My Denali experience: Immensity, Generosity, Intrigue, Triumph, and Tragedy

For those of you who didn’t have a chance to follow the Cure JM Team Hope blog page of our climb of Denali, also known as Mt. McKinley, the short of it is that I got sick (a cold) that wound up killing my chances for a summit, but we were lucky in that Ron and Oleg were able to summit, and all 4 of us came back with all of our somewhat lighter body parts, intact.  I lost at least 10 pounds, a good chunk of it, muscle, based on how sore I was after doing one of my standard runs after returning home!

What follows is the much more detail about the climb. 

I’d like to juxtapose our first and last team pictures of the climb:

And:

 

The first picture has us and ALL of our gear in front of us – we were standing behind our backpacks, which were in back of our sled bags, which were behind our boots.  On the right of that picture, there is a plastic bag with our closed cell foam sleeping pads (have to have at *least* one of these – each of us also had an insulated air mattress, as well), and the Clean Mountain Can, used for human waste on the mountain.  We’d been asked to put aside these light, bulky and fluffy stuff, for easier packing of the plane.  Most of our sled bags were near the 80 pound limit, and our packs all about 45 pounds, so that we were near the “free” 125 pounds per person limit that the air taxis all imposed.  Roughly 120 pounds of all of that (about 30 pounds each) was food!  We would pick up our 5 gallons of white gas (fuel for our stoves) when we got onto the mountain.

The 2^nd picture has us with all of our gear packed up into the van behind us, with Gary, the owner of the Go Purple Shuttle service that we were using, who was also our driver.  Our faces are probably all a little thinner, although that’s sort of hard to tell because we’re so tiny in the pictures.  You probably CAN tell that Oleg and Ron have nice furry faces – we flew onto the mountain on May 7^th, and flew off on May 29^th, so they had a full 3 weeks for the growth!  And, yes, we did not take a shower the entire time we were on the mountain.  I was sort of surprised that people weren’t avoiding us, but apparently the layers of clothing helped. . .

Again, we were using the climb to raise awareness of juvenile myositis (JM), and raise funds for research to cure this potentially life-threatening disease that attacks little children.  All donations go directly, and in full, to Cure JM, an organization set up to fund research to cure JM.  So, we put up the banner as often as possible, which also helped to distinguish our Trango 3.1 Mountain Hardware tent from the gazillion other such tents on the mountain.  Oleg and Candi’s Black Diamond 4-person Bomb Shelter helped to distinguish us, as well, as there were very few of those on the mountain.

Immensity

As many pictures as I’ve seen of other people’s trips to Denali, I was totally unprepared for the reality of the vastness of the area.  Denali is but one mountain in a sea of mountains that stretch out for hundreds of miles, and that sea of mountains is but one range of many in Alaska.  By the nature of a picture, everything is reduced to something that fits on a card/laptop screen/even a projector screen – miles are condensed into a little space.  As we were flying in for a landing, I started to sense how immense everything was compared to what I had fixed in my head from looking at pictures.  The length of the glacial runway was my first clue.  And, after landing, and getting out and looking around, I was drenched in a feeling of being a minute person in this huge immenseness.  One of the partners of a guy we came to call “Spokane Dan,” actually left after the first day because he couldn’t handle, mentally, the immenseness of the area!

In spite of that, I’ll try to give you an idea of the immenseness within the confines of a tiny picture:

Denali is that white shrouded mountain in the middle in the distance.  How distant?  Well, to reach the top, which is currently 13,120ft (4000m) above us (that’s well over 2 miles higher than where this picture was taken), we’ll have to cover 15 miles (24km), although, as the crow flies, we’re probably looking at something that is about 9 miles (~15km) distant.  There is nothing in the picture (or in real life) that allows one’s brain to understand the scale.  There are no trees, no roads winding off into the distance.  Even though I know, intellectually, how far it is, it’s only when I start to walk, and see other climbers in the distance, and nothing in the far distance (even when I know that there are people, there), that my brain starts to get a sense of just how big this is.

Check this out: 

See those dots about half way to that mountain?  Those are people.  See the base of that mountain?  That is about two miles (3km) away!!!  And that mountain is about 2000ft (600m) higher than we are.

This is a big place, and these are big mountains, especially Denali (and I just read that it’s the highest, from the surrounding tundra and river valleys, than any mountain in the world!). . .

Generosity
I’ve experienced the generosity of climbers in the mountains, many times, but I was struck by, well, the immensity of the generosity on Denali.  I think, in part, that it’s because everyone realizes that this is a serious venture.  The environment is hostile.  So perhaps people counter the hostile environment with generosity towards each other.

One morning, Ron noted a temperature of 10F (-12C) inside the tent – the temperature outside was likely around -10F (-23C).  If you include a wind chill factor, it felt much colder.  Up high, we were hearing that the temperature was around -20F (-29C), without including wind chill.

There are no plants, nor animals (except for the rare bird, now and then) to eat, nor water to drink.  All you have around you is snow and ice, and so you *have* to have fuel and a stove to melt snow for water.  You have to drink 3 to 5 quarts or liters per day.  You lose water while exhaling in the high, dry air, and you have to replace it so that you don’t become dehydrated, which could lead to suffering Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS), or succumbing to frostbite.

Storms happen, and when they do, they may dump multiple feet of snow, or have high winds, so you have to make sure that you build protection for your tent – high walls with lots of space around them and your tent.  And, typically, you have to build your walls after a day of climbing with 45-55 pounds on your back, and 65 pounds or more in your sled.  It’s hard work.

Here’s a picture of our Kahiltna Pass camp that we spent at least 4 hours building:

 (Photo taken by Ron Jenkins)

I’m standing next to our tent, and the yellow and grey tent on the other side of the snow wall is Candi and Oleg’s tent.  Beyond that, on the right, are the NPS (National Park Service) tents.  It’s hard to see that the wall behind me is about as tall as I am, but you might be able to tell because my snow shoes are sticking out of it, right above my shovel handle on the left side of the picture.  Ron and I hadn’t yet moved out all of the snow that had gotten dumped next to the tent.

Back to discussing the hostile environment, crevasses are underfoot, everywhere, but you might not know where, so you have to probe all of the campsites before taking yourself off of the rope.  And then you have to remember (by putting wands on the periphery) to stay within the confines of that area that you just probed.  Fortunately for us, any snow bridges we may have camped or walked on were thick and stayed intact (the low temperatures helped that!), and none of our group ever punched through into a crevasse. 

So the first thing that I noticed in the generosity department was that the National Park Service (NPS) guys paid attention to the climbers around them and at camp.  They seemed to have the “public face” person who would go out each day and talk to all of the different teams and ask everyone what their plan for the day was.  Rest day?  Cache day?  Move up day?   We met Joe at the very first camp.  He told us that his team of 5 was also camping that first night.  I don’t remember, now, where they were the first day we moved up to Ski Hill Camp at 7800ft (2375m), but they were already in their fortified camp at Kahiltna Pass at 9700ft (2950m) when we arrived.  They greeted us and told us that they were at our service.   I decided to test that out soon thereafter when I couldn’t extend my shovel.  It turned out that the shovel handle was frozen, and since they had a stove already lit and melting snow, one fellow used that to heat my shovel handle until he could extend it.  Thank you!

We made our camp next to an established one (“home” of the Finns, whom we’d later meet), and another camp that Solo Jim, whom we’d met the previous night, was creating.  The wind was blowing, and snow was coming down, so we knew that we had to create a very good camp, here.  We sawed out blocks in the snow, and built a wall, and shoveled out our camp to create a flat area for the tents. 

A storm raged the next 2 days, so we didn’t go anywhere.  The NPS guys came by each day, visiting each camp, and making sure that everyone was ok, and the tents were ok.  Ron and I hadn’t paid that much attention to our new tent and all of its features, and we’d not tied down the one side because it made access from the tent to our pee/bathroom area inconvenient.  I was sick with a cold and trying to sleep, and Ron was busy doing something when the NPS folks came by and noticed that our tent was flapping around more than it needed to be.  They asked us if we minded if they fixed it for us!  Of course we didn’t mind!

One time when I emerged from the tent, the Finns, next to us, were busy redoing their camp – the snow had pummeled their tent more than it should have, so they moved a wall, and in doing so, they filled in one of our walls where we’d previously had access to the other side.  We discussed this, and moved on to other topics, like the bigger purpose of our climb – fundraising for Cure JM.  It reminded me that, due to the storm, I’d yet to get a picture of our camp with the banner, and I mentioned this to them.  One of them told me that he would be happy to help and take a picture for me.  Oh!  How sweet!  He then told me that he is a professional photographer!  Even better!!!  I ran inside the tent and got the banner, and he ran into his tent and came out with a beautiful and very large camera!  The wind was blowing and it was snowing, but he didn’t mind.  He took some pictures.  We exchanged contact information so that we could get the pictures after the climbs were over.  We all talked some more, and eventually went back to the warmth of the tents.

Finally, we woke up to silence.  After 3 days of constant wind, the lack of the wind was “loud”!  I guess that one would say that it was quite, quite noticeable – we could *hear* the silence.  The Finns were up and ready to go, early.  I thought that they were exceedingly cute in their outfits – they were exactly the same.  It turned out that sponsors had given them those outfits, the tents, and many other things.  We were happy that they were heading out, first, because that meant that *they* would be breaking trail, not us.  It’s sort of funny – the mountain is so big, so vast.  One could create many trails.  But breaking trail is hard, so once someone does it, everyone uses that same trail, and only after a snow does someone bother to break trail, again.  The NPS guys followed, as did another team or two that had come in one of the previous days during the snow storm.  We all moved up to Motorcycle Hill at 11,000ft (3350m). 

We set up our tents on either side of Solo Jim at this new campsite, and noted that we were once again near the NPS team.  A guided Alaska Mountaineering School team, led by a guide named Tom, camped behind us.  I think that it was on our second day at this camp that Tom told us that several of his clients had decided to return home, so he was left with a lot of extra food.  He started telling me about all of his delicacies, and his clients, 4 German guys, likewise started telling me how I couldn’t possibly survive without this tea or that dinner.  They’d brought up very heavy things like some boil-in-the-bag Tasty Bites Indian food, and a variety of chocolate bars.  They wanted me to tell Solo Jim and the rest of my team.  I did, but our team already had a lot of food weight.  I decided that I would try the Tasty Bites for some variety of my dinner, and Candi went for the chai tea (with powdered milk!), and the rest of our team plus solo Jim grabbed some bagels.  Cream cheese was also available!  Solo Jim realized that he had a lot of a certain type of food, but he was missing candy type snacks, so he went and stocked up on those.  He looked like a drug dealer when he came back and opened his jacket to show us his loot!  Later, Tom and team begged us to finish their soup, which Oleg and Ron happily did.  It had dairy in it, so I didn’t partake, and Candi couldn’t be sure that it didn’t have wheat in it, so she had to give it a miss, although it was a favorite soup of hers –  broccoli and cheese.

Meanwhile, my cold raged, and I coughed and coughed and coughed.  Candi had brought 10 cough drops, which she was going to need as she got higher, and none of the rest of us had even thought to bring any.  She frugally doled out 2 for me, 1 of which I used.  Solo Jim heard me coughing, and asked if I had any cough drops.  I told him our situation.  He then produced a whole ziplock bag of cough drops and gave it to me, telling me that he had 2 more, just like it, so that I could use them all!!!  Ron, who’d also developed a cough (sorry, Ron!) was also thankful.  In the tent, we put the bag within easy access of the two of us so that either of us could fetch one when needed.  It seems that Solo Jim’s previous trip caught him without cough drops and with a cold, so he didn’t want to repeat the experience.  Lucky us!

I went over to visit the Finns to find out what they’d been doing.  They’d done a cache one day, so I asked them how long it took them.  Well, they’d stopped to help someone on the way up who was having trouble with I can’t remember what, and on the way down, they’d stopped to help some other climbers who were having troubles with their sleds, so they couldn’t really tell how long it took them, since they kept stopping to help people.  I got a rough idea, anyway.  The next day, I stopped by, and saw that 2 of them were busy shoveling nearby.  I asked what they were doing?  Creating a bigger fortress?  Nyah – a couple of climbers had come up and were exhausted, and at least one seemed to be suffering from AMS, so they were creating their camp for them!!!  Eegads!  Silently, I wondered if I would be so generous. . .

I think that it may have been at this camp that we started to hear that 2 people had reached the summit, but at the cost of some frostbite.

Eventually, we moved up to Basin camp, at 14,200ft (4330m), and as we crested the hill into camp, I could see the first campsite, and I saw the banner waving that told me that the campsite belonged to the Finns.  I was so happy, I yelled out either “My Favorite Finns” or “The Finns!”  This was enough to get their attention, and Illka, the photographer, ran to get his camera, and Tatu, some food, and then, as we came into camp, Illka took a photograph of each of us as we crested the hill into camp, and then Tatu offered us banana chips.  It was *such* a nice welcome – we were absolutely knackered!  It lifted our spirits!  In addition, Markus had carved out a huge smiley face out of the snow, which couldn’t help but put a smile on my face.  I think that that smiley-face was probably one of the most photographed non-mountain thing – I saw so many people taking pictures of it.  Alas, I don’t have *any* pictures of it. . .  We had intended to get one, but somehow, it just never happened.

Ron, who was leading our rope team that day, looked for a place to put our camp here at 14,200ft, and settled on a place that was right near Tom and his team.  Tom and his team came out and welcomed us.  Tom showed us their snow block quarry and offered us the use of it, and let us use his sleds, for ferrying the blocks, and his spade shovel, which made removing the blocks a cinch.  And then, he offered us the use of his stove, fuel, and pots to make water (and started some for us!), and the use of their kitchen area that had a tent over it, so it was nice and warm.  Wow!  So nice!  It made our first night there a heck of lot easier.

Intrigue

On the way up to this camp, sometimes when we saw someone coming down, if it appeared that they were heading out (sometimes people would be coming down from an acclimatizing hike, or stashing a cache), we’d ask them if they had been successful or not.  Everyone said that they’d not been, but everyone had heard about the 2 climbers who had made the summit, and we started hearing different twists on the story.  In some of the stories, at least one of the guys was sure to lose his toes, if not his whole foot, if not both feet, and in others, the frostbite was minor.  We started to hear other things about these two – it seems that people started to doubt whether they had, indeed, reached the summit!  Some people had seen them climbing.  The two climbers apparently said that they had reached the summit in 5 hours from the high camp, but those who saw them climbing said that there was no way that they could have done it in 5 hours (the typical summit time is 8 to 16 hours!) at the speed that they were going.  And it seems that they didn’t have pictures of being on the summit.  So did they or didn’t they reach the summit?  Would they be stripped of their summit claim?  It started to sound like high crimes and suspicious dealings.   I never followed up, and I’m not sure that there is a way to, barring calling the park service employees and getting the scoop from them.   When they put out the end of year report, they might include the conclusion of this suspense!

Triumph

The day after arriving in Basin Camp, we had to move our campsite – after digging down just a few inches, we’d run into ice.  Thick ice that was many feet thick.  We weren’t going to chop through it.  Our tent stakes were mostly good for snow, and snow is more comfortable than ice, but the first night, we’d made this discovery too late, and didn’t want to move the camp, so just decided that we’d risk camping out without adequate storm protection, and move the camp the following day.  

The next day, I was feeling pretty worn out, so the others looked around for a suitable place, and then worked to move the camp.  And then, pretty late in the day – I think that it was around 4pm – we geared up to go and get our cache at 13,600ft (4145m).  It seemed closer than I remembered, and even the return, going back uphill, didn’t seem as arduous as the previous day, but also not a walk in the park.

This might be a good time to show a picture of me all geared up:

(Photo taken by Ron Jenkins)

Unfortunately, you can’t see the sled, behind me.  This was from lower down on the mountain, since we cached our snowshoes at Motorcycle Hill camp at 11,000ft, and therefore didn’t use them going any higher.  We didn’t take the sleds any higher than the 14,200ft (4330m) Basin Camp.

It was on our second day at Basin camp, after we’d retrieved our cache, that I finally decided that perhaps the cold that I’d been sporting all of this time was really an upper respiratory bacterial infection, and that I should take the round of antibiotics that I’d had prescribed for this exact eventuality.

The following day, we all geared up to deposit a cache of food, fuel, and, unfortunately, our second rope up at 16,300ft (4970m).

We were headed to the top of the headwall (lowest part of the top of the ridge in the following picture), and then another 100ft (30m) up the ridge to the right for the cache spot:

Let’s talk about immensity one more time – the top of that headwall is 2000ft (610m) higher than where this picture was taken (in Basin Camp).  I chose this picture, because I think that you can make out the trail that everyone is using to the top of the headwall, and there is one person on the fixed rope lines near the top of the headwall, and some people on the lower part of the trail.  We made it, successfully.

Here is a picture taken as we were going up the headwall, with Candi and the 14,200ft Basin camp below her: 

 And one of Ron as he was going up the fixed lines at the top of the headwall:

The next day, we cached what we didn’t need for the summit bid (more fuel and food), and packed up everything else to move to high camp.  Ron stopped us soon after leaving camp, and said that this wasn’t going to work.  What wasn’t going to work?  “You,” he said.  He told me that I was going way too slow, and that we hadn’t even gotten to the hill.  I didn’t know what he was talking about, although when he mentioned that we hadn’t even gotten to the hill, I was thinking that he had a point, there.  I was thinking that I should be mad at him, because by pretty much saying that I couldn’t go up, he was taking away my chance at a summit, but I couldn’t get mad at him – no summit is worth ruining a friendship.  I just turned around to go back, and he followed, so that he could give me a stove and the fuel bottle (I already had the tent).  After he went back to the others, I realized that I had the bags for the Clean Mountain Can (poop can), and so tried to catch up to them to give those to Oleg, who was at the end of the rope.  When I returned I started to erect the tent, and discovered that everything was very difficult.  After every stake that I put in, I would have to take several minutes to recover – do lots of breathing.  Then, I would move to the next stake, and have to recover, again.  I started to get the picture that there really was something wrong.  After a bit, I went over to one of the Alaska Mountain School guides and started whining about my predicament.  He told me that whenever they have someone get a cold, they immediately start them on antibiotics, just in case that clears up the situation, and they keep them at a lower elevation, because then there is a chance for them to recover.  He was saying that if he got just a small cut on his finger that would be healed in a couple days down low, it would take at least a week to heal up here.  He mentioned that it was a good thing that I was staying at Basin Camp, because even though it was too high to recover at this altitude, that with my problem, I could easily get HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema) if I’d moved up to the high camp.  I became thankful that Ron said something.  I still think that it was odd that I couldn’t notice, but I definitely didn’t fully notice the deterioration in my abilities.  I’m thinking that when everything is hard to begin with, it’s hard to tell that it’s even harder than it should be. . .

Later, the whole team showed up – they weren’t comfortable with when they calculated that they would reach high camp, so they returned to try again, the next day.  The next day, all three set out, again, but by then, Candi had gotten worn out, so she returned, and Ron and Oleg continued to high camp.  While I continued to rest, Candi took the opportunity to visit other folks in camp.  One person she visited with could hear me coughing, and insisted that I had HAPE, and offered us drugs to take care of it.  We already had the proper drugs to treat the condition, but I was sure that I didn’t have HAPE.  Since I was pretty sure that the NPS had a doctor at this camp, I offered to go there, and double-check that I didn’t have HAPE, and that I could likely safely stay at 14,200ft, rather than having to go down.  I had an oximeter, which I’d been using, and saw that my oxygen saturation was now in the 60’s (we like it to be in the 80’s, at this altitude, if not higher – I’m usually at 98 or 99% oxygen saturation when at sea level).  So, off to the doctor we went.  The doctor listened to my lungs and said – nope, no sign of HAPE, but she did hear what sounded like the possible start of bronchitis.  She didn’t like the low oxygen saturation, but she didn’t think that there was a problem if I stayed at this elevation, as long as I kept a watch on how I was doing.  She advised me NOT to take any drugs to treat HAPE at this point, since she said that that would lower my heart rate, which would be bad with my low oxygen saturation, and that then I *would* have some serious problems.  

The next day, I rested. Candi thought that she might try to go up and get our cached rope, and Oleg and Ron took off for the summit from their high camp.   The Finns came by as they started their way up a different route to the summit – the Orient Express – so I wished them all good luck.  I went over to the NPS camp, and tried to follow Candi and the Finns’ ascents, but the headwall was shrouded in fog, so I couldn’t find Candi.  I decided to take one last look at the Orient Express route, and was amazed that I happened to see one of the Finns.  I thought that it was odd that he seemed to be pointing downhill, but going sideways, up.  The clouds moved in, and I could no longer see anything on either the Orient Express, or the headwall on the West Buttress (the standard) route.  Later, it turned out that because there was such low visibility, Candi just hung out on the mountain before returning.  And, higher up, the winds were strong, so Ron and Oleg returned to high camp, having made it to Denali Pass. 

The following day, Ron and Oleg tried, again, for the summit, and this time, they made it!!!!!  Yay!!!  Even if I couldn’t make it, I was happy that someone in our team could.  Not only that, when Oleg called down (we used radios to communicate with each other) to tell us of their success, he suggested that Candi, if she was feeling up to it, go up the next day – meet Ron and Oleg at the top of the headwall – Ron would continue on down, and Candi would move up, with Oleg, to high camp, take a rest day, and then attempt the summit the next day!  I was happy for Candi that she would get this opportunity.  While I was feeling better, I knew that I wasn’t better enough to go up.

Here is a summit photo of Ron and Oleg:

 (Photo courtesy of Ron Jenkins)

Tragedy

On the day that Ron and Oleg were summitting, I finally felt better, so Candi went over to the Finns to borrow a rope (since our 2^nd rope was cached above), so that Solo Jim, Candi, and I could take all of our accumulated bags of poop over to a crevasse.  When Candi returned with the rope, she told me that the Finn she’d borrowed the rope from was looking really worried.  So, on our way over to the crevasse, I yelled to him that I would stop by on our return trip.  He acknowledged what I said with a wave, and hung his head down.  Wow – he really did seem quite depressed. 

Candi, Solo Jim, and I made it over to the crevasse with me leading the way, since my abilities were the limiting factor.  We’re supposed to throw the poop contained in biodegradable bags, into what should be the abyss of a crevasse.  Instead, just like the previous two crevasses that I’d thrown poop into, this one had a snow ledge, and the poop all landed on that.  I hoped that the snow ledges would eventually melt out, and then the poop would all go deep into the crevasses, as intended. . .

As promised, on our return, we stopped by the Finns’ camp to visit as well as to return the rope.  By this time, there were two – Markus as well as Juuso.  Before, Juuso was just plain worried, but, now, there was a real reason to be worried – Illka had fallen, and had slid into a crevasse.  Markus, a snowboarder and a search and rescue person while in Finland, had had to make a split second decision whether to attempt to go to Illka and help out, or go down and get more help, leaving Tatu up there.  Markus knew that no matter what, they would need more assistance than the two of them who were with Illka, so he elected to go down and inform the NPS.  The NPS took over and so Markus joined Juuso at camp.  Markus and Illka had been successful in reaching the summit, and, like most accidents on mountains, Illka’s fall had happened on the return trip.  We didn’t know Illka’s status, so Candi and I stayed with the Finns to talk, while Solo Jim returned to his camp. 

After a while, I saw Joe, of NPS, headed our way – I was struck with a sense of foreboding, and just looked his way and said “uh-oh”.  Everyone looked up at Joe’s arrival.  He immediately went over to Markus and Juuso and apologized and told them that Illka was dead.  He let this sink in for a while, and then told them that a team from Kenya had been nearby, so they rappelled into the crevasse and it was they who had given this result.  The NPS weren’t sure if they’d be able to recover the body, but if so, it would be flown to Talkeetna where they would await instructions from the family.  We were then all told not to say anything to anyone about this, while they notified the proper authorities in Finland so that the family could be notified, first.  He made sure that Candi and I understood that we were included in this message.  We nodded.  He told us that Tatu, the 4^th Finn was instructed by the NPS to rope up with the Kenyan’s and walk down.  Tatu later told me that he’d wanted to ski down in Illka’s honor, so was frustrated by this instruction, but he abided by it, nonetheless.

Joe recognized me, since we’d chatted many times on the way up the mountain, and he was aware of my doctor visit.  He, too, had been ill, although fortunately not as affected by his illness as I was by mine.  He asked me how I was doing, and I reported my success in going to the crevasse.  He informed me that they’d staked out a different crevasse for poop disposal – one that truly was deep, with no shelf. . .  He then told everyone that he needed to return to finish up with the logistics of this incident, and took off.  Candi and I and the Finns were left to discuss the horrible news.  Markus told us that he wanted a cigarette.  He repeated the request several times.  So few (thankfully!) people on the mountain smoke, that it seemed an impossible request.  Candi and I eventually left to make dinner, but promised to return, later.

I felt obliged to help with the one request that any of them had ever made.  I had Candi ask one group if they had any cigarettes, and then I went to ask another group – I’d remembered that someone who was asian had been smoking, and so I wanted to find that person, and bum a cigarette off him to give to Markus.  The group I asked was a Korean group, and they had a couple of smokers.  I told them that a friend had received some bad news and was in need of a cigarette (remembering Joe’s warning not to spread the news, prematurely), and they were extremely generous, handing me a pack of about 5 cigarettes.  I told them only 1 was necessary, but they insisted, and then they said that cookies (sweet things!) would be nice in return!!  I didn’t have any cookies, but Candi did, so she gave me some to give to them, and I added in some candy that I had.  The Koreans were very happy with the trade.  After Candi made some tea (and I, my hot cocoa), we returned to the Finns with the cigarettes.  Markus had already found another smoker, earlier, and so had had his fix, but he was happy to get more cigarettes.  And Candi shared her tea, which turned out to be of a flavor that was traditional in Finland, so was very appropriate.  Tatu had returned, so we all sat around and talked about Illka, and what would happen next. 

A helicopter appeared, went over to the crevasse, and then landed over at the NPS camp.  It then went back to the crevasse, this time picking up Illka, and taking him off toward Talkeetna.  When the Finns saw that the helicopter must have Illka, they stood, and Candi and I with them.  They yelled out some tribute or other (in Finnish).  I wanted to yell out that at least he would live on through his pictures.   I didn’t, but I shared that thought with the others a little later.  And that’s when I found out that likely, there would be no pictures.  His camera was lost.  They thought that he’d been taking a photo when he fell, and they thought that they’d seen the camera in amongst the rocks, but they couldn’t know for sure.  The NPS thought that it might be a worthy mission to look for the camera, precisely because Illka was suspected of taking a picture when he fell, but I have no idea if they followed through with that.  The Finns promised that they’d send pictures if the camera were found and returned.  This was such a super sad day.  By then, we knew that Ron and Oleg had succeeded, and we were happy about that, but this news was so present and so oppressive, and we could only discuss it amongst the five of us.

Ron and Oleg did hear about it – it’s hard for a camp full of people to not notice a helicopter plucking someone out of a crevasse.

This had been the second death in the season, and by far the one that affected us the most.  The other was of a German climber who’d attempted to retrieve his sliding backpack, but instead, slid, himself, down the backside of the headwall.  That death was quite sobering, as it happened just before we crested the headwall, and while we were on top of the headwall, the body was being recovered.  It made us especially vigilant anytime any of us were up there – making sure that we were safely tied in to an anchor, even though the area looked relatively flat and safe.

We stayed an additional 4 days or so – the day following Illka’s death, Ron came down with a super heavy pack and Candi went up.  The following day, everyone rested.  And then the next day, Candi and Oleg wound up coming down, while Ron and I went to the “Edge of the World” as a certain area outside of camp is called – because there are places where there is an edge, and it appears that you’re looking over nothingness.  I sprinkled some of Monty’s ashes, here, because I knew that he had enjoyed this spot.  I kept the rest for a return trip to Denali, where I hope to spread them on the summit, as I’d hoped to do, this time.

We flew onto the glacier on May 7^th, and we flew off on May 29^th – 22 days and 21 nights.  So much had transpired – and as much as I’ve told here, there is still so much to tell.  Luke and Margo and their kids, whom I visited in Anchorage on the way home, got to hear an earful!!!

And, in spite of all of our efforts at being trained and prepared – gathering as a group to talk to a high altitude-knowledgeable doctor, getting the proper prescriptions – it was a simple cold, that, unchecked, caused me not to be able to summit.  One just can’t treat stuff the same at altitude as at sea level, as I’ve learned, once again. . .

As I remember Illka, I also remember another cousin of mine who recently passed away in a different accident, at home.  I hope that you all remain safe and healthy,



An intense training session on Mt. Hood, for Denali

I thought that I understood how intense a snowstorm could get; however, any complacency I had on that front was dashed on our training event this past weekend, on Mt. Hood.

On my expedition to Aconcagua, in South America, we hired mules to take a lot of our gear up to base camp.  On Denali, *we* will be the “mules” taking our stuff up to base camp, using sleds.  We expect to have somewhere from 45 to 65 pounds on our backs, and somewhere between 45 and 65 pounds in the sleds.  So, in our training, we’ve been wanting to build up to that.  We checked the mountain forecast and saw winds of up to 70mph (112kph), temperatures around 0 degrees Fahrenheit (-18C), and about ½ foot (~15cm) of snowfall predicted.  What a fantastic weekend for checking out our gear!  While we hope that we don’t have to ever actually climb through such weather, our camp *has* to be able to endure such a storm.  So, late afternoon on Saturday, my team, consisting of Candi and Oleg, and my tent mate, Ron, headed up from Timberline Lodge at about 6,000ft (1828m) with our destination being the top of the Palmer Ski Lift at 8600ft (2621m), about 2 miles (3.2km) away from the lodge.  It’s a pretty common training ground, but we were the only ones seeking it, this particular weekend. . .

At our start, we were greeted by sunshine and mild weather.  *This* was going to be a piece of cake!!!   We roped up, mostly as we would if we were on the glacier on Denali, so that we would get practice working as a rope team, here, before we get to Denali, so that there would be fewer kinks to work out when we get to Denali, as there will be *plenty* of new kinks to work out, there! 

We made decent time up the hill, with Oleg breaking trail the entire way (if I had broken trail, we would have gone about ½ the speed, as I proved a couple of weekends ago!).  We followed the chairlift the whole way to the top of the Palmer.  It was amusing watching Oleg stop, shine his light on one of the ski-lift support structures, turn to shine his light up the hill, then shine his light at the top of the ski structure, and then forward, again.  I was wondering why he was doing that, but when he was obviously staying put, and signaled me to come up, it was clear – there wasn’t the usual flat snow cat road at the top of the Palmer - just snow - and lots and lots and lots of it!  We’re all used to seeing the cable going from the ski structure into the chairlift building, but all we could see was the top of the last ski-lift structure, and the cable going into the snow, and no building (this picture was taken the next day):

. 

See the cable going into the ground on the left side of the picture?  The top of that structure looked like:

At the time, I was taking a picture of our equipment, and only realized, later, that I’d not taken a picture of just the structure.  We are usually looking way *up* at this part of the structure, but now, we were at the same level.

The top of Palmer, here, was our planned camping site.  By this point, the winds were pretty steady – maybe a little over 20mph (32kph), with snow coming down.  It was dark, as well – around 9:30pm, although with all of the bright snow, not pitch black dark.  With our heavy sleds and backpacks, and having to break trail the entire way, it had taken about 4 and ½ hours to get here, when, typically, when we’re climbing it with normal climbing packs, and without snow shoes, it takes about ½ that time.

We started to build a camp.  Candi and Oleg worked on theirs and Ron and I worked on ours.  We first dug out a flat place for my sled, so that we would have a safe place to keep that (I’d anchored it in, prior to this, but it was on a slope), and then scooped out enough to put the tent on a relatively flat area in the side of the hill.   We put up the tent as the winds increased, anchoring it very solidly in the back, where the wind was coming from, and the front.  We also put our packs inside of the tent to weigh it down, even before we got the tent poles up, as added insurance that the tent wouldn’t fly away.  We didn’t bother too much with all of the extra tie-down places on the tent, which we would usually anchor down so that the wind didn’t flap in the wind, but we didn’t have the anchors readily available, and neither of us were that worried about that aspect, I guess.  And maybe we were in just a little too much of a hurry to get out of the wind and snow.  When we did get into the tent, it was fine, except that with the wind blowing outside, there was no way that we were going to light a stove, which, when being started/primed, emits very high flames.  We opted for a cold “dinner” of our snack bars, and tucked in for the night at around ½ hour after midnight.  We were both quite tired.

I had a nice, warm sleep, until Ron woke me up, telling me that the snow was piling up on the tent.  I rolled over and told him that if he wanted me to do something about it, to let me know, as otherwise, I was going back to sleep.  He let me know.   Probably because the snow was collapsing his side of the tent, it entered his brain that it was serious well before it entered my brain.  He told me that we really needed to relieve the pressure of the snow on the tent, and so he was going to go out and do something about it.  The wind was absolutely howling.  I realized that I needed to pee, so suggested that I should go out, since I needed to pee, anyway, and put on my boots, and my balaclava and great big down jacket – I already had on my wind pants and layers of long underwear, which I’d been sleeping in.  I couldn’t find my headlamp, but it was so light, with all of the snow, that I didn’t think that it would matter much.  I put on one of my warm pair of mittens, and unzipped the door on my side of the tent, and the whole tent shifted! There was no way that I could zip it back up – Ron would just have to deal with the wind racing by.  Fortunately, the wind hadn’t shifted, so the entrance was still pointing downwind.  The first thing I noticed, besides being blown by snow and wind, was that everything in the front of the tent was completely buried in snow.  I couldn’t see Ron’s shovel, which I thought we’d left at the front of the tent, so I made my way to the back of the tent, and found my shovel, picked it up, and almost lost it to the wind!  The wind practically ripped it out of my hand- and catching it before it flew away cost me a sprained thumb, but, at least I had the shovel.  I noticed that the sled in back of the tent was completely buried under about 1 to 1.5 feet (1/2meter) of snow, and started digging, there, thinking that I would dig there, and then on Ron’s side of the tent, from the back of the tent, so that I was always facing downwind.  Unfortunately, I just couldn’t get to the bulk of the snow that was weighing down primarily the front of the tent, so I moved around to the front, and had to face into the wind to shovel.  I shoveled for a while, and was just getting hammered in my face, so decided to take a breather, and stuck my head into the tent.  Ron gasped when he saw me – he told me that there were all sorts of “ornaments” hanging down in front of my face.  I reached up, and realized that all my frizzy hair had collected over an inch of snow, so that it was as if I had a hairdo of tennis balls hanging down, everywhere. 

Ron said that the snow on the tent situation was a little better, because he could now move the side of the tent a bit.  He told me that he couldn’t find his boots, though, which had been in the front of the tent.  I looked around, and couldn’t find them, either – they were buried, inside of the tent, with that part of the tent completely covered in snow.  Ron warned me to be super careful that I didn’t rip the tent with the shovel.  I went out, again, and worked some more on it.  I was really proud of myself for getting some really large chunks off of the tent, and then, wait a minute!  Where’s the tent?  I yelled at Ron that I needed his light (to be shining through the tent).  I didn’t know whether he heard, but I couldn’t see the tent.  But I was right next to it!  I was sure of it!  I stretched my arms out, feeling around for it, and finally felt it, and then had to continue feeling around it to find the entrance way.  It was getting smaller, as the wind started drifting the snow both in front of, and curled around into the tent!  

The storm was dumping more snow, even as I’d moved so much away from the tent.  Ron told me that we needed to get Oleg and Candi’s help.  With the memory of standing next to the tent and not being able to find it, freshly in my head, I told him that there was no way that I could go over there.  I was remembering their tent as being about 40ft away.  I was quite worried about getting lost on the way there, even if I went on my hands and knees!  I’d never been in such blinding snow, before.   Ron noticed that I wasn’t wearing goggles, so offered me his, but I couldn’t get them small enough to fit on my head (why I didn’t just go and get mine is a mystery to me!), and something happened to the strap of his headlamp, when he tried to give that to me, so I just when back out and tried harder to get rid of the snow.   I did try to go over to Candi and Oleg’s tent, but got scared of getting lost as soon as I cleared my tent.  I screamed their names, but there was no way that they could possibly hear me, even if they’d been 5 ft away.

I started shoveling the snow that was piled up around the front of the tent, and thought that I’d found Ron’s shovel, so I dug even more vigorously, and then felt with my mittens – oops – that wasn’t a shovel, that was his helmet, which I knew was *inside* the tent, and so I knew that I’d likely damaged the tent, just what Ron had been warning me *not* to do.  I couldn’t do anything about it, at that point, though, and just tried to move more snow away.  I finally dove back into the tent, and asked Ron if maybe he could use *my* boots?  He told me that he’d been wondering the same thing.  He told me that he’d need the parka and some mittens, as well, since all of his stuff was still buried.  He was able to use my boot shells with his inner boots, miraculously, even though they are about 2 sizes too small for him.  I gave him my parka and my warmest mittens, and then he went out. 

He worked a while and made tremendous progress.  He put his head in long enough to tell me that Candi and Oleg were up, as he could see their lights.  He went over there to check on them, and came back with the report that they were “doing the same thing” – dealing with snow around their tent.  I was able to find my headlamp, and while Ron did more shoveling, pushed out the tent from under the snow, and I was able to find his boots and the rest of his gear.  I was also able to finally close the tent, but before I did so, I shoved out all of the snow that had accumulated – huge chunks of it.  The next morning, Ron discovered that I’d managed to shovel out one pair of my fleece pants with all of the snow, and it neither got buried, nor blew away.

After greatly relieving all of the stresses on the tent, Ron returned.  The inside of the tent was wet.  Snow was coming in through the vents that I hadn’t remembered had some additional zippers for complete closure.  Our sleeping bags were wet, and my down compressor jacket was wet.  I went into my sleeping bag, anyway.  After a couple of hours, it started to get light, and I asked Ron if he’d slept at all.  He hadn’t.  We’d both been lying there, shivering the whole time. 

The wind hadn’t abated, but the snow seemed not to be accumulating as much.  We started talking about how to pack everything up, while staying sheltered, and how to get the tent packed, as a final move.  I’d never been able to pee, so I was now getting desperate.  While I’d practiced several of the various techniques for peeing inside of the tent, I’d given up on them all in favor of just going outside.  But, then, I’d never experienced a storm like this one, and realized that I couldn’t bare all in these driving winds.  I rearranged my water supplies (which we fortunately had plenty, so that we didn’t *have* to melt snow) so that I could have a “pee” bottle.  Ron didn’t want to hang around for some reason, so he got up and conferred with Candi and Oleg while I emptied my bladder into the bottle.  When he returned, he graciously emptied the bottle for me.  And since everyone always asks me about this – no, I didn’t use one of those funnels, although I have one, and Candi swears by them.

Oleg and Candi had suggested that we wait about 3 hours to see if the wind would die down.  It was a sensible idea.  Ron and I decided to eat food.  We still didn’t want to light a stove inside of the tent, so we finished off whatever we had, which for me happened to be a lot of candy, as well as a granola bar.  Yum.  Black licorice and Hot Tamales (a cinnamon candy) for breakfast!!!  Nutritious!

We started packing.  In the light, I noticed the zippers for the vents, and finally closed them, so that it stopped snowing inside of the tent.  Ron noticed the shredding I’d done to the front of the tent, and tried to accept some of the blame for it, thinking that he’d contributed to it on our previous outing; but, I remembered that one of the two of us had put crampon points in the ground cloth at that time, but that the tent, itself, had been fine.  No, I’d managed to shred the tent all by myself, thinking that I was unearthing Ron’s shovel.   Good thing the tent was mine, and I had only myself to blame!

We finished up the packing, stuffing the tent and ground cloth into my bag on the sled, and then worked on getting the sleds all configured.  While going up the hill, it wasn’t necessary from a sled control point of view, to be roped together, but while going down, it was quite necessary, because the person *behind* the sled winds up actually controlling it, and preventing it from passing the person to whom it is attached.  We elected to rope up quite near each other, just so that it would be easier to communicate, and also easier to control the sled in front of us, even though we wouldn’t be able to do that on the glacier. 

We had a lot of troubles with the sled that Candi was pulling, and had to stop a couple of times to rearrange it.  I snapped this picture after one of those times:

Candi (green blob) is in front, with her sled (red blob with black bag) behind her. Oleg (orange blob) is right next to her sled, with his sled (blue blob) behind him and right next to Ron (big blue blob), with his sled (red blob with black bag on top) behind him.  The rope from that sled is leading to me.  There was still a driving, snowy wind, but compared to the previous night, this was *nothing*!  

Before this whole weekend started, Oleg didn’t like the weather forecast and had apparently decided not to join us!  However, Candi had no way to reach us to tell us not to show up at her house, so she decided, what the heck, she would just go with Ron and me.  Somehow, Oleg’s mind was changed in the process, so I was shocked that, on the way down, Oleg was positively smiling!  When we were in the parking lot, he said something like “Wow! That was FUN!!”  I could only think of Mark Twight’s famous (to climbers) quote “It doesn’t have to be fun to be fun.”  However, as I was later to learn, Candi and Oleg’s night was nowhere near as eventful as Ron’s and mine was.  Their tent held up just fine.  All of their clothes and their sleeping bags, pads, etc. were *dry*.  The only complaint that they had was that their outside vestibule got snowed in.  I had a hard time sympathizing.  They had even boiled some water the previous night, inside that outside vestibule, so that they could eat a “nice” dinner.

I’ve heard stories about Denali’s storms, and I’d been worried about not having an external vestibule for cooking, but this Mt. Hood storm convinced me that I absolutely need another style of tent (it’s on order – FYI, climbers, I’m buying a Trango 3.1 to take, instead of the EV3).  It also convinced me that I need to have a pee bottle, just in case. . . 

In analyzing the snow on the tent situation, we decided that our big problem was not leaving enough space between Ron’s side of the tent and the snow wall that we put the tent next to.  We should have left at *least* 2 feet, and then, likely, the 2 foot gap would have been filled, and even if we still had snow on the tent, it likely would not have been as bad as it was.  And to get from my tent to Candi and Oleg’s, during the night, even if I couldn’t see, I could have used the rope as a safety line.  It turned out that their tent was more like 10 or 15 ft away from mine, but in that storm, it seemed so much farther!  Ron, who actually went over there, told me that he was surprised to see how close the tents actually were, in the daylight!

Ron suffered severe windburn on his face, which has only just now cleared up (it took a week).

One thing that didn’t go as forecast – the temperature must have been around freezing, and not around 0F/-18C, or all of our stuff wouldn’t have gotten so danged wet.  Where is the cold when you need it, eh?

So, I’m thankful that I am living in a place where we can experience harsh conditions in order to ready ourselves for potentially harsher conditions!  I wish you all “helper” experiences on the way to your great experiences!

leora

Anticipati​ng Antarctica

Back in May, I mentioned that this year’s big trip is to Antarctica for celebrating the 11/11/11 birthday of my travel buddy, Ed. Well, the trip is almost upon us.

The plan is for the two of us to meet up on November 2nd at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport in Texas (me flying from Oregon, and Ed from Arizona), and then flying on into Buenos Aires, Argentina, where we have to switch to the domestic airport across town (we’ll probably take a taxi), and then on to Ushuaia, at the very southern tip of Argentina. We should make it to that town around 6:30 in the evening, enjoying the spring season, which should be well under way, down there. In a move that is a little against our tradition, we’ve reserved a hotel for the whole time that we’ll be down in that town.

Ed and I were talking about the location of Ushuaia – it’s at the 55th parallel in the southern hemisphere. I couldn’t find any notable towns in Canada that appear on the corresponding parallel in North America. It’s sort of the southern tip of a little finger of Alaska, and is halfway through provinces like British Columbia and Alberta. In Europe, it’s a little north of Belfast, Ireland, and runs pretty much through Newcastle in the U.K. It’s roughly the southern tip of the Scandinavian Pennisula, and runs through the southern part of Russia. It’s just fun to consider where we’d be in the northern hemisphere if we were near the corresponding parallel.

We expect that we’ll be doing some hiking and exploring while in the area, and then we get on the One Ocean Navigator (also known as Akademik Ioffe) on the 8th with about 94 other passengers. I’m hoping that we’ll have a night of calm channel travelling, before the 2 days of rough Drake Passage crossing in order to get to the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula – an arm of land that looks as though it was torn off from the mainland that lies to the east of the peninsula. We’re hoping that we’ll be able to actually touch the continent on Ed’s birthday on the 11th. If everything goes as planned, we expect to spend up through the 17th doing sea kayaking, snowshoeing or hiking, and at least one night camping out. The whole point of going with this particular company was to be able to be active while down there. We may or may not get to cross the Antarctic Circle. We’re expecting that the weather and existence of ice in the water to play a big part in determining where, exactly, we’ll be going after getting to the peninsula area. And no, I won’t be doing any climbing while there, which is sad, as there are quite a few nice mountains, in Antarctica, and some on the peninsula, itself.

I think it’s on the 18th, we have to turn around and head back to Argentina. We’re expecting to go from the boat to the airport on the 20th, and spend the entire day getting over to Mendoza, Argentina, where Ed wanted to spend a few days. I’m hoping that we’ll get a whitewater rafting trip in, while there, before we take off on the 25th for the long trip back to the US, which is routed through Miami, Florida.

We’re both hoping that between what we’re bringing, and what the boat is providing (waterproof parkas and bibs, Wellington boots, and dry suits for the kayaking), that we’ll always be nice and toasty warm. Besides, it’ll be Spring! In spite of the season, something that I read mentioned that the water is just about 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 Celcius), so I’m really, really, really hoping that there will be no splish-splashing around in the water!

They say that we’ll take about 4 or 5 times as many photos as we plan on taking, so I hope that I’ll have enough memory in my camera. I’m also hoping that Ed will take his normal array of spectacular photos. I’m beginning to expect that I’ll have the crappiest camera on the boat, but it’s small, supposedly waterproof and shockproof, so it quite suits me with the paces I put it through. . . .

Don’t expect any email while I’m down there!

Oh – I have written up some of my summer climbs, but they’ve all been written as trip reports, or discussions on www.CascadeClimbers.com, so written for consumption by mountaineers. If you’d care to take a gander at them, one is here: Failed attempt at Glacier Peak, another here: Steel Cliff Route up Mt. Hood, and another writeup in the comments at the very end of this post Adams Glacier route up Mt. Adams. This last climb was one of my favorites this summer, since it was technical, involved a lot of route-finding through the crevasses, with no assurance of success, and had fabulous weather. My partner was also able to take what I thought was a great picture of me on a snow bridge, in the middle of a huge crevasse in what we were hoping was a route out of the crevasse field:

Looking forward to touching the, and my, 7th continent,
leora

A couple of trip reports

These trip reports were designed for mountaineers, but I thought that I'd put links to them, here, since some folks might be interested in reading them.

This one is about a less-often done route up Mt. Hood, Steel Cliff:
http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1023692

And this one is about a failed attempt at a mountain in the Northern Cascades, Glacier Peak:
http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1025177/What_should_have_been_a_Glacie#Post1025177

Safe travels. . .

leora

The Universe Delivers

Many times, I feel just plain lucky. I choose to say something, and discover something helpful. I’d like to think that those times outweigh all of the times I choose to say something that I later regret. . . This missive is about one of the fortunate times.

One of the guys at work, Matt, was having a devil of a time trying to get an opportunity to climb our local, highest mountain in Oregon, Mt. Hood. He took the local mountaineering group’s basic mountaineering class (something I’ve helped to teach in the past), and signed up for a climb. I was going up every weekend to either climb or teach, and he was maybe climbing to the top of the Palmer snowfield (which is really the start of the significant climbing of Mt. Hood), and turning around and going home, or his climb was being cancelled for one reason or another before even getting to the mountain. 2 weekends ago, I was trying to get someone to climb a technical route with me, and failed, so I asked Matt if he wanted to accompany me for a south side ascent (the most climbed route). He jumped at it. We had great weather, including high clouds that kept the sun off of the top of the mountain until we could get up there, thus avoiding the dangers of ice falling down onto us.

Here are a couple of shots of the sunrise:


And:

That’s Mt. Jefferson peaking out through the cloud mass that the sun is lighting up.

We were successful and had just stunning views of all of the surrounding mountains, and the cloud shrouded valleys, below. We headed down, and got to a safe spot, the Hogsback. Matt was telling me how beat he was. He ate, and I suggested that perhaps a snooze was in order, as soon as we got to the base of Crater Rock, out of the way of any possible avalanche, ice, or rockfall danger, since the sun was blazing at this point. We went down to the base, and tried to snooze for about an hour. We then headed down, with Matt telling me that he was having a splitting headache, and no amount of water seemed to get rid of it. As we got down to the top of Palmer, with 2 miles and about 2,200ft in elevation still to go, he told me that a migraine was coming on, and that he wanted to put a wet towel on his head and sleep in the dark, but all we had was bright sunshine and a ways to go. I started to wonder if there was *anything* that I could do to help him. I realized that I could take his backpack, and then he would just have to worry about getting his body down. I took his pack, and strapped it on my front. He’s a tall guy, so it stuck up a bit, but wasn’t really much of a problem – with all of the water he’d drunk, it was pretty light. We kept going down. With a little over a mile to go, and still another 1000ft left to drop, we came across two guys taking a lot of pictures. One of them turned to us with that “can you take a picture for us” look in his eyes and he may even have asked it, aloud, and I answered him, that of course I’d be happy to do so. I took their picture with the top of the mountain behind them. They started asking questions about what we’d done, and I was answering. Matt was suffering. We turned around to go down, as did they, but they were still behind us. I decided that I wanted to know where they were from, since they’d been speaking another language when we’d approached, and were obviously tourists. I yelled back the question about where they were from, and they called back “Israel.” I’ve been there, years ago, and despite having relatives there, which should make it more attractive to me, just didn’t care for the heat. Just like Florida, I have a hard time returning, and have yet to. I told them about that, and then mentioned that we have a team of Israelis whom we work with at my company. I so rarely mention what company I work for. I don’t know why – perhaps because many people, in places I’ve visited, give me a blank stare when I do . . . This time, I thought, let me just mention the company. I told them that I work for Intel. They both piped up, “me too!”

We started chatting about all of the people we know, quickly establishing that we knew some of the same people. And, finally, we got around to exchanging our own names. One of the guys, Muhammad, offered to reduce my burden by taking Matt’s backpack from me. He was happy, because he felt like a mountaineer, and I was happy, because it was easier to see without it. As we continued down, I started thinking about the ride home. I’d not gotten any sleep the prior night. I’d woken up at around 6am on Friday, worked all day, and tried to sleep at a colleague’s place, but was never successful before having to pick up Matt at 10pm, and starting our climb at midnight. At this point, it was nearly 3pm the next day, so I’d had 33 hours of no sleep. I told Matt that I was sorry, but I would have to sleep some before I would be able to drive home, so his agony would continue, since for sure, he was not able to drive. Steed, the other Israeli, piped up that he and Muhammad could help drive. At first, I thought that this sounded impossible, but then I realized that they would have just 1 car between them, and could split up, with one driving me, and the other Matt, since likely, they would be staying somewhere on my way home. I asked if they could drive a manual transmission. Of course, they could – they didn’t grow up in the US, where automatic transmissions are the norm!

So, when we got to the parking lot, we moved Matt’s stuff into Steed and Muhammad’s car, so that Muhammad could take Matt home, and Steed took over the driving of my car. As I curled up to go to sleep in my car, with Steed driving, I thought of my friend Mary and what she would say to this, “you had a complete stranger drive your car while you slept!!!!! Are you crazy??!?!? “ I told Steed about this thought as I went off to sleep, and his only comment was “I never did show you my badge!” (He was referring to the Intel badge that we all get as proof of our employment.) He dropped himself off at his hotel in Portland, and by then I’d had enough sleep that I could make the 3/4s hour drive back home without incident.

Steed and I wound up going hiking the following day with one of my interns, with Steed driving his rental car. We returned really late, and Steed got tired while driving, so I took the wheel (fortunately, any Intel employee can drive an Intel employee rented vehicle), and as I did so, mentioned that I was happy to be able to repay the favor from the previous day!

Here’s a picture of me from after that hike, with Coldwater Lake behind me, and some of the low mountains north of Mt. St. Helens:

I’m still amazed at how well this all worked out. Oh, and Matt recovered, nicely – just slept the whole way home, and then that night, and felt quite fine, and very happy that he’d climbed his first mountain, and Mt. Hood, at that.

May the universe put out friendly tentacles, at just the right time for you, too.

leora

The Good, the Bad, and the Tragic

The good news is that my travel buddy and I are going to celebrate his 11/11/11 birthday by traveling to Antarctica!!! We'll be flying to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and then on to Ushuaia, at the very southern tip of Argentina, where we'll hop on a boat, take off across the dreaded Drake Passage (everyone tells me that it's very rough!), visit a sort of arm of land that projects out from the continent, called the Antarctic Penninsula, do some kayaking, and, if the weather permits, an overnight campout on the continent, a little more kayaking, and then return back to Ushuaia. We'll be on a ship called the One Ocean Navigator (also known as Akademik Ioffe) and get to spend about 6 days wandering around the Antarctic Peninsula.

The bad news is that we've had to postpone the Denali expedition until next year, due to Candi's back injury. She's spending the year getting her back up to snuff. Meanwhile, Tom and David are climbing Denali, now, as I write this, with a guide service. Candi, Oleg, and I are currently planning to climb Denali as a threesome, with which Candi is now comfortable. This makes the planning, skills practicing, communications, and likely the whole climb much simpler. It does narrow the safety margin a bit, so practicing together will become even more critical. We did a navigation practice several weekends ago, climbing Mt. St. Helens in a whiteout, which was really fun. There was only one other team on the mountain. I put some wands in on the way up, and we took compass bearings and made a mental note of the altitude of each wand. There was one wand in particular, in the middle of a vast snowfield, that I never expected to see again, on the way down, because we spaced them so far apart, so that relatively vague readings on the compass would get us near, but perhaps not near enough, in such whiteout conditions, to make out a wand, but we found them all, which was quite gratifying.

Our summit shot gives some indication of the low visibility:

Can you see the edge of the crater rim behind me? I sure can't! And in case you can't tell, I'm the one standing, and Candi is sitting.

Now, compare the above to what it looked like on a clear day, earlier in the year, when I went with my friends Rita and Gil:

This was taken looking east, where you can see the edge of the rim in the near distance, and Mt. Adams in the far distance. (JM stands for "Juvenile Myositis.")

The tragic news is that my wonderful next door neighbor, Steve Allen, was killed, yesterday, in an explosion of something called an hydraulic accumulator that he was working on at his work place, Stimson Lumber. It was apparently under pressure, when it wasn't expected to be. This was the neighbor of whom I wrote in an earlier leoralore, when I was having my water difficulties. Steve didn't like to hear about my climbing exploits, because they made him too nervous. . . Little did we know, when we discussed my climbing, that his work would wind up being so deadly. He was a truly wonderful man. He touched many lives, and always in such positive ways. It's heart-wrenching to have to talk about him in the past tense.

Please, all - stay healthy and alive.

leora

Denali: Background and Another Snow Session

By the comments and questions I received, I realized that I didn’t set up my Denali Planning leoralore very well. . . I got the most “grief” from my uncle who told me of his surprise that I would be “climbing” a Denali (Chevrolet Sports Utility Vehicle) or an Expedition (a Ford SUV). Although he was kidding me, I went back and read that missive and noticed that not once did I ever refer to it as a mountain! So, let me introduce Denali, properly!

Denali is also known as Mt. McKinley. It’s located in Alaska, and it’s the tallest mountain in North America at 20,320 feet (6193 meters). Being the tallest, it’s also a magnet for people all over the world who want to summit the tallest mountains on each continent. So, there will be a lot of us on the mountain. . . For us, the plan is to start our trip sometime in May of 2011, and finish sometime in June, reserving an entire 4 weeks to do the trip, including taking all of the flights. The expedition starts at 7,200ft (2195m) on the Kahiltna Glacier, where we’ll be dropped off by a small plane that has us and our gear. We then plan on climbing the 15 miles (24 kilometers), with about 13,120ft (4000m) elevation gain, to the summit via the most common route, the West Buttress. If we’re lucky, the entire time on the mountain will be around 16 days, but if there are storms or what not, it could take longer, hence the reservation of 4 weeks. . .

So, that’s the background information. In November, we did a snow session practice on Mt. Hood with four of the six of us. Both Oleg and Tom were on international trips, so couldn’t join us. Candi and I went on snow shoes, and Denis and David went on skis.

Here is Candi gearing up. Her and my snowshoes are at her feet, and she’s putting the finishing touches on getting her backpack ready, while mine is lying behind her:

Denis and David were able to hustle up much faster than Candi and I were:

Candi is the obvious person in the picture, and Denis and David are the two dots dead center in the picture, near one of the ski lift pylons. Our visibility came and went throughout the afternoon. Mostly, it went. . . However, it cleared up as we set up camp, giving spectacular sunset views:

And the top of the mountain became visible:

Soon after this picture (that’s the back of Candi’s head), we had dug out platforms in the snow for our tents, tied them down, and had gotten started melting snow for water, when the moon came up in the east and the sun went down in the west at the same time! I took pictures, but they didn’t come out, well, so imagination is probably better than lousy pictures. . .

With the weather looking so great, and the snowpack looking pretty great, we decided to try to make it to the summit the next day. We were camped at about 8,650ft, which seemed so low to me, that I didn’t bother to make sure that I was properly hydrated. I just wanted to get to bed and make sure that I got enough sleep before attempting to climb early (5am) the next morning (everyone wanted to get back home, early, so we had to get up early to do the climb to make it back down in time).

Both Denis and David woke up before 1am and took in the fact that there was a full moon and clear skies. They also noted that it was quite cold, but knew that it wouldn’t get much warmer and decided to make the move to summit, then, instead of going back to sleep to get up at the previously agreed upon time. I was feeling like crap, so I was thinking more sleep would be nice, but I had been cold (a 40-below sleeping bag just doesn’t seem to do it for me, unless I also have an inner bag!) all night, and didn’t think that it would get much better, so, yeah, what the hey – I decided to give it a shot, then, too. Candi agreed. We all started up, and I was as slow as molasses. Candi stayed back with me, and Denis and David skied steadily up and out of sight. When I got to around 9600ft (2926m), I threw up! I thought of Joe, who’d gotten ill just around this elevation a couple of years ago, and the 3 of us who were climbing “with” him, not noticing and trundling on up. . . At the time, I couldn’t believe that he’d gotten Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) at such a low elevation – yes, it’s certainly POSSIBLE, but I’d never known anyone who did – at LEAST make it to 10,000 ft (3048m) before succumbing to AMS if you want to call yourself a climber, for Pete’s sake!!!! Anyway, here I was at 9600ft, and retching. I was pretty sure that there was nothing that I could do to make myself better enough to keep climbing, so I called up to Candi and told her that I was turning around. She told me she’d join me, even though she was feeling very strong. I ran down about 100ft just because I thought it would help me not to retch, anymore, and used my cell phone to leave David a message that we were turning around (fortunately, the cell phone SOMEtimes works on the south side, and it appeared to be working, then). I had no more AMS issues, and by the time Candi and I arrived back at camp, the sun was rising:

We took a “Cure JM” (Cure Juvenile Myositis – the disease for which we are hoping to raise research funds with the Denali climb) picture to the east. Yes, that’s a sea of clouds, below us, in the distance behind Candi. And Candi is quite bundled up because we judged it to be around 14F (-10C), or possibly colder.

The guys turned around at the Hogsback due to super-deep snow, and met us just as Candi and I were leaving camp. Since their trip down was going to be faster on skis, we took off, doing some gear exchange with them when they passed us on their way down.

As a practice session, it wasn’t the best, since we pretty much didn’t practice anything that we would need to do on Denali, except deal with cold and melt snow for water. If I needed a reminder, which, apparently, I did, that hydration is important, I definitely got it. But it was ok that we didn’t practice any of the other stuff that we’d need to do on Denali, since we intended to have other sessions later in the 2010 year, and in 2011, including everyone. However, as what happens with expeditions many times, things change. Our December session didn’t happen, because Denis dropped out (an expected change in jobs wasn’t going to be conducive to taking a month off), David and Tom got busy, and Candi sprained her back.

Soon after, David and Tom dropped out, deciding that they would go, instead, with a professionally guided group. This increases the chance of success of the climb, so it’s quite understandable. However, it’s not the type of climb that I’m interested in. I told Candi about this newest development, thinking that she would still insist on 6 people for the team, and I was ready with a bunch of ideas about how to obtain the additional 3, but to my surprise, she’d already thought about just doing a 3 person climb, and was now ok with the idea. Three people climbs are a HECK of a lot easier to arrange, plan, practice for, etc. On the actual climb, we won’t have the added security of having an additional team to help haul out us out of a crevasse, should one of us fall in, and we won’t have as many options if one of us gets ill, but the coordination and preparation, which are a pretty huge part of the expedition, will get much, much easier.

However, Candi still has a sprained back.

So, are we going, or not? Well, we don’t know. We’ve decided to give it until the end of January. If her back is fine at that time, then we will go as originally planned. If it’s not, then we’ll be forced to put off the climb for a year.

There are advantages for me, personally, either way, so I’ll just wait until the end of January for that decision, and meanwhile, continue the planning and getting ready, as if I were to go, since some things need to be done whether it will be this year, or next year.

May your dreams come true!

leora

Snow, as ordered. . .

When I booked my trip to Michigan in December, I was actually hoping that there would be snow, but I guess that I was hoping that it would already be there. Instead, there was snow when I landed, but just a dusting, and that’s about how much there was until, of course, I was supposed to leave. Saturday night, the weather first got warm (a few degrees above freezing – it’d been in the 20’s and teens Fahrenheit (about -5 to -12C) all week) and it rained, and then later, with the quote “be careful what you wish for” ringing in my ears, I saw some 3 inches of snow pile up outside, ensuring a nice icy layer under a nice blanket of snow. United Airlines rang the house at something like 4am to say that my 7pm flight was cancelled, so they put me on one early in the morning. My Mom woke me up at 5:30am thinking that maybe would could make the flight if we got up and out within the hour. I felt that it was already too late to make such a flight, even if we left at that moment, which none of us were prepared to do. I logged in to see if I could find out the scoop, online, and when I tried to check in for the new flight, it wouldn’t let me do it “until 24 hours ahead of time”. That’s when I realized that it was scheduled for the next morning. I went back to bed to deal with it in the morning. On Sunday, it just snowed and snowed and snowed – we got about 6 inches or so, with high winds that drifted the snow so that there were places where the snow was much deeper. The early morning flight wasn’t going to work for a number of reasons, including the storm not being over by the time we would have to leave my folks house, so I rescheduled the flight for later on Monday.

This allowed me time to go for run in the drifted snow and wind (that was a workout!), and shovel us out, and for that, I used the yooper scooper. I’m not sure how “yooper” is actually spelled, but I spell it that way so that people pronounce it, correctly. A “Yooper” is someone from the U.P. (Upper Pennisula) of Michigan. We pronounce the letters, when we talk about the U.P., and so the people who live up there become the U.P.ers, or, more fondly, the yoopers, because they tend to be of Scandinavian descent, and therefore have that long drawn out accent. Anyway, I believe that the Scandinavians brought with them a type of “shovel” that they used back in Scandanavia. It looks like this:

Since the only place that we know of people using it is in the U.P., we, naturally, call it a yooper scooper. Note, in the above picture, what you can do is scoop up the snow, and then slide it up and over other snow, and then tip it up to dump it. This snow was very heavy, and I was able to move an amazing amount by using this technique. It was still hard work, but I don’t even think that I could have shoveled the whole driveway with a regular snow shovel without getting an extremely sore back.

Monday brought nice sunshine, showing us all of the beautiful snow:

We made it to the airport without an accident, which was quite a miracle given the many spinouts, and my parents were able to make it back home without an accident, although there was a little slipping and sliding that occurred. . . (Michigan doesn’t allow studded tires or chains).

And I thought that everything was hunky dory for leaving, until just before they boarded my plane – the agent called me up and asked for my paper ticket. I handed him my boarding pass that I’d received from the Continental ticket agent. He said, no, no – he needed a ticket – the boarding pass said that there should be a paper ticket. United had put me on that Continental flight, but it seems that they’re not quite one company, yet, and somehow the agent that put me onto that flight made a mistake and didn’t make the ticket electronic. The guy said that I would likely miss the flight since I needed a United agent to reissue the ticket as an electronic ticket, but no United agents were there – he sent me off to two different United gates, but no one was at either one. When I returned to his counter, I asked them if it were possible for them to actually call United, since at this point, going back to the ticket counter (outside of security, which is what they were suggesting) would ensure that I wouldn’t make the flight. An agent did so, and everything got fixed in time for me to get on the plane (the last person, but I got on!).

As a parting shot – here is a cardinal eating seeds embedded in suet during the snowstorm:

May your winter be what you want it to be, and may you be healthy and safe.

Leora

Planning for Denali

About a year ago, while running with a friend, Candi, during lunchtime, she mentioned that she was interested in climbing Denali in 2011. That sounded great to me – I was definitely interested in climbing Denali, but I wasn’t interested in doing it in 2010. 2011 sounded perfect. Candi wanted to have 6 people on the team – 3 for each rope team, and 2 teams in case someone fell into a crevasse. A team self-rescue would be much easier with 6 people, total. Neither of us wanted more than that – too many personalities to deal with! I immediately thought of 2 of my regular climbing partners, who I was sure would want to join us, David and Tom. David was an immediate “yes!” We started putting feelers out for who would be interested in such an endeavor in 2011 (Denali climbs typically happen sometime in May through July). Several people started to express interest.

Candi, David, and I took the local mountaineering organization’s Expedition Class in January-March of this year. My primary purpose in taking the class was to learn how to deal with sleds, which are primarily used in Alaska. It was also good to get refreshers on the high altitude medicines and to get tips from others on their expeditions.

The three of us started planning climbs together to get some experience climbing with each other. Denali is quite the commitment – likely 3 weeks, and potentially 4 weeks, mostly on a glacier, together, constantly working together, either climbing, digging/sawing/building camp, melting snow, cooking/eating, taking care of each other in case of illness, or discussing the weather, next day’s plans, etc. Good/compatible team selection is frequently cited as the number 1 criterion for a successful expedition. Our three-some climbs didn’t work out due to weather and our crazy schedules, but we all did get some climbing in during the summer, just not necessarily with each other. . .

We finally decided that we needed to start meeting, regularly, to make sure that we were making progress toward our goal. Candi, David, and I started regular once a month meetings in June. David got some preliminary info on logistics (flights, shuttles, climbing fees), Candi talked to folks who have guided on Denali, and I created spreadsheets. . . We met with a member of a previous successful Denali climb, made some basic decisions, such as what route we’d take, and we came up with a schedule for when we would get together to climb/practice. We decided to do the practices, also on a once a month basis starting in October. We met for our first practice session this last weekend, and for this month’s meeting, I came up with the preliminary Denali climb schedule. At the meeting, looking at the schedule, it was starting to become real. And then we looked around the table and noticed that we had 6 people - and that these 6 were also the same 6 who showed up at the training session (I’d invited more). It’s starting to feel as though we have a team!

Before showing a couple of pictures, I’d like to explain that Candi has a friend, Mason, who has Juvenile Myositis (JM). She found out that there are many promising theories or avenues for research for curing this disease, but that the research is underfunded. She asked if we’d mind using our climb for helping to raise funds for JM research purposes. Of course, we all said that we didn’t mind and would help out, and one of our monthly meetings dealt with fundraising for curing JM. With that in mind, Candi and Mason’s Dad had a couple of banners made, and Candi and I have been taking photos with the banner ever since, as we climb and also prepare for the Denali climb.

Here is a shot of us working on the basics of a crevasse rescue system. Oleg is in back having “arrested” the fallen climber (me) and sled (my weight and that of the sled are on the rope that is clipped to his harness, out of sight – he’s using the rock to brace himself while I weight the rope, as if I were in a crevasse), and Candi is working on creating a Z system (something that makes it easier to haul out a climber rather than just trying to pull on the rope by one’s self), using the handy rock as the anchor. Tom is helping by holding the other end of the banner. . .:

And here we all are during a break for lunch after everyone practiced setting up a Z system:

Left to right we’re: Tom, Leora, Denis, Candi, David, Oleg.

The following picture shows Denis in the foreground, and you can just see David in the sun in the background. Both are practicing climbing out of a crevasse by “climbing the rope”, and having to deal with getting around the sled. We did all of this practice on a sunshiny day, without the snow, to make sure that we all had the concepts down. Later, we’ll do these things in the snow. Most, if not all, of us have practiced this, before, but practicing them, together, is important to see how we all work with each other and to make sure that we have a team understanding of what is expected:
I’ve climbed with every one of my teammates at least once, but they have not all climbed with each other. We’ll have to fix that! We have sooooo much more to do before we go on the climb, but it’s rather exciting to see it take shape, a year after Candi and I first discussed it. . .