Denali Expedition 2009

I’m going back. Some people I met on Rainier want to do McKinley, so the three of us are planning a 2009 expedition without a guide company, saving the $5,200 RMI fee. If it all works out, I’ll climb McKinley three years running, two routes, once self-guided.

I get an uncontrollable smile every time I think about flying back to Alaska. Just twenty-five more weeks. Sounds close, until I reframe it as nearly half a year, which actually makes me feel better since I still need the training time.

A McKinley expedition wants six to nine months of training; having succeeded once, I am complacent enough to pick six. The gym got boring, so did hauling a heavy pack up the stairs, so I run them. The lack of inspiration is my job’s fault: I love working from home.

Wes, from my McKinley team, asked why we put our bodies through this. My only answer was, “because I’m freakin’ bored out of my mind in New York.” I feel like I should have a better answer than that.

Two gym trips and three stair runs this week, topping out at sixty-three flights, and for the first time I climbed all 21 stories twice without stopping. Still cannot picture running 1,576 steps at a story every 7 seconds. Also: I won the $5 bet, my sister still has her job.

Thanksgiving interfered with my normal routine, but Missouri gave me real running outside, because treadmills steal your soul. I started timing my stair sets, and on Friday I spent five brutal hours throwing logs up a hill. My arms are still sore.

Three trips to the gym this week, four would have been better, no stair running. I looked through photos of my last trip, including the Valley of Death and Camp 1, and I am just dying to get back. Twenty-one more weeks.

MooseJaw had a 25% off sale, so I stocked up for ice climbing and McKinley. The La Sportiva Baturas come to just $52.50 per toe, and shaving a couple pounds is huge when people drill holes in their toothbrush handles to save weight. As for workouts: I slacked off.

My shiny new Petzl Nomic ice tools arrived this morning, quite possibly the most beautiful things I have ever seen. Dangling a couple hundred feet up on half an inch of pick is the stuff of dreams. (It is less thrilling than it sounds. We are top-roped the whole time.)

I just got word that Fede, one of our three guides on McKinley, died Friday on Aconcagua. Two friends from that same trip are on Aconcagua right now. I almost went with them.

I skipped a few weeks of training updates but not the training: four days, including 71 flights of stairs with 62 pounds. I have started wearing my boots on the stairs and sworn off buying alcohol until after McKinley. And ice climbing is just twenty-one days away.

Almost half way to McKinley. Seven training sessions this week, all the trip logistics locked down except the daunting food planning. My brother asked me to be his best man, and bachelor party ideas are already coalescing. Also: I now own twice as many chairs as I can use.

I admit to having read this email several times. The paperwork is in order, confirmation coming soon, and the ranger notes that my experience will help the other two on their first Denali trip. It seems like a fitting picture.

I think something is wrong with me. I just set up my tent in the middle of my apartment, escaping the city by confining myself to an even smaller space. The countdown to ice, mountains, and McKinley is on.

The day has come: crampons sized to new boots, a big pile of gear pulled from the trunks, ice tools strapped to the outside of the pack. I hope the subway people don’t mind seeing me walk around with them.

A full week of ice climbing, eight hours a day, and it is just as fun (and hard) as I remembered. Corey and I found our limits on some WI-5 climbs, each dropping into the harness when a desperate pick placement let go. A brutal hobby that does wonders for your forearms.

The plan was an iPod Touch loaded with movies for the long storm-bound days in a tent. Then Amazon released the Kindle 2 and complicated everything. Somehow this leads to fat pictures of William Shatner.

All my gear is in a pile on the floor and a car comes at 6am to haul it to the airport. On this trip we brush up on crevasse rescue, roped travel, and half-forgotten knots. Also, US Airways and I are not friends; ask me about their baggage fees.

We had grand plans for a five day winter traverse of the Presidential Range. Two days of breaking trail through chest deep snow got us to the ridge, a scramble nearly killed Brett and me, and a stranger lectured us on our campsite. The first four miles are great.

The plastic buckle on my Osprey pack broke near the end of my last climb, and I braced myself to pay for the part plus shipping. Instead the parts department took my info and said, “you’re all covered.” Now that is good service.

MSR makes amazing stoves and terrible snowshoes. I have had a binding strap rip apart twice now while just tightening it. Then I found Tubbs, a thing of beauty and simplicity, whose break in period is unfortunately going to be on Denali.

The last two months of a long training period are the hardest to push through, especially with no outdoor options. So I invented my own Crossfit-ish workout: stairs, situps, pistols, dips. First attempt took 31 minutes, and I refuse to wreck my knees running down.

Seeking out sponsors for our Denali trip never would have occurred to me, but Corey was on it. MyTopo came through with maps, software and a gift certificate in exchange for some logo photos at 17k camp. I just hope we sell the summit shots at a premium; those take so much more effort.

Apparently we’re still alive. Another Spot locator ping at -71.2857, 44.3313, logged the evening of February 25.

I won’t haul blogging gear up the mountain, but Corey’s bringing a Spot Locator. The plan: hit send, OS X Mail catches it and fires an AppleScript that hands off to a Perl script, which posts to Blogger. Profit. A walk through each step, including the gotcha that ate an evening.

Apparently we’re still alive. A Spot locator ping logged at -71.2857, 44.3313 on the evening of February 25.

Apparently we’re still alive. A Spot locator ping at 42.4876, -72.0183, with the closest point of interest being home in New York, 142 miles away.

My Brunton Solaris 26 solar panel charges my iPhone even through L.A.’s gross haze. Its four DC tips fit precisely zero of our gadgets. A rundown of the satellite phone, radios, and cameras bound for Alaska, and the temptation to ditch it all during the third 72-hour storm.

Hand-held trail GPS units peaked with the Garmin GPSMap 60csx. Mine writes every location to a 1GB microSD card I couldn’t fill in a lifetime of walking. The pretty touchscreen Oregons and Colorados still cap you at 10,000 tracklog points. Such a shame.

The three of us bound for Denali are in a study on how altitude affects the brain, though they don’t even consider Denali high altitude. It starts gently (what’s today’s date? I never know) and escalates to backwards numbers and re-telling stories from half an hour ago.

Planning the Alaska menu: breakfast and dinner cover about 1,000 calories a day, leaving 3,000-plus to fill from lunch and snacks for twenty-five days. A real man would just bring sugar, lard, and protein, then throw up violently. I opted for variety instead.

The footage from my last Alaska trip was less than great, so I cut a ten-minute video set to suitably invigorating music. The iMac is compressing it now. Here’s a teaser while I wait to get back there and film better.

Four days of training left, and I’m easing off to dodge last-minute injuries. New Scarpa boot liners arrived and they’re much warmer. Plus my food plan, gear list, and a weight estimate that came to a daunting 144 pounds. Apparently I don’t travel light.

Don’t forget to check whereiscurtis.blogspot.com every now and then. Corey will probably start sending location messages sometime Wednesday.

Just landed in Anchorage. The first thing you notice stepping off the plane is the amazing air (or maybe my standard had just dropped). I glanced at the spot where we all met up a year ago. Such nostalgia. On to Talkeetna tomorrow.

Corey and Brett got into Anchorage late last night. Today a van carts us to a grocery store to supplement our 300,000-plus calories (no exaggeration) with a few goodies, then it’s off to Talkeetna and the air taxi airfield.

No flight home until Saturday, so I floated in the hotel pool and walked 2.4 miles to see Star Trek (worth it, even if it lacked a certain Trek feel). Meanwhile I’ve been reading Ayn Rand; We The Living was amazing. Here’s the obligatory summit GPS pic.

The route from High Camp to the summit climbs Denali Pass, winds through smaller hills, drops into the Football Field, then tackles Pig Hill and the Summit Ridge: about three thousand vertical feet. Here’s video from the descent, plus an unfortunate close-up of my runny nose.

I love my watch, and I forgot to leave it in Talkeetna, so I photographed it on the summit and sent the shot to Tag Heuer. Surely they’ll want to sponsor my next climb and send me a newer model. Here’s the money shot.

Google finally added higher-res imagery of Denali, in a strip that conveniently misses the summit. Why bother? Anyway, I stitched my GPS tracks from two years into one route: three weeks up the white line, about a day back down.