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Departs for Alaska from Salt Lake City, Utah with his climbing partner Damian Benegas |
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Bang. Again. Did both of our last trips start like this? At the airport, after we spent 20 minutes rearranging our gear to be exactly 50 pounds per bag, (except one, 51 pounds so we had to pay overweight) we realized we didn't have tickets. A mistake was made, which resulted in us having to re-buy our tickets. But we made it to the plane. Upon arrival in AK, we were greeted by the world record halibut. I dubbed him Harriman. A 150 mile drive to Talkeetna, a small drinking town with a climbing problem (and a mosquito problem for me). We repacked out stuff for the glacier plane tomorrow and walked around a bit. The day seemed pretty rushed, but long at the same time. Especially with the 24 hour daylight, thats new. |
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We thought yesterday was rough? Today was gnar. Besides the 300 mosquito bites, our permit got revoked. We casually went to the ranger station for our climber orientation, and wham! They laid it on us. After a long discussion with the ranger, we quickly went to set things right. I had to arrange for 4 outside resources to send letters saying that Damian is my climbing partner, not my guide. So 6 hours later, we got accepted, and had our orientation. I was afraid for a bit that we would have to hi-jack a plane and fly in ourselves! But at 7pm, we flew in a teeny fixed wing plane onto the Kahiltna glacier, base camp. From the plane we could see everything, the flat landscape building up into the magnificent Alaska range of pointed, jagged granite and ice peaks. We landed right on the glacier, he flew off, and we started repacking. We had to repack all our gear into move-able sleds to get a mile downhill from the landing snow to the base camp area. With sunlight still glowing in the skies, we hit the sack at about midnight. |
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Pretty slow day, we woke up at noon slowly cooking alive in the tent. We probably could have fried some eggs on our mattresses. But really, it's like a greenhouse in the tents- then chillin in your sleeping bag in a greenhouse equals not fun. We lazed around all day, I tried to build a kicker, epic fail there, so I settled with cooking water. Well boiling it. Our plan is to get up and break camp at 3 am.We'll see how we do. |
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Well, 8 am is close enough I guess. We packed up and started off. Skiing/skinning while being roped up, carrying a pack, and hauling a sled that weighs 150 pounds is harder than it sounds. Over crevasses, around them, luckily not in them. It "stormed" all day, so Damian, 30 meters ahead was at the edge of my visibility. We passed camp one, and went straight for a sort of "camp 1 3/4". Big day with heavy loads. At least we'll sleep good tonight. Oh yea, we've also been doing daily dispatches. which most of you won't want to see. But maybe they'll get released. |
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Pretty much just chilled today, stayed put in camp. It "snowed" again all day but it was so warm that it would melt on impact, so slush was the result. Everywhere. We barely left the tent, slept alot, thought even more. Towards the end of the day the clouds opened revealing a beautiful landscape, snowy and rocky pointed peaks jagging like teeth through sheeps wool clouds, a pink glow residing over everything, with a light blue sky sandwiched in between distant cloud layers. The opening also meant we were in for a cold night. The heat all escaped and everything wet froze immediately. Again, we are shooting for a 3am wake up to go to camp 2. |
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It' s 3am! We did it! It was cold though, packing up and getting gear on was a chore in the cold. We started off about 4 and had a most pleasant day. The snow was cold so it didn't stick to our skins, weighing them down. We also had views for the first time for a short while, then the clouds moved in crusting us inside the fog. We made it to the 11,000 foot camp no problem arriving about 9 am, so we had the whole day ahead to sleep more, rest more, and lay out in the newly found sun. Clear skies and cold air, we are livin it now. |
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We overslept--again. We planned to get up and go about 6, but we woke up at 11. Oops. The light is hard to get used to here. Usually you can wake up at least when it gets light, but here it's always light, so it's hard to nail; there's no difference. We need to get out before the snow heats up... so, we have another sit-around day. Then we learned there is a nice little (or big) storm coming in. We could be here for days. This is what could take away our summit bid; a storm coming in and lasting for too long, which can be weeks. I think this trip, this expedition is a bit harder than Everest. It's much much different in every way, but harder in some ways. Just because of the waiting and lack of communication. At any time on Everest I could call home or have someone call home. Here, there is nothing. I can't call home, can't radio to someone to call home, we are secluded. It's just Johnny and Damian up in Alaska, cruising on a big time mountain. |
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Woke up today, or is it the day before yesterday? Maybe it's still last night. Anyways, the storm is still going on outside; heavy snow, strong winds. We're stuck. We did a little jibbin' in the storm, threw some 3's, keepin it real son. Taught Damian his first 180's. Jea Boi!! Everyone who saw us thought we were crazy. We ate some aweome burritos, then I had to say goodbye to a friend, or "go #2". It was miserable, droppin trow in the blizzard with howling winds, and every once in a while people looking outside. All I could do was smile and wave. Then, back in the tent to think and weather out the storm. More snacks, more waiting, more snowing. See you tomorrow and good evening San Diego? |
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That was a lame joke in yesterday's blog. It was from "Anchorman" 'for those who didn't get it. Anyways, we were woken up by Greg, a homey guiding for Alaska Mountain School. He told us he thought we were dead, so he just had to wake us up. The weather proved to be the same, so we decided to try and carry a load of food to a cache at about 13,000 feet. We passed through "Windy Corner", a much talked about pass that holds true to it's name. We cruised on our skis, passing a couple of groups. After a while we came over a hill and were like, where did all these tents come from? Accidentally we had gone too far, all the way to the 14,000 foot camp. Oopsy. There was a ton of people, it's like a tent/snow wall city. After dropping our loads we headed back down and shredded some amazing snow... some places it was kinda gnar, but in quite a few I was able to score some face-shots. Back to camp, a burrito and a Red Bull. It definately revitalized my body and mind. |
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Move up to 14!! It was super gnarly. It snowed a ton so the whole trail was covered in thigh deep snow, and we were trying to pull a 120 pound sled up the hills, with our packs. We were pretty tuckered out by the first hill (it's called Motorcycle Hill because it's super steep). But we pushed on through Windy Corner, through the blizzard, through the everything, and arrived at 14 dog tired. It was 8 pm by the time we crawled into our sleeping bags, tired but happy. |
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Whoa. So much snow up here. With the continual storm, it just keeps accumulating. The past few days we've been getting to know some other skier bros from Squaw, John and Glen. So instead of sitting around getting fat (at 14,000 feet that is a real easy feat) we went for a shred session. We climbed up the headwall on the normal West Buttress route, to the ridgeline pass at around 16,000 feet. It gets so steep at one point that there is fixed lines set up. Here we took our skis off, strapped 'em on our packs, and booted up. We were breaking trail, and trying to boot up a 55 degree face of near blue ice, in ski boots, with no crampons. Pretty sketchy stuff. Most of the way up the lines, a crack rang out from under Damian's feet. The crown of an avalanche 6 inches deep, 35 feet wide cracked and broke down, not 5 feet from me and John. Looking down, there was a steady line of people below. AVALANCHE!!!!! Immediatly people were scrambling to get out of the way, but the snow was faster and took down large groups of climbers. It wasn't large enough to do much damage, but it thoroughly disgruntled many people (we found this out later). So, as we were in the safe, we continued to the ridge then dropped to rappel the icy fixed lines to where we could start our ski descent. The skiing down was out of a dream. Creamy blower pow floated us the whole 2,000 feet down, with all the other climbers watching in awe and frustration as they struggled through the deep snow in boots. I would never have imagined skiing that kind of powder on Denali, it was out of a ski movie. And I felt like I was in one. Good stuff. A chill night at camp, dreaming of our run, daylight fell for the night. |
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11 o'clock in the morning? Great time to wake up. We poked our heads out, then scrambled to get boots on. It was a beautiful day; sunny, no wind. Looking at the summit, it would have been a great day. A little angry at myself, I conceded to eat breakfast with Damian. There was no way we could start for the summit now. I couldn't believe it. Our first clear day for days, and we missed the opportunity. Damian told me to chill, because we needed to dry our gear anyways. We spent a couple hours laying everything out on everything else, trying to have the high altitude sun dry it out a bit. We watched teeny clouds scud accross the sky, and skiers climb a couple different lines. Jealous? Oh yeah. I had to be content with sitting there watching it all go on around me. Towards 5 o 'clock, we watched a skier drop Rescue Gully, a gully dropping straight down from camp 17. Then, in horror, we watched the slope fracture all around her. The slide broke, about twice as big as yesterday's, carrying her down the hill. Reports started to fly in: knee injury, head injury, etc. Damian and other guys around camp rallied with the NPS and got a team of 7 to go for a rescue. I was waiting in camp, watching them slowly get closer and closer, while the sun slowly dropped. When the sun goes behind the ridge it gets cold. Really cold. The shadow crawled over my tent and I watched it chase the rescuers up the hill, and creep up on them as they got the girl down. They were back in camp about 11pm, not too bad. She wasn't too badly injured and will be able to fly out tomorrow. Damian crawled in, told me that John and Glen summited and left camp about 11:15 . Dang. We so could have done it. So we ate a little, and prepared our heads for tomorrow, because we are going up! |
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June 26 2009 Summit Day!! |
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We got up, early, then fell back asleep. At about 10 we stirred, and then I sat bolt upright. We gotta get going!! Damian reassured me that we would leave at 11:30, and not to worry about it. It was nice not waking up early, because it is really cold here. Without the sun, it's freezing. So about 10:30 we started to get ready. We packed nearly everything yesterday, so we just got everything else in line, squeezed into our frozen plastic boots, said bye to everyone in camp, and headed up the headwall, bootpacking. The weather didn't look too nice with clouds brewing up top, and winds throwing up mists everywhere. A little hesitant, we were at 17 about 2 and a half hours later. Here we geared up, put on all of our stuff, I even borrowed an extra jacket from an RMI friend!! Thanks Gabriel! The winds whipped up everywhere, making it not too nice to climb. We climbed a long trail to Denali Pass, a traversing icy slope that goes for hours. Luckily, for this part we had pretty good weather, which was nice because of how long and exposed the slope is. We hit Denali Pass, and started a long suffering journey. The winds chapped any inch of exposed skin and the rime/ice built up on anything it could get a grip on. The visibility was shortened so much that I had to squint to see 20 yards ahead. The mountain threw some bad stuff at us, but I guess we had worse to throw back. We topped out at 7pm, with 0 summit views, and steep slopes dropping on every side. It was quite a different experience--suffering the joy. It became a sort of game, seeing how long I could suffer for, then having to stop and warm my fingers or my nose. On top the temperature was -21, not including the windchill. I am actually quite proud of our summit; only one other guy summited that day, and nobody who saw us go up thought we would make it. But we were tougher than the weather that day.. luckily, and punched through. We skied from the summit ridge, dropping 6,000 feet down mixed icy slopes through camp 17, down climbed a section of exposed rock ridgeline, and finally got to the the 16,000 foot pass. Damian opted to rappel with skis down the fixed lines, but I wanted to ski it all. It was pretty cool, dropping a slope that steep after summiting North America's highest mountain. It was a day of mixed pleasures. Climbing, skiing, suffering. what else could there be to live for besides the ramen noodles back at camp? NIce work team, we did it, now time to head out and make contact with outside civilization!! |
It’s kind of relief to have summited. Just in a way that now we can relax and not worry about what the weather is doing. Now there is no stress. So, we spent all day packing gear. Packing everything well, getting it ready to travel all the way home. We talked with the Finnish girls next door, talked to the park rangers, talked to everyone else, and we were ready to go. Our plan was to travel at night because then the lower glacier would be cool enough to travel across. At about 7 PM we skied off with sleds in tow and said goodbye to the mountain. Damian was in front towing our sled, and I was the caboose, keeping the sled from running him over on the downhills. Things went more or less smoothly to Windy Corner. Then we literally stepped down into a blizzard. One second we were skiing down in afternoon sunlight, the next I was putting on a hat, pulling up my hood, and blocking my face. From there it was a struggle. Fighting down through 2 feet of snow to camp 11,000. The visibility dropped with the temperature, and each inch gained was work. Once at 11,000 we dug out our cache, and were saved by some friends. They gave us hot cocoa, refreshed our spirits, then we were off. Back into the ping-pong ball.
I don’t know if I should put a new date here, it seems like a whole new day started. We left 11 at 9 PM, and started to follow the wands down… until we couldn’t find them anymore. 4 wands from camp and we were stuck. Couldn’t see forwards, backwards, or anywhere. We pulled out the GPS, but following it, something felt wrong. We felt it was pulling us too far left. In a teeny break in the weather, we looked up and saw the giant face of a serac looming overhead. Definitely something wrong. We spent the next three hours finding our way from wand to wand, many times taking 15 minutes to go 10 meters, zigzagging to find the wand. Each time one was spotted, my whole body would relax for a second, then we would be alone again, straining our eyes for the next little stick. It seemed like quite an ending for the trip. It definitely summed up all the stress and suffering into a few hours. It was like being in a milk bottle, but colder. I could barely see Damian ahead, snowrime was built up on everything. At midnight, we had had enough. We were physically beat, our brains were tired, and our eyes were strained. Setting up an emergency camp is kind of rough. In the middle of the raging blizzard, you have to unpack the sled, dig a hole for the tent, put up the tent, secure it against the wind, get the snow out of the tent, get you and your pack in it, sleeping bags out, and get comfy. Somehow things don’t really go as smoothly as they sound though. Getting comfy is the toughest though, [June 28, 2009 1:45am] there is snow everywhere, all over the tent, in your sleeping bag, in your clothes. And somehow I couldn’t have been more satisfied. These are the experiences I won’t forget. My first trip to Denali, no, things didn’t run on a plan, but it was awesome. Yeah we suffered, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
5:00 am wake up and get up. A glance out the door shows clear, cold weather. Perfect. Pack up and move out. The skiing down the glacier was uneventful, but I feel like last night was the perfect banger for the trip. Wandering in a snowstorm, swearing our heads off, and loving it. Well, especially loving it now. But now this trip is at its end, and it was even more successful than I thought it could be. Bad weather and all, it was great. Now, time to let the airplanes get us home.
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