Entries By adam knoff
July 6, 2014
Posted by: Adam Knoff, Lindsay Mann
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Denali
Elevation: 20,320'
July 6, 2014 - 11:00 am PT
Adam Knoff called the office with great news: The team reached the summit of
Mount McKinley at 7:00pm last night! Everyone is doing great and very happy. They are packing up high camp and plan to head down to 14K camp to visit with
Dave Hahn and team, then may continue on to 11,000’. Their plan is to be at Basecamp tomorrow.
RMI Guide Adam Knoff
On The Map
July 5, 2014
Posted by: Adam Knoff, Lindsay Mann
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Denali
Elevation: 17,200'
July 5, 2014 - 5:05 pm PT
Adam called and reported that they were on their way up to the summit, just below the
Football Field with all climbers doing well. Yesterday was a great move day for them, and they continue to enjoy good weather, with blue skies and 20mph winds.
RMI Guide Adam Knoff
On The Map
July 4, 2014
Posted by: Adam Knoff, Lindsay Mann
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Denali
Elevation: 17,200'
July 4, 2014 - 9:44 pm PT
The move to
Mt. McKinley's high camp is like stepping into the ring with a heavy weight larger than King Kong. Thing is, he really likes to throw things at you in one long grueling round. That round our team won. It could not have been a more perfect day to come to high camp. Now the question becomes how much strength does the team have for round two which comes in the form of Godzilla. Tomorrow we will attempt to climb to the summit, weather permitting. Wish us well.
RMI Guide Adam Knoff and team signing off from high camp.
On The Map
July 3, 2014
Posted by: Adam Knoff, Lindsay Mann
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Denali
Elevation: 14,200'
Thursday, July 2, 2014 – 4:43 PM PT
Yesterday our team experienced the unparalleled vistas of a clear sky at 16,200’ on Denali as we were finally handed a nearly perfect day. We loaded up three days of lunch and snack food plus a few personal items for our carry to the top of the fixed lines which crest Washburn’s Ridge—the most stimulating section of Denali’s West Buttress Route. The team did great learning how to jumar. All members of the St. Angelo family and Jay and Mary Lampas hit personal altitude records. Fatima did a great job breaking trail down the lines, literally paving the way for thirty other climbers on the same program as us.
The population of
14k camp has increased dramatically. What once was a camp that resembled a wide cow pasture with wandering wildlife now resembles a city with distinct neighborhoods on main thoroughfares. Just like a city, this can create traffic jams when multiple teams, all roped together, try to move around at the same time. This sudden influx of guided teams means we will need to wake up at 4 am, while the temperature here sits around 5 below, just to beat the crowds and avoid a bottleneck.
This afternoon we had a lengthy breakfast which leaned more along the lines of a leisurely brunch. We then took a beautiful stroll to an incredible precipice called the Edge of the World. Great weather allowed us more breathtaking views and inspired us for the hard days to come. Hopefully our next contact will be from high camp.
RMI Guide Adam Knoff
On The Map
July 2, 2014
Posted by: Adam Knoff, Lindsay Mann
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Denali
Elevation: 14,000'
July 2, 2014 - 12:09 am PT
Thank you for all of the blog comments. It is great to hear from everyone back home and it is always reinvigorating.
Today we got to sleep in and then scurried down to our cache above
Windy Corner. It was nice to be reunited with our food, clean underwear and base layers that we left buried in the snow for a few days. We then spent the afternoon doing some kitchen redesign, fixed line training and more sorting of food.
Tomorrow is an exciting day! We will get to see some more challenging and exciting terrain-- carrying to the top of the fixed lines!
RMI Guide Adam Knoff and Team
On The Map
July 1, 2014
Posted by: Adam Knoff, Lindsay Mann
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Denali
Elevation: 14,200'
June 30, 2014 - 11:19pm PT
After an impromptu camp on the polo field we woke up to intermittent wind gusts rattling our tent flys. We crawled out of our shelters to crisp cold weather and blue skies. We ate a quick breakfast and began to break camp to complete our journey to 14,200' feet. Amidst the chaos of packing our bags we spotted Billy Nugent and his crew descending from a successful summit, we exchanged high fives and and hit the trail. This time equipped with snow shoes and skis to deal with the waist deep drifts. We were feeling very happy about floating on the snow surface vs crawling through it. We had pleasant weather and relatively calm winds working our way around
Windy Corner. We pulled into camp and made ourselves at home, feeling the altitude a little we began to take care of ourselves and focus on the mountain ahead of us.
We are all feeling good and hoping for the best weather possible.
RMI Guide
Adam Knoff & Team
On The Map
June 29, 2014
Posted by: Adam Knoff, Lindsay Mann
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Denali
Elevation: 12,500'
June 29, 2014 - 9:51 pm PT
Hello to everyone out there in blog land. We all wish, in some selfish way I suppose, that there was a sure fire way to teleport any curious individuals straight to our location here on what is commonly called the Polo Field of the
West Buttress. As I mentioned yesterday, a move to 14,000 foot Advanced Basecamp was on the ticket and we were gonna "make some hay" while the sun did shine. Oh how the "High One" can take any given plan and turn it into any thing she wishes. Like the oxymoron I spoke of about a "windless" Windy Corner. Can you say JINX! As it turns out, not only was the corner as windy as a Dave Hahn Everest story, the sun only shined for a few minutes before it started dumping snow again. Combine this with heinous trail breaking in the multiple feet of new snow and out pops a midway camp spot used only when the going gets tough. So tomorrow the tough will get going again and try for 14,000 feet once more.
Wish for warm toes, a better trail and quite winds.
Until Tomorrow.
RMI Guide Adam Knoff
June 29, 2014
Posted by: Adam Knoff, Lindsay Mann
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Denali
Elevation: 11,200'
June 29, 2014 - 12:16 am PT
I believe the saying goes "when the sun shines, make some hay!" Well metaphors are going to have to do because Toto, we ain't in Kansas anymore and nothing grows up here except foot fungus and beards. So, with the sun finally shining brightly and the snow settled to what seems a safe consistency, the team is ready to make some hay and move to
14,000 camp tomorrow! This morning we didn't crawl out of tents until the sun warmed them up at 9 am. After that, massive coffee presses, eggs, bacon and hash browns followed. Yup, we do it right up here. It was
Andy's birthday today so he got to be served all morning and surprised after breakfast to a tent full of balloons thanks to
Lindsay's pre-trip preparations. After breakfast the team read, sun bathed, still sunk waist deep in snow when not on the trail and prepared gear to bring up the mountain. We are all excited to move our rested legs and make our way up hill. It will indeed be a doozy of a day, breaking trail, dealing with the sun and carrying heavy loads. I know we are all up to the task.
Wish us luck.
RMI Guide Adam Knoff signing off
On The Map
June 28, 2014
Posted by: Adam Knoff, Lindsay Mann
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Denali
Elevation: 11,200'
June 27, 2014 - 11:11 pm PT
At 8 PM this evening we were blessed with the first glimmer of sun in two and a half days. This isn't completely out of the ordinary for this neck of the woods but more surprising, even to me with eight
Denali expeditions, was the amount of snow that fell during that sunless stretch. Four feet would about do this storm justice but when you are living in a nylon house that can collapse under a moderate burial of drifting snow it felt more like ten feet. This morning at breakfast while in the posh house, a one pole pyramid cook tent set up to fit the entire team, shook and sagged under the constant loading of falling flakes, Jay Lampas asked if this snow storm qualified as "epic" yet? I didn't want to sound too fragile and make him believe this was the "storm of the century" but I did have to concede that four feet in two days was a touch "epic". Of course the main worry of the team is how this massive blanketing will effect our upward progress. I didn't have an exact answer but I do know we will be sitting still on Saturday no matter how brilliant the weather because of the avalanche hazard that awaits above us. Safety is always the number one priority so we will move to 14,000 feet only when we know it is safe to do so. Hopefully our dwindling lunch food and Cosmo magazines can hold us out until we can get to the cache of food we left at Windy Corner. We are all looking forward to a night with no 2 am wake up calls for shoveling duty. Maybe full dreams will be of the upper mountain. All the best from McKinley Team
Knoff.
On The Map
June 27, 2014
Posted by: Adam Knoff, Lindsay Mann
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Denali
Elevation: 11,200'
June 26, 2014 - 6:37 pm PT
The entire team woke up at 2 am to a winter wonderland. With wind blowing and snow stacking the team had to wake up, strap on their boots and grab our shovels. What was a nice camp with all tents visible to each other some 30 feet distance, is now a maze of deep trenches leading blindly to six-foot deep pits, each holding a team member's house. Approximately 40 inches of snow fell by morning in camp, completely covering our posh tent.
Currently the snow continues to fall. A call on the satellite phone to the rangers at advanced base camp at 14,000 ft told us that five feet of snow had fallen there. Some loose snow avalanches were observed on south facing slopes around camp-- a reminder that winter is still upon us on
Denali. We have had mixed results with the accuracy of the weather forecast, however in the extended outlook a high pressure system may be headed our way later this weekend and early next week. It is times like these that test the will and patience of any Denali climber. Thank God for Lindsay's Cosmopolitan magazine.
RMI Guides Adam Knoff, Lindsay Mann and Andy Hildebrand
On The Map
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Awesome job team. Congrats Jay and mart and all. You will make it down soon!
Posted by: Susanlampas on 7/7/2014 at 3:53 pm
Awesome achievement Mark Skinner and team! Congratulations!
Posted by: Will Kerner on 7/7/2014 at 10:22 am
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