Denali

Summary5 MITOCers climb highest point in North America
OwnerMatthew Gilbertson
Creation Date2010-06-11 12:21:21 UTC-0400
DescriptionDenali (Mount McKinley) – 20,320ft. Highest Point in North America
via the West Buttress
Team MIT: Matthew Gilbertson, Eric Gilbertson, Dan Walker, Darren, Woody Hoburg
May 16th-May 28th, 2010: thirteen days plane to plane

AUTHOR:
Matthew Gilbertson
NEW! Trip report quoted in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner Newspaper: May 2011

SCHEDULE:
Day 0: Sat May 15th: Fly in to ANC, buy & repackage food, stay in cheap hotel.
Day 1: 7am shuttle to Talkeetna, meet with rangers, fly to Base Camp on glacier.
Day 2: Move to 7800’, camp there
Day 3: Move to 11,600’, camp there
Day 4: Rest at 11,600’
Day 5: Cache at 13,500’, camp back at 11,600.
Day 6: Move to 14,200’
Day 7: Pick up 13,500 cache, sleep at 14,200.
Day 8: Rest day
Day 9: Move to 17,200’
Day 10: Rest day
Day 11: Wednesday May 26th: Summit day, sleep at 17,200’
Day 12: Sleep in until noon, hike down through the night
Day 13: Hike all morning, arrived at Base Camp at 7:00am, fly out of glacier
Day 14: Sat May 29th:Woody, Darren, Dan fly home. Matthew and Eric have rest day before backpacking in Denali National Park for a week.

REPORT:
“Let’s go see what the top of the country looks like.” Darren said. Our elevation was 20,100ft—about 200 below the top.

Through the past eleven days we had ascended 13,000 feet over 13 miles. But the final 2,000ft of climbing had been grueling. Even though we had tiny packs (compared to days ago) each step upward was now a monumental feat. There was one-half the oxygen here as at sea level. Every twenty seconds of hiking you needed to rest for the next thirty to catch your breath and slow down your pulse. Imagine climbing Mount Washington with an extra 200lbs on your back, while breathing through a small coffee straw, while the mountain is made of soft sand. That’s the effort level of the final 2000ft up Denali.

We paused a few seconds to catch our breaths. You couldn’t speak a complete sentence without needing to refill your lungs. We had split into two groups; Eric and I had just summitted while Darren, Woody, and Dan were on their final pitch to the top.

Me: “Almost there…[gasp]…just watch out…[gasp]…for the Polish people [gasp]”
Dan/Woody/Darren: “Let’s do it! [gasp]…”
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DAY 0 -- Saturday May 15th 2010:
The five of us had swooped into Anchorage on Saturday May 15th from all over the country. Our goal was to climb Denali (aka Mount McKinley), the highest point in Alaska, the country, and the continent.

Eric and I were seeking the crown jewel for our state high points collection. We could worry later about our remaining 14 state high points (mostly the southern and north-central states). Since Alaska was on the list we had to climb it. We invited Darren, Woody, and Dan to join. I believe all responded an enthusiastic YES within 10 minutes of the invitation email.

We had all managed to push and persuade our advisors/employers to give us the three weeks off that we figured we would need. We had all read trip reports or books that warned that even three weeks might not be enough because of the high potential for bad weather. We heard that sometimes people could even be delayed for days on either end of the trip because the glacier planes needed good weather to land on the glacier.

We thus set up a tight schedule and wanted to get onto the glacier as soon as possible. Eric and I descended upon Anchorage first, on Saturday. Dan/Woody/Darren landed later. We grabbed our bags and put them in the rental car. We each had about 130lbs of non-food gear. We dropped off the bags at a cheap hotel in Anchorage and pulled in to Walmart for some hardcore food shopping. We each took a cart and a deep breath and stepped inside.

We had created a spreadsheet for everyone to list their food preferences. Here’s the food we bought that we ended up eating:

Dinner: For dinner we picked up pasta, couscous, and some Ramens. Couscous and Ramen are super simple because you just need to add boiling water, and it’s a cinch to clean up. We got some good sausage, pepperoni, and brought some meats that we had dehydrated. We also dehydrated some vegetables and pasta sauce. Many thanks to Kate for the dehydrated spices that along with some Dan Walker cooking made our dinners particularly awesome.

Lunch: We picked up 20lbs of cheese split up into five gigantic bricks. We also had a cracker mix of Triscuits, Gardettos, Combos, and cheese crackers, along with some Tortillas.

Breakfast: Bunch of oatmeal for some, and cereal/powdered milk for others.

Snacks: Soft fruit bars, cookies, Great Value chocolate chip/fruit/nuts trail mix, Jello (for a real tasty post-dinner dessert)

Eric and I got quite a few looks while we were shopping. I guess not too many people are pushing around two overflowingly full shopping carts. I think we had about 10 boxes of oatmeal, 10 bags of mini-wheats, 20lbs of pasta, 30 boxes of couscous, 10 huge bags of crackers, 5 x 5lb cheese bricks, 20lbs of sausage, and about 300 Ziploc bags. On three separate occasions people asked us for help because they thought we worked there.

We planned on eating a lot of food in 20 days. On the nutrition facts a box of couscous might say “3 servings” but when you’re working as hard as we would be you can divide that number by 3 or 4.

An hour and a half later we traded $950 for 250 lbs of food. I guess for five hungry hikers for 20 days that’s not too bad, especially considering that we’re in Alaska, where most prices are way higher. Heck, I probably eat for more than $9.50/day in the city. I think a lot of other climbers buy expensive Mountain House free-dried food, which costs about three times as much and produces three times more trash.

When we got back to the hotel it was time to repackage everything. We began the daunting task of pouring all the food into Ziploc bags. The original food packaging produces a tremendous amount of trash, both in mass and volume. By repackaging food into resealable bags you can get rid of all the extra plastic and cardboard. Through years of trial and error and especially from the Appalachian Trail, Eric and I discovered that by far the best bags are the Ziploc one-quart freezer bags. Eric and I cleared the room and began our assembly line.

We poured the food into the bags and lined them up into two huge matrices on our bed. Each column of the matrix was one person’s food. In the end we had about two big trash bags full of waste packaging. We ended up reducing the amount of trash we carried up the mountain from about 3lbs/person to just a few small, compact ounces of Ziplocs.

We’ve found that 2lbs of food per person per day is about right. So for twenty days that’s 40lbs per person. With Darren’s handy hand scale we each picked out about 40lbs of our favorite food bags. It was like a little shopping trip all over again. We ended up with about 50lbs of extra food. I guess that’s better than not having enough. Bedtime finally came around 1:30am.
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