. This day involved going around Windy corner which, for us, was renamed the sweaty corner. We wanted to move quickly through the exposed section and it was a warm, calm day.
Despite striping all our layers, we were drenched by the time we made it around the corner. The last strech into camp was smooth and we arrived at the small city of 14k camp in the early morning.
Quick side note here on temperatures. Denali in the summer has an immense about of sun (24 hours of it, per above) - so it can get quite hot - 70s even. At the same time, you are standing on upwards of 300 vertical feet of snow/ice and summer storms can still bring snow so it can get quite cold - as low as negative 20 (see thermometer below). One thing I learned very early was to have a optimal layering strategy, with layers easily accessible in the front of the sled. I was constantly dropping and adding layers when we stopped for breaks or during movement if a cold front came in. I could add/remove a layer in 20-30 second and start moving again. These temp swings were actually a great reminder of where we were - This was a very forbiding place.
Given how noteworthy 14k camp was, I was able to group the pics where we went back for our gear. The views as we rounded over the bend from 14 camp looking down on the Kahiltha glacier were quite breathtaking.
We ended up spending a long time at 14k camp. We had a short weather window for the first couple of days and we made a carry trip to the top of the fixed lines, but that’s when the wind/weather came in. It was a weird felling at 14k camp - It was nice/calm at camp for most of the time we were there, but you could look up at the ridge and see wind blowing snow off the ridge with like 30 mi per hour winds. There is a reason why most people end up spending a lot of time at 14k camp waiting for a weather window - it’s perfectly situated to avoid weather and sit on a relatively stable part of the glacier without crevasses.
There’s a point at 14k camp that we walked out to on one bad weather day - I can’t remember (or find) the name of it - but it had an amazing view of the surrounding glaciers and a view down on the route we came up. I think I had a rotation of these ten photos as my background/screensaver for the next several years…
We ended up spending over 7 days at 14 camp - For the most part, my routine included breakfast, followed by a walk around camp to take a look at the new snow sculptures or funny activities of bored people in the morning. I would usually spend 3-4 hours a day reading (I read both of the books I brought with me and had to trade with some of the other people on the team for other ones) and probably spend 2-3 hours with my brother building snow walls or funny snow men or whatever - anything to fight the boredom. I would finish my day with another walk around camp and dinner. We ate like kings for that week - 3 very full meals a day and even with our mostly sedentary lifestyle, it was barely keeping up. I grew quite a beard during those 7 days…
By day 6-7, I grabbed this picture - titled “losing it”. Needless to say, we were quite bored and doing anything we could to keep our spirits up. We knew we had only a limited window to summit and our chances of submiting went down by the day.
Still, I was focused on enjoying the experience and I wanted to make sure that I took it all in - and make full use of the downtime. I had a notebook I brought with me and just used it to write down my thoughts. I was in the process of purchasing a Condo in Seattle (we took this trip during the downtime between graduating with my MBA and starting at Amazon) and I had a lot of sketches of what I wanted to do with my new space. I also spent a lot of time making lists, writing down the adventures I had undertaken in the past, and creating several pages of the adventures I wanted to have.
Another way we helped to pass the time was to tell stories of past climbs or army stories (my brother had just finished his tour and I had finished mine a couple of years earlier). There were a couple of stories our guides told that stuck with me. One funny one was of a climber who’s wife refused to allow him to tent with another woman and had contacted the guide company directly to make sure of it. Todd thought it was crazy - like somehow putting a man and a woman together would result them just randomly coupling. Turns out, however, that this man’s current marriage started on a different climb where he was married to a different woman and he was in the same tent as his current wife.. Scandals! Another somewhat epic story involved Todd and his wife skiing in Alaska and both of them dropping into the same crevasse and Todd getting wedged in to the point he couldn’t move. In a incrediblely lucky happenstance, someone saw them fall in and called a rescue team who was able to pull both him and his wife out. Todd also described some of his guide trips in Antarctica - the last degree of latitude was particularly interesting, it takes about 30 days and you walk on flat level ice (in all directions) the entire time. Literally, nothing to see but the person in front of you (or maybe just your compass if you are in front?). Crazy…
Finally, the weather cleared and we headed up to 17k camp. 14k camp was actually very cool to see from above, it is literally a little town perched in the middle of the snow. We had a small climb to make over a very nice looking ski slope (which many people who had brought skis had taken advantage of) and up to the bottom of the fixed lines.
We had a beautiful day and made great progress up the fixed lines. The fixed lines are a section of about 1.5k of elevation gain where you use a rope to help you climb up the very steep slope (you can see some of this in the pictures below). We made use of ascenders to head up the slope - using ice axes in one hand and the ascender in the other. It was actually quite fun and the transition from snow shoes to crampons made you feel like you were actually climbing. We also dropped the sleds, which made for some big packs and cool pictures.
The ridge from the top of the fixed lines to 17k camp is called the “west buttress” - which the route is named after. The ridge was very exposed, with big drop offs on each side.
Despite the appearance, it’s fairly well protected with fixed pickets & plenty of opportunity for added protection. We made quick work of the ridge and made it into 17k camp as one of the first parties (of several that were coming up at the same time.
Two of the members of our team dropped out at 14k camp and we picked up a new member before heading to 17k camp, so our new party of 4 (myself, my brother, our new party member, and the guide) could all huddle into one 4 man tent. It was cosy, but spirits were high now that we were making forward progress again. We had a good meal and drank a bunch of water before getting some shut-eye.
The following morning, the wind was starting to pick up and we knew this was bad… We had only a few more days before we knew we would need to turn back (we were capped at 21 days on the mountain) and if we didn’t get a weather window soon, we knew this was not going to work. Late morning, it looked like the wind was dying down and we geared up for our summit shot. Unfortunately, the wind did not die down and the forecast was for increasing winds for the next couple of days. We knew we missed our shot.
We packed up our gear and headed back down in low spirits, but (at least for me) excited to have had this journey. We made it down to 14k camp and I was feeling a bit dehydrated, so we stopped for 5-6 hours to rehydrate and get some rest. After that, we packed up and headed down in one big push. As we lost elevation, we felt stronger and stronger finally making it to the runway with all our gear in less than 12 hours. We had heard horror stories of people being stuck at base camp for days waiting for the weather to clear and planes to land, but we got lucky and were on a plane within a couple of hours of arriving. It was bittersweet knowing that we were leaving the mountain, but we made a pact to come back and summit someday. A decade later, we still haven’t done it - but the pact is still alive so hopefully sometime soon…