wfinley

Who is Annabell Bond? Regarding sleds... A pole setup is nice but few climbers haul them. Getting to Alaska is hard enough with out a giant sled thrown in as well. Most climbers opt for the sleds the air taxi services provide (which are in a big pile at KIA). These sleds tend to be crummy cheap plastic sleds but work well enough. If you're not bringing your own sled I suggest you fly in a few pieces of plastic garden hose and 6 mil cord to reinforce the sled so it doesn't shatter when it rockets into your heels as you're doing turns down ski hill. Still - regardless of all your efforts your sled will still try to kill you or at the very least try to dislocate your knee.

I will also say that the Sultana is far more committing. Weather and ave danger are major factors on this route -- if a bad storm comes along you're a sitting duck. At least on the Buttress you can always hunker down to a sheltered camp.

Ha Ha! I loved the book... it was a great read once I had time & energy to devote to it. It was a little heavy (literally - it's like 500 page) for Denali though. So far I've also read Lot 49 and V. - Vineland is on my list for late summer (after Harry Potter).

Last time I was on Denali I took "Gravity's Ranbow" by Thomas Pynchon. It's a tripped out novel about a guy who, every time he gets an erection, causes a german V-1 rocket to fall. This was NOT a book for Denali.

To be fair to the original poster... I can see how some might see it as boring. I have trudged up to 10,500' 3 times and find the trail from base camp to 10,500 to be a monotonous haul. However - once you turn around and take the skins off the flight back down with Hunter, Francis and Foraker in front of you is amazing! Here are pix from a trip last year: http://www.couloirgraphics.com/images/misc/akr-kah/

The NPS put in fixed lines on the Autobahn? I thought there were only pickets. OK… rant coming on here. I disagree when people call the West Buttress boring. It’s a beautiful route in a beautiful setting. The climbing varies from stellar 20 degree ski slopes to a beautiful rock ridge complete with massive exposure and altitude. If Denali were not the tallest peak in NA then there wouldn’t be a conga line heading up the route and the climbing rags would worship the buttress calling it Alaska’s best route instead of continually ragging on it and commissioning people like Twight to write articles calling climbers on the route dweeds. People whine about the fixed lines and say how it takes away from the character of the route etc. etc. – but guess what? – there are fixed lines on the Muldrow and West Rib and I imagine on the Cassin as well. The difference is on the Buttress the NPS actually works to ensure they are usable instead of 1000’ of trash cord twisting in and out of the snow (like on the upper rib). The crowds are a pain – but that’s what you get for wanting to summit NA’s highest point. Don’t like crowds – climb Francis and you’ll be by yourself. As for the Rib… The Rib is considered AK 4 – which means steep continuous ice combined with a difficult retreat should something happen. Sure it can be straight forward – but if anything happens (HAPE, weather, a slip) the route quickly disintegrates into an epic as witnessed by the numerous accidents that have taken place on the route. I think perhaps the reason we see so many accidents on the Rib is because of this continually desire to escape the “status quo” of the Buttress. This is feeling is enhanced by the continual rant against the Buttress in rags like R&I and Climbing. From your living room the entire West Rib looks easy… from 14 camp the Upper Rib looks easy. Thus people get pulled to the routes when in reality they probably shouldn’t even be trying the Buttress. If you’re looking to climb Denali make sure you have adequate experience – if you’re looking to do the Rib make sure you’ve done similar climb. The consequences are high and long lasting should you screw up.

My bad... it's not a twin - it's a "Turbine Otter:" Here are some aviation pix: http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.se...inct_entry=true

Actually - The serac has a single titanium screw; the booty is in the crevasse we slept in. I stuck 2 (nice and shiny new) BD screws above my head and clipped stuff to them. Next morning I was groggy and the wind was insane... I walked off with them still there.

We have to know... what book did you bring?

Everyone's postin' so I guess I will too... This is how I spent my late spring. I brought an esoteric novel (V. by Thomas Pynchon) and spent my tent days reading postmodern fiction and thus never really escaping as I should have. Next time I will take a cheesy detective novel and veg out. N. Ridge of Mt. Blackburn (16,390') On May 6th, Wayne Todd, Carrie Wang, Ben May and I flew from Chitna into Mt. Blackburn's 9,500' camp with Paul Clause. At first we had five days of stellar weather for the Wrangells, and successfully moved camp up through a teetering serac field to Camp 1 (11,000'). We carried one load up and then moved camp the following day. Climbing was up 40 degree knee deep sownfields, followed by a pitch of 60+ ice, a traverse through a maze of seracs and finally 300' of 60+ ice to a corniced ridge camp. At Camp 1 we enjoyed two days of stellar weather and used one of those days to forge ahead to 13,000' to scope the route. However, come summit day the clouds rolled in to create questionable weather. Ben did not feel like a summit bid so Wayne, Carrie and I opted to go as a three person team -- leaving our 11,000 camp at 6 am to initially climb 2,000' of 40-60 degree ice and snow slopes to a football field sized plain with a large crevasse in the middle where we cached a stove and extra food. This was followed by a knife-blade ridge for 1 mile and finally a mile long summit plateau from 14,500-16,390. We reached the summit around 5pm. Near the top the weather rolled in and high winds scoured my face and nose giving me minor frostbite. We summated, snapped a couple pics and then literally ran back down the route we ascended. On the ridge the winds were howling a steady 60+ mph and the snow was disintegrating around us. We moved fast, but safe - protecting every pitch with pickets for fear of being blown off the route. At the crevasse we regrouped and continued down. It was 10pm and the winds were still howling. We down-climbed about 400' then realized we were tired and that further descent could be dangerous - so we turned around and climbed up to our crevasse. Back once again at the crevasse we decided to bivy so Wayne began to melt water while Carrie belayed me over to a gaping crevasse that I hollowed out for a bivy ledge. We then each drank a water bottle of hot soup, put on all our insulated layers, zipped up in our bivy sacks, spooned together for warmth and had a fitful sleep from 1am - 4am. At 4am we packed up and began the descent. Luckily the weather held and avalanche conditions we good and we made good time - reaching our high camp at 7:30am. Ben greeted us with food and water and we passed out sleeping all day and night. The next morning we hoped to descend to base camp but a huge storm rolled through. We had to take turns on shovel duty - one person would stay outside for a full hour while the other three tried to rest. You would pick up a shovel full of snow and where you dug would instantly fill again with spindrift and snow. We battled this from 6am - 6pm when the storm finally broke. Instantly we were up and packed but then looked out at our descent route to see huge avalanches scour the route. Above us the slopes sagged and when they finally broke we dove for our campsite wall and held onto ice axes for safety. Luckily a crevasse above us diverted all snow and the avalanches poured off the ridge a mere 200' above us. After a discussion we decided to let the slopes settle for a night and descend to base camp in the early morning. At 4am we were up and packed and by 5:30 we rigged the first rappel to escape our camp. A 200' rappel followed by 400' of chest deep wallowing in collapsing hollow snow brought us to a huge overhanging serac that we drove ice screws into and rappelled down to another serac. A final rappel brought us to safer slopes that we jogged down. At the bottom we had a mile of knee to thigh deep snow back to our camp. Back at camp we collapsed happy to be down and safe. Two more days of snow delayed our pilot but finally around 1pm on May 17th he broke through a hole in the clouds and drifted in lazily, finally parking his Twin Otter right next to camp. We loaded up, and off we drifted down glacier, over rock and finally green trees, muddy water and flat level warm ground.

Excellent route... but saying that this route can be done is 3 days from Seattle is pushing it. This mountain is home to some of the worst weather in Alaska. I recently spent a week in an area nouth of Marcus Baker. We had beautiful blue skies but gigantic clouds sat on top of Marcus Baker the entire time. It's like a vortex! Likewise multiple stories about lost tents, lost caches and snowcave tunnels abound. Most parties fly into Marcus Baker and sit around practicing their shoveling for a week and then fly out. Consider yourself lucky! Abe - the standard routes are the W ridge (accessed from the basin at 8000' on the Knik) and the N ridge (accessed from the Matanuska). The W ridge is supposedly easier and shorter but weather is worse.

Flew with Paul last week (Blackburn). We asked him about Canada and he said they raised the insurance costs and he didn't fly into Canada enough to justify paying for it. He said many people are having to fly into remote areas via helicopter (except for obvious LZ like the King Trench) and that it was costing them a small fortune.

Yes - we were able to fly in and out. We had to stamp out the suncups on the runway - and Paul / TAT flew over us a few times while we were there to monitor the snow. Definitly fly with Paul -- he'll go out of his way to make sure he gets you out. While we were there he actually landed the plane twice with flightseers to pick up our and another groups crap. (Imagine paying good money to flightsee and having to fly out with a bag of frozen crap that slowly thaws as you reach Talkeetna.) The hike out is a bear (no pun intended as you will most likely meet a few). Go out the pass SW of LS - drop down to the Kahiltna -- hike S until you can veer E to Peter's Hills then thrash your way down misc. mining roads and ATV trails until your reach the Petersville Road. There is a landing strip 1/2 between the Kahiltna and Petersville Road. If you're seriously considering it contact the AK chapter of NOLS as they actually guide (un)willing 18 year old girls on this route every now and then. Likewise Roger Robinson (at the Ranger station) could show you the route he used in the past.

I have climbed in there in August. Rock / snow etc. was great - weather was iffy. July would have been better. The previous party before us had been in for a couple weeks of July and had killer weather and did many routes.

Hey - I'd be hauling beer and pizza if I could! Problem is we fly in on a supercub - which means 70lbs of gear per person. My skis alone (Karhu Jaks) weight over 10 lbs so I have to be somewhat light. One must have priorites so I opted to eat light and have fat skis instead of tthe other way around!

Hmmm... perhaps this is why I am always so hungry. The servings are pretty ample (my logan bread is more like a logan brick); I always plan on being hungry but not starving. Regarding the planning stages - I have two weeks inbetween trips - I'll gain back that weight at the local pub.

OK... here's more info. Flying into the Chugach for 9 days - but we're bringing 2 extra days of food in case of stroms.. This 20lbs is only my food. IMO it's a tad bit heavy - but we are base camping it. However I'm trying to get it as close to a real trip as possible b/c I leave on another trip right afterwards. The second trip will be Blackburn - so we'll have to carry loads and I want to be fairly light. Thus this food planning serves as training for the next trip. There are certain things I could cut to make it lighter for a longer carrying trip (like only eat oatmeal instead of granola and nix the extra bagof gatoraid) but I'm wondering how much weight others carry. Not interested in the Twight 'carry only Gu and crank method' - more along the lines of long glacier plods and what people carry for those. Typical meal / days consists of: Breakfast: nutrigrain bar / oatmeal / coffee Lunch: 1 logan bread bar / 1 candy bar / 1 powerbar / misc (gu or something) Dinner: 1 packet miso / chicken with dehydrated potatoes, stuffing & corn / one handful chocolate Calories end up being about 6000. Maybe little more. (Never been so good at counting). What do you eat per day?

Here's my $.02 -- Bad idea! Thre are definitely three icy section regardless of year -- Windy corner, the headwall, the the 16-17 ridge. The audobon can be ice (and no - it's not fixed - but there are some fixed pickets you can clip to) likewise the summit ridge can be ice. The ice in the 3 sections I mentioned is rock hard -- why risk it? My basic rule of thumb for alaskan expeditions is: if it's going to break - it will - and it will break where you need it most (one of my partners broke his crampon bolt on windy corner). Go with the standard and test your new gear on peaks you know. Furthermore - what's the weight difference? It can't be that big a difference - if the weight bothers you - eat out of your nalgene.

I'm going out for 10 days - I have 20 lbs of food... am I too heavy? This weight does not include fuel, camping or climbing gear... only food. We're not doing a technical route -- just mellow glaciated climbs where we'll be dropping loads and setting camp before it gets steep. What's your weight when you're out for a while?

I agree - toss either the zip fleece pants or insulated pants. I've always carried just fleece pants (nonzip as they're lighter) and no insulated pants and my legs have never gotten cold. Likewise drop the belay jacket. I disagree on the one-piece suit - too hot for me. On most May / June days in the AK Range I wear a short sleeve shirt under a jacket - or my white capaline and no jacket. A one-piece dark suit will kill you on a sunny day! However - I tend to stay pretty warm. It all comes down to comfort level. If you ice climbed all winter in only a capaline top and jacket - then you'll be hot on the mountain until you reach 17 where you'll finally be comfy. If you ice climbed in a fleece and belay jacket all winter you'll freeze your ass off everywhere.

FYI AkClimber - just for you to compare - here's one I put together for an April Chugach trip. This is for a team of 5 people and for the first 10 days of April... Food is not included. IMHO this is a little bit on the heavy side as it is a base camper trip. If we were moving I'd drop some cloths, the food bowl (eat out of mug or nalgene) and a few other misc stuff. CAMPING GROUP GEAR PER EXPEDITION Mega-mid Stove #1 (+ repair kit) Stove #2 (+ repair kit) 2+ quart sized pan for cooking #1 + gripper 1+ quart sized pan for cooking #2 + gripper Cooking gear: Dipping Spoons, scrubbers etc. 3 gallons Fuel Expedition Gear Repair Kit (sewing kit, rip-stop repair tape, duct tape, tent repair kit. Wire, cord) Binding Repair Kit (drill, screws) First Aid Kit GPS Sat. Phone Latrine Equipment (plastic bags, rubber gloves) CAMPING GROUP GEAR PER ROPE TEAM lightweight climbing tent for team 1 lightweight climbing tent for team 2 8 mil rope for team 1 8 mil rope for team 2 Ice tool for team 1 Ice tool for team 2 Altimeter for team 1 Altimeter for team 2 Sled & Sled Bag for team 1 Sled & Sled Bag for team 2 INDIVIDUAL CLIMBING & SKI GEAR Seat harness Chest harness (or webbing for) Personal carabineers Personal runners Personal Belay Device Ascenders and/or Prusiks Pulleys (x2) Snow Pickets (x2) Ice Screw (x2) Mountain Axe Crampons Helmet Shovel (metal) Probe Beacon (plus extra batteries) Whippet Ski Pole Skis Skins (plus tips repair kit) Large Volume Pack INDIVIDUAL CAMPING GEAR Sleeping Bag Bivouac Sack Inflatable Foam Pad Closed Cell Foam - Pad INDIVIDUAL CLOTHING OUTER LAYER - Heavy Down Jacket OUTER LAYER - Down or Synthetic Pants OUTER LAYER - Overboots or Supergaitors SHELL LAYER - Gortex Jacket SHELL LAYER - Gortex Bibs INSULATION LAYER - Expedition Weight Top INSULATION LAYER - Expedition Weight Bottoms INSULATION LAYER - Tights or Pants BASE LAYER - Mid weight Top x2 BASE LAYER - Mid weight Bottom BASE LAYER - Briefs MISC GEAR - Hat MISC GEAR - Baclava MISC GEAR - Mittens MISC GEAR - Climbing Gloves MISC GEAR - Liner Gloves MISC GEAR - Wool Socks x2 MISC GEAR - Sun Hat MISC GEAR - booties MISC GEAR - lightweight shorts Plastic Boots INDIVIDUAL MISC GEAR Book Journal Toothbrush & Toothpaste TP & Handiwipes Sunblock (Zinc and Regular) Chapstick Mug Food Bowl Water Bottles X 2 Water Bottle Insulators x 2 Pee Bottle Spoon Ear Plugs Glacier goggles Ski goggles Foot Powder Camera & Film

If you're doing the Sultana Ridge everyone I have spoken to tells stories about the traverse across Crossan to the Sultana being riddled with crevasses. I can't personally speak for anything on Foraker proper - but I have climbed Crossan and thought the crevasse danger was horrible - and worse than Denali's West Butt. We found crevasses running in all directions: vertical, horizontal and everything in-between. I would definitly haul ascenders up there -- it will save you tons of time because someone is going to go in a hole.

Unles you're planning on skiing the Messner or Orient Express those boots are overkill. You can easily skin to 11 and could possible skin from 11500- 13000 and 13500 to 14000 - but most parties leave skis at 11. I've carried them from 11 to 14 b/c the skiing at 14 is awesome... but have never taken them to a higher camp. The Denali's will be warm enough -- but come summit day you'll be hating life (remember - 1 lb on the foot is equal to 10 lbs on the back). If you're dying to ski I suggest the Lasers which are a bit lighter and easier for walking -- however if your main goal is to climb the mountain get some Inverno's and accept the fact that it sucks to ski in plastic boots. One thing to note -- if you're Scarpa's fit you and you're comfy in them stick with a Scarpa mountianeering boot. They fit the same way.

I tried to carry my iPod once and it froze on the flight in. I always carry a cheap Sears FM/AM radio. It's the best $10 I ever spent -- it has a nice speaker that everyone in the tent can hear - and from my gear repair kit I always pull out a long coil of wire and thread it around the tent poles then wrap it around the antenna. You can pick up tunes from just about anywhere with this setup. I never carry a camp chair -- they're nice but every ounce adds up. Other stuff: a big measuring cup (2 cups) to add snow to the pot and dump boiling water into nalgenes; black plastic trash bags (two per person). On days you have to carry you can fill these up with snow and leave them outside in the sun. By the time you come back they'll be slush and your snow melting time will be halved.

Thanks! I also emailed black diamond and they suggested the same thing.