Mt. McKinley (2008) - Day 00
Still in New York
Overview
An account of my May 2008 trip to Mt. McKinley (Denali). You can find the original online post here.
This is based on the journal I kept during the expedition. I've finally got all of the journal typed up and available here and I've added all of the pictures (except for the flight-seeing tour the last day). Captions are in place as well. Five months after the trip, and its just about done. I've got a bunch of video footage as well, but I don't (yet) have the disk space necessary to pull it off the camera. One day.
Other Blogs
Three other climbers in the team have blogs with information and pictures from the trip. They include Baron, Wes and John. Wes and John actually had satellite phones with them, and they phoned in daily updates for their respective blogs. Wes and Dan were kind enough to send out CDs with all of their respective pictures, so I've incorporated some of those pictures here.
The Team
This May 2008 expedition of Mt. McKinley (Denali), the highest peak in North America (at 20,320'), was guided by RMI Guides based out of Ashford, WA. The team consisted of:
the guides
- Mike Walter - lead guide
- Billy Nugent - first assistant guide
- Federico Campanini - second assistant guide
the clients
- John Carney
- Yury Chernykh
- Dan Dittmer
- Jerry Edwards
- Curtis Jones (that's me!)
- Wes Lemberg
- Eric Reckman
- Baron Schon
Day 0: Sun, May 04
Still in NYC
RMI said the snacks we bring along should weigh about 15 pounds. After shopping yesterday I ended up with only eight. I bought more today and it came to exactly 15.0 pounds. Amusing. Mostly I have a bunch of the highest calorie candy bars I could find (mostly Snickers and a few 3 Musketeers), lots of trail mix (several different variations), chocolate chip granola bars and fake fig newtons. We're going to stop at a grocery store on our way to Talkeetna and I'll have the opportunity to pick up a few more things. This really is an enormous amount of food. I don't see how I could possibly eat it all.
I spread out all of the gear that I'm bringing with me on the floor, yesterday, and took a few pictures of it. It's an impressive amount of stuff. I should probably start packing it into the duffel bags at some point today. I hope it all fits.
I'm going to be in Alaska tomorrow....
