Fun & games at 17,200’

By Dorothy Adler

The story behind our May Denali climbing trip begins in Girdwood 10 days prior to the climb. Bethany Barnes and Meghan Seifert are busy dehydrating fruits, vegetables, tofu, salsa, tomato sauce, and homemade power bars. I arrive in town just in time to help finish off the shopping, run around REI and AMH, and make a trip to Girdwood to help pack the food. The food-packing day is a chaotic 12-hour day with a short break to visit Jim at Girdwood Ski and Cycle. There we decompress from the chore of packing for a 21-day mountaineering trip—Jim has an array of hoola hoops in different sizes and colors! We each pick up a hoola and Jim even joins in to show us some tricks. He finds us a hoola, which breaks into three lightweight sections to carry with us on the mountain. Meghan and Beth are hoola veterans; quite a scene together as they pass the 4-foot diameter hoola hoop back and forth.

Days later we arrive in Talkeetna, where we register with NPS and check in with Talkeetna Air Taxi for our flight the following day. It has been raining for days and the air taxi is backed up. They hint that we might not fly the next day. Because their bunkhouse is filled for the night, they give us girls the luxurious shed that has just literally been constructed (they were putting the roof on while we weighed our gear). It was a modest little building, plenty big for the three of us and our combined 375 lbs of gear; however, somewhere during the night we took to duct taping the leaks in the roof. I finally took cover in my truck.

The next morning was bustling around TAT. Climbers were gearing up to go and planes were already flying. The weather was still improving and we were on the list to fly out later that day. After a big breakfast at The Roadhouse we did our last minute packing and hauled our gear to the runway. After a 45-minute flight in the Cessna 185 we landed at the 7200-ft. Kahiltna base camp. It was quite a scene. Now you probably are under the impression that this is a climbing trip, meaning serious business, right? The following day becomes what is typical for us on the mountain—never start before noon and always drink coffee and giggle for a while before doing anything else. And to get the trip started on just the right note, Meghan participated in some ski- jumping events at base camp that fully impressed onlookers, all of whom were of the opposite gender. So after a full morning of coffee, hoola hooping, and ski jumps, we finally left base camp in the early afternoon. After we were all roped up with sleds rigged and packs loaded, we debated for a good while over whether to wait for it to cool off or just go for it. Considering it was still May and cooling off a bit at night, we decided it was safe to travel and off we went. We were also traveling on skis, which make it safer through the crevasse fields. The route descends a well-known slope appropriately named “heartbreak hill” and then climbs again slightly to a camp at 7800’. Some of the largest crevasses and snow bridges of the entire route exist in this area. We traveled cautiously and quickly, arriving at this next camp in about three hours.

The next morning we had our typical coffee routine and set off a bit earlier. Ski hill was the next challenge, a section of the West Buttress route that many parties double-carry; meaning that climbers will carry some gear to 9700' and dig a cache and return to it the following day. We decided that there was no way we wanted to travel up this hill twice, so we single carried (125 lbs. each) with our sleds and packs. The conditions ascending ski hill were practically whiteout and quite windy, making a rest stop for food and water very short and cold. Arriving at 9700' in the early afternoon gave us time to start digging out a camp—until someone vacated, and we were able to move right in to an established area. Here is where we became known as the “hoola girls” and the festivities began. The following day we decided to rest—partly because we needed it, partly we had a mini-blizzard going on and didn't want to travel. Besides, Meg and Beth were having too much fun greeting other climbers with the hoola hoop and trying to get those passing by to join in the fun. That night we had our first official dinner party on the mountain. Those of you who know me well know that I like dinner parties. This continued to take place on the mountain all the way up to 14,200’ with 12 people sometimes getting cozy in the megamid (cook tent) for potlucks.

The next day's move to 11,000’ was fairly mellow. We actually set our alarms for 5 AM, thinking we might get an early start that day, but didn't leave camp until 8:30. That was a record for us and I think the only time we left before noon. From 9,700’ to 11,000’ is a gradual slope, getting steeper just before reaching 11,000'. This is a beautiful camp and gives one the feeling that you are finally gaining elevation and moving up the mountain. There were many people at this camp, international climbers as well as friends from Alaska. We were greeted as the “hoola girls” as soon as we rolled in. The next day the hoola hoop came out and people gathered to try their hand (I mean hips) at this collapsible party favor that brought us so much notoriety. We didn't intend to try and carry it to the summit, but here is where we began to formulate the idea to be the first to hoola hoop on Denali's 20,320-ft. summit.

After another rest day we were really feeling like we were on vacation and ready to carry a load of gear to 13,500'. We ascended Motorcycle Hill and worked our way up Squirrel Hill. The next major obstacle was Windy Corner, a section of the climb that has claimed lives in the past. As the name indicates, it can be tremendously windy and with the exposure and potential icy conditions it can be necessary for the leader to place protection in case one should fall. Fortunately, the conditions were perfect each time we traveled this section of the route. The Alaska Range saw a lot of snow this year, which made sections that are often icy, quite perfect for us. We slept at 11,000’ again to better acclimatize and then moved to 14,200’ the next day and picked up our cache along the way.

We were all beat when we arrived at 14,200’. I remember this as being one of the most tiring days of the entire trip. The altitude begins to affect your breathing and you feel like you're moving incredibly slow, like you are walking through quicksand. Fortunately, we had 5 days of chillin' to get our bodies used to the altitude. The weather was fairly good at this elevation and we had some bluebird days where it reached over 100 degrees inside our tent. There is a ranger station at this camp where climbers can check the weather and chat with the climbing rangers. It's a mini city with people from all over the world gathered for the same reason. We stocked up on chocolate at this camp, as climbers coming down from the 17,200-ft. camp are anxious to get rid of food and fuel so they don't have to descend with it.

Once the megamid was erected, kitchen counters and seating for about 12 sculpted from snow, the dinner parties began. We would have several MSR stoves going at once and a potpourri of food to eat. The meals always began with melting snow for water and the making of hot drinks. The cooking and eating of these meals lasted several hours with the grand finale being some no-bake desserts that were out of this world.

So here we are at 14,200’ feeling like we are on vacation. Yoga sessions, hoola hooping, and skiing by day and dinner parties and card games by night. We had Jiffy Popcorn delivered to our tent at midnight by friends looking for a card game and got to hang tight with two other rad women who were skiing some big lines from 18,000’. Then we decided to make the move to 17,200’—and the vacation became more like the mountaineering trip that it was.

The day we moved up to 17,200’ was absolutely stellar. We ascended the fixed lines between the 14,200-ft. camp and the 16,200-ft. ridge. We had made a cache two days prior and the day before we gorged on rich foods all day long. We brought only 3-4 days of food and fuel, thinking the good weather might last and we'd make a quick ascent and then be back to our big cache of food at 14,200’ in no time. We also had added an interesting dynamic to our all-girls team and I only mention it because it became in some ways, the greatest challenge of the trip. We called him “the hitchhiker,” someone we had befriended at the previous camp whose partner became ill and descended. He asked us if he could join our team and we almost instantly all agreed, realizing not too much later that we had taken on too much. It didn't take long for him to move into our three-person tent and join our team. We moved up to 17,200’ with him attached to our rope, changing the dynamic of the entire climb. The ridge between 16,200’ and 17,200' is the most magnificent part of the West Buttress route. Meghan and I were flipping coins for that lead before the trip even began. It just so happened that on that day Meghan was suffering a bit from an altitude headache and gave up her lead to me. I was recovering from some nausea that I experienced all the way up the fixed lines earlier in the day, but was starting to feel good again and took the lead. The ridge can be threatening in bad weather. In some places it is not much more than three feet wide and drops off 2,000’ on one side and slightly more on the other. Climbers have been blown off this ridge. There was no wind that day until we rounded the corner to 17,200-ft. camp, then the wind blew mighty cold and I remember thinking my hands might get frostnip before reaching camp. They didn't, but it was that painful feeling of your hands rewarming after they've been so cold. The weather on Denali is the primary factor in what makes it a mountaineering trip vs. a vacation. So far we had been on vacation.

The first night at 17,200’ was still clear, but cold and windy. Four of us squeezed like sardines in the tent warmed things up a bit, although it was almost too tight to sleep at all. That combined with the altitude and we barely slept at all while at this elevation. This was the first of 7 nights that we would spend here. We were all still fairly chipper and spent hours late that night giggling, melting snow, and cooking dinner. The next day the weather made an appearance and really didn't let up at all while we were up high. We managed to acquire an extra tent for one night, which gave us all some elbow room and I think some of us might have even slept a little. By now it has become apparent that “the hitchhiker” is draining us all and we need to address the situation with him. Privately the three of us girls talk and decide we want our original team back, thus meaning that we need to find a different situation for our hitchhiker, which we don't feel so good about. The vibe between the three of us is changing a bit from being real lighthearted to more serious and there is some grouchiness between us. Ah, morals and values on the mountain—what is the right thing to do here? The situation begins to resolve itself. The four of us sit down and talk real honestly and gently. The hitchhiker is aware that we want our trip back and realizes that it isn't an ideal situation to be stuck in a storm at 17,200’ with four of us in a three-person tent. He decides to descend with some rangers going down. We learn that it is OK to say “no,” and we should have done so at 14,200’ instead of trying to be nice.

So, back to the climbing. The storm picks up some force. Winds are blowing at least 60 mph through camp; snow is falling upwards of 3-feet during the time we spend up high. We spend time everyday doing something physical so that we don't lose our fitness. We build snow walls, bomber snow walls. We hoola hoop and take walks. But sometimes we don’t get out of the tent for more than 3 hours a day. Food and fuel are running low, but we are able to acquire both from parties going down. Some were strange, unidentifiable dehydrated things that we wouldn't normally eat. My favorite was the chicken noodle soup we had for dinner one night.

I should also mention where the idea for this trip originated. Last year Meghan’s boyfriend died in a tragic accident in McCarthy. She put this trip together in his memory and carried some of Chris' ashes to scatter at our highest point on the mountain. We also lived in Chris' tent while on the mountain, spoke a lot about him, and shed some tears thinking of him. This is important because the first day the weather cleared where we could make a potential summit push from 17,200’ was the year anniversary of his accident, June 12th. This was always the day we had in our minds for our summit attempt and it just so happened that the weather was offering us a window. However, the winds were still raging up high and although others made summit pushes that day, after spending hours watching the wind tear up the upper mountain, we opted to wait one more day because the winds were forecasted to die down some.