In Talkeetna!

The team travelled thru the night last night and reached basecamp in time to fly out this morning.  They've showered, and begun eating way too much...  They'll spend a night in Talkeetna enjoying the slow return to civilization, and we'll bring them back to Anchorage tomorrow.

Congratulations to the guys.

Summit on the 4th of July

I talked to Chris Kerrick from high camp this morning and they were able to summit yesterday!  The team did great, and they had a beautiful day, with just a bit of winds.  

They were sleeping in a bit this morning, but planned to be heading down towards basecamp by noon or so.   They'll be to basecamp in just a couple of days, and then fly back to Talkeetna.   

Congratulations to all of the crew!

High Camp 17,200ft

Chris called from high camp today.  They were able to move up yesterday and made good time.  They were hoping to try for the summit as early as today, but the weather didn't cooperate, and they'll try again tomorrow.

Moving to 17,000 camp

The guys took a rest day yesterday after a lot of trailbreaking in their attempts to get over to the West Rib.  They did a bit of re organizing and will be heading up to the high camp on the West Buttress route today.   

Pics from the Kahiltna

I happened to be camped near Camp 1 on The Kahiltna Glacier when this troop of climbers came by. I managed to waylay them for a little while and snapped a few photos before they took off up glacier. Sorry it has taken me a little while to publish them.

Team TT moving up the Kahiltna, across from the East fork of the Kahiltna and the Northwest Ridge of Mt Francis.

Geoff Booras, way too happy for having just humped a huge load 4.5 miles up a glacier!

David Kaufmann, looking fit and psyched at being in the Great White North!

The irrepressible John Mosler, sitting on one of the biggest packs I'd seen whilst on the glacier!

Catching up a bit

So the team has been busy since John had to leave... they moved up to 14,000 camp a couple of days ago, and for the last 2 days have been trying to break trail up to the 16,5000 ft level where they join the West Rib route.  There has been a lot of new snow which not only makes the trail breaking more difficult, but makes it more dangerous as new snow avalanches are more likely.  They have been poking around towards the W. Rib, but due to the snow and avalanche conditions they have decided not to go up that route, but to attempt to reach the summit via the West Buttress.  They are a bit disappointed no to be able to climb the more difficult route, but should have a good shot at summitting on the West Buttress.  

They plan to move to high camp at 17,000 ft tomorrow.

At 11,000

The remainder of the team is at 11,000 ft camp tonight, and ready to move up to their next camp at 14k as soon as tomorrow.   The weather has been a bit unsettled, but tomorrow is expected to be reasonable, so everyone still on Denali is excited to move.