Mt. McKinley (2008) - Day 03
Gear Checks and Orientation
Met for breakfast at the Roadhouse. This place has the menu on a chalkboard on the wall. There are three choices for breakfast and each comes as either a "half" or a "whole". Everyone - and I mean everyone - orders the half. I too ordered the half. It was a considerable amount of food.
The guides introduced themselves. I don't have much to go on, but Mike seems like he is a pretty good lead guide. Each of us (the clients) had a moment to introduce ourselves - mostly just who we were, what we did for a living, and why we felt compelled to climb the mountain ("I feel couped up in New York", I explained. "This is my rash over-reaction."). I made a point of emphasizing that I just lived in New York; I wasn't from New York. I feel compelled to apologize.
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Gear checks. We're using the Hudson airplane hangar at the air field. We all have all of our gear spread out all over the place. Mike recited everything that we need, plus gave us instruction on what to do with our rope. He suggested we craft foam wraps for the top of our ice tools (so that we're not holding directly on the medal; even with gloves it'll make your hand cold.), plus the ice tools need leashes. We need ditch loops on our packs (so that when you fall in a crevasse and you're hanging from the rope, you can drop your pack with it attached to the rope, so that it won't cause you to hang up-side-down) and a loop attached to the pack for dragging the sled.
We've reduced everything to an amount that we can cram into our packs and one duffel bag. We had to weigh and label (with the weight) each bag so that the pilots could properly load the planes.
After some conversation on the matter, I picked up some pringles, more candy bars and a Sobe drink from the store in town. I'm leaving the Sobe to be consumed when I return. The pringles and candy bars are coming with me. Mmm...pringles.
Billy and Fede (the first and second assistant guides, respectively) have been out back organizing our breakfasts and dinners into big white garbage bags. Twenty-two of them. That's a lot of food.
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We all went to the Denali National Park ranger station. It's in Talkeetna, of course, on one of the three streets that comprise Talkeetna. On that topic, I understand there's a permanent population of 600 people in this town and yet I have no idea where 600 people would possibly live. Anyway, we each paid our $200 registration fee (I thought that was covered in the RMI registration ... apparently not) and received a lecture about keeping the mountain clean and a slide show depicting the course of our trip.
The ranger station has a big board which shows that there are 1085 registered climbers this season (so far), 160 on the mountain, 3 people have returned from the mountain and no one has summitted.
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We're back at the hangar sorting and packing our gear. Outside, a raven just got into an in-air fight with a seagul and ultimately dragged it (the seagul) down to the ground and started feasting on it - with the seagul pinned up-side-down, trying to flap its wings. Welcome to Alaska. The birds here are psychotic. I got a picture.
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The group got a tent orientation. First the guides showed us how to properly set up and anchor one tent and then we all set about doing our best to mimick them with the three other tents. Pretty easy stuff. I imagine we'll all be pretty competent at setting up and tearing down the tents by the end of this trip.
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We're done with gear checks. It's time to eat.
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We criss-crossed town stopping at pretty much every eating establishment that Talkeetna has to offer, and they do have a surprising number. The highlight was definitely the cafe at the Roadhouse. I had blueberry cobbler with two scoops of vanilla ice cream and a glass of milk. So. Very. Delicious.
We're just burning time eating food. Very soon these calories are going to be keeping us alive. We're supposed to meet at the hangar at 9am, boots on and ready to fly. I can't wait. We're almost there.
