Before Denali: 7 days to Anchorage

I put all the Alaska gear I have prepared and set it out to sort, organize, and check off the list.

This is most of it in one place, ready to go. Today I did very light training, had a checkup at my family physician, and did a lot of work at my place of employment to make sure things will go mostly smoothly while I'm gone. I also did a little arranging of my small music player I'll be taking, and have previously loaded up my Kindle with a handful of books that I hope to keep myself amused with in case I end up in the tent for a week or two ...

Tomorrow I hope to sort my gear, check it off the list, and pack it. I'll show more about it then. This is just a teaser of sorts.

Before Denali: 10 days to Anchorage

In 10 days I'll be flying in to Anchorage. Last night I fit my Black Diamond Sabretooth crampons to my Lowa 8000 Meter boots, and experimented with sock combinations with various insoles. I'm heading to Colorado to test them this weekend.

I went climbing with a friend, toproping at Rock Canyon by Provo, Utah. We did laps on a 5.7 - first time I've climbed outside on rock in about a year. Last time was on lovely granite up Boulder Canyon. Ahh, Rock Canyon crud ... photo below is Ryan just clearing the 2nd "crux".

I actually prefer the Draper Red Rock for lapping. Might get that in yet this week.

This past week I did two 5k running tests. First one was at 31:55 and the second at 29:00. I'm not a runner. I run because it gets my heart rate up. I'm feeling kind of tired now, so I'll be cutting back on my training just a bit to reload/refresh before I head out.

I'll try to put some more up here as I get stuff done.

Northwest Buttress Route

I've been looking at the route in this book: High Alaska: A Historical Guide to Denali Mount Foraker and Mount Hunter, by Jonathan Waterman



There are some really good pictures by the inimitable Bradford Washburn, with little lines on them (mostly correctly labeled) where the historical routes passed.

Perhaps it is because the Northwest Buttress leads to the North Peak instead of the higher South Peak that this moderately difficult ridge is seldom climbed. However it is a classic Alaskan route because it offers the full spectrum of climbing snow and ice cornices, a knife-edge ridge, couloirs, frost-fractured schist towers and pink-speckled granite. Last, but not least, it has an awe-inspiring view down the biggest wall in the world and across the vast Alaskan tundra.

Our anticipated route has the following elevations:

Plane Lands: 7,200'
Glacier Low Point: 6,700'
Kahiltna Pass: 10,000'
Peters Glacier, foot of Northwest Buttress: 7,800'
North Summit: 19,500'
Camp between summits: 18,500'
South Summit: 20,320'
Plane Pickup: 7,200'

The ridgeline should involve a couple thousand feet of up and down as we ascend the various peaks and spires along it, so we'll probably have to ascend over 15,000' from our plane dropoff.

Training for Denali

I've been spending the past week in Summit County CO, and while here, I'm continuing my training for Denali. Right now I'm doing some fast walking on a fire road behind a ski resort that the ski patrol hauls sleds down from the backside lifts.

I've been able to get in 3-4 miles per day at an average 3.3 mph pace (both up and down at an average 5% grade). It's been snowing pretty much every day I've been here, with about a foot last night so I got to do some trail-breaking training today.

I hike in my Lowa 8000 meter boots with poles. Pretty cool overall. I was going to do a 14'er in them last weekend, but the weather and avalanche danger were more than I wanted to deal with. I talked to some friends that tried it last weekend, and they didn't make the top and they said the weather sucked.

In this picture:
Lowa 8000 meter system boots
REI mountaineering socks
Pearl Izumi windproof tights
UnderArmour Coldgear medium weight fitted top
The North Face running shell
Outdoor Research beanie

Audio:
Creative Zen MX
Skullcandy cheap earbuds
Android Lust

Denali/McKinley - Not the standard route

Okay, just a quick post that I'm going to do Denali this May via the Northwest Buttress Route. This is the next ridge to the North from the standard West Buttress "tourist" route, and is considered between West Rib and Cassin in difficulty. Going to go train now, so I'll say more later.