Entries from Denali

Chapter 6

The Bond Girls squirrel up Squirrel Hill. The Bond Girls completed quite a mission today!  We left 11,000' camp and moved a cache to 13600' in preparation to move to 14,000' Camp tomorrow (if the weather allows).   We finally infiltrated Motorcycle Hill, which has been staring at our camp since arriving here last Friday. Before I tell you about our day, I have to tell you what made the day possible.  After some weather at 11,000' Camp, serious trail breaking was needed.  All of the guides at 11k Camp worked together as a team to discuss weather and a plan to put in the route for everyone.  Climbing this mountain is not possible without teamwork (unless you’re that guy who climbed it in like 11 hours, but even he probably had some help).  We all pitch in, carry group gear uphill on shared ropes.  We set up camp together, eat meals together and make each other laugh over hot drinks when the weather outside is… well, Denali.

Back to the daily adventure! The wind rushed through our hair on Motorcycle Hill. Trying to get my full zip gortex pants on was like trying to get Church the cat from Salem’s Lot into a cat carrier for an exorcism.  Luckily Jack saved the day. Thanks Jack!  It is a pretty humbling experience to not be able to wrangle your own side zip pants!  After Motorcycle Hill we took on Squirrel Hill. Climbing Denali, you become like a squirrel, caching treats and clean socks… or the books you don’t feel like carrying any higher, deep under the snow, marked with a little flag, to come back to when you are able to collect them. Squirrels are endowed with luxurious tails, we brandish orange plastic sleds. Luckily we did not bring the sleds today.  Squirrel Hill stole Windy Corner’s thunder as goggles and summit parkas struggled to keep us warm. Pony Rider led the charge across Polo Field with a war cry, and Windy Corner was actually quite pleasant today. The weather cleared up for the team to enjoy a break at the cache and take in the majestic mountain paradise of Denali.  The walk back to camp was beautiful.  Now we hydrate, try to not smell so bad and get ready for burritos. The caches at Basecamp are a bit more celebratory. Visions of beer, cigarettes and hard liquor cheer exhausted climbers on to the finish line; the airstrip of the Kahiltna glacier.   There bush planes take you back to reality...Talkeetna, where the past three elected mayors have all been cats (two long haired Siamese and one tabby to be precise). I am grateful for the knowledge, experience, fortitude and tenacity of this team. We take on hardwork with a smile and show up for each other. Trash Man, Sled Dog, Polar Bear, Goldie Locks (formerly known as Pony Rider) Joey Dreamboat Manship and Bond-O are a few of the many nicknames this crew has, surely more will be given before The Bond Girls break into our base camp cache and get weird while we wait to fly off of the Kahiltna glacier.  

Thanks for stopping by to check up on your favorite secret agents!

Tune in tomorrow night for another installment of, “Who’s Cache is it Anyway?"

Shout out to Jessee and all of my Wyldcats! To Mom, Dad, Maggie and Lenora, I love you!

-Katherine

Tuesday, June 13, 2023 - 11:57 pm PT

The team has arrived in Talkeetna with all of our bags! 

Yesterday, we spent the day doing the hard work of packing for a three week expedition. It is hard to visualize how much you will actually need and hard to come to terms with the sheer weight of the equipment needed for a Denali Expedition. There are no porters here. We have to carry everything we need on our own backs, but that’s what makes Denali special. You can’t pay your way to the top. 

At the moment, we’re waiting in a dreary Talkeetna for a weather window to fly. We’ll be hanging out in the hangar, practicing and refining the skills needed to climb “ The Big One”, and crossing our fingers for an opening. 

Wish us luck!

RMI Guide Dominic Cifelli

Monday, June 12, 2023 - 10:06 pm PT

Day ???

As a kid I remember snow days being a little more fun than this. The team emerged from hibernation and were greeted by less wind, but a lot more snow - both key ingredients to our second straight rest day. We spent most of the morning uncovering and digging our tents out while Chef Joey cooked up some delicious breakfast burritos - a fair trade if you ask me. The team passed the time lounging in the posh, playing games, and learning that some are much worse at spelling than others. The weather finally cleared (kinda) in the afternoon, and we crawled out of our cocooned tents to soak in the sun. Days like this are what the Bond Girls prepared for. 

Hoping the sunshine continues to hold so we can venture out of our little camp tomorrow and push toward 14k.

- RMI Guide Andy Bond aka Sled Dog

A new chapter in the adventures of the newly named RMI Denali team - The Bond Girls - The flapping sound of our tent walls in the winds acted as our alarm clock this morning. We awoke to a freshly snowy and wind drifted camp. Egads! After shoveling off / out our various camp structures including the kitchen, living room, bedrooms and bathroom, we set about to enjoy a slow morning. Hot drinks were casually sipped and topics with no answer were discussed. Is Texas just a terrible place or just an awful place? Whatever happened to David Hasselhoff? Or Oprah for that matter? At some point smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels were devoured. It became clear as morning went on that we would not be granted a break in the weather to head uphill to cache supplies. So with the plans for the day settled the team got ready for another weather day. Snacks were devoured and stories were told, all while the wind and snow raged on. We dug trenches through the snow that would have made a French WW1 general proud. Hopefully in the night the storm will break and the wind will cease. I know I would love myself some sunshine right now. Or perhaps a beer in a Bavarian town. If the weather persists, you’ll find us here again, same place, same time. Doing battle with The Great One.

Signing out from,

Camp 2 (11,000 feet) - Denali, Alaska

RMI Guide Jack Delaney and the Team

Today was our promised “easy day” by our guides and the jury is still out. We climbed down to 10K to grab our previously buried cache and climbed back up to camp 2. The day was and still is snowy and windy, but we got to spend a lot of it in our tents eating our newly uncovered snacks.

Tomorrow - should Denali allow, we will climb to 14,000, to bury another cache.

Happy adoption day to my dog Mav and early birthday to my best girl Alex, and lastly to my mom, we are giving it hell! I love you.

Ps I wrote a really great dispatch yesterday, but the German guy stole my blog.

Thursday, June 8, 2023, 9:52 pm PDT

This morning we woke up to Joey the Guide’s scrumptious pancakes.  Does he moonlight at Benihana’s?  Conditions weren’t favorable so we made it a rest day.  We ended the day with dinner and optimism for a move to Camp Two tomorrow.  And now, a poem:

All day we were stuck at Camp One
Blueberry chocolate chip pancakes are fun 
Tomorrow we’ll try for 10 And if this happens again
Call our team the cloistered nuns 

- Lenhardt Stevens and the June 4 Denali Expedition Team
 

--

Cache and carry was the theme of the day; or more appropriately the reverse. We carried loads up Ski Hill to the Kahiltna pass and buried them in a cache, to be dug up on a later day. We did this to acclimate and make moving camp easier. The weather was hot, cold and windy; so typical for the mountains. We then loaded our sleds in our backpacks and looking like characters in a Mardi Gras parade tromped back down hill to some of Jack’s spicy Jambalaya. Check back tomorrow to see what  kind of adventure or mischief we get into - same time, same channel. -

RMI Climber Scott Coffey

Tuesday, June 6, 2023 - 11:11 pm PT

The RMI team lead by RMI Guides Andy Bond, Jack Delaney and Joey Manship thoroughly enjoyed the K2 flight in to base camp this morning. The views were spectacular! We began our climb for a short distance down hill before beginning the arduous journey with heavy packs and full sleds up what we referred to as Blister Hill. The team made excellent time and established our camp at 7,800 feet elevation on the flats at the base of Ski Hill. As the clouds rolled in and a light snow began to fall we enjoyed delicious burritos and looked forward to a well deserved nights rest. 

Climber Jeff Ebeling

Tuesday, June 6, 2023 - 9:53 am PT

The weather is cooperating and we're taking off to the Alaska Range and landing on the Kahiltna glacier! Our next update will be via satellite messenger and the climb will have started! 

Bon voyage!

RMI Guides  Andy Bond, Jack Delaney and Joey Manship

Hello readers,

What a day, what a day. We woke again to snow and all you can see, white. The forecast didn't call for all this snow and white but it's what we got for 36 hours straight. Hope wasn't lost and the team enjoyed a group activity of stomping out the runway. It didn't look like we would fly but we would at least be ready for those planes. The hours went by and no change. Surely we would spend another night at basecamp...then all of a sudden the clouds started to lift. There was a bustle around camp...planes were coming. The team having done a few false alarm pack ups was dialed. In less than 30 minutes we were fully packed up waiting next to the airstrip for our plane. It is a whirlwind experience to be one second in your sleeping bag on the mountain and the next loading a plane to take you off. In no time we were back in civilization, stinky, tired, and a few shades darker from the sun. A long shower, a hot meal not cooked over the XKG stoves, and a mattress you don't have to blow up later, we are new people. It's been an amazing trip full of ups and downs and always lessons learned about ourselves. We are grateful to be back safe and already look forward to our next adventures. 

Thanks for following along! Till next time,

RMI Guides Hannah, Devin, Erika, and Team