cbcbd
Well-known member
Awesome stuff guys and gal, I can't wait to hear the stories and see the pictures!!!!
Team Dom attempts Denali May 21 - June 10th
- Thread starter Mats Roing
- Start date
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mtnmama
New member
Yea!!! Your all safe!!!
Nice climbing...can't wait to give my boys a BIG hug.
Have a safe trip home...hope to see you real soon.
Hugs,
Mtnmama
Nice climbing...can't wait to give my boys a BIG hug.
Have a safe trip home...hope to see you real soon.
Hugs,
Mtnmama
SherpaKroto
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Excellent news! Of course, it was a bit skewed in Rob's favor: he was actually climbing down from his point of view
Hey - maybe Arm can make this weekend's practice
Congrats to all for a safe (successful) trip, and to Rob "Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!"
Now back to my regularly scheduled breathing.
Hey - maybe Arm can make this weekend's practice
Congrats to all for a safe (successful) trip, and to Rob "Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!"
Now back to my regularly scheduled breathing.
tallguinness
New member
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Wager
Well, I just lost $20 as I had my money on Arm as the lone summiteer.
Sounds like they were all very close!
"You kow the boys in the newsroom have a running bet"
Well, I just lost $20 as I had my money on Arm as the lone summiteer.
Sounds like they were all very close!
"You kow the boys in the newsroom have a running bet"
The Sikes
Member
Denali
It's been a long couple of days waiting to hear. I'm so happy that you are all down and safe! Congratulations for getting as far as you did everyone!!! I'm jeleous!!!
It's been a long couple of days waiting to hear. I'm so happy that you are all down and safe! Congratulations for getting as far as you did everyone!!! I'm jeleous!!!
mavs00
New member
Congrats to team DOM........
SherpaKroto said:Excellent news! Of course, it was a bit skewed in Rob's favor: he was actually climbing down from his point of view
Congrats to all for a safe (successful) trip, and to Rob "Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!
Here is Rob's short training bio posted on our Google Groups site; sorry that I did not get to meet him this trip. He also has climbed Mount Cook, New Zealand's highest, and then met Mats on their climb of Aconcagua, South America's highest. Hope to see Stinkyfeet back in NH this September and the others soon. Welcome back all.
Name: Rob Kettels
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Title:
Industry: Arts
Email address: [email protected]
Website or Blog:
Quote:
About me: Current ongoing training:
• August: Winter snow-shoed 110km off track (solo) across the Australian Alps including crossing Mt Kosciusko.
• September: Skiing, ice climbing and winter camping on summits in NZ.
• October: Ran the Melbourne Marathon 42.2km in 3.14 with no training other than above.
• 14th-17th December: Rock climbing up to grade 19 or 5.10 and off track hiking in the Grampian's.
• 31st-3rd January: Multi-pitch rock climbing in the Grampian's at about grade 5.10.
• 7th-21st January: Two weeks climbing in NZ. Climbed Mt Aspiring and Mt Brewster, included glacier travel and ice climbing.
• 1st - 2nd March: Hiked 36km.
• 14th March: Cycled 145km in one day.
• Wilderness hiking for four days, in the Buchan Headwaters Wilderness Zone.
• Climbed Mt Buller 1805m. 1200m ascent and then descent in one day.
• Trad rock climbing Mt Macedon at 1100m
• 6 days hiking in the High Country. Reaching the the Razor - Viking Wilderness Zone (The most remote mountains in Victoria).
• Weekend at Mt Buller, had the flu but walked up to the summit in snowy conditions.
• Hiked to the highest point in Victoria, Mt Bogong camped about the tree line.
• 30km run, time to taper.
This is Rob Kettels,
I'm sitting with Courtney in Talkeetna, and still have a hangover from celebrations yesterday.
I would like to thank everyone for following the expedition.
Also thanks to the members of Team Dom and Frodo for putting a great trip together.
And a personal thanks to Mats who kept my spirits and the teams spirits high throughout the whole trip. Legend!
If anyone wants to see my summit shot or other photos, my email address is:
[email protected]
Courtney now: It was great to see Mats at 1:30am to 4:30am last night/this morning and everyone this morning before they headed back to Anchorage. Had a great relaxing day with Rob today. A real treat seeing friends and making new ones while out here. Huge congratz to everyone - its quite an accomplishment to get to those heights - and glad I could toast Robs summit in person with a beer. Off to the glacier myself tomorrow!
I'm sitting with Courtney in Talkeetna, and still have a hangover from celebrations yesterday.
I would like to thank everyone for following the expedition.
Also thanks to the members of Team Dom and Frodo for putting a great trip together.
And a personal thanks to Mats who kept my spirits and the teams spirits high throughout the whole trip. Legend!
If anyone wants to see my summit shot or other photos, my email address is:
[email protected]
Courtney now: It was great to see Mats at 1:30am to 4:30am last night/this morning and everyone this morning before they headed back to Anchorage. Had a great relaxing day with Rob today. A real treat seeing friends and making new ones while out here. Huge congratz to everyone - its quite an accomplishment to get to those heights - and glad I could toast Robs summit in person with a beer. Off to the glacier myself tomorrow!
Last edited:
WinterWarlock
Active member
leaf said:
Awesome stuff! Rob, I think we'd all like to see the photos - you should post the link here for everyone, unless you want to get bombarded with emails!
Courtney - have fun and be safe! We'll be waiting for your photos too!
Scott
Bobby
Active member
Awesome job on the climb. Happy to hear you will all be coming back. I can't wait to see the pics.
Great job by Chinooktrail with the updates.
Great job by Chinooktrail with the updates.
Mats Roing
New member
Thanks for all positive thoughts and postings everyone!
Team members are starting to trickle back to new England and elsewhere now.....Jeff Stone will arrive in an hour to Logan. I just came back this morning. Hope to write up a day by day today......stay tuned....
Mats
Team members are starting to trickle back to new England and elsewhere now.....Jeff Stone will arrive in an hour to Logan. I just came back this morning. Hope to write up a day by day today......stay tuned....
Mats
hikerfast
Active member
I feel like I know a bunch of famous mountain climbers..then I realize..I DO! what a privilige. Unbelievable accomplishment!
Mats Roing
New member
Started a trip report separately....see: http://www.vftt.org/forums/showthread.php?t=23042
Will do one day at a time.......
Will do one day at a time.......
Just arrived home yesterday morning and I now finally have a chance to respond to this long thread. Since it is going to be a while before Mats has all of his TR’s up, I figured I would do an overall summery of our trip and answer a few lingering questions.
First of all, special thanks to Chinooktrail for doing the progress updates and being our team manager. I had people from work and family members who have absolutely no interest in mountains or hiking websites tell me how they kept track of our progress via this thread. I also thought my Mom referring me to “Frodo” was quite funny… hehehe
Our 15 days on the mountain were blessed with good weather other than the snow storm that hit us at 9500’ camp and the wild summit day we had (more on that below). We were on schedule the whole trip, and actually were ahead of schedule by one day when we made it painfully to 17,200’ camp.
We had an amazing trip! When you go on expeditions like this with close friends you can’t help to come back just a little different. We all suffered, laughed, stank, ate lots of freeze dried bags-O-crap, lay in our tents telling bizarre stories, hauled heavy loads up some steep headwalls, tip-toed across some very scary stuff, went to the bathroom in front of each other which was even scarier (no modesty on the glacier), and we did all of this in one of the most scenic places on Earth.
Once we arrived at 17,200’ camp, we had to rest a day there to acclimate before summiting, this is when we faced a dilemma. The weather forecast called for a descent day the following day (our summit day, and ended up being wrong), BUT snowy weather coming in the day after and the next few days after that were forecasted to have high winds, and the one thing as a climber on Denali is you DON’T want to get stuck at 17,200 camp (who wants to get stuck carrying the crap can down after 5 days???? 8 climbers X 5 days X 1 crap can… you do the math…YIKES!) Even though we had 4 summit days on the schedule, we had the weather to only attempt one before we had to get down to avoid being stuck in a place that will make your brain shrink along with a few other body parts, DOH! I also have to say that with this team of climbers who came in so fit, none of us suffered any high altitude sickness other than the normal headache or shortness of breath.
Summit day started out with sunny skies, but with more wind that was forecasted. We delayed our attempt by 3 hours hoping the winds would subside, and they did for a little while… All 8 of us headed up Denali Pass, which is a no fall zone. Rob grew impatient with the progress and went ahead alone towards the summit. Jeff was feeling fatigued at the top and felt that he didn’t have the energy to continue safely to the summit and back, so I decided to stay with him (nobody should be left alone anywhere on the mountain) to rope up and head back down. The remaining 5 (Hamtero, Arm, Mats, Stinkyfeet, and GO), pushed on for the summit.
I won’t go into much detail here because Mats will provide that in his TR, but as those 5 and Rob made there summit push, the weather became worse, quite a bit worse… When Denali wants you to summit, it will let you know or not, and that is a given…
Dom’s axe was with Arm, and it came only 400’ from the summit. This sounds quite close, and it is, but at that altitude it takes a long time to climb 400’. I give those 5 brave climbers the utmost respect for being able to make the right decision to turn around so close. It’s not easy to make that decision, but they did and all of them are here to talk about it. No mountain is worth dying for…
We had a memorial set up at our 14,200’ camp for Dom (thanks to Arm). There will be pictures posted of this soon.
While we were there, 2 Japanese climbers became missing (and are presumed dead). On the way down from 17,200’ camp we came upon a rescue of a Canadian climber from Montreal (Claude Ratte) who fell 1500’ off the back side of the West Buttress. We donated 4 pickets to the rescue, and later Arm even helped do some pulling. The ironic thing about the rescue is that on our shuttle van ride back to Anchorage, we picked up Claude and became friends with him. He is now planning on joining us this winter for our annual Katahdin Trip! His story is a story in it’s self. AMAZING that he is still alive… Good thing he didn’t have our Satellite Phone…
Hmmm… this is longer than I planned on writing, but I hope it answers a few lingering questions. By the way, I plan on auctioning off my -40 sleeping bag on E-Bay. Not because don’t plan on doing another tip like this (I plan on doing a high mountain expedition every two years for as long as I am able), but because I got so dirty and smelly on this one that my image is now transferred into my sleeping bag like the “Shroud of Turin”.
I also want to say thanks to all of the people and friends on this site who followed our little adventure and who gave us lots of well wishes. It means a lot to us to read all of the posts. I stumbled on to this site 11 years ago, and based on all of the people I met and close friends that have developed over the years, I can honestly say that this is the only website that has ever changed my life.
This was the best trip of my life, and I am lucky to have friends like you. You guys were “wicked awesome” and I look forward to future endeavors…
Good luck to Jean and Nat! I hope they have better summit weather than we had. To a safe and memorable trip!
Till the next one…
Names:
Mats “International Man of Mystery” Roing
Garret “Chris Chelios” Oswald
Armand “Crack-O-Nooner” Turcotte
Jeff “Hey WTF! How did these Swedish underwear end up in my sleeping bag??????” Stone
Sue “Doesn’t Smell Like the Rest of Us Neanderthals” Johnston
Rob “Lone Ranger” Kettles
Lloyd “Stove Man” Graves
Robert “Crap Bag Slinger” Williams
First of all, special thanks to Chinooktrail for doing the progress updates and being our team manager. I had people from work and family members who have absolutely no interest in mountains or hiking websites tell me how they kept track of our progress via this thread. I also thought my Mom referring me to “Frodo” was quite funny… hehehe
Our 15 days on the mountain were blessed with good weather other than the snow storm that hit us at 9500’ camp and the wild summit day we had (more on that below). We were on schedule the whole trip, and actually were ahead of schedule by one day when we made it painfully to 17,200’ camp.
We had an amazing trip! When you go on expeditions like this with close friends you can’t help to come back just a little different. We all suffered, laughed, stank, ate lots of freeze dried bags-O-crap, lay in our tents telling bizarre stories, hauled heavy loads up some steep headwalls, tip-toed across some very scary stuff, went to the bathroom in front of each other which was even scarier (no modesty on the glacier), and we did all of this in one of the most scenic places on Earth.
Once we arrived at 17,200’ camp, we had to rest a day there to acclimate before summiting, this is when we faced a dilemma. The weather forecast called for a descent day the following day (our summit day, and ended up being wrong), BUT snowy weather coming in the day after and the next few days after that were forecasted to have high winds, and the one thing as a climber on Denali is you DON’T want to get stuck at 17,200 camp (who wants to get stuck carrying the crap can down after 5 days???? 8 climbers X 5 days X 1 crap can… you do the math…YIKES!) Even though we had 4 summit days on the schedule, we had the weather to only attempt one before we had to get down to avoid being stuck in a place that will make your brain shrink along with a few other body parts, DOH! I also have to say that with this team of climbers who came in so fit, none of us suffered any high altitude sickness other than the normal headache or shortness of breath.
Summit day started out with sunny skies, but with more wind that was forecasted. We delayed our attempt by 3 hours hoping the winds would subside, and they did for a little while… All 8 of us headed up Denali Pass, which is a no fall zone. Rob grew impatient with the progress and went ahead alone towards the summit. Jeff was feeling fatigued at the top and felt that he didn’t have the energy to continue safely to the summit and back, so I decided to stay with him (nobody should be left alone anywhere on the mountain) to rope up and head back down. The remaining 5 (Hamtero, Arm, Mats, Stinkyfeet, and GO), pushed on for the summit.
I won’t go into much detail here because Mats will provide that in his TR, but as those 5 and Rob made there summit push, the weather became worse, quite a bit worse… When Denali wants you to summit, it will let you know or not, and that is a given…
Dom’s axe was with Arm, and it came only 400’ from the summit. This sounds quite close, and it is, but at that altitude it takes a long time to climb 400’. I give those 5 brave climbers the utmost respect for being able to make the right decision to turn around so close. It’s not easy to make that decision, but they did and all of them are here to talk about it. No mountain is worth dying for…
We had a memorial set up at our 14,200’ camp for Dom (thanks to Arm). There will be pictures posted of this soon.
While we were there, 2 Japanese climbers became missing (and are presumed dead). On the way down from 17,200’ camp we came upon a rescue of a Canadian climber from Montreal (Claude Ratte) who fell 1500’ off the back side of the West Buttress. We donated 4 pickets to the rescue, and later Arm even helped do some pulling. The ironic thing about the rescue is that on our shuttle van ride back to Anchorage, we picked up Claude and became friends with him. He is now planning on joining us this winter for our annual Katahdin Trip! His story is a story in it’s self. AMAZING that he is still alive… Good thing he didn’t have our Satellite Phone…
Hmmm… this is longer than I planned on writing, but I hope it answers a few lingering questions. By the way, I plan on auctioning off my -40 sleeping bag on E-Bay. Not because don’t plan on doing another tip like this (I plan on doing a high mountain expedition every two years for as long as I am able), but because I got so dirty and smelly on this one that my image is now transferred into my sleeping bag like the “Shroud of Turin”.
I also want to say thanks to all of the people and friends on this site who followed our little adventure and who gave us lots of well wishes. It means a lot to us to read all of the posts. I stumbled on to this site 11 years ago, and based on all of the people I met and close friends that have developed over the years, I can honestly say that this is the only website that has ever changed my life.
This was the best trip of my life, and I am lucky to have friends like you. You guys were “wicked awesome”
and I look forward to future endeavors… Good luck to Jean and Nat! I hope they have better summit weather than we had. To a safe and memorable trip!
Till the next one…
Names:
Mats “International Man of Mystery” Roing
Garret “Chris Chelios” Oswald
Armand “Crack-O-Nooner” Turcotte
Jeff “Hey WTF! How did these Swedish underwear end up in my sleeping bag??????” Stone
Sue “Doesn’t Smell Like the Rest of Us Neanderthals” Johnston
Rob “Lone Ranger” Kettles
Lloyd “Stove Man” Graves
Robert “Crap Bag Slinger” Williams
Last edited:
Frodo said:Hmmm… this is longer than I planned on writing, but I hope it answers a few lingering questions. By the way, I plan on auctioning off my -40 sleeping bag on E-Bay. Not because don’t plan on doing another tip like this (I plan on doing a high mountain expedition every two years for as long as I am able), but because I got so dirty and smelly on this one that my image is now transferred into my sleeping bag like the “Shroud of Turin”.
Nice summary, Frodo. If you can sell your -40 Dark Star bag (mention the name!) on EBay for something similar to what the Virgin Mary pizza, and now a pretzel, generated, you may have enough cash for your next big trip!
http://blog.oregonlive.com/breakingnews/2008/02/eugene_radio_station_puts_virg.html
Did my magic orange shovel make it down from 17.2?
HuiYeng
Active member
BRAVO!! Congratulations on the admirable efford. What an amazing group of people. (Somehow there were tears in my eyes while reading your summary !?)
To me this is more than just a climbing affair, this is the Fellowship of the Axe, friendship in the making and thickening. You guys watching out for each other out there and us here wishing the best for you and genuinely care about your safety. Welcome back! {{{Group hug}}}
RIP Dom and all the fallen climbers.
!?)To me this is more than just a climbing affair, this is the Fellowship of the Axe, friendship in the making and thickening. You guys watching out for each other out there and us here wishing the best for you and genuinely care about your safety. Welcome back! {{{Group hug}}}
RIP Dom and all the fallen climbers.
giggy
New member
Frodo and all - sounds amazing and awesome. welcome home.
some awesome team aspects shown here
some awesome team aspects shown here
Last edited:
Steve-o
Active member
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Frodo said:I also thought my Mom referring me to “Frodo” was quite funny… hehehe
What will she think of Robert "Crap Bag Slinger" Williams ?
Excellent summary Frodo!
Sounds like you had a great time! can't wait to see some pictures.
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