Back in Talkeetna

Weather cleared enough this morning for the planes to fly climbers in and out of base camp on the SE for of the Kahiltna glacier.

The team is all in Talkeetna now heading for the Roadhouse for the best breakfast in Talkeetna. They'll be heading back to Anchorage this afternoon.

Welcome back!

Base Camp

The team made it to base camp this afternoon, but the weather has continued to work against them. The planes weren't able to fly into base camp this afternoon or evening due to the clouds and snow. They'll spend a night in the relative comfort of base camp, where the oxygen is plentiful and the air is warm.

They are hoping to fly out tomorrow morning and be in Anchorage for dinner time.

Mark Howard (who descended a few days early) was able to fly out yesterday and is on his way back to the UK already.

Coming Down.

Well they made the tough decision to come on down today. It wasn't a summit day again today, and with all of the snow and increasing avalanche hazard it didn't look like Saturday would be a possibility either. They gave it a really good shot, and worked incredibly hard to get up there and be ready to go for the summit, sometimes you just need a bit of luck.

They are making their way down to base camp tonight, and hope to be there by tomorrow morning if they have decent weather and snow conditions. It has snowed several feet in the last few days, so they may have some deep snow to wade thru on the way down.

Another day of wind and snow.

Another stormy day on Denali...

Not much happening at high camp, sleep, eat, watch the weather.

Forecast has improved for tomorrow, so they still have a shot.

Route Map

Here is a route map I just made of the upper stretch of the West Buttress route. Click on the image for a larger version.

Thanks to Paul Roderick from TAT for the beautiful photo!

Summit attempt

Dave just called from high camp after turning around on today's summit attempt. They awoke to a pretty nice morning, still a bit of wind up higher but looking better than expected. Dave and the crew decided to give it a try and hope that the weather improved as they were climbing towards Denali Pass. It got even more windy and snowy as they were ascending and after an hour or so it became pretty apparent that it wasn't going to be a good enough day to climb to the top. They are back in camp now starting up the stoves for hot drinks and an early dinner.

Tomorrow they'll get up again and see what the weather brings.

Podcast from High Camp

Here's Kevin calling in from high camp.