The following is an account of our Trip up the West Buttress of Denali. We flew in on May 15th and flew out mid-June.

Day 1:

We arrived at the airport at about 7:30am and the weather was good, the planes would be flying! The previous day no planes had made it in all day, twice taking climbers all the way out to base camp only to be unable to land and have to turn around.

We piled into the plane with 4 other climbers; 2 were going to the Ruth glacier to climb some other peak, and 2 were going to base camp with us with plans to summit Denali.

The flight went without any problems, and in perfect weather we could see mountains as far as the eye could see. Denali stood proudly above all of them, seemingly inviting us to a challenge. We landed and got to work; we left a few weeks of food and fuel buried under the snow, then loaded up our sleds and backpacks with 3 weeks of supplies and headed for the first camp. The route dips to about 6500ft before climbing to camp 1 at 7800ft over the duration of about 5 miles. We were carrying somewhere over 200lbs between the two of us, enough that we were very slow. I had skied a few times in my ski boots to find that they didn’t fit very well so I had the shells molded before the trip. I found quickly that I hadn’t gotten them fitted quite right, the right side of my right foot didn’t have enough room and hurt with every step.

We finally arrived at camp hours later, set up our tent and went to sleep.

Day 2:

Today’s plan was to bury a cache at 10,000ft. Weather was crap, low visibility. We loaded all our food into our sleds and backpacks, clipped into our skis, and headed into the whiteout. The higher we got, the worse the weather got. Snowing and blowing in addition to the whiteout now. A few times I lost the route and had to sweep left and right to find the path of willow wands left by another party. Finally we hit 10,000ft where we found a tent site someone else had dug out. We huddled there to put on a few layers then started digging. Now it was snowing heavy, I was getting worried that the tracks were going to get covered making it hard for us to find the route down, and we had no stove and tent to stop if we got lost. Finally we buried our supplies and started the ski down. From one wand we couldn’t see the next. We were roped up about 20 meters apart and we would sweep sideways down the hill, peering into the whiteness looking for a wand. Finally we would see one, ski to the wand, then repeat the process. Eventually I found that even though I could’t see the trail I could feel it’s iciness below my skis. After that we sped up a bit, skiing into the bright whiteness by feel and, as if by magic, a wand would always appear in front of us.

Day 3: We move to 10,000ft. Repeat of the day before with similar weight, but better visibility. I’m trying to take notes of landmarks for the way down so I took note of a large serac block off to our left then went back to staring at my skis for about 30 minutes, immersed in the pain and effort of going uphill. 30 minutes later I looked to my left for another landmark only to find that the serac block had barely moved. My sense of scale was way off here, everything was so much larger and further away than I was used to. Throughout the day the pain started to come and go in my foot… I hoped the boots were breaking in. That night I found it was probably more my foot breaking in; I was starting to lose feeling in my small toe.

Day 4: Rest day, we lay around in the tent, aside from occasionally going out to shovel drifting snow away from the sides of the tent, melt snow, or cook. We do some maintenance on the walls, putting the snow saw to use cutting snow blocks to reinforce the walls.

Day 5: The wind is howling up Kahiltna pass, we consider today a storm day and sit it out. We regularly go out to shovel snow drifts off the tent, the wind is relentlessly trying to return our dug in tent site to the level of the glacier.

Day 6: Weather hasn’t improved much. We decide that it probably won’t improve in the next day so we get on with it; we pack up to do a single carry (all of our weight) to 11,000ft. The hill is steep, the loads heavy, and the pain in every step. The pain in my right foot stops after about 10 minutes of activity now, and a numbness takes over. I’m glad we’ll be leaving behind our skis at 11,000ft and switching to mountaineering boots with crampons. Shortly after leaving camp with our heavy loads something gives way in Lubica’s knee and she falls; we discuss and she decides she can make it to the next camp and we’ll assess there. She would later claim it was because I made her carry the CMC. CMC is a Clean Mountain Can, or in less flattering terms: A poop bucket. To help keep the mountain clean they give you a plastic bucket with some biodegradable bags. They have some designated crevasses at 7800ft, 11,000ft, and 14,200ft that you’re supposed to throw the bags into. As gross as it can be to sit on the same bucket all expedition, or to have to go out into a howling windstorm to sit on the bucket… they work pretty well, it’s much better than trying to melt snow only to find you’re scooping someone else’s poop into your pot of water.

Day 7: Behind schedule we try to do a carry to 13,500ft. We make it a few hundred feet up the mountain to Squirrel Point and we can’t go further. This traverse is very exposed, a stumble means sliding down the slope then dropping off a cliff that goes far into the valley far below. The wind is strong enough that a few times I need to lay down and dig my ice axe into the snow to hold on. We turn around, leaving our cache at the top of the previous hill.

Day 8: Wind has died, we try again. This time there is no wind, and we carry our loads to about 14,000ft before dropping them. This part of the climb is exciting; the infamous “Windy Corner” isn’t blowing today but there are crevasses big enough that you could lose a house in them, and overhanging rock threatening to fall and send you down to them. The east side of windy corner also holds many hidden crevasses, there’s numerous spots where we see others punched a leg into them. On the descent Lubica’s knee fails again, now our trip is in jeopardy. We wonder if her knee will fail completely up high, leaving us stranded on the mountain.

Day 9: Another good weather day. We decide I’ll carry the sled with the weight so Lubica can have a light day on her knee. Despite the heavy weight, I’m feeling good. I’ve named my sled and developed an ongoing dialogue with it by now, and today we’re getting along. Around 14,000ft though the altitude hits me and I lose strength… the last few small hills feel incredibly difficult, as my sleds personality turns more sinister.

Day 10: Mostly a Rest day, and there’s high winds in the upper mountain anyhow. We start hearing the stories. The guy next to us has been there 14 days waiting out the high winds. Not everyone waited though, there’s climbers stuck at 17,200ft, many with frostbite. At least one case is bad enough to warrant a rescue, and for the next few days the NPS Rangers will attempt helicopter rescues only to be thwarted by high winds every time. Eventually they will get him down by leashing him to one of the rangers so that he can descend without using his hands.

We go down to 14,000ft to pick up our cache from two days earlier. I’m exhausted from the weight the previous day but I agree to haul it all on the sled to save Lubica’s knee. Feeling bad when we leave the cache site she tries pushing the sled. It makes it effortless but I can’t get my balance that way so I tell her I’ll pull it alone. I move up the hill for a few minutes before I feel her pushing again, the sled turning lightweight. After a few minutes of this I turn around to tell her to stop and she’s not at the sled, but 20 meters behind me. Surprised, I continue. For the rest of the hike back to camp it feels like sometimes there’s weight, sometimes there’s not. Every time I sneak a glance behind me though, it’s just me and the sled.

Day 11: Winds are good down low so we moved up to 16,500 to cache a few days on food. On our way up the fixed lines we see the frostbitten climber coming down with the rangers. When we get back to camp we notice most of the camp staring up at the mountain… a few Czech climbers that Lubica had befriended walk past and they tell us the story. Two climbers were soloing up the Messner Couliour (a more technical route adjascent to the one we were on) planning to ski down it when one fell. Looking up, I could see a lone figure a few thousand feet above slowly coming down. Two thousand feet or so below, there was a motionless figure laying among some serac blocks. I couldn’t help but to wonder what was going through the climbers mind as he descended alone, it must have been a very lonely time. The two Czechs we were talking too had been climbing near them up the West Rib Cutoff when he fell. They descended to him, and from their description, he was certainly dead. Between this and the cases of frostbite, there was some thinking to do that night.

Day 12: We wait and rest. Winds are ripping through high camp.

Day 13: We wait, rumors are that weather could get better soon. The prediction is lower winds, but maybe snow. We do a short hike to below camp at the “Edge of the World” which offers some amazing views.

Day 14: We wait, the 8pm forecast is predicting lower winds soon.

Day 15: We think about going, but we wait. Winds are still high but the forecast is looking good: low winds, not much snow.

Day 16: A 3 day weather window is open, so we move up to high camp. We leave with the minimal supplies but it’s still fairly heavy. At 16,500ft we pick up our cache and now we’re loaded very heavy. The steepest part of the route is between 14,200ft and 17,200ft, 50 to 55 degree blue ice. Easy with two ice tools and a light pack, not so easy with one mountaineering axe and a heavy pack. After that the ridge gets interesting, at times 1ft wide with great exposure on both sides. Looking down to the right, it looks like the camp 4 is right underneath your feet, about 2,500ft below. The pain of the heavy pack dulled the exposure though, I remember thinking that I should be concerned about falling, but the pack was just too heavy for me to care. At some point I stopped to take a picture, the only picture I have above 16,500ft with clear weather.

At the lowest point I remember thinking “I should apologize to Lubica… we shouldn’t be here” I very nearly did apologize for bringing us there, but I decided it wouldn’t help our morale at all. The altitude was thinning the air and making it hard to breath, by the time we reached camp 5 I had a headache and was starting to feel sick. Laying in the tent at a rest my heart rate was about 80bpm, compared to the 55bpm that it normally is at sea level. The amount of oxygen here is something like 50% of that at sea level.

Day 17: I woke up still feeling sick and with a headache. Lubica made coffee and oatmeal but I was afraid I would vomit if I ate oatmeal so I just had coffee and opened a cliff power block (the gummy block things) and carefully ate 1 at a time, making sure I wasn’t making things worse. By the time we were packed and ready to go my headache cleared, but my stomach was on edge all day.

We moved up through the places that I knew the names of very well, but until now were just things created in my imagination by reading guidebooks and descriptions. The Autobahn, Denali Pass, The Football Field, Pig Hill. Each one exacted it’s own special kind of pain and suffering, all while providing a beautiful view. By the time we hit the Football Field around 19,500ft or so I was feeling bad.

I was having a hard time walking straight. I’ve felt bad from altitude before, but this seemed a little worse. I noticed Lubica stumble a few times so I stopped her to ask her “How do you feel, can you walk a straight line?” Her answer surprised me “What does it matter?” I usually have the higher risk tolerance out of the two of us, but she sounded ready to commit for the summit. There were clouds moving in below as well, the forecast tomorrow was for 20-40mph winds. Not horrible, and we were prepared with heavy mittens, jackets, and pants for some very cold weather. Our boots though, were only 6000 meter boots and we had cold toes that morning in the Autobahn. Other climbers were wearing neoprene overboots or 8000 meter boots.

My mind ran through the scenarios… what if those clouds are the 40mph winds moving in? We summit late, and descend into a 40mph blizzard. We have no stove, shovel, or sleeping bag… we have to descend. Our toes would be the first thing to go… if we can find somewhere partly sheltered we have chemical foot warmers in our packs… who knows if we can even get our boots and crampons off in bad weather, but they might help us keep our toes if it gets bad… if her knee goes… well an unplanned bivouac just can’t happen.

I decided as long as the altitude symptoms didn’t get worse, we could keep going. I figured we’d have some slurred speech or vomiting before anything serious like cerebral edema took hold. Later I asked Lubica about her decision to keep going and she told me she meant her response literally; she couldn’t think why I was asking her about walking in a straight line, AMS, cerebral edema, and the descent weren’t on her mind at the time.

The last stretch was Pig Hill, then we hit the Summit Ridge. It’s the home stretch; another 20 minutes or so and you’re on the summit. Still, it’s quite exposed, especially when you’re stumbling around off balance and exhausted. We tried to be careful, despite the fact that we were rushing because we could see weather moving in and were summiting late in the day. In Alaska the normal rules of mountaineering don’t apply – there’s rarely any 2am starts or 2pm turnaround times because it stays light so long; the direct sunlight at high camp lasts until around 11pm at this time of year.

Finally we stood on the summit. Clouds had moved in down low by that time and the altitude and incoming weather made it hard to enjoy. At the summit there’s 42% of the oxygen that there is at sea level and I wasn’t doing well with it, I just wanted to get back to camp. We snapped a few pictures, the only ones we stopped to take the entire day, and started our descent. Step by step as we lost elevation my legs started listening to what I was telling them a bit better. By the time we got back down to the steeper more exposed parts of the route I was exhausted, but feeling better. We kept dropping elevation for hours, until we found ourselves back at our tents. Here we slept, completely spent.

Day 18: I woke up, again with the headache and questionable stomach. Coffee and a bit of oatmeal was all I could get down. It was snowing and visibility wasn’t great, but the ridge is so small it’s impossible to lose your path. We descended slowly as many other expeditions were on their way up, and there’s usually no more than a few feet to maneuver around someone. By the time we got back to 14,200ft we were happy to find our old campsite still open with minimal snowdrifts. We pitched our tent and went to sleep.

Day 19-22: Slow and tedious descent, still hauling a lot of food and fuel. Skiing with a rope and sled is nearly impossible, we unrope for some sections to save time.

Day 23-27: Resting, fun, skiing, and scouting a few climbs. We hoped to climb but the forecast wasn’t great and we didn’t want to wait so we flew out.

Overall this trip was a fantastic adventure. It was a lot of type 2 fun (fun when it’s over) but sometimes that’s the best fun. The scenery was absolutely mind blowing as well. When I was 22 I had set climbing Denali as a goal to do by 30, so I just barely got it done on schedule! I’m excited to see what the next decade holds, it should be an adventure!