Ready to Move High!
Dispatch: Lead Mountain Trip Guide Jesse Yon called in a report from Genet Basin, the big camp at 14,200′ on the West Buttress route of Denali. Unfortunately, his call was cut off and he wasn’t able to share much about the team’s day or their plans. Fear not – we’ll fill in the blanks!
The team took today to rest, eat and ready their kit for a planned push up to High Camp on the West Buttress. They are hoping to make the move up to 17,200 feet tomorrow, weather permitting. Everyone is doing well, feeling good and excited to climb up through what I consider the prettiest part of the route.
They will hike about 1200′ of moderately steep snow up out of their Camp 3. After a rest, they will once again ascend The Headwall, the steepest section of the entire route. Affixed with ropes along its length, they will clip into those ropes for security as they climb.
Here’s a very truncated report from Jesse!
14 camp to cache at 16 ridge If you haven’t climbed Denali you probably have no idea what this is. Our last two days have been busy and the head has cleared up. Thanks to Todd and Jessy and medical dispatch they cleared me to keep going. Many people say the carry between 14 and 17 camp is as hard as summit day. You are still carrying a lot, elevation starts to kick in, an ice wall with fixed ropes, a rocky mixed climb along a knife edge ridge going from the cache to high camp at 17 thousand feet. Two days of moving I am glad to stop spinning and keep going up.
Crampons and rock mixed climbing, blue ice kicking in jumaring up a wall is actually my strongest skills, plus a month in Nepal in the similar conditions also helped. But when I get to 17 camp the work isn’t finished. Pitch a tent start melting ice and a new skill sawing blocks of snow and ice to build a bearer wall around my tent. We are exposed and the wind at this place can easily shred a tent. we now wait 2 days for best window for a summit push.
Running low on food but high on anticipation and excitement I love this stuff. The last two days unlike the the two days spinning in my tent are two different stories. One a can’t control and didn’t plan for leaving me in despair, and one that I can control and have worked for and I am exhilarated.
Lesson to grandkids:
Embrace things you can control they give your energy and the things you cant don’t control as Elsa would say let it go.
