Summit Day!

The wind had howled and blown at near gale force all night and we mostly thought that the summit attempt would be off. Our rope team (Paula, Laine and me) had made a pact that we would only give three days for the summit attempt (as opposed to our friends that spent 8-11 days at high camp – and the other team of Sam, Alex and Sandra who had committed anywhere between a week and a month at HC).

I was the first one up and out of our tents to try to use the can – which was successful (yay).

People asked me what the weather was like and I said, in a weatherman’s like voice, “Winds from the Northeast around 15 knots, temperature around -20, high cirrus clouds, forecast for today —- summit success!”.

We all started to get up to get ready and we left around 0945. Only about 250 yards from our camp, up the snowtrail, we saw where the young man had been buried in the snow the night before and marked with wands and secured to the mountain with a snow picket and carabiner.

We would return to the camp about 1215am, about 14 1/2 hours later.

It was very cold in the morning and I wore capiline base layer pants, soft shell and puffy pants. Up top, it was two layers of capiline, vest, fleece top, windbreaker (hardshell) and parka to start. Everest Millet boots with two clean layers of socks, mittens, woolen hat, sunglasses completed the attire.

We started off ok in the sun after the winds that blew the night before until about 5am. It was now calm, clear and sunny. The first part is the so-called Autobahn that leads up to Denali Pass below 18,000′. We did not take our first break until 1230pm, we had gone a full 2 hours and 45 minutes without a break and we were making good time. I drank, and ate a good amount of meat and cheese during this break along with some M&M’s and trail mix.

Along Denali Pass we had to have running belays, where we did not have much problems, except for the time consuming part of taking off a mitten to be able to manage clipping and unclipping of carabiners along the way. I got tangled up several times in the ice axe leash with the ropes but got better as the day progressed.

Surprisingly, there were little cries of “slow down” or “stop”, we were all incredibly strong going up. We managed to get through Denali Pass and around Archdeacon’s Tower, through the rock formations and extremely steep snow slopes that we had to use all of our energy to get our crampons to bite into the exposed ice and snow. causing some side stepping.

A big triumph was reaching the famous Football Field, a wide exposed mostly flat area just below the summit at around 19,000′. We went a little downhill and took a nice long break in the Field.

I thought this was it for the hard parts but I was severely wrong. We then had to navigate up Pig Hill, which just kicked my ass. I was in and out of semi-consciousness and every step up the steep slope was just agony and painful, I felt that I was in another dimension.

The highlight was when we got to the razor-thin ridge where we could see the summit around 500 meters away. We then saw our other team coming towards us after their summit and we all had high-fives with them and much congratulations. Meanwhile, we were left to look ahead and imagine that we could walk this ridge without falling off. After a break here, I and we all felt fantastic and all of our energy had returned and were so ready to make a go of it.

It was very scary to look down but after our other team passed us, we were ready. The ridge was tricky and we had to clip in and out of several points. A narrow falloff on both sides and we had to manage the rope very carefeully.

Finally we made it to the SUMMIT – success at 730pm on Tuesday July 8th, 2008. It had taken us 9 hours and 45 minutes to get to the summit. We stopped about 50 feet below the summit and we were belayed one by one to the summit to take our picture by the summit pole, but we had not group picture. We took some team pictures just below and we were all anxious to get going and get down. We stayed on the summit not more than about 20 minutes.

I was not ready to fully celebrate until we had made it down. We made the ridge coming down in good shape and through the football field and onto the running belays on the ridge.

We were however, extremely slow, but luckily the weather remained perfect.

On one of the belays, about halfway down, I removed a mitten to tie in and watched as the red mitten, in slow motion, fell 4 feet then 10 feet and then picked up speed to fall hundreds of feet into Rescue Gully where it sits today. I then had to put on two other gloves on that hand and keep the other mitten on the other hand. Apparently the keeper loop had come off of my wrist and if the weather had been bad, I would have faced frostbite on my left hand. Plus I was pissed about losing a $150 day mitten.

The sun remained out.

There were then some rope team issues with regards to speed, where Laine was moving pretty slow and wanted/needed some rest stops and Paula and us wanted to keep going. It was a long and arduous descent down the Autobahn and took way too long.

We made it back to High Camp after we passed the deceased climber again by the down side of the trail. We rolled into camp around 1215am just as the sun was setting in the horizon, just a ball of orange and reds and we were all feeling exhausted but exhilarated and happy.

The other team had made it back to camp more than an hour before us and Nate had already made us a delicious soup mix of rice, beans, chicken and spices that tasted great. We turned in with mixed feelings, success for us but knowledge of the death on the summit and near base camp.