Here folks is a trip report from my climb of Denali written two years after the fact! I’ve got notes from my journal, pictures, and fuzzy memories to cobble together a picture of what went down. Overall this was a super great experience. We were all fit, healthy, and prepared and the weather treated us as good as I could have hoped for.
Pre-Trip
Most of the preparation for this trip fell into 3 buckets: Physical, technical, and logistical. I don’t want to get too in the weeds here but maybe just dip my toes in the weeds.
PHYSICAL: Most of my training for Denali was spent ski touring as much as possible the winter leading up. It is really all about building your aerobic base and getting your body used to long ski tours with heavy packs. I would try and get big ski days in on the weekends and run during the week. I also did a lot of weightlifting, just basic lifts like squats and deadlifts seemed to really pay dividends on the mountain. Having a super strong core and back helps a ton with the heavy packs. Since we left in Mid-May I was able to ski all winter leading up to the trip.
TECHNICAL: I took a 6 day mountaineering course with AMS about a year prior to help dial in my glacier travel and winter camping skills. I cannot recommend this course enough, I learned a TON from my badass instructors: Chelsea Bomba, Emma Lydenn, and Fallon Connelly. I was able to spend the whole next winter practicing these skills and dialing more stuff in. We did a weekend attempt of Rainier about a month out to work out the kinks as a group since everyone had learned slightly different variations on crevasse rescue and stuff like that. We didn’t make it to the top of that mountain but it was a really great opportunity for everyone to get on the same page with our systems.
LOGISTICAL: There are so many great online and print resources for dialing in logistics for the trip. I roughly followed a gear list from AMS but most gear lists are the same. Coombs “Denali’s West Buttress” is a great guidebook for that route. Uphill Athlete has a good Podcast on preparing for the West Buttress. Really just take the time to nerd out on trip reports, books, and stuff online. If you are stoked about the climb you will gobble all that information up.
THE TEAM: Consisted of myself, Forrest Allen (my cuz), three of his friends from college, Evan, Glacier Dave, and Tim, and then my buddy Mike who I met in the mountaineering course a year prior. In my opinion assembling a good squad is one of the most important things you can do. You will be spending so many hours melting water and chilling in tents with each other. Being able to spend that time with people on the same wavelength as you is invaluable.
DAYS BEFORE: Okay leading up to the trip was stressful and chaotic. There are just a lot of things to remember to bring and you don’t want to forget everything. We did a bunch of last minute shopping at Costco, AMH, and REI. Packed and repacked and checked gear lists at Forrest’s house the night before. We didn’t wrap that up till around midnight. Our parents made us all a big ass dinner the night before which was tight and let us have more time to pack, thanks Team MOMS!
Day 1 – Drive to Talkeetna, fly in, move to Camp 1 (5/18/2019)
Me and Kianna woke up at 4AM to load up the truck and drive up to Forrest’s to meet up with the boyz at 5 and drive up to Talkeetna. We had our Ranger meeting at 8AM I think and then got all checked in with K2 for our flight in. Luckily the weather was good so we didn’t have any weather days! It was finally our turn by the afternoon. Said my goodbyes to Kianna and all of our worried parents and we were soon blasting off the the Kahiltna International Airport. The flight in is unreal check out these pics!
We landed and unloaded all of our stuff, there was plenty of stuff! Worked out some kinks on pulling and rigging our sleds, had lunch and then began the slog to Camp 1 (7800′). In hindsight I wish we would’ve bought a pizza in Talkeetna and ate that when we landed instead of digging into our climbing snacks right off the bat.
Eventually we rolled into Camp 1, made dinner and set up our tents, and crashed HARD! Sleeping is tight. Day 1 was very long, with the lack of sleep, waking up early and driving, flying, and then a long carry with all of our gear. Good wake up call for the body!
Day 2 – Cache at 11 Camp
Okay way less tired now that we got a full night of sleep! We are all pretty stoked on the views and being amongst the big mountains. We carry a load of food and stuff to Camp 2 (11,000′). Weather was awesome on this day, and after we made our cache we had an incredible ski back to camp. This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip! And blasting past some of the teams walking down was a good reminder of how awesome it is to have skis up here!
Day 3 – Move to 11K’
Day 3 we had a bit of weather! Quite windy and snowy! We broke down camp and got ready to move to 11k. It was pretty whiteout conditions but we had a GPS track from yesterday and were able to follow that all the way up. Evan was the hero of the day and did all the trail breaking and navigating. Serious hero status! Once we rolled into camp we were a little more sheltered from the wind which was nice. This was when I first started feeling the altitude pretty hard. Digging out the cache and things like that were super tiring. 11 camp is sweet though!
Day 4 – REST DAY
Okay guys this might have been the chilliest day of my entire life. We took a rest day here to aclimatize and recover after 3 pretty long days in a row. The weather was great and all we had on the docket was to chilllll. It is a different type of chill than I can achieve at home. I couldn’t make a plan if I wanted to and thats what made it so great. Forrest and I played a bunch of music with our pocket fiddle and mandolin, we lounged, smoked weed in the cooktent. What more could you want!
THE Chelsea Bomba – In the flesh!!
Day 5 – Cache at 13.5k
On this day we carried up and cached a bunch of food to 13.5k. This was our first time on crampons for the trip since squirell hill and windy corner were not really in great shape to ski. But, windy corner was not as bad as it was made out to be! This is probably very conditions dependent, we didn’t get blasted with wind as hard as we were expecting. The way back to camp after dropping off our stuff had excellent views all around!
Day 6 – Move to 14 camp
This was a rough day, ha! The weather wasn’t super great on this day but we felt comfortable moving upwards. Transitioning from 11 to 14 really feels like a transition into the big mountains. At this point you are already towering above everything else in sight, but the rest of the mountain towers another 6000′ above you. The scale of this place is just awesome! I think it took around 8 hours to get to 14 camp and I was definitely feeling the altitude and pretty worked when we rolled in. This picture sums up the vibe pretty good
It was sort of process finding a spot here. There weren’t any empty camps to snake since everyone had been held up at 14 all season, the first spot we chose the guided group next to us told us to leave because we were too loud which confused and upset us, we finally got a spot picked out on the outer reaches on this mini city. Mike was not doing super great at this point, the altitude was hitting him the hardest in the group, poor guy! You never know who it is going to be and it doesn’t really matter so much your fitness.
We got our tents set up and dinner made and then worked on building snow walls around our tents. I think I was feeling better than I was expecting energy-wise but was definitely looking forward to being more acclimated in a couple days. From the journal “Everything up here is a process and seems to take forever”.
Day 7 – Grab Cache at 13.5
Day 7 was an easy day recovering the cache at 13.5k. We had a nice little ski to the cache and short mellow skin back up to camp.
Weather was good and once we got back to camp we made the little side trip to the “edge of the world”. Pretty amazing view from this drop off! That evening we watched two skiers absolutely rip down the Messner Couloir. It was truly incredible to witness.The entire 14 camp stopped what they were doing to watch. They skied all the back into camp like a coupla badasses. One day I would like to come back and ski that, it is rarely in as good of condition it was this season.
Day 8 – Batten down the hatches!
We spent all morning building beefier snow walls in preperation for the oncoming storm. Once we had everything prepped to HUNKER DOWN we did a ski tour up to the base of the fixed lines. I was still feeling the altitude pretty hard but it was nice to tour with a relatively light pack. I beat Forrest at Chess back in camp, ha! The wind was blowing around pretty good by the time we were making dinner. Should be an interesting couple days.
Day 9 – Storm Day!
Day 9 was spent hunkered down as it was extremely snowy and blowy. It was too stormy too poop, I had to hold it for a later date! We spent the day shoveling out our tents, playing cards, and going around interviewing other climbers for www.realtalk.com. We must’ve spent hours interviewing people. We had a camera crew, a boom mic, the whole nine yards. It was actually a super fun storm day, loads of time to annoy Forrest!
You know one thing I would have done different is bring more entertainment for the storm days. We are lucky that we weren’t holed up for long at all, but by the end of the day I had finished my book and had resorted to watching Forrest play Pokemon on his Gameboy over his shoulder like an annoying little brother.
Day 10 – Ski Day!
We woke up and the worst part of the storm was over! We were all waffling really hard over breakfast on what to do next, the forecast still called for pretty high winds up top. We consulted my buddy Kakiko who was guiding a team in camp at the time and he gave us a lot of great advice. We ended up doing a couple ski laps to ~15k to help with acclimatizing and then move up to 17k the next day in hopes of getting a summit push in this small weather window. On my second ski run a took a really hard crashed, tomahawked pretty good. I was a little shook, I don’t remember the last time I crashed at speed like that but was super thankful that nothing was injured. And a good reminder that this was an area to maybe ski a little more conservatively than I do normally.
We also waffled on the decision to bring skis from this point on. It would be super cool to ski off the top and the mountain was actually in good enough shape for that. But the extra weight would make us tired and make getting to the top that much harder. In the end not everyone on the team was on board with bringing skis to the top, and if we weren’t all on board it wasn’t something we were going to do.
Day 11 – Move to 17k
With a small weather window in front of us and not sure when or if another would come we took our opportunity to move up to 17, setting us up for a summit bid the next day. We cached our skis and everything else we didn’t need at 14 camp, I think we took 5 days of food and fuel to 17. We made our best effort for an early start but by the time we woke up, melted water, made brek, broke down camp, cached gear, and packed for the day all the guided groups were well on their way. I suppose it doesn’t matter too much because there is so daylight but we were hoping to get in front of the traffic jam. Turns out we were so much slower that we missed most of the main backup.
Going up the fixed line was super fun and we had our systems pretty dialed so there wasn’t too much faffing around using our ascenders. At the top of the fixed lines when we got to the 16 ridge I was fading pretty hard from the altitude, I think we all were actually. “16ridge is cool climbing but sort of too tired to really enjoy it. I’ll enjoy it on the way down”.
I grabbed a piece of argillite for Kianna at some point on the ridge. Despite all the snow and ice there were some cool rocks to snag as little keepsakes! When we rolled into camp there weren’t any spots people had moved out of so we had to build camp from scratch. I was feeling like absolute shit from the altitude, bad headache and super nauseous. Building our snow walls when we were that tired was extremely tough and took a few hours but the winds at 17 can get pretty intense so you can’t really afford to half ass your walls.
17 camp felt like another planet. It was probably around -25F when we were there so everything has that weird squeaky sound that happens when it gets real cold. No one is really chilling and out and about like they are at all the other camps. And mentally I feel like I wasn’t totally there, I was kind of in a fog. It just felt like such a cool, bizarre place that people had no business being ha.
For din I tried real hard to get my Pad Thai mountain house down (my favorite), but I only managed maybe half. That night I had a terrible night of sleep, it is just rough up there when you aren’t adjusted all the way. But the weather was looking like Game On for summit push tomorrow!
Day 12 – Summit Day (5/29/2019)
Summit Day!! A year of preparation and a lifetime of dreaming all came down to today, and I felt like garbage! “nauseous and headache, super nervous because I’m not in any state to hike, laying in the tent while Forrest makes water”. #mood. I made a mountain house breakfast and was only able to get a couple bites in, going into the day real calorie negative. As I struggle to put food in my belly, Mike starts coughing up blood, shiiiit! We send him to go talk to the Rangers at camp and start talking contingency plans and how we are going to Mike down lower ASAP. After a bit Mike comes back smiling, turns out he had a bloody nose in the back of his throat or something and was NOT about to die, phew! We were still good to go!
This was one of the busiest summit days of the season but with all of our morning faff we were still the last team out of camp haha. We start out of camp and begin heading up the autobahn. It was in good condition with ample snow pickets placed for protection. But there was a pretty gnarly crosswind that would NOT let up. I was feeling the altitude pretty hard and was glad to be stuck behind some slower groups! We got up to Denali pass and it was super snowy and blowy, we took a little break there to put on some additional layers and this is where things started falling apart. Getting my puffy pants on over my crampons and harness in those conditions was pretty tough, my goggles completely froze up and my hands went numb from the cold so I was feeling tired, frustrated, and useless. Add in the wind and blowing snow and it just creates a super chaotic and stressful situation. Forrest was able to unfreeze my goggles which was a huge help, Evan and Mike were feeling the altitude really hard and made the call to turn around and head back to camp. Forrest and Dave were shockingly chipper and wanted to press on, Tim was sick from a cold he had at the beginning of the trip (freaking trooper that kid!) but was willing to give the summit a shot. I wanted to turn around because I was miserable at the moment and the weather was getting to me, but I was not going to let Forrest go to the top without me haha.
I felt better once I got my poop in a group and we had made it past Denali Pass, in hindsight that wasn’t the best place to stop because it was so windy there! From this point every step was a struggle but Forrest and Dave were very patient with me. I knew they could have gone on much faster without me. The weather past the pass was pretty good too, mostly sunny and not too windy! Cold though, I had every single layer on that I brought with me. I didn’t take any pics in this section because that was just extra effort that I wasn’t up for. The altitude was truly a struggle for me and is hard to properly characterize. I remember going from a breath every step to four breaths every step going up pig hill.
Once we got to the football field and could see the summit ridge I knew that we would be able to make it. It looks so close and would be a cakewalk of a hike in normal circumstances. Getting up pig hill nearly killed me and I was pretty wobbly on the summit ridge. When we hit the top we all hugged and took pictures. I was super proud of myself, that was to this day the longest and hardest grind of my life!
We didn’t loiter for long and began to make our way back down. We stashed our packs at the football field and by the time we get back to them I am straight wrecked and collapse on my backpack. Too tired to open my backpack for water. As we descend I feel better and better. Around tiger rocks Forrest fell waist deep into a crevasse, it was a good wake up call that we were still on a big mountain and had to make it down safely.
We descend Denali pass into camp as the sun is coming down. Good freakin day!
Day 13 – Descend to basecamp
We slept in a little this day because we were pretty tired from the Summit, but we had another big day in front of us. We packed up our camp at 17 and started heading down around 1:30 in the afternoon. My pack felt heavier on the way down, I think it actually was because of all my uneaten mountainhouse and poop I had to carry down. My bad for sure. The 16 ridge was incredible and we were able to soak in the views a lot better than on our way up a couple days ago. I was still feeling pretty stumbly on the ridge but once we got down to 14 camp I could breath soo much better, what a relief!
At 14 we gave away a ton of leftover fuel and food we had to some happy dudes who moved into our camp. We began the process of rigging our sleds for the descent, everyone had a different idea on the best way to pull off the operation. We skied with fully loaded sleds and backpacks to windy corner. No ones method worked well, sleds were crashing left and right, a true gong show really. Windy corner was pretty icy so we decided to get off skis until the top of motorcycle hill. When we switched back to skis we tried the method of having your sled in front of you and controlling it from behind with a a long lead line and this worked super well. Skiing down to camp 1 was pretty fun and cruiser once we got the hang of skiing with the sleds.
We eventually slogged our way back to Kahiltna basecamp around 1:30AM, 12 solid hours of bumbling our way down the mountain. BUT we had stashed margarita stuff down here so we dug those puppies up and had a little celebration! We crashed really hard at camp, after getting done with 3 huge days in a row.
Day 14-16 – Wait on Weather Window to fly out
The next three days were pretty boring. It was too stormy for planes to fly so we just did some hardcore chilling at camp. Made some awesome food, stomped out the runway, watched movies, had snowball fights. In hindsight we should’ve stashed way more booze at basecamp! On day 16 (6/2) we finally flew out! Called our baes and parents when we landed to tell them the news! My inReach actually died at 14 camp so no one had really had any status updates in awhile, OOPS!
We showered, ate SO MUCH in Talkeetna, and partied our bootys off at the Fairview. Anyway, thats all she wrote folks, thanks for tuning in!
Things I learned BOB!
- Having skis on the mountain is amazing if you are comfortable with that
- Having fun partners makes all the difference. So many hours spent goofing off in the cooktent boiling water.
- Lots of people give away food and fuel at 14 camp. Not saying you should rely on that, buuuuut I would personally bring way less food if I did this again.
- Bring some solid entertainment for down days. I was lucky we didn’t have many because all I had was pass the pigs and my imagination!
- Make friends with other teams and the rangers, there are so many cool cats up there
- You can’t be in too good of shape, seriously do some long ass hikes with heavy packs.
- Stash lots of booze and treats at basecamp in a home depot bucket. Consider bringing a pizza on the plane with you and eating one last good meal at basecamp before you start the climb too!