Team Dom Denali Attempt Day by Day

[Gillian]

Thanks for the reports Mats...looking forward to more....! Congratulations team!

 

[SherpaKroto]

Quiz: Who did take Bradford Washburn up Mt. Washington for the first time?

Hint: It was a woman with initials M.U.

Mats, way too easy. You really ARE from Sweden A rather appropriate (inappropriate?) name for a mountaineer!

Really enjoying the read. Now please finish it - I can't go through another week like the last few

Congrats everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Mats Roing]

OK, here comes the next episode:

Tuesday May 27

Slept in again and enjoyed last breaths of thicker air at 11,200 feet......by 2:30pm we had dug down some of our stuff including snowshoes, sleds, some food and trash and miscellaneous stuff we wouldn't need further up.......still...the packs were heavier than yesterday Both rope teams were together after Motorcycle Hill. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. Rob, Jeff, Arm and me started up towards Windy Pass which again and lo and behold! Windy Pass was good to us again Passing the cache we were again thinking: "Would have been nice to have the cache already up at 14.2K camp"......oh well, if we did, we would probably have suffered a lot more today..........thinner air slowed our progress and we had been on the go for five hours by now......after the cache it's a relatively steep section which kind of "S's" around to a wide long right turn where it flattens out and we can see the edge of the shelters at 14.2 camp......it started to snow a bit and the sun was gone so it wasn't exactly tropical.....once in camp we unroped and soon found a shelter seemingly built by Rainier Mountaineering, Inc. (RMI). It had a lovely sunken kitchen and space for three tents and an igloo. The igloo was sealed and packed with their provisions so they were obviously higher on the mountain. The rule is that an empty shelter can always be taken and so we did. It was smack in the middle of this metropolitan center on Denali. Probably the biggest camp and where people hang out the longest. They have established Toilets here with plywood windscreens (covering from chest down at least)........foothold often icy so be careful.......no one wants to fish you up from a 20 feet deep toilet ......they have two of them in camp......one of them have seat and the other is squat style......the one with seat....let's say the seat is more for decorative purposes......nice views though

Anyway, we started to prep the camp and set up tents and get water going since we figured the other rope team were having difficulties (we were exhausted getting up there ourselves). It was getting close to 9pm so I started down the trail with some hot chocolate for rejuvenation of the four remaining-on-the-trail members. Soon I saw them coming around the wide curve slowly and the little santa thermos with chocolate was soon empty. I took the tent they carried and then Arm came down as well and took some other stuff......it was great to see everyone was well....just wicked tired........someone uttered "this is a death march!". We were soon united in camp and the third tent was set up quickly and nothing makes life better high on the mountain than shelter and something hot in the stomach.......

The most prominent and intimidating view from this camp is of the 2,000 vertical feet headwall with the upper steep section having fixed ropes:
http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0eqvdNUeUCbjJ/610x.jpg

This fixed rope section is what gives the West Buttress it's grade (Alaska Grade II, 50 degree ice). To the right of the top of the fixed ropes you can see the narrow ridge leading to the 17.2K camp. Washburn's Thumb is the most prominent feature along the ridge.

We were looking forward to a rest day tomorrow.......well, we still needed to go and get the cache......but that's a story for tomorrow

TBC'd.......

 

[HAMTERO]

Mats is being charitable but I was croaking coming into 14k and Frodo had to carry part of my load at the end.

 

[giggy]

pretty cool stuff dudes abd dudette. more jealous than gene loves gezebel

 

[Mats Roing]

Who-hooo! Just got Alpinist Issue nr 24 in the mail and guess which is the featured mountain????? Denali!!!!

I'll bring it to the bar tomorrow....I might even make some illegal copies to distribute.....some of you might even start to subscribe to Alpinist after reading the outstanding article. It's about 12 pages long.

Back to the story.....

Wedenesday May 28

We got settled in at 14K camp and had a good time here. Lloyd was still a bit under the weather from yesterday so he was excused from going down and get the cache. In order to avoid going twice I went around camp looking for a sled to borrow. Don't ask how but the Chech dude with the thong from basecamp ended up lending a really fancy one to me.....back to Team Dom HQ with the Ferrari sled and we discussed back and forth if we should go tonight to get it and we just wanted to get it over with and Garett happened to stash all his food there so he was really eager to get it asap.

We roped up and I ended up with the sled as a thank you for getting it in the first place. The wind had picked up real good by now and it was cold....about -10 F........going down was easy.......although a slight miscommunication meant that when Frodo's team had dissapeared down we (the other rope team) wasn't sure if Frodo's gang had brought a shovel.....so Arm went back to get another shovel......after arriving at the cache Frodo et al had already dug up the cache and we distributed the stuff and since I was hooked up to the sled already I started out with it. Frodo offered to make turns. We added some fuel cans to the sled for the fun of it also. After leaning forward so the nose almost scratched the snow, the sled finally moved forward.....after 20 steps or so I had to take a break.....then I got in a rhytm and pulled up the steep section before the lungs gave up and I asked Frodo to take over. he also had a fun time After I regained some strength I went forward and relieved Frodo who now was fighting a strong headwind of maybe 30-40 mph. I saddled in and Frodo helped holding the rope.....just wanted to get it home.....our faces froze up real fast in the icy wind....it was good it was a fairly short distance back to camp....and back at Camp Dom Lloyd had been boiling water for us and we all thought Lloyd was the best thing since sliced bread.

We were looking forward to a rest day tomorrow

Quiz: Who was the first person to summit Denali twice the same year?

No hints....

 

[Solitary]

Great reports, keep 'em coming.

 

[Woody]

A couple of years from now

Alan and I have been talking about trying Denali in a few years from now when he turns 50 and I'll be 51. Reading about this crew struggling a bit is making think I better up my training schedule now! I had a tough time just skiing into Roaring Brook this past winter (the blizzard didn't help).

Great Job to all of you!

 

[Mats Roing]

Thursday May 29

Finally a restday on the schedule! Mostly sunny today Went to say thank you to the Czech team for the sled yesterday. Many of our team members hang out at our kitchen area talking about most things on the spectrum and a few things outside the spectrum. Saw a Swedish flag at the other side of camp and went to check it out. Ended up meeting four Swedes. Three of them were with Mountain Trip and one with Alpine Ascents. Then the helicopter came to supply and de-supply the rangers. A Darrell from CT was also hanging with the Swedes. It turned out Garett had already made friends with Darrell. Arm, Frodo, Sue, Lloyd and Rob went on this short "End-of-the World" acclimitization hike to the edge of the plateau. Garett, Jeff and I stayed put in camp. The freeze-dried spagetti with meat sauce was spiced up with tabasco and olive oil....yum! The rest of the evening was spent sorting through what stuff to bring to 17K for cache tomorrow........

Friday May 30

Time for close encounter with the headwall for the first time! Lloyd, Jeff and Sue basically reached new high altitude PB for every step they took now. The whole group passed the 15,000 foot mark and the camp below got smaller and smaller. At 15,300 feet there is a small flat areasticking out like a little balcony on the headwall. We took a break here and Garett decided that today was not his day. One of us took his food bag and what not. Another 300 vertical to the fixed ropes. Got a little steeper here and we started up the fixed ropes. Lloyd called it a day here and went back down. Six of us continued up the ropes and submerged at the top of the ridge at 16,200 feet. Did I say that we were chasing oxygen molecules here? We moved up another 200 feet and Sue had it for the day. Frodo and Sue cached their stuff on the ridge together with Garett's stuff before heading down. Arm, Rob, Jeff and I continued up around the fixed ropes by Washburn's Thumb:
[/IMG]http://www.peakbagger.com/photo/p6.jpg
Shortly after the ridge gets less steep but also more narrow. At a couple of places you have about 8 inches to balance on and if you fall, you probably end up on one of two glaciers below depending on if you fall right or left. A lot of people prefer to rope up here. I don't think we did.

According to Bradford Washburn, mental capacity is cut in half at 17,000 feet on Denali......the last 1/4 mile or so to our cache was brutal.......there was no oxygen in the air it felt like.....even if you stopped to rest it took a lot of hyper-breathing to catch up and it still didn't feel like you caught up. We buried our cache on a hill overlooking the 17,200 camp. My altimeter showed 17,280 which made me believe we were slightly higher than the high camp. We didn't feel like going down the col and up to the real camp so we started digging......slowly and with light heads.......we were happy to have made it up here though. Arm and Jeff reached 17K for the first time. After an eternity we had covered our cache with less snow than we probably should have. We figured that the ravens can't really fly up here since no air under the wings....they probably have to rope up to get here.......

Arm and Jeff decided to rope up going down and hang around there for a while setting up the rope and enjoying the achievement. Rob and I went unroped and moved a bit faster beacuse of it. We were down at 14.2 camp two hours later. Later in the evening Arm and Jeff showed up, they had taken their time up there without stressing out. It was good to find some air down here.......

Tomorrow.........attempting to move up to 17.2 camp........is the team ready for it? We'll see in the next episode...... ;)

 

[kevinmac]

Love this stuff, better than watching the Discovery Channel.

 

[mookie]

QUOTE]Love this stuff, better than watching the Discovery Channel.[/QUOTE]

although it takes a bit longer than an episode on TV!!

Great Stuff!!!

 

[Adventurous]

Tomorrow.........attempting to move up to 17.2 camp........is the team ready for it? We'll see in the next episode......

I've been on the edge of my seat reading about your adventure. I could almost feel the vertigo when you mentioned having 8 inches to walk on. I feel faint just thinking about it. Awesome stuff!!! Can't wait to read more.

 

[Mats Roing]

Saturday May 31

I was anxious for today and our move up to 17.2 camp. Got the stove going in the morning to brew water. One team member after another got going as well. Slowly we packed up our camp. Arm carved out the letters "DOM" by the kitchen area and we took some group photos shortly before heading towards the headwall around 2:30pm. Team members were scattered about with Lloyd, Sue and Garett up front. Arm was the last to move out of camp. Lloyd moved very slowly. By the time most members were by the "balcony", Lloyd wasn't even halfway there. Didn't look promising. The verdict seemed to be that Lloyd gotta turn back.
Rob, Sue and I started up the fixed ropes and dug up the cache at 16,400 feet. We waited there for other members to show up. Jeff and Arm came up.....and then the awesome news came that Lloyd caught a second wind and was soon above the fixed ropes! Go Lloyd!
The whole gang were at 16,400 now! There was hope!

We divided up the cache stuff and Frodo ended up with a bag he carried in his hand. Had some discussions with him about slinging it on the already full packs. He ended up carrying it in his hand. Jeff Stone led the rope of those who wanted to rope up. Rob, myself, Frodo and Arm continued up unroped. Slow going with heavier packs than yesterday. Got some awesome shots taken on the ridge. One was with Rob and Arm on the knife ridge with undercast in the background. At the fixed ropes by Washburn's Thumb disaster nearly struck us.......the bag with tent poles and stakes for the Bombshelter tent slipped out of Rob's backpack and tumbled down towards Peters Glacier........fortunately they got caught by a rock.........Rob showed off his technical climbing skills when retrieving them. Sigh of relief when he finally came back to the fixed ropes.

Around and up Washburns Thumb. Here is a shot of where the ridge levels out a bit:

This is still the safer section before it narrows considerably on some shorter sections. You can't rely on your trekking poles for balance either since often the ridge is iced up on the sides and trekking poles has a tough time getting purchase. Also need to make sure overboots and crampons doesn't have straps on the inside of the feet which crampons can snag on. Real slow going again.......finally camp in sight.....decided to go and find shelters before getting the cache.

Found a couple of scattered shelters in the main group. I talked to a French woman who said there were some empty ones in the direction of Denali Pass just a minute away......so Rob and I went downhill and found a shelter holding three tents - perfect. Soooo nice to get rid of the packs finally! Hacked away a bit to even out the ground before heading back to guide Arm and Frodo to where we were. It was now close to 10pm.......the four of us functioned partially to start to set up camp. Sometime after 11pm we saw Sue and Jeff on the cache hill. Frodo and I went to meet them. Soon thereafter Garett and Lloyd showed up. Went to reel in them as well before going to get some of the cache. It was low visibility and it must have taken 45 minutes to get the stuff. When I got back Arm went to the cache to try to get the rest of it which he managed to do. By now it was close to 1am. We just had two stoves going since we missed a fuel bottle. There were some irritation with respect to water allocation but it all worked out. Irritation is a lot more prevelant at higher altitude.

Team Dom were exhausted but intact at high camp. Summit day was out of the question tomorrow due to our condition.

Knowing it was rest day tomorrow, it was a bit easier falling asleep although sometimes waking up gasping for air.

Tomorrow......resting up for summit day.....stay tuned.....David Allan Boucher for Midnight Magic.....

 

[leaf]

holy crap, i have some reading to do once i get back to MA on sunday. looking forward to it!

 

[WinterWarlock]

holy crap, i have some reading to do once i get back to MA on sunday. looking forward to it!

Hey - howzit going out there?

Reading? You're going to have your own reports and pics to post, too!

Have a good trip back...

 

[DreamFarmer]

At this point in the trip, had you started to see oxygen bottles littered about ?

 

[Mats Roing]

Sunday June 1

Slept in late due to the exhaustion from yesterday's move up to 17.2 camp. A fair amount of people went up Denali Pass. We had prime seats overlooking Denali Pass from our campsite. We were also strategically placed about 30 vertical feet below the others up on the hill

The altitude let us loose a bit at night talking at night about this and that. We planned on leaving at 10am tomorrow morning. At this altitude it's recommended not to head out until the sun shows up. many parties have experienced frostbite in the morning trying to get going early.

Monday June 2 (Summit Day)

Woke up to very strong winds ealry in the morning........hoping it would subside........around 9am we decided to postpone the start until noon hoping the wind will die out. AFter 10am the wind actually started to die out and we started to get going slowly. Rob was very anxious to get going and made sure everyone was on the same page with noon. Rob left at noon sharp. The rest of the team were a little later and left around 12:20. The sun had started to shine now and it looked promising. Several parties had started out earlier in the day. And more people showed up with us. Sue and I were behind Rob up the diagonal slope to Denali Pass. At 17,650 feet I realized that my gigantic overboots were compromising my ability to get a good grip when stepping sideways so I decided to ditch the overboots. Stopped at a few squarefeet of flat area by a rock and started to process of removing them and the crampons and then putting the crampons back on. I filmed all the team members passing by in the process. Denali Pas is located at 18,200 feet but the trail hits the ridge a little higher up at 18,400 feet. Jeff was having a rough day today and made up the rear end.

A couple of rope teams were also with us heading up to Denali Pass. As we got closer to the pass the wind picked up. We saw Rob disappear behind the ridge and Sue was next to get to the Pass. Jeff was lagging a bit so we waited for him at the by now very windy Pass while deciding whether it was wise to continue. Both other rope teams decided it was better to go down. Frodo went down to see Jeff was doing. About 45 minutes later they came up and Frodo was asking what we were still doing there. He encouraged us to go on. He was going to stay with Jeff who was exhausted by now. After a brief discussion we decided to move on up. The wind diminished a bit after we overcame the initial steep section after the pass. The going was slow. Garett was requesting a slow pace. Took 4 breaths to one step and it was a bit too fast was the feedback I got so I slowed it down a bit further. The vertical feet came slow........we did hit 19,000 feet in the whiteout. The wind came in bursts but not too bad.......after another eternity we made progress to 19,200 feet........I think this is where I did the last piece of filming during the summit attempt. We started to meet a few people coming back from the summit. More uphill and we met a person who looked like he was ready to die and he was short-roped. His friends asked us if we could move out of the way since they had a sick person coming down and so we did.

We were slightly confused when we came up to the ridge before the Football Field. We really didn't want to go downhill but we did eventually. The wind was getting increasingly violent now. We decided to keep truckin'. We meet another dude with frostbitten nose who was escorted down by his friends. After the football field we started to move uphill again. After a little while we ran into Rob's backpack which he seemingly had left. He did the same thing shortly before the summit of Aconcagua two years earlier. He left Denali Pass approximately two hours before us and we figured we are either far from the summit or he is in trouble. It was a bit of combination of the both. We plowed uphill a bit further and then suddenly Rob is coming stumbling down out of the white/grey curtain which surrounded us. We embrace each other and he says he had to ditch his goggles since they became useless on the ridge since icing up. He was afraid he might get snowblind and said he might need help to get off the mountain. Garett is very exhausted. Rob says that the ridge is really tough and it would be at least another hour or two to reach the summit. Arm left his goggles at 11.2 camp and relied on his glacier glasses which started to ice up as well. The wind is more or less constant now.....no mercy from the wind anymore. Noone else is higher up on the mountain than we are right now. It's around 11pm and very cold. My altimeter shows 19,918 feet. I vote for returning with all six of us. We confer amongst us and it seems to be what everyone wants to do as well. The conditions are not very good and our next goal is to return alive to high camp. Sue tells me to take the lead back to denali Pass. Once down at the football field we have an uphill ahead. Rob is falling behind and I dig up a thermos of warm rosehip soup. I know he likes it since it was a big hit on Aconcagua on summit day. He seems to regain a bit of energy. He tells me "Mats, I'm slowly dying". I tell him to keep going while I fiddle with putting the thermos back in th backpack. The others have now managed to get most of the way back up to the ridge connected to the Archdiaconess Tower. The wind is relentless.....we keep moving slowly although it's a lot quicker downhill.

By the time we reach the steep section the gale force wind is pestering us and Garett can't see anymore since his glasses are totally frozen up by now. Rob doesn't want to rope up and heads down himself. It takes an eternity to rope up while trying to cover our faces from the wind. Garett wants to bivy but agrees to go down the steep section. Lloyd goes first, then Sue, then Garett, me and Arm. That was a long pitch....and we gather together. Garett wants to bivy here. Art Davidson and his two companions did bivy at the exact same spot in 1967 and were stuck for 7 days before being able to crawl back down frostbitten. They had been left for dead by their team mates at high camp.....so they had to crawl a lot longer than high camp.

Lloyd and I insist on going down. Lloyd asks me if I can see well and since I can I'll take the lead of the rope. We make it down to the Pass where we left Jeff and Frodo an eon ago. Wind is still pestering us and I try to make out the trail in the grey night. I don' t know how many falls happened here but at one point I saw both lloyd and Arm tumbling down side by side and Garett did a tremendous self arrest and held both of them. We clipped in as much as we could and gather every so often to hand down the biners to me since most pickets in the slope were without biners. "ANCHOR!" was the most common word uttered.......slow progress with five people stopping for each anchor. At one point I tell Garett we are almost there and he replies "Mats, you said that an hour ago!" We finally made it below the rock where I took the overboots off. Been climbing without gaiters since then.....the boots seems to hold the warmth well since toes still not cold. The last right turn and we can distinguish the camp and soon a figure who starts to run towards us......Frodo has been mighty worried for us. He immediately asks if I need medical attention. then he runs towards Garett etc. Garett and I walk side by side back to camp and Frodo helps me to get the rope off. He has a thermos of chicken soup also. Team Dom's nr 1 goal accomplished - getting back alive. Rob also accomplished the secondary goal of summiting. Slow process to get into the tents.....but oh so good being in the sleeping bag

Next episode - helping out the Park Rangers in the rescue of Claude from Canada during our decent to 14.2 camp........

 

[mtnpa]

Friends watching out for each other...Much can be learned here.

 

[Dr. Dasypodidae]

Yowser, quite the summit day! I was gripped reading your summary, Mats! I am trying to recall how your summit day compared with Frodo's with John and Ben four years ago. Sorry that I could not get to Tia's last evening to hear all about the expedition first hand. Congrats on getting down safely!

 

[Gris]

Wowza!

what Pa said - deeeep sh*t if not for: Matts help'n Garrett, G saving Arm & Ham, Frodo pitching in, etc. Scares me just reading...