Pictorial Trip Report

Here are pictures from Denali. In this view, they're all on one page, so take a break for 5 minutes while everything downloads.

On Saturday, May 29, 1999 I flew to Anchorage, AK, picked up a shuttle run by Denali Overland Transportation and made it to Talkeetna, while trying to sleep on the arm of a chair about level with the top of my hip bone.  We made it there around 2 am, and it was still light (24 hour daylight), kind of dusky really, and I crashed in my bag on the floor. The next morning I met Scott, my climbing partner to be and an Australian I had met face to face for about 2 hours in Switzerland the year before.  From Talkeetna we had chartered a bush plane, a Cessna 185 run by Talkeetna Air Taxi, to land us at 7000' on the Kahiltna glacier. We attempted to fly to the glacier on Sunday May 30, but after taking off, clouds settled over the glacial landing strip prohibiting us from landing.  We turned around, landed in Talkeetna, and waited some for a clearing.  The next morning it was clear, and we made it to the glacier.  The weather was clear and warm (30 deg F), with lots of people milling about, and plenty of tents. The whole story follows, but in summary we took the West Buttress route up the mountain to the summit at 20,320'.  We summitted June 12, day 13 of the expedition, and hiked all the way out the next day. 

Loading the plane at Talkeetna Air Taxi. It is a 35 minute flight from Talkeetna to the southeast fork of the Kahiltna glacier.
Brian and Scott Eden, my partner. Brian and his partner, another Steve, climbed the West Rib. On their way they retrieved the gear left by the British climbers who were rescued off the same climb a couple of weeks earlier.

On the mountain every team was known by their expedition name. Brian and Steve's team was "IDGSA", Scott and I were called "The Flatliners".
Our first view of Denali. Denali is on the right. Mt. Hunter is on the left. Mt. Foraker is further to the left, but not in this picture.
Still in the plane, you can see directly up the main Kahiltna glacier, with a great view of our route for the next 3 days. We camped at the base of the flat hill at the far end of the glacier, which is Ski hill.  The Northeast fork of the Kahiltna glacier, also known as the valley of death, goes to the right from the base of ski hill.  More on that later. 
Here we are, unloading the plane at Kahiltna base, on the southeast fork of the Kahiltna glacier.  Basecamp Annie is in the bright pink jacket, she manages the place. You can usually hear her yelling about, trying to keep preoccupied climbers in line. Mt. Hunter towering in the background. At base camp we buried a cache of some heavier food for our return, picked up fuel from Annie, loaded our sleds, and headed out. (They don't allow climbers to carry fuel on the plane.) 

We camped at 7800' that night, at the base of Ski Hill.  The next day, in heavy fog, we carried a load to 9700' and buried it.  When burying a cache it must be at least 1m deep to prevent wind and ravens from uncovering it.  After burial, it must be marked with bamboo wands with identifying tape so it can be found later.  Since it can snow many feet the wands must also be long.  Although it didn't snow more than a couple of feet while we were there.

The following day we packed up what remained of our camp at 7800' and carried straight through to 11,000', bypassing our cache at 9700'. 

The day after that we descended from 11,000' to retrieve our cache at 9700'. 
A campsite (not ours) at 11,000'.  Snow walls are always built around the tent to keep out the wind. It is not unusual for a high wind of 75 mph or higher to rip a tent or break its poles.  We were fortunate and never got any high winds.  If you're lucky you can find a tent site with walls already built. 

The next day we lugged half our gear to the camp at 14,200 and cached it. 
After lugging loads to 14,200' we returned to a windy campsite.  Not having enough walls to keep our stove from blowing out, we ate cold food.  Smoked oysters, brie, and melba toast was our appetizer for the evening, not too bad. I should eat that well at home. 
The next day we moved camp through windy pass, shown here, up to 14,200', called 'basin camp'. 
Scott on Squirrel Point. 
A corniced ridge seen from Windy Corner. 
Alpenglow on Mt. Foraker, seen from basin camp. 
Scott and I at 'the edge of the world' at 14,200'.
Scott, Brian, myself, and the other Steve.  Brian and Steve have completed acclimating at 14,200 and are heading down to the northease fork of the Kahiltna glacier, also called the 'Valley of Death', to begin their climb.  The Valley of Death is so named due to the narrow valley in which you are never safe from avalanches.  They did very well, considering, only falling into 6 and 8 crevasses respectively. 
The best cheesecake I've ever eaten. Basin camp. 
From the 'Edge of the World' you can look down onto the Kahiltna glacer and Mt. Foraker.  In real life, you can see the trail we used on the Kahiltna stretching from left to right, but the resolution of this pic isn't good enough.  Also, that's the valley of death directly at the bottom of the picture. Ski Hill is to the right.
Drying our sleeping bags at 14,200'.  Our tent is the blue and gold Sierra Designs in the rear.  Chris Stubbs and Mike slept in the burgundy and gold Garuda in the foreground.  This was the first camp we actually rested at. Before hitting basin camp, we hiked every day ferrying loads. We took about 3 complete rest days with one other day used to carry loads to 17000 feet. Then we moved up one more camp to 17000.
(L to R) Me, Mike, Chris Stubbs (kneeling), and Scott before Chris and Mike headed down.  Mike summitted from basin camp (14200').  An amazing story as he left at 2:30 am in a snow storm, had to wait 45 minutes on the ridge for a whiteout to clear, then had to wait at 17,000' an hour and a half for wind to die down.  Finally forged his own trail across the autobahn (the riskiest part of the climb), and summitted. 

Most people are barely capable of reaching the summit from 17,000'
A scrumptious dinner of Uncle Ben's rice, sardines, smoked oysters, and a sprinkling of body hair which found its way into every meal.  It was all over our clothes, tent, and it even on the camera lens, as you may have noticed in some of the pictures.  But what's food without spices?
Moi at the top of the headwall, 16,200'.  Ready to head up the ridge towards the thumb. This ridge is the West Buttress.
Washburn's thumb on the ridge between 16,200' and high camp at 17,000'.  Scott is sitting at the end of our rope waiting for some slowpokes to place and remove snow pickets every 20 feet. But in their defense, an unfortunate guide did slip off the ridge here and die the previous year.

See how the sky is black? That's the way it is at altitude a lot of times. Part of it's due to camera exposure, but even with your naked eye it is black a lot.

Me up at Washburn's thumb.  There are now fixed lines at the thumb due to the accident last year. 
The West Buttress ridge between 16,200 and 17,000.  The route traverses the ridge from left to right.  That was fun.

 
Scott ahead of me heading up the infamous autobahn. This slope accounts for most of the accidents on the West Buttress climb. 
At high camp summit day morning.  We typically never hit the trail before 2 pm, but today was a special day. We were out of the tent at the ungodly hour of 11:00 am.

Notice the lenticular cloud in the background.  This is the sign of an impending storm, so we had to keep an eye out. There was a large lenticular over Foraker too, but none over the summit of Denali.  We decided to go to Denali pass (18200' at the top of the autobahn) and see how the weather looked at that point. If the weather was deteriorating we'd turn around, if not we'd go on. 
On summit day, heading for Denali Pass.  Weather still looking good. 
A look backwards at the climbers behind us.  On the left you can see Mt. Foraker, and in the upper right, the cloud. 
At Denali Pass the wind was howling at about 50mph or so.  Many people turned back.  I put on my overboots for the first time of the trip. We huddled behind a rock while I put on my boots and we ate some gorp, then we headed out into the wind and upward. Some people thought this was cold, but it was nothing compared to the weather we've seen on Mt. Washington.
A quarter mile beyond Denali Pass, the wind died down and the day became perfectly still and sunny.  Smooth Cruisin! We got our first view of the summit block.  It looked about a half hour away. 
At least an hour later I caught up with some Japanese guys at the summit ridge.  The summit was 10 minutes away. 

 
Both of us on the summit! 
Heading back across the summit ridge. 
Me on the summit ridge. 
On the summit ridge we met up with Brian and Steve who had just made it up the West Rib. 
Clouds from the football field. 
Heading down to the Pass. 
Scott on the morning after summit day. 
Me on the morning after summit day. I'm psyched that hair has regained so much of its body 

The next morning we packed up camp and left at 1:15pm to see how far we could get out. We had caches at 14,200, 11,000, and 7000'.  Our plan was to pick up each cache, eat as much as we could, take a break, get fat, then move on to the next cache.  If possible we'd go all 15 miles to the airstrip. It was summer, and we had 24 hour daylight, so night wouldn't be a problem. 

On descending the headwall into basin camp the slope was steep, and pretty warm for all the clothes we were wearing. The worst part was the soles of my feet -- they were killing me. 
We picked up our cache at 14,200, took a break, checked our O2 saturation, which was lower than on the way up, and ate.  My feet were sore because of the dirty socks. Changing them fixed the problem.

Here our snow wall is showing its age. 
The two guys in red dropped a sled into a crevasse.  While they fished the sled out, their stove fell in and they lost it.  They offered to purchase my stove which is ready for replacement but Scott, being a weiner, sold them his instead. 
Descending from 14,200 through Windy Corner to 11,000'.  I pulled the sled which was a pain, but I didn't care. We just climbed Denali. 
Scenery to the north while descending. 
At 11,000' we stopped to dig our largest cache and eat as much as we could.  It was really warm here. Steve and Brian caught up on skis and helped us eat (lighten our load).  Then it started snowing, so we packed up and moved out. Steve and Brian had skis, so they were gone in a flash. 
While heading down from 11,000 we got bored, and decided to try sledding. We could sit on the backpack on top of the sled, that was like riding a one legged horse.  At one point we got up good speed, but I started veering off to the left while Scott kept going straight.  Not a problem except that we were still roped together.  Coming up the hill between us was another team of climbers.  That problem was averted when I wiped out and tossed through the snow.

We finally got it down though.  While wearing our packs on our backs, we'd sit on top of the gear on the sled.  With the help of a slope and a lot of good luck we could stay on top, steer, and not hit any crevasses.  Most of the time it was a lot of work, however, and we often ran off course, tumbled over and through the snow with our packs, and once even zoomed over a crevasse.  But it was fun, like anything that sounds stupid, and 3000' later, we were at the base of ski hill. 
At the base of Ski Hill we caught Steve and Brian. It was 1:00 am, and they had some great hot jello and other snacks out. They were packing up their cache when we arrived.  We ate a little, took a break, and the four of us headed out again. Over the next few hours it got foggy and dark.  We couldn't see crap, but Brian and Steve acked like they knew where they were going, so we followed them.  We put on our snowshoes since the ground was too flat to sled, and we were sinking in. 
Four hours and 6 miles later, around 5:00 am, we climbed Heartbreak Hill and got to the airstrip. It had started raining, so our clothes were wet, we were cold, and we were miserably tired.  We pitched our two tents door to door and set up the stoves in the space between them.  What a great feeling. Scott dug up the cache we had left. We ate.  Due to the crappy weather it was doubtful any planes would be flying that day, but Steve went to Annie's hut and left a note saying we were ready for a fly out just in case.  We wanted some naps, but didn't want to miss our plane. Given the conditions we unanimously decided to nap.  What seemed like 5 minutes later, I heard Annie's voice screaming again, although this time it was that our plane was here and we were first in line. We rushed to pack all our gear, food, stoves, and tents in 20 minutes, normally a 1 to 1.5 hour task.  We came damned close to making it, and finished up our trip with gear sprints to the plane in plastic boots through calf deep snow.  We made it.  Showers were a half hour away. 
Civilization, or the next best thing -- downtown Talkeetna, Alaska. 
After showering and a couple nights rest at the Talkeetna Air Taxi bunkhouse, I moved my camp to a gravel bar on the Talkeetna river to chill.  I had nothing to do but read 'Into the Wild' by John Krakaur and let my body rebuild.  The view from the front of my tent included the mountain.  And it felt great to see it from a distance where I was relaxed, warm, and a short walk from a hot meal. 

For the next few weeks I had a gargantuan appetite of my life, and I wanted to sleep all the time. To my surprise I found a new brand of ice cream in the grocery store in Maryland - Denali Ice Cream! I ate a few gallons of that for the next 2 weeks and quickly regained the little weight I had lost. And just in case I put on a few more pounds.

Denali from my tent on the gravel bar. 

Weather

We were truly blessed with the weather. While waiting at Talkeetna for our flight onto the glacier, other climbers were returning with horror stories. Their faces were sunburned and peeling off while they told of -40 F in the tent just the previous night. Once we got to the mountain we never recorded temps less than -10 F although on most nights temps would get below 0 F. Winds never got scary, never above 50 mph. One cool thing -- On some mornings when the sun hit the tent it would warm up quickly. One morning I timed it while it rose from 5 to 50 within 20 minutes.

Cooking

One night at 11000' the wind was howling a little, and we couldn't cook but we had plenty of food that didn't need cooking. Later in the trip we cured the cooking in wind problem by cooking in the vestibule. You've read all the stove manufacturer warnings to the effect of 'Don't use inside a tent'. That's great advice for when you're in a store. Sometimes the flame would hit the nylon which was exciting, and we heard about CO2 accumulation in the tent. People have died from CO2 poisoning, so we kept the tent ventilated a little while cooking in it. Other than that no problems from cooking in the tent.