Mt. McKinley (2011) - Day 22

Camp 3 to Base Camp to Talkeetna

01:30 - It had briefly started to snow while we were eating, and our fine, fine meal was consumed from under the protective covering of Wes' tarp, held up by our trekking poles. It was a simple but effective shelter, and with the stove running, it was noticeably a few degrees warmer than the outside air.

The ground was hard and icy, and I was looking forward to avoiding snowshoes, so I stuck with my crampons, for which it seemed these ground conditions were designed. You can't just wear boots coming out of Camp 3 because the descent is too steep. I tried that last year and fell on my butt within a few steps. Managing the weight of a pack and a sled on a slope requires some stepping grip, it seems.

We quickly descended past our 10k cache location and down to Camp 2. It seemed impossibly quick and I wonder why people bother setting up camp here, especially considering how frequently it gets blasted with wind.

03:30 - A few hills later and Camp 1 is in sight. Considering that June is nearly here, night time is nearly as bright as day time when you consider that you aren't weaing sunglasses. The glow from the sun can be seen beyond the mountain ridges behind us.

My throat is seriously dry when we come to a stop just on the close side of Camp 1. Climbers can be seen ascending to Camp 1 from base camp They obviously don't want to get baked on the glacier. Smart. It requires some will power to get up and pack up in the middle of the night.

I power down some M&M's, frozen raisins and finish off one liter of water, with one remaining. And like five miles remaining. The slog to base camp begins. We don't even discuss the possibility of setting up camp. The weather is perfect. We feel good. And this near t-shirt weather is far preferable to being cooked by the sun.

07:30 - The final left turn to Heartbreak Hill comes sooner than expected. A full turn sooner. It must be the ground conditions. It's like a sidewalk of hard ice, which is just rough enough for boots. It's difficult not to start picking up the pace, but hard double-boots and long distances were not made for each other, and I'm entertaining thoughts of returning to Talkeetna without any serious foot damage. This'll be a first.

08:02 - We're here and it's all done. Lisa is gone (back to Talkeetna for a shower?), and some other lady has taken her place. The US Army Rangers hauled it down to base camp the day before, arriving at 20:47, missing the window to fly out by forty-seven minutes. They're tearing down camp. They had to sleep here last night as a result. I'm surprised to see that Alex isn't smoking. He's always smoking.

I drop my pack and the rope and head straight for the lady with the important looking clipboard and annouce, "Curtis Jones. Big Test Icicles. Two people. Sheldon Air. Ready to go. What else should I tell you?" A few minutes later she informs us that Dave (of Sheldon Air) will be in the air shortly. In the mean time, we weigh our bags, estimate our own weight and sum these numbers on a not very official looking scrap of paper. 419. That's some seventy pounds of food and twenty four pounds of fuel lighter than when we started. And we weigh a little less ourselves, too.

09:15 - We're in the air. The Rangers are still standing there. I resist the urge to wave. Not much more than an hour after we pull into camp, we're flying away from camp. They'd been stuck there for thirteen hours. Sheldon Air, ftw. K2 and TAT had long lines. I don't understand that, either. They'd been waiting since the night before, and either airline could potentially have landed right at 8am. The underdog was seriously working in our favor this time. Dave rocks.

I fall asleep on the duffel bag which is on the seat beside me as we clear the mountain range and start flying over the tundra. I knew I'd only be able to sleep for a short while, but the minutes are important when you've been awake and climbing since the morning of the day before.

10:00 - Back in Talkeetna, Lisa hands me the ziplock bag containing our phones and wallets. Our "valuables", they called them, when asking for them before the trip. My iPad was with me the whole time though, and my laptop was stored in their attic, along with everything else I didn't bring, in a duffel bag. It's an arbitrary distinction based only on size.

Due to our early-morning return time, there's not yet any room in the 7 Trees hostel. Lisa asks us if we'd care to have breakfast first. I heartily decline. Shower first. Nothing else. Just a shower. I don't care if I never eat again. I have my grocery bag of clean clothes and toiletries in-hand. I can feel the stuff on my teeth. I don't understand why the lack of a room at the hostel is a relevant detail when the showers are separate from the rooms. Whatever. After a couple quick phone calls, we're set up with bunks at the Roadhouse and access to their showers, which you can apparently buy for just a few dollars (showers, that is).

You know how showering in a new location is always slightly awkward? Combine that with simply being out of practice when it comes to showering, and there I am. I nearly step in the shower three times before backing up, throwing on the stinky clothes, walking back past the large family eating lunch, back to the bunk room, and returning with some other article - a razor, a wash cloth, a towel. Fortunately, the shampoo and soap come from dispensers in the shower, otherwise there would have been two other trips, both causing a brief but memorable waft of "ripe" air to wash over that one family's lunch. I try not to take delight in that thought. I don't have anything against them. The location of a shower on one side of that dining room and the bunk on the other is amusing though.

It takes a lot of effort, but my razor finally prevails in liberating my face from three weeks of unnecessary callory expenditure in the form of facial hair growth. What a waste. I stopped half way in the shaving process and rinsed out my hair and threw in another load of shampoo. Once is definitely not enough. Twice just sort of gets the grime out.

11:00 - The Roadhouse restaurant is packed. We take the final two seats, which are rocking chairs out front. They're chained to the wall, so my first attempt to move the seats to the table fail and we end up moving the table to the seats, which conveniently enough isn't chained to anything.

One's first meal back in Talkeetna is very important, which makes the lack of attentiveness of our waiter severely annoying. We're actually looking at our breakfast some forty-five minutes later. He only drops by again to deliver the check at which point Wes also orders desert. Another twenty minutes of waiting.

We use the extra time to change flight itineraries and make hotel reservations in Anchorage. Delta's customer reps answer my call and address me by name when I use my FF number and the special medallion phone number. It's an easy trick, but the little details count a lot.

12:30 - We're a lot closer to the ranger station than the air field, so we swing by the ranger station first to "check out". Yes, we summitted. No, we didn't get hurt. Yes, we saw some problem spots - some garbage, the cigarettes. Yes, we left some gear behind because of Adam Smith with Mountain Trip, who apparently decided not to clean those biners for us and return them to us. The ranger board shows 55 successful summits and some 6xx people on the mountain right now out of nearly 1,200 registrations. 34 percent summit success. I think that's low even for early season climbing.

An older, tourist couple asks us if we climbed McKinley. I always manage to work in the fact that it was a 3rd time for us. "What was it like?" "Pretty much the same as the last two times." It doesn't answer their question at all, I know. They take pictures of us and jot down our names, impressed with our three-time feat.

13:00 - We each have two large duffel bags and a back pack at the Sheldon Air hangar, in need of repacking in preparation for tomorrow's departure. We fill a garbage can with wrappers, zip locks and uneaten food. Wes declines all of my offers of baggies of raisins, M&M's, protein bars, etc. Once valuable food is now "gross".

14:00 - We finally have room arrangements at 7 Trees and Jaque gives us a ride over there after we say hi to Billy over at RMI's new airline partner. Wes has the CMC, all bagged up.

After settling into the Aspen room at the hostel, the same room we stayed in the front end of the trip, we walk over to the rangers again, this time delivering the CMC into the caged area outside, and we go inside so that Wes can wash his hands. It's the thought that counts when touching anything that touches the CMC. There's a video playing inside about McKinley.

Wes wants to do some gift shopping for his nieces and nephews. I want some pizza. We part ways, I realize, for the first time in three weeks.

Mountain High Pizza is bustling, but there's plenty of seating. They hand me a menu and tell me to sit anywhere. That's the way it works pretty much every where in Talkeetna.

There are several kids playing some variant of horse shoes that involves buckets sitting in a hoola hoop and small bags filled with sand. Restaurants here are a little different than other places.

Thirty minutes later my head is resting in my arms. I can't stay awake. I'm thirsty but no waiter has been by to take a drink order, or my pizza order for that matter. I call it quits and walk out. Thankfully, the hostel is next door. During that thirty second walk, I cross paths with Wes and I explain that the restaurant has exceeded their capacity to serve people and that I'm going to sleep.

Back in the Aspen room, I crank the window open all the way. I can hear the kids next door still playing. This window looks down on where I had just been sitting. I lie down in bed and drift to sleep almost immediately. Precious sleep.

18:00 - Wes' booming voice announces, "it's so hot in here. I don't see how you can sleep." And yet I was. So very asleep. And thank you for waking me up and pointing out the heat. He keeps on talking and doesn't stop. Apparently my fate is to go eat now. I give in. If he hadn't shown up for another ten hours, I probably still wouldn't have caught up on sleep.

We each have some quarter slices of pizza and some wine. I stop by the Roadhouse, across the street, to secure some cobbler and ice cream. There is a fresh black berry pie instead. It won't be cool for an hour. I return in an hour. It won't be cool for another hour. It obviously wasn't meant to be. I head back to the hostel for the night. We determine to wake up at 7am and get breakfast before meeting up with Bill of Denali Overland who is going to drive us back to Anchorage at 8am.