Introducing Denali Team 7: “Last Second”!
With a few “last second” shakeups in the roster, Team “Last Second” was born! One excited climber from team “Denali Forever” was so stoked on the experience he signed up to head out with the next team leaving. Denali is truly a magical experience.
Our gear check and National Park Briefing went well. Wish us luck before we fly today!
“The Drag Queens” strategize their caches
Hi Everyone. This is Steven checking in with the drag queens. We Back-carried successfully today. Unlike the day before. So now we have all of our food and fuel and gear 11. That means it’s time to go put all that stuff somewhere else again. So tomorrow we’re going to go cache. Hopefully around Windy corner like 13400 feet. Kind of the first day of real climbing of the trip we’ll be in crampons and ice axes for the first time of this expedition. So nice to change things up and leave the snow shoes here. But yeah, just an easy back carry day. Took us maybe like 3 hours, camp to camp and then have a nice leisurely dinner of pizza, thanks Bobby for preparing. And yeah, everybody’s tucked into bed.
Excited for tomorrow!
“Grateful Sled” climbs the west buttress to cache
This is Matt with AAD#4, Grateful Sled. This morning we had a change in plans due to a closing weather window and we decided to pump the brakes on a move to 17k camp. Instead of moving to 17k, we chose to climb the fixed lines to the 16k ridge and placed a cache on the beautiful west buttress of Denali at 16,200’. We are back at 14k camp for the evening and are more poised than ever for a move to high camp. Our climb today served us well as part of our acclimatization schedule as we look forward to a good weather window to move up.
Stay tuned tomorrow for another update.
Denali team “hot hands cold play” caches at 13,500ft
Hey everyone! This is Ari with Team Hot Hands Cold play. Today, we went all the way up to 13500 and cached some of our gear and then came on back down. Sounds like the weather that has been hanging around for the last few days has cleared of it and that’s really great views. Got some good pictures and can see more of Mt. Foraker and other peaks.
Team “Drag Queens” hanging out at 11k while weather moves through
This is an awesome program that has been carefully planned and put together by Alpine Ascents. The level of preparation required by participants is very high however, Alpine Ascents makes sure months in advance that participants train accordingly.
