Before Denali: 9 days to Anchorage

Today in Summit County Colorado it's been snowing off and on all day. I went out late in the day (1 PM) with the intent of doing some coloir on Quandary's South Side to test my boots in crampons, and my new sock combo, and my steep snow skills.

I parked as far up the Blue Lakes road that I could, at a turnaround just before the fork to the private road, then changed into my Lowa 8000 meter boots, put on my pack, and took off. There were a lot of ski tracks, and one set of snowshoe tracks, but no boot tracks. The snow was firm with about 6" of fresh powder on top.

I passed a skier going up, and one coming down, said "Hi" and continued to an old wrecked cabin where I did a layer adjustment, peeling off my Houdini.

With the falling snow, and being beat from the past week in which I did two 5k speed tests, I decided not to continue on to the main coloir, and picked a pretty looking one of about 1000' from the look of it.

I wasn't sure what fork to take but it would all work out. I went up about 100' above the road and put my crampons on, but kept my trekking poles for now, since it wasn't so steep. I tightened my boots, now that I had crampons on and needed more "control".

I could feel the hard but broken chunks of snow from the avalanche debris under the fresh snow, and there was a layer of hard slush, so the top layer wasn't adhered well, but it wasn't too bad danger-wise since that top layer was only 6" of soft powder.

I went up to a rock where I paused to switch to my Camp aluminum ice axe. It would be a lot steeper above me. I made my way up, angling around some of the huge blocks of rock.

I tried a couple of the forks, and ended up doing a bit of steep mixed climbing. Ice/snow/slush over broken choss that broke off in my hands if I tried using them as holds. The snow and wind picked up and it got darker just as I faced a stiff looking section of low 5th class climbing, so I bailed.

I did a bit of downclimbing for the first few hundred feet, and as soon as the angle let up and the snow improved a bit, I faced out and sidestepped down.

My technique was back in the groove and I felt good, having solo'ed up and down a random coloir. My Garmin 305 later told me it was 900'. Good guess.

Picture looking down from the fork where I rejoined the main path after my detour into the rocks. At the road I found my tracks all filled in, as well as the ski tracks. I made good time to the car, where I took off the boots and found one layer of socks had wandered all the way down off my ankles. That sucks. Otherwise all was well enough. I drank a bunch and headed for home.

Overall great day testing and training. 3.4 mi round trip with about 1500' of elevation. 9 days to Anchorage.

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.

Solar Power for Denali - Part 1

I'm going to be on the Northwest Buttress of Denali for about a month, and between the music, audio books, Kindle, Spot, and who knows what else, I'll need some serious power.

I'm an Elite Team Athlete at Goal0, so I'll be proving the ability of their equipment to work on an Alpine Expedition like this. They have some great larger solar panels, and some great battery packs and inverters, but those are all pretty heavy. For this I'll be taking a Nomad 7M panel with USB charging ability.

In the picture above, while hiking up Quandary, a 14,265' mountain in Colorado, I took one with to test (one of the first beta models I've had for about a year). At the 13.200' break spot I pulled it out and hooked up my Droid Pro to see if it charged regardless of angling the panel directly perpendicular to the sun. You can see the summit ridge in the back of the picture.

The answer is a happy yes. Though I won't be taking the phone on the mountain, it shares similar USB charging characteristics with many of my other gear.

A few days later I dropped by the Goal0 office to talk to some of the great people there and pick up a Guide10 kit - which has a newer model 7M panel, with a special plug to charge the included AA battery pack that stores power to charge small electronics. I also got a Luna 1/2 watt LED tent light - which might come in handy for the few hours of total darkness during the May Alaska nights.

I'll show some tests of that in an upcoming post.

Goal0 Guide 10 Kit
Goal0 Luna Light

More Denali Training - Video

Just a quick shot of myself hiking along the fire road at 10,000' in Colorado.

As a fun note, in the lower right corner, the disturbed snow is from where I stepped off the road to place the camera and sunk to my waist. I had to cross my poles as a brace to mantle off to get out.

Pentax w80
Joby Gorilla Pod

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.