Denali Expedition Pre-Departure Update!

Posted on May 12, 2010

Denali Expedition 2010 – ‘Team Boris’  

On May 15^th 2010 alongside my good friend Nick Hollis I fly to Alaska to begin our attempt on one of the harshest mountains on earth – Mt Denali. Traveling roped together for 3 weeks we will make our way higher and higher up the mountain until finally we reach high camp and launch our summit bid. Please read below a number of paragraphs covering all aspects of the trip from – What will I be wearing? How will we go to the toilet? Altitude sickness? What’s climbing Denali like? Entertainment? What will we eat and drink? Hope your enjoy the read! 

What is Denali?   

Mount Denali or McKinley (Also know as “The Great One”) is situated in the Denali National Park in Alaska. It is the highest mountain in North America, with a summit elevation of 6,194 m (20,320 feet) – about 6 times higher than Snowdon! Mount McKinley has a larger bulk and rise than Mount Everest, although the summit of Everest is higher at 8,848 m (29,029 feet).  The mountain is characterized by extremely cold weather. Temperatures as low as −60 °C (−75.5 °F) and windchills as low as −83 °C (−118.1 °F) have been recorded.

What’s climbing Denali going to be like? 

Denali is hard to describe – for some people it would be their worst nightmare. It’s very cold and from the minute go we are on snow and ice for 3 weeks. However to me this sounds like the most amazing adventure ever! When we set off Nick and myself will be roped together, this is in case one us falls into a crevasse and the other one can aid pulling them out – hopefully!  

Because there are no Sherpa’s or porters on Denali we have to carry everything. To help us on the lower mountain we will be pulling sledges. Between us we need to carry food for 20+ days, cooking equipment, tent and sleeping bags, clothes, ropes and axes and all this weights a lot! We have to be really careful with what we take – because we have to carry it. Nick actually has scales and weights everything and has even cut labels out of clothes before!! On the lower mountain we will be skiing, this is not only safer when crossing crevassed areas but slightly faster and more fun than using snow shoes, particularly when descending after a ‘carry’! 

When we arrive into camp the day is far from over. We have to put the tent up then at most camps erect snow ‘walls’ around the tent. This is to add some protection against the strong winds and harsh weather. Building these walls can take a few hours, we have a ‘snow saw’ to help us cut blocks! Light and dark? Because of its latitude it will never get dark!! This is good for a number of reasons. 1. We don’t have to take head torches and batteries. 2. We can travel safely at ‘night’! The main problem though is trying to sleep – so we are planning on taking the sleeping masks from the plane! 

Will we get altitude sickness? 

Altitude sickness is very common on mountains as high as Denali. Both Nick and myself a have been to altitude a number of times before and we’ve also both been nearly 800m higher than Denali! This said is perfectly possible that either of us could get altitude sickness this time. We will be doing everything possible to try and limit this, like all teams we have ‘rest days’ built into our climbing itinerary and ‘carry days’ – where we climb high and sleep low.  Altitude sickness is cause by the lack of oxygen to the body, caused by a lower air pressure at altitude (not less oxygen!). Denali has a higher risk of altitude illness for climbers than its altitude would otherwise suggest, due to its high latitude. This is because barometric pressure decreases with increases in latitude. The pressure on its summit is around 42% than that of seas level! 

What will we eat and drink?

One of the hardest and most mundane things about cold expeditions is that we have to melt all our water from the snow and ice! This is a very slow and boring process that takes up hours of everyday but has to be done. We will be carrying hot chocolate and tea/coffee too add flavor. 

Food – well we are cheating a little here and a guy in Anchorage is doing this for us!  A logistics company called Exposure Alaska offer a service to aid logistics including sorting your food out into great little packages. One of the main reasons we went for this is not only does it save loads of time but on our last expedition we eat porridge, noodles, cheese and sausage for 3 weeks and after about 4 days I really really didn’t want any more!! So ill let you know what luxury’s we have. I expect it will be freeze dried meals for high on the mountain so all we have to do is add water and lower down and on rest day we will have better food that we can make. 

History of climbing Denali 

The first ascent of the summit of Denali came on June 7, 1913, by a party led by Hudson Stuck. The first man to reach the summit was Walter Harper, an Alaska Native. Harper later commented, “The view from the top of Mount McKinley is like looking out the windows of Heaven!” The mountain is regularly climbed today, with only around 50% of the expeditions successful, although it is still a very dangerous undertaking. By 2003, the mountain had claimed the lives of nearly 100 mountaineers. The vast majority of climbers use the West Buttress Route, pioneered in 1951 by Bradford Washburn. This is the route that we will be attempting. Climbers typically take two to four weeks to ascend the mountain. 

Entertainment 

On major expeditions there is quite a lot of down time, so I always bring my iPod, and a few good books. I have already spoken with Nick about books to make sure we don’t take the same ones! Once we’ve read them we will try and swap them with other climbers on the mountain! I also like to bring a small note pad a pen. Charging my iPod? A good friend has kindly lent me his Solar Charger so that’s sorted! 

What will I be wearing? 

I daren’t even add up the cost of all my kit, but in order to climb a mountain such as Denali there a few pieces of kit that a very specialist. For example – my sleeping bag is a PHD Goose Down bag rated to -41oC! And the boots I am wearing ‘ Millet Everests’ as the name suggests are the boot of choice for Everest and cost in around £600!  To give you an idea of what I will be wearing, on summit day I will have 3 layers on my legs: thermals, primaloft trousers (a bit like a synthetic sleeping bag shaped as trousers!) and my gore-tex shell to keep the wind out.  On my top half, 6 or 7 layers, starting will merino wool base layers and primaloft mid layers and a big down jacket!  On my head I will have a thick balaclava, warm hat and most of jacket hoods up!! I will either be weathering ski goggles or sunglasses (depending on the wind) and every mm of skin will be covered up. On my hands I will have some merino wool gloves on and then my massive down mitts! My fingers and toes are the most likely parts of me to get cold and frost bite is common on mountains as cold as Denali – loosing toes and fingers is not something I don’t wish to do! 

How do I go to the toilet? 

Denali National Park has started a new campaign to keep the mountain clean and so we have to carry everything out! The DNP give us a container that I guess we fill and take back and give to them?! At camps there are designated areas for going for no.1’s. This is because quite a few people pass through the ‘camps’ and if everyone when to the toilet everywhere it would very quickly become a yellow and smelly campsite.  At night I have a pee bottle – So I don’t have to go outside!! Just have to make sure I don’t mix it up with my water bottle J 

The plan / Itinerary 

The itinerary is very weather dependent and so is quite vague! Saturday 15  We fly out and to Anchorage. Sunday 16  Do any last minute shopping, collect our Ski’s and drive 2 hours to Talkettna. At 16:00 we have our ‘meeting’ with the DNP and collect our ‘Poo Container’ and then fly out on to the Glacier! We board all our gear onto small planes and fly for 45 minutes out into the middle of the mountain range! (Im very excited about this!) we touch down on the glacier and unload and the plane fly’s away…. By the glacier runway there is a small ‘basecamp’ which is manned through the climbing season. Here we collect out sleds and gas for cooking and spend some time packing out sleds before heading out towards camp 1. (Remember its always light so traveling at night is fine – especially on the lower glacier where it can get very hot in the day and the snow bridges across crevasses can become weaker) Monday 17 – Saturday 29 Weather permitting we gradually make our way up the mountain acclimatising as we go until we get ourselves into a position to go for the summit. Sunday 30 – Sunday 6 June Waiting on the weather to allow us our chance we have these days to try and reach the summit of Denali. It will take us 2 days to get back down to the ‘Glacier runway’ and then the basecamp manager will radio out for our plane to come and get us! 

Whats next? 

If everything goes well and we summit safely then we are looking at doing Everest next year. One of the biggest challenges of this will be raising the funds! 

Updastes from Denali? 

As and when I can I will be putting updates on here all the way through the climb. Apparently there is phone signal on parts of the mountain so I will be calling in and then the website will be updated! So keep coming back to see what news there is from the expedition… Questions? – If you have any questions you would like to ask them please leave a comment on this blog and I will answer it in the next blog!! Thanks very much for reading through this and a look forward to telling you about it when I’m back!!

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