Pictorial Trip Report

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A scrumptious dinner of Uncle Ben's rice, sardines, smoked oysters, and a sprinkling of body hair which found its way into every meal.  Hair was also all over our clothes, tent, and even made it onto the camera lens, as you may have noticed in some of the pictures. 
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. Note the black sky. This is often the case at high altitude on a clear day.
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.  Extremely beautiful and fun hiking.  Moderate exposure.  The trail comes up the headwall in the lower left of the foreground and traverses the ridge from left to right. 

 
Scott ahead of me heading up the autobahn. This steep slope accounts for the most accidents of the climb, always on the descent. 
At high camp summit day morning.  Ready to go!  Notice the lenticular cloud in the background.  This can be the sign of an impending storm,and it caused some concern as there was a large lenticular over Foraker too, but none over the summit of Denali.  We decided to go to the the pass (Denali pass 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 for the summit. 
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 lenticular cloud that had us concerned. 
At Denali Pass the wind was howling at about 50mph or so.  Many people turned back.  I had to 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. This photo was taken a little above Denali Pass. 
A quarter mile beyond Denali Pass, the wind died down and the day became perfectly still and sunny.  Soon thereafter, we got our first view of the summit block.  The summit is left of middle.  The top was surely only a half hour away now! (I thought). 
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.  Successful climbs for all of us! 
Clouds from the football field.