Denali Prep

[kmehrtens]

I am looking to the future with attempting Denali in mind. I got into mountaineering a few years ago after rock climbing for 20 years or so off & on. I have climbed Mt Rainier via the DC Route (2011) and recently completed Mt Hood (2012) via the Hogsback Route on the Southside. Both of these trips were with a guide service. I am trying to plot out my next climbs with the culmination being Denali. All of the future trips will need to be with a guide service, per my wife & I's mountaineering/climbing "agreement". Plus living in the midwest, there is not a whole lot of seriously interested folks in mountain climbing. Or at least in the circles I frequent, and I have a "normal" Monday - Friday day-time job, but with the vacation time to support a couple of climbing trips a year. So just knowing that I have a "built-in" climbing partner as a guide with more mountaineering skills than me is nice (but always wanting to learn more to make myself better equipped & less of a liability).

 

This is my list:

2011 - Mt Rainier; DC Route (complete)

2012 - Mt Hood; Hogsback/Old Chute Route (complete)

2013 - Mt Adams; South Lunch Counter Route (& maybe Mt St Helens if time allows)

2014 - Mt Baker; Easton Glacier

2015 - Mt Whitney; Mountaineer's Route

2016 - Denali Prep on Mt Rainier (in March or April)

2017 - Denali; West Buttress

 

Does anyone have any other suggestions for prep climbs or any other advice?

Suggestions for Denali Guides? AMS, IMG, AAI, etc...

 

Oh, also part of the wife's climbing "agreement", all climbing must be done in the US.

 

I have posted this in both the "Newbies" & "Alaska Route Reports" forums.

 

[CaleHoopes]

Interesting list. Here's the best advice I have. Find someone who wants to do this with you. Even on guided climbs, it's an actual advantage to bring along a climbing partner who knows you well and you know well. You'd be surprised.

 

Depending on what you're doing, different guide services do different things better. Adams doesn't need a guide at all.

 

Do keep in mind that with the DC under your belt, the climbing on Denali won't be TOO much harder to be honest. More importantly is your ability to ENDURE Denali. And until you go, you won't know.

[W]

The winter ascent/attempt of Rainier and a winter mountaineering seminar will teach you as much or more than everything else you list. Quite frankly if your vacation time is limited each year, climbing Whitney will be of little value towards Denali prep. Go to cold and snowy places. Go take an Alaska Range seminar, IN the Alaska Range, in the early spring with one of the concessioned services, and get some experience with the climate and vastness of the Denali area and Alaskan glaciers, before you go up high, and before you drop a lot of money on a Denali climb. What you need are winter camping and survival skills, and mileage on crevassed glaciers so that you will feel comfortable and in your element once on the mountain doing the real deal. Since you are going with a guide service, who will make the routefinding decisions and logistical and judgment calls, your focus should be on two things: fitness, and becoming supremely competent and comfortable with day to day existence and camping in cold, harsh, uncomfortable environments, in big mountains.

 

Lack of the above are the two most common reasons I see guided clients fail on Denali.

I'd focus less on a list of specific peaks and ascents and think more about the quality of the outing as it relates to your goal. And I second the above rec to try to find a partner with the same goal to train and learn with, and eventually be your tent mate on Denali.

Good luck-

[Seamstress]

Certainly climbing numerous peaks in winter/spring conditions will help with your confidence. Be sure to discuss your desire with the guides you climb with. So many times, you can be led up a mountain and not really need to do all the physical labor or be privvy to the decisions that are being made. Example - doing Rainier with a guide service that has camp set up for you is a much different experience than the physical labor you will be subjected to to climb Denali.

 

Adams can be done in one long day. Better training for you if you can drag a big load up to lunch counter - not the typical guide experience. For St. Helens, you can drag a load up the Winter route to 4,300'. Again, this won't be the typical guided experience. Whitney is the least comparable climb. The rock bands would make dragging a sled impossible. However taking a large backpack up to the lakes is certainly training. I might suggest Shasta instead.

 

What I highly recommend is figuring our how much experience you can get going up and down in deep snow with a large load. The fitness level to drag 100+ pounds up the hill in deep snow every day for three weeks is much different that a one day to one week trip. Get a sled and rig it to the back of your pack.

 

All the iterneraries you read are ideal. You may not have ideal. You may have to carry double loads three days in a row because weather didn't allow you to get going as expected. When you put as much time and money into an adventure like this, give yourself the best chances for success. What steep snow covered objective can you drag your load up and down near your home?

 

My training tip - make the extra ballast for your load water. That way if you are spent on your training, you have the option of dropping 10 - 20 pounds. I don't think that the load ever becomes inconsequential (or maybe that is just for a small lady like me). The notion of taking a large load up 3,000 vertical needs to be no big deal for you to be ready for your trip rather than merely survive the trudge to 14 camp.

 

Find a ski area and walk the boundary in snowshoes up to the top in all kinds of conditions - deep snow, icey.

 

Good luck. I'd be willing to take a motivated mid-westerner up my home mountains of St. Helens and Adams. I'd have you taking the entire load and explain why this is good for your training!!!

[Jon H]

The winter ascent/attempt of Rainier and a winter mountaineering seminar will teach you as much or more than everything else you list. Quite frankly if your vacation time is limited each year, climbing Whitney will be of little value towards Denali prep. Go to cold and snowy places. Go take an Alaska Range seminar, IN the Alaska Range, in the early spring with one of the concessioned services, and get some experience with the climate and vastness of the Denali area and Alaskan glaciers, before you go up high, and before you drop a lot of money on a Denali climb. What you need are winter camping and survival skills, and mileage on crevassed glaciers so that you will feel comfortable and in your element once on the mountain doing the real deal. Since you are going with a guide service, who will make the routefinding decisions and logistical and judgment calls, your focus should be on two things: fitness, and becoming supremely competent and comfortable with day to day existence and camping in cold, harsh, uncomfortable environments, in big mountains.

 

Lack of the above are the two most common reasons I see guided clients fail on Denali.

I'd focus less on a list of specific peaks and ascents and think more about the quality of the outing as it relates to your goal. And I second the above rec to try to find a partner with the same goal to train and learn with, and eventually be your tent mate on Denali.

Good luck-

 

+1

 

Listen to this guy

[Water]

on that line depending on where in the 'midwest' you are...depending on what geopolitical, weather, or football alignments that can be anywhere from SW Kansas to Eastern PA.

 

But a lot of the area is within a 3-day-weekend drive of the White Mountains in NH. While you do not have high-altitude you have elevation gain and plenty of cold to fool around with in the winter time. Might be a way to get more experience if you live in any reasonable proximity vs a single 'pop' a year flying to the west coast.

[ScaredSilly]

To be honest not much of that is going to prep you for Denali. Sure it will remind you of your snow walking skills but they are all single day or weekend trips. If the weather is shit you will run down the hill and hide in the lodge and sip hot chocolate. We have all done that.

 

My suggestion would be head some place during the winter for a week long ski/hike trip. Pull a sled, see what crap you brought was really crap and should have been left behind. It can be something as simple as some flat land terrain in the midwest so you do not spent time driving.

[CaleHoopes]

Scared Silly is right. I got SPANKED by Denali. I took too much crap. The weather was fine, but I was ruined after day one. I did get to 16,500. I would say I have all the technical skills - I just should have thought a lot more about how to make the trip lighter. Strategy on carries is very important. Being sick the week before did not help. I actually injured myself carrying too much crap.

[kmehrtens]

Thanks for all of the good advice. It also seems that the consensus about ditching Whitney and substitute with Shasta sounds like a good plan. The only real reason I originally picked it was for the higher altitude. I am also just trying to get as much climbing experience under my belt so I am less of a liability. I really don’t want to be the guy at the back of the line holding up the group.

 

The other reason for the list is to give me an excuse to get out every year to do a little climbing. If you all have a better list, I would be all ears, but it must come with a professional guide. So says my wife and I would kind-of like to keep this one. I’m already on my second one & she supports & encourages my climbing/mountaineering habit. It’s nice to have two incomes to fund a sort-of expensive hobby.

 

It also sounds like I need to spend my winters outside for a week or so backpacking & pulling a sled.

 

When I say “Midwest” I mean St. Louis, MO where the elevation is only 500’. We don’t really have a lot of hills with real elevation gain in Missouri.

 

Thanks again for the advice. Keep it coming if anyone else has anything else to add.

 

Any comments regarding a Denali guide service?

 

[tvashtarkatena]

Winter train in the boots you'll climb Denali in. I saw an sponsored, extremely well equipped all women Italian team (matching uniforms, no less) explode because their (matching) new boots didn't fit everyone's feet, as, of course, they wouldn't. Boots are an expensive purchase - it's not uncommon to postpone it till late in the game. Hands are the other problem area in cold temps - easier to solve that one.

[CaleHoopes]

After being on the mountain, I was impressed with Mountain Trip. I was not guided by them, but they were obviously the most organized up there. I've heard good things about AMS as well. Other companies such as Northwest Mountain School run their trips through guide services up there. However, John Race is a good guy, he wouldn't be a bad person to go on an expedition with.

[Kibo]

If you can get the wife to bend the US rule, Orizaba in Mexico is a good objective. Gets you to 18,500 so you can experience the joys of AMS, appetite loss, cold, etc. :-)

 

All the other advice about fitness and enduring make total sense.

 

Also, check out www.mtnathlete.com and http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/everything-you-know-about-fitness-is-a-lie-20120504

 

As a flatlander you'll have unique challenges getting in shape, and this type of training can go a long way.

 

You can skip Adams, Baker and Shasta and go right to Denali prep and they'll get you ready to go.

[CaleHoopes]

Another good practice is climbing in Ecuador. All the peaks are good experience and get you great Altitude. I know that my susceptibility to AMS went way down after a trip to Quito, Cayambe and Cotopaxi. A 14 day trip with IMG was the right way to go and was a fairly cushy expedition (great food, great shopping, hot springs and cushy mountain huts).

[mhux]

^^Gotta second Ecuador, I managed to get in Cayambe and an epic on Chimborazo (friends climbed Cotopaxi) and Illiniza Norte (not much but its fun) while in school down there.

Unless you want to experience the joy of 'expedition bus ride' approaches, I'd go with a guide service

[iluka]

Another good practice is climbing in Ecuador. All the peaks are good experience and get you great Altitude. I know that my susceptibility to AMS went way down after a trip to Quito, Cayambe and Cotopaxi.

 

A trip like this with multiple moves up to very high altitudes will certainly help with acclimatization and prevention of AMS on subsequent trips if they occur within a short time frame of those climbs (days to weeks depending how long you spent at high altitude on the first set of climbs). It will not, however, help at all with altitude acclimatization and altitude illness prevention for a trip to Denali, say, one year later.

 

Susceptibility to high altitude illness is somewhat wired into our genetic make-up (although people have not really worked out the precise mechanisms behind this). Susceptibility doesn't go away because of trips to altitude taken long ago, although you can alter the risk by doing things like making preacclimatization trips to higher elevations close the planned expedition or slowing one's ascent rate. That all being said, another benefit of doing trips like the climbs in Ecuador and elsewhere is that it helps one learn their how their body responds at altitude, information they can use to better plan for future travel and climbing there.

[tvashtarkatena]

Ditto on climbing out of La Paz, Bolivia. The Cordillera Real is a mere 4 hour's drive from town...some 20,000 footers are even closer. The standards of the area: Ancohoma, Illampu, Pico Shulz, Illimani, Huayna Potosi, Condoriri, and the more remote Sajama, offer an efficient way to get in lots of high altitude experience in their winter (their dry season) which is, unfortunately, also our summer. Temps high in the Andes can be similar to the lower altitudes in the summer AK range - zero F at night, etc - but generally warmer during the day.

 

Getting to La Paz isn't exactly a hop, skip and jump, however.

[CaleHoopes]

What it helped ME with was understanding what my body does at high altitudes. So, yes, I didn't have any extra bonus from doing an Ecuador trip years before. However, I've so dialed how my body handles AMS and altitude in general that I had NO ISSUES on Denali at all by just following my good habits. Something about being at the altitude (or near it) helps in the future trips.

[tvashtarkatena]

Sleeping is a common difficulty at altitude. Last trip I took was with a doc, who provided our tiny party with a before-bed pain cocktail consisting of very light doses of cough suppressant (a persistent cough is common), pain reliever (whatev works for you for headaches) and a sleeping pill. This really helped us maintain good health by getting good sleeping. It also made for a hell of a Heath Ledger style par-tay when combined with locally made beer.

 

Some weird stuff can happen at altitude. Cheyne Stokes syndrome, for example. This is when you hyperventalate, then don't take a breath for 30 seconds to a minute. It's not dangerous (your lungs easily hold several minutes worth of oxygen), but it's quite strange to be happily sitting there for so long without the urge to take a breath.

 

I had an out of body experience, too, while plying some neve penetente with a heavy load. I couldn't feel my body at all, yet it kept on climbing - not a hint of stumbling, so I just said 'cool, no pain!' and kept going.

 

My partner eventually got cerebral embolisms - which can be a precursor to cerebral edema. If the blood vessels in your eyeballs start rupturing and you find that you don't much in the way of stamina, it might be time to bail. Check for it if someone's performance starts to inexplicably flag. That IS potentially very dangerous.

 

Aaaand, of course, pink, gurgling sputum doesn't usually signal an imminent increase in climbing pace. Often, the afflicted is the last one who considers bailure...they can feel bad at night when hypoxia is at its worst, then sort of 'wake up' during the day a bit...but go down they must.

[CaleHoopes]

Hey tvashtarkatena:

 

Cheyne Stokes syndrome, for example. This is when you hyperventalate, then don't take a breath for 30 seconds to a minute. It's not dangerous (your lungs easily hold several minutes worth of oxygen), but it's quite strange to be happily sitting there for so long without the urge to take a breath.

 

Thanks for describing this. This was the ONLY thing I experienced on Denali. It was more like 20 seconds for me, but incredibly unnerving and kept me from sleeping (what the hell is going on!??!)

 

Also, one of the things that worked for me? Daily Gingko Biloba (360mg) and 2 200mg Ibuprofen. That made a big impact.

[tvashtarkatena]

We're just now discovering the mechanism that makes us take a breath (it's not O2 or CO2 levels) - it appears to be an autonomic rythm that produces a sense of extreme discomfort when forcefully repressed. Experimental subjects who've had their body and breathing artificially paralyzed such that they signal (with one unparalyzed arm) for a breath from a ventilator when they feel they need it, happily don't take a breath for 3 to 4 minutes at a pop. This experiment was done back when you could get away with something so dangerous. They used curare as the paralytic.

 

I'd guess since this discover pretty new, the mechanism behind Cheyne Stokes remains a mystery. Perhaps that part of the brain which produces the breath signal 'skips' when hypoxic.

[genepires]

and I thought it was spelled Chain Stokes breathing.

[iluka]

We're just now discovering the mechanism that makes us take a breath (it's not O2 or CO2 levels) - it appears to be an autonomic rythm that produces a sense of extreme discomfort when forcefully repressed. Experimental subjects who've had their body and breathing artificially paralyzed such that they signal (with one unparalyzed arm) for a breath from a ventilator when they feel they need it, happily don't take a breath for 3 to 4 minutes at a pop. This experiment was done back when you could get away with something so dangerous. They used curare as the paralytic.

 

I'd guess since this discover pretty new, the mechanism behind Cheyne Stokes remains a mystery. Perhaps that part of the brain which produces the breath signal 'skips' when hypoxic.

 

The control of breathing is actually quite a complicated process that involves multiple regulatory factors and multiple control centers in the brain. There is, in fact, an automatic aspect (rhythm controller) that operates independent of other factors and keeps you breathing in the absence of other stimuli. Oxygen and carbon dioxide do play an important role, however. Decreases in the partial pressure of oxygen in blood stimulate increases in breathing as do increases in the partial pressure of carbon dioxide. Rising carbon dioxide levels are actually a much more potent stimulus to breathe than low oxygen levels. For example, rather than a dropping PO2, it's the rising CO2 that is the main reason you need to come up to the surface when you hold your breath under water. Various other factors such as blood pH also play a role in controlling breathing.

 

The mechanism behind Cheyne-Stokes respirations has actually been fairly well worked out. It occurs as a result of instability in some of the main feedback loops controlling breathing in the brain. The phenomenon is referred to as abnormal "loop gain." Individuals who develop this breathing pattern are hyperventilating at the start of the process. This causes their blood CO2 levels to fall significantly. When they fall below what is referred to as the "apnea threshold," the brain stops sending signals to your respiratory muscles to breathe. At this point the person is "apneic" (not breathing). During the apnea, CO2 levels start to rise again and when they cross the apnea threshold level on their way up, the brain starts sending signals to breathe again. The problem in the people who develop Cheyne-Stokes is that the signals and the breathing response that results are too strong, leading the CO2 levels to drop below the apnea threshold again... and the process just keeps repeating itself. Hypoxia likely triggers the entire process at the start because hypoxia sets the hyperventilation in motion. Those people that have the stronger hypoxic ventilatory responses, as this phenomenon is referred to, tend to have more prominent Cheyne-Stokes respirations.