Mt. McKinley (2011) - Day 02
Anchorage to Talkeetna; gear checks; packing
03:00 - Our over night stay at the Mariott Anchorage Downtown was pleasant. We strolled around the city late at night after spending most of the day in planes and airports. There really isn't any point or purpose to Anchorage as far as I can tell ... except that it serves as the entry point for my Apple products when they ship directly from China.
13:00 - Denali Overland picked us up on-time and ushered us (and two French climbers - Pierre and some L-name that I couldn't understand, much less pronounce or spell) to Wasilla for some final grocery shopping at Fred-Meyers. We grabbed bacon bits, salmon, butter, ramen, ear plugs, toilet paper - the necessities.
14:00 - Our ground transportation concluded at the Sheldon airplane hangar and we started gear sorting and packing. Wes' delusions of sub-80 pound loads were a distant memory. Unexplainably, our respective gear weighed in at nearly the same amount - just over one hundred pounds each, not counting the three gallons (twenty-four pounds) of fuel we'll gradually burn for the sake of hot water. We'll each carry some forty-six pounds of food; enough for us to eat two pounds a day for more than twenty days. That's a lot of food.
16:00 - Alaska Mountaineering School has a gear shop in Talkeetna and we paid them a visit; not a overly expensive visit, suprisingly. We each replaced our duffel bags with new thin, light-weight duffels that aren't water proof, but also aren't six pounds. My Mountain Hardwear duffel is designed to withstand the rigors of airport travel (the most brutal test of baggage strength known to man) and that's way over-kill for glaciers and mountaineering.
18:00 - Dinner this evening was at Mountain High Pizza. Desert (berry cobbler -sort of - and ice cream) was from the Roadhouse Cafe. It rained briefly. The moquitos were out in force. The merlot was good despite being Yellowtail. I am looking forward to the post-climb pizza, wine and cobbler. I think I just climb to eat. And I know Wes just climbs to eat. He speaks of it regularly.
Sheldon Air put us up at the most conveniently located hostel ever - House of the Seven Trees - which is next door to the pizza place, across the street from the cafe and two doors down from the bar. Food and liquor has never been so accessible. Although in early season, like now, those amenities lack a certain abundance. The town seems very dead compared to years past. Things were much more lively by this point in '08 and '09.
Breakfast tomorrow - which is always an important topic for us, the night before - will be at the Roadhouse. The "standard half" for both of us, I expect. Following that delicious and filling meal, we'll spend an hour or more being lectured - for a third time - about the perils of mountaineering. The lecture will include a slideshow, which should be rated "R", consisting largely of frost bite pictures and otherwise very sad looking people who apparently chose not to heed the lectures delivered to them.
Following the small but inevitable bout with depression and anxiety that follows that lecture, and with CMC, climbing permit and "Big Test Icicles" cache stickers in-hand, we'll traipse across town to the airport, change clothes, toss our extra crap in the storage room, and eagerly jump onto the plane, somehow managing to ignore the pain we know awaits us.
Talkeetna ... a quaint little drinking town with a climbing problem.
