Day 1

Leaving base camp

Up at 4:30 AM. It wasn’t dark. It never got dark the whole trip. But it was cold. We weren’t moving very fast. With so much equipment, and melting snow for breakfast, it just takes time to get ready. Finally we left base camp at 7 AM. This first leg sounded easy. Base camp is at 7,200.' The next camp is at 7,800.’ Hardly any elevation gain at all. Of course it is 5 ½ miles to the 7,800' camp, and all of it is crevassed, so everyone needs to stay roped up. In addition, we all were dragging sleds. These are little K-mart-type kid sleds. TAT and the other airlines stock them at base camp so they don’t have to shuttle them in the airplanes. The idea is to haul about 30 or so pounds in the sled and 20-30 lbs in your backpack. Since we each had about 120 lbs of stuff to move, it usually required two trips. But it doesn’t work to take half the gear the first day and the rest the second. You never want to be without extra clothes and food. So it ends up that you have a light day and a heavy day. Today was a light day since the tent and sleeping bags were staying back at base camp. I was caching maybe 20 lbs or so at 7,800.’ So my total load was only maybe 50 lbs, with 20-30 in the sled.. Tomorrow would be a different story.

The first half mile or so is downhill (it’s called Heartbreak Hill - the name makes sense when you are coming back up it at the end of the day), so my rope team (David

On the lower Kahiltna glacier

and Dove) started without skins. I fell immediately. "Well, I got that out of the way," I said to myself. At the bottom of the hill I discovered the snow was firm, so I decided to walk, since I didn’t have skins, which allow one to walk uphill on skis. We had talked about improvising skins for my skis by wrapping cord around the skis. Kyle said that was the way they did it in the old days. He was an expert on the old ways. According to Kyle, the worst thing that ever happened to skiing was plastic boots. Who needs skill when you’ve got all that equipment? And don’t even get him started on snowboards. But when he said this, Kyle was on Teli skis with T-2 plastic boots. He’s not quite the purist he makes himself out to be.

After a mile or so I was hot and stripped down to just

David in the same spot "Kuku" took a picture in 1963

my lightweight underwear top. It was a bit of a mistake, because after that the wind came up and I was cold. We were in the shade, and I kept looking at a spot a half mile ahead in the sun and telling myself to just keep going, I would be warm in the sun. After a mile in the sun, I put more clothes on. It’s the wind that gets you.

Most of the time I just kept my head down and plugged away, focusing on breathing and rope management. If you go faster than the guy in front of you, he’s in danger if he falls in a crevasse - he’ll fall a long way before the rope comes taught and catches him. Besides, it gets hard not to step on the rope or let it get behind you and wrap around the sled. If you fall behind, the rope goes tight and you pull on the rope teammate in front of you. I was the last guy on the rope, which is better than being in the middle. Then you get pulled from the front and the back.

The sled was awkward and pulling it quickly became old. With each step the sled hesitates, sticks in the snow, you step forward and the rope from your harness to the sled comes taught, the harness pulls back a little, you feel it on your hips, then the sled lurches forward and slides easily - until the next step. Step, pull, lurch, step, pull, lurch. It works muscles in the hip that don’t ordinarily get worked when hiking or backpacking. Sleds are a pain.

The trail back to base camp from the lower Kahiltna

For those few moments when I broke from my meditative trudging and brought my head up, I was enthralled and inspired by the beauty of this place. Beautiful desolation. There’s only rock and snow here. Occasionally you see a bird, not sure what kind. There are supposed to be ravens, but I haven’t seen one. Only rock and snow, but how majestic! Moving up the lower Kahiltna is like walking into the throne room of the Mountain Gods. Peaks on either side of the broad valley, steeply rising to the clouds around the tops. I’m not the only one who has responded to Denali in this way. Both Hudson Stuck, of the first party to ascend the south (highest) peak of Denali in 1913, and Howard Snyder, member of an ill-fated expedition in 1967, borrowed the phrase "The Hall of the Mountain King" from Peer Gynt to describe Denali. It is a fitting description.

There are lenticular clouds over Denali’s summit today. Not a good day to try to summit. Lenticular clouds only form in mountains when the winds are strong. The mountains force the wind upward. It’s moving so fast that the moisture can’t dissipate and condenses to form a cloud, but only during the upward loop of wind over the peak. It’s sort of like a jet contrail, but the air is moving and the ground is staying still. Yet down here in the valley, in the sun, it’s pleasant and the mountains seem friendly - and breathtakingly spectacular.

We arrived at the 7,800' camp at 10:30 AM. Right on time for 2 mph plus 1,000 vertical feet/hr. I had hoped I could do that. We buried our cache and ate lunch. You have to bury your cache to prevent the birds from tearing into it and other people from shopping.

Punches on the trail.  Hereafter he was known as the "Walrus"

I ended up walking back to base camp, with my skis and empty sled on my back. It turned out that it’s downhill enough that it could have been skied without skins all the way to Heartbreak Hill, with a little poling and herringbone on the slightly uphill parts. Live and learn.

Back in base camp my shoulders hurt from the pack. I hadn’t before worn both a harness and a heavy backpack. The belts want to be in the same place, so it’s hard to get comfortable with them both. Consequently I ended up with more weight on my shoulders than I wanted. I suppose I’ll adjust with time and experience.

We were encouraged with the way things went on day one, so we decided to leapfrog tomorrow, i.e., we would pack up our heavy loads and move all the way to the 11,200' camp. Then we would come back down to 7,800' the day after or so and retrieve our cache. This would get us higher, to start acclimating, and would ultimately save us a day if we stayed on schedule.

Sitting in base camp, melting snow and drinking tea, I observed what a scene it is. I was outside in just a shirt and pants, no jacket, perfectly comfortable in the sun, but it was snowing lightly. What a foreign environment. There are maybe 20 or 30 people camped here. They seem to be just milling around, but most of them are packing or unpacking their gear, rigging sleds for the pull tomorrow, unpacking sleds from the pull today, burying caches, digging up caches, heading for or coming from the plywood toilets, which are in plain sight of everyone, including the landing airplanes, but they also have a fabulous view of Mt. Foraker. There’s a large guided group camped up at the top of the knoll who are practicing crevasse rescue. And the windless silence is frequently broken by the ear-splitting mechanical roar of the ski/wheel planes dropping off and picking up. This is definitely not a wilderness experience. It’s closer to Disneyland than wilderness. Punches is down with a group from Canada, trying to talk them into removing their ascenders from their traveling rope. The ascenders have teeth on them. If you fall into a crevasse and put a shock load on the rope, the teeth can cut through it - and you are suddenly in great danger. Consequently, it’s very bad form to travel with your ascender on the rope. I hope Punches is persuasive. Although, to be honest, the crevasse situation doesn’t seem that bad. The snow is fairly solid. There are crevasses, but they’re fairly easy to spot, and the snow bridges seem fairly firm. Still, it’s wise to be prepared for someone disappearing into the snow right in front of your eyes.

Tony from TAT was successful in finding our lost gear and brought it up on one of his runs today, so the team is now whole again, and ready for the hard push tomorrow.