Climbing Denali
It started out quite cool this morning and we took our time with coffee and breakfast. It was to be a rather quiet day.
We did another walk around the Moose Flats trail, this time it was to do a bit of birding. There was a lot of activity in the trees, but not much that we could see and those we could were pretty common. There were two uncommon birds, for us anyway. One was a lone Barrow's Goldeneye in one of the ponds. We've seen the very similar Common Goldeneye recently, but not the Barrow's as its range is more limited.
The other bird of interest (actually birds) was a rather tame Spruce Grouse and her seven chicks who all just wandered back and forth in relatively open grass next to the trail not paying much attention to us about six feet away.
After getting back to the campsite there was a fair amount of discussion of things to do before we went into the National Park this coming weekend. Tomorrow it will be back to Talkeetna to do some flightseeing. It has been quite cloudy today, but the forecast is for a clear day tomorrow. This could be our best chance for good views. We've booked a flight on a small plane for Sally, Ellen and I to fly up the glaciers and around Denali from Talkeetna. We made a reservation for a 10:45 flight, but they called back later in the day to ask if they could change it to 12:30 and we will be the only ones on the plane.
We noticed a sign down by the campground entrance about ranger-led activities today, a nature walk in the afternoon and a talk in the evening. A National Park Service ranger came by a bit later to invite campers to attend. The activities are a joint endeavor between the State Parks and the National Park Service and the rangers come by a couple of days a week to do walks and give talks. Tonight's talk is on Climbing Denali.
After a nice outside dinner, we walked down to the park's interpretive center for the talk. It was quite interesting. Although somewhat geared to kids with the demonstration of crevasse rescue techniques. The ranger explained the difficulties in mounting a climb of Denali. They get about 1200 climbers a year and only about 50% make it to the summit. The most attempted route is not a very technical climb, but a long one over lots of glaciers.
Even though they fly onto the mountain it is still a 15 mile climb from the drop-off point. Unlike climbing Everest, there are no porters or sherpas to help out and each climbing team must carry in and out all of their gear and supplies. This is usually 90-150 pounds per person carried on your back and by sled. Except for the single day summit attempt, the climber's usually climb the distance twice on the way up as they move about half of their gear at a time, going back up and down from camp to camp.
It is so cold and windy on the mountain during the climbing season, April to early July, that the they have to erect snow walls around their tents every night for protection from the wind. It usually takes 3-4 weeks to complete the climb and those who fail to make it to the top usually just run out of time or supplies due to the weather.
The season is just ending now, in early July, because it is getting too warm. The glaciers are becoming to unstable and it becomes very dangerous, if not impossible, to traverse them as the surface snow melts and more crevasses are exposed and form. There have been several falls into crevasses this season and one was a 60 foot fall and took all day to rescue the climber who was not badly injured.
Being a US National Park, there are a few more controls than elsewhere. There are rangers up on the mountain, including at the highest camp at 17,000 feet. They have a requirement that no waste is left on the mountain and each climber is issued a "Clean Mountain Can" which is basically a personal port-a-potty. Every climber must carry all his or her waste out. Every team must carry all of their equipment and supplies out.
The youngest person to summit was 12 and the oldest 78 (I still have several years...I don't think so...).
It was a good talk and a good introduction for tomorrow's flight.
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