The thought of skiing off
North America’s highest peak had been a recurring discussion between my main ski partner and me over the past few seasons. Usually, we’d be scheming for our next adventure, searching locally before the conversation started branching out to more distant destinations. Grander objectives, more technical logistics, speculative link-ups, the mountains and descents grew bigger and bigger with each exchange. Skiing Denali always found its way into the dialogue, but money, gear, time, and the unknown kept us away.
This past season was unique. Opportunities united and dreams manifested into reality. Jeff Dostie of
Alpenglow Sports in Tahoe City seemed beyond motivated to make it happen. I had always committed verbally that if the stars aligned I’d be on board, but truth be told all the previous barriers mentioned above remained stuck in my mind like that annoying song you don’t even know how you know the lyrics too, even though it just played over and over in your head for the last four hours of a skin.
After a life dream trip to ski in
Antarctica and
Patagonia went down early season, and plans solidified to ski Chamonix, La Grave, the Dolomites, Alagna, and
Morocco in mid-winter, I could barely comprehend how I could be skiing in the
Alaska Range by May. But that’s what good partners are for, especially if they’re as motivated as Jeff.
As the season wore on, and the Sierra Nevada received ample amounts of fluffier than normal powder, Jeff acted swiftly, and three committed, solid ski mountaineers were rallied for the mission. By February we had put in our permit, and “Tahoe Mixed Bag” was a five person group headed to Denali for the month of May. Our group included three AT skiers, one splitboarder, and one tele-skier (Jeff's co-worker at Alpen Glow, tele-ripper Brenden Madigan), hence the name “Mixed Bag”.
After getting a group together, securing a permit to climb/ski Denali is the next step. You have to submit a permit a few months in advance of your scheduled attempt, and since the initial cost of $25 dollars isn’t cost prohibitive, I figured I’d put in and hope to find a way to make this dream trip a reality. But once the permit was in I started realizing just how different a mission this way in comparison to other adventures I’ve had in the mountains, and the logistics began piling up faster than the snow totals from a hundred year storm.
For three months, our group met once a week to hash out details. We discussed food options as one member of the group can’t eat gluten, and another doesn’t eat meat. We discussed crevasse rescue techniques, sleeping gear, wands, how to stay warm, rope teams, and the list went on and on. The more we talked about one thing, another thing would come up. It was a beautiful organic experience to be a part of, with a great deal of knowledge sharing, and I was always surprised by how many things added up in the greater equation to get dialed.
Fast Forward to May 1
st and I think we were about as ready as you need to be for attempting a ski expedition to Denali. Everyone was in great shape (I never thought I would backcountry ski with a huge rock in my pack for training purposes) and after shopping was completed in downtown Anchorage, the final shakedown of gear was made before we met our shuttle early the next morning and headed to Talkeetna.
We arrived early in the afternoon and since we had already made arrangements with Talkeetna Air Taxi, we almost immediately started the first of many unpacking and repackings to weigh in for our flight. After paying for the rest of our permit and getting the run-down from the US Forest Service (mandatory for all groups attempting Denali) we headed back to the Air Taxi and found out we were scheduled for a 7 p.m. departure.
The flight in was amazing. The Alaskan tundra gradually gave way to mountains that encompassed our whole perspective. Jaw dropping flutes and spines, unridden faces, the classic walls of the Ruth Gorge, endless fields of ice; the scenery was mind-blowing. After we landed and checked in with the Park Service base camp staff, we started digging out our first camp on the Kahiltna Glacier, elevation 7200’. Of course the stoke factor was high, and with daylight lingering well beyond what we were used to in the lower 48, nobody went to bed early that night.
Actually, we all stayed up till it was dark, the only darkness we’d see for the next few weeks, and our reward was a swift but brilliant display of aurora borealis. Having seen northern lights on previous trips to Alaska this display was special. Not only were there shields of light flying over the summit of Denali, we got to see pinks intermixed with whites and greens-a truly natural psychedelic experience.
The next morning was completely bluebird, and time to get moving. We packed up camp, loaded the sleds, roped up, and dropped the initial few hundred feet of Heartbreak hill (
May 3rd Powder Journal entry). Not too bad for a couple of skiers who had little experience in pulling a sled on skis. It’s definitely an interesting experience to ski and skin with a sled when you’re not used to it, and especially exciting when your combined climbing weight is somewhere in the range of +/- 140 lbs of gear.
The skin out was fairly straightforward following a well traveled trail, but we all took notice of the wands because if the weather happened to change, and new snow covered the trail, they would be our only way to proceed up the mountain.
Thankfully it stayed clear for our skin as by the time we got to the base of ski hill and camp number two the wind had picked up considerably. Just like that it looked like we were about to encounter our first storm on the mountain.
Stay tuned for the rest of the story! Part 2 coming soon...
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