climbing

A last breakfast in Talkeetna where a stranger recognizes my iPad case as her professor's design, a ride to Anchorage, and then home. The trip was concluded.

The final push: Camp 3 to base camp through the bright Alaskan night, then Sheldon Air flies us out while the Rangers, who missed the previous evening's window by forty-seven minutes, sit stuck. A shower (twice), a shave, and Talkeetna restaurants that never quite manage to serve me.

Down from high camp in a t-shirt through a whiteout so total there was nothing to be seen. We pass the guide who nearly killed his team, give away free calories, dump the CMC in its peaceful resting place, and reach Camp 3 to thaw smoked salmon into ramen.

Summit day at last: the steep new route to Denali Pass, Team Yark, Team Gabby, the traverse that is still the best part of the whole climb. Then a slow descent that turns into a second rescue when the team that accused us of stealing biners peels off the autobahn.

Two in the morning, a team falls 1,500 feet off the top of the autobahn, and high camp happens to be full of military rescuers staged minutes away. Two dead, two survivors, and another reminder that this mountain keeps its tally. Summit day tomorrow?

A flat mattress, a CMC neglected, a serious headache, and a guided team firing up stoves for the summit at 3am. I persevere and stay in the tent all day. Tomorrow, weather permitting, we head up by ten.

A rest day at high camp: gusts hitting the tent, fortune cookie weather reports that never quite agree, and freeze dried beef stew so inedible a 3 Musketeers had to stand in. Eager to finish the trip, and already sad to leave the landscape behind.

Camp 4 to Camp 5, with a mid-fifties pack up the headwall and a Russian group asking to move into our fortified camp. Someone got offered thirty pounds of sharp cheddar. The weather report says we might summit tomorrow, and then the trip will be over.

Day 15: Weather just bad enough to keep us off high camp and honor the sabbath. Teams descend all around us, the Army Rangers next door complain about the smell of bacon and pancakes again (guilty, and it's the last of it), and a client carves an ice obelisk to pose beside.

Day 14: An acclimatization hike to 15,300 on the upper West Rib, turned back by a crevasse with no findable snow bridge (Wes wanted to jump it; I talked him out of it). A balmy +15 forecast and a neighbor named Mike whose lost clients we keep telling to go away.