Mark Horrell - Denali Nights: A commercial expedition to climb Mt McKinleys West Buttress (Footsteps on the Mountain travel diaries Book 20)

Denali Nights

A commercial expedition to climb Mt McKinley's West Buttress

by Mark Horrell

Except where indicated, all text and photographs copyright Mark Horrell, 2014

Denali Nights

Table of contents

Day 1 - Welcome to Alaska

Sunday, 16 June 2013 Denali Base Camp, Kahiltna Glacier, Alaska

Talkeetna isn't at all like I'm expecting. The jumping off point for climbs of Denali, the highest mountain in North America, is little more than a handful of log cabins in a wood. I was expecting a small town - I've been recommended two bars to go to - but this is more like the sort of place where you might pull up your car halfway through a long drive and stop for a picnic. If they'd told me beforehand it's what the surreal town of Cicely, Alaska, in the 90s TV series Northern Exposure was based on then I might have been less surprised.

I'm about to do something very exciting. There is a small airport here and you can catch mountain flights to the Alaska Range a few miles to the north. We're about to use one as a taxi service to fly us onto the Kahiltna Glacier near the foot of Denali's West Buttress, and save ourselves a long trek in.

I arrived in Alaska at 1am yesterday after about thirty hours in transit from London, missing two connections and losing my luggage. My journey did not start well. Only an hour out of Heathrow, while we were still flying over Scotland, the pilot's voice came over the PA system to say somebody had been taken ill and he was turning round to head back to London. I spent a lot of yesterday standing in queues and running across airport concourses as fast as I could, and I wasn't surprised when I arrived in Anchorage and my bags were nowhere to be found. I met my group at the hotel yesterday, nine clients and three mountain guides working for the American Alpine Institute, who gave us an equipment inspection to ensure we had the right technical gear to climb Denali. Mountain boots, crampons, down clothing and all manner of climbing hardware were strewn across the floor of the lounge bar while I sat and looked on with nothing more than the clothes I was wearing.

"You've climbed mountains before, though," said head guide Mark, "so you don't need us to see your kit." (He meant that assuming my luggage arrives I won't need him to inspect it.)

"Yes," I replied, "but never just in jeans and a tee-shirt."

I walked into downtown Anchorage along busy roads, and mentally started considering what I would do if my luggage did not arrive. There were three options: (1) to go home, (2) to buy several thousand dollars worth of expensive technical equipment to replace what I had lost, and (3) to do something else in Alaska that didn't require mountaineering equipment. There wasn't much I could do about it, so I did not allow myself to be too stressed. My new companions seemed to sense this, and I became the butt of jokes. They talked about having a whip round to buy me some new clothes, or suggesting that I could be the first person to climb Denali in just my underpants. At nine o'clock in the evening, just after we arrived back from dinner, my luggage arrived 24 hours late, and this morning we were able to leave as planned at seven o'clock and drive across the Alaskan plains to Talkeetna, three hours away.

Anchorage lies between two arms of a substantial fiord, Cook Inlet, and although we drive across plains, dark snow-streaked mountains rise up out of the sea on either side. The plains are carpeted with lush birch and pine forests, and the broad, fast highway cuts a path between them. In Talkeetna we have to check-in to climb Denali at the National Park offices in a large log cabin decorated with huge photographs of beautiful Alaskan mountain scenery and, more quirkily, a jar of moose droppings on the window sill. There is a sign up behind the main desk listing statistics for the number of climbers currently on Denali, the number registered to climb this season, and the number who have summited already. There has been a prolonged spell of good weather and an unprecedented success rate so far this year of 79 per cent. Normally on average only 52 per cent of people successfully climb it each year. We're keeping our fingers crossed this good weather spell continues, but we're going to be here for three weeks, so there's plenty of time for things to get worse.

We have an expedition briefing from a park ranger called Tucker, who shows us aerial photographs of the West Buttress route we intend to climb. It looks an interesting one with lots of variety, up glaciers, along ridges, through cwms, and up steep snow slopes. He points out how remote we will be when we arrive on the Kahiltna Glacier. I will have travelled by long haul flight from London, taken a short trip up a highway, and then another short flight on a tiny plane to a sea of ice fifty miles from the nearest road. In the old days people had to hike for weeks across difficult terrain to get there. It will be unwise to rely on rescue if we get into difficulties, and even with guides it's necessary for all of us to be capable of looking after ourselves. He also draws our attention to another very important point. If bad weather means our being delayed for several days when we are hoping to fly back off the mountain then we should enjoy the moment and not be frustrated. Most of us will be flying back to busy, often annoying jobs. A few days of doing nothing in this beautiful wilderness is something to be appreciated.

It's a fifteen minute walk to the airport from the National Park offices up a dirt track through pine groves. Mark decides to stop on the way to give an expedition briefing beside a picnic table in a copse of trees.

"This expedition is really intense," he says. "You'll all be sleeping in tents."

There is a collective groan around the group, and I'm sure I hear someone rolling a snare drum. He talks a lot about how tiring it is to drag a sledge up a glacier while carrying a heavy pack, and how important it is to keep the energy levels up by eating snacks.

"I don't want people to bonk on the trail. If you feel yourself starting to bonk then stop."

I look across at Tim, the other Brit in the party, and realise both of us are smirking. Mark notices.

"Does everyone know what I mean by bonking?"

"Yes, but it means something else in the UK," I reply. "If we're going to be doing any bonking then surely condoms would be more useful than chocolate?"

He hands over to assistant guide Aili, who talks at great length about the importance of teamwork before asking our third guide Braden if he has anything to add. Braden is much the youngest in the team and has quite a laid back air about him.

"It might be obvious," he says, "but remember to make sure the lid is secure on your pee bottle before going to sleep."

We fly out of Talkeetna at three o'clock. The Twin Otter plane is very small and we have a lot of gear to bring with us, so we have to leave in two groups. I volunteer to go on the first flight with Aili and Braden, and the rest of the non-American climbers, Paolo from Canada, Charmaine from New Zealand, and Tim. It was probably only coincidence that it ended up like this, and we also happen to be the oldest people in the group, but by flying out first it means we have to help set up camp when we arrive.

It's a spectacular flight, but not initially. The early part is across a large, flat swamp, and I look down upon carpets of green strung out with sandy patches and grey lagoons. Then gradually we cross the foothills of the Alaska Range. Smooth, bare hills of rock streaked with snow rise up out of the plain. Soon they are merging with more dramatic peaks of narrow snow-lined ridges. It's not long before we find ourselves flying among breathtaking alpine mountains painted with glaciers, and we pass within a few metres of walls of ice. Then a more significant peak, Mt Foraker, a giant pyramid of snow, appears to our left and our pilot swings to the right and begins lowering the plane as he takes aim at a smooth glacier. This is the Kahiltna. We touch down on skis, but I'm sure I've had rougher landings than this on tarmacked runways. Tucker was right. It's barely 48 hours since I left London but now I find myself in one of the most amazing mountain amphitheatres I've ever been in. To the south Mt Hunter rises directly above the airstrip in a dizzying wall of sheer rock and ice. To the left of it this arm of the Kahiltna Glacier leads east between a small tower of rock perhaps a hundred metres high known as the Control Tower to another rocky mountain wall linked to Mt Hunter by a narrow ridge. To the north two small peaks called Mt Francis and Kahiltna Peak form a gateway to Denali, which rises up between them. It's further away than the rest of the mountains around us, but it's clearly much higher than everything else, a sleeping whale back of a mountain from here. But the peak which dominates our base camp is Mt Foraker, which rises up beyond the far end of the landing strip to the west, a sheer triangle of ice two miles high. Its native American name is Sultana, and its northern ridge drops a huge distance to a natural wall known as the Sultana Ridge, which links it to a smaller peak called Mt Crossen. A rocky spur falls down from the southern side of Mt Crossen to the glacier just below the landing strip, and Aili tells us the standard route up Mt Foraker involves climbing this difficult spur and traversing the entire length of the Sultana Ridge to the summit.