Everyone is out of the mountains!

They all flew out in 2 flights this afternoon, and are on the way to the Anchorage Airport to catch their flights home right now. We had the Mt Trip van heading to Talkeetna when we got the word they were flying out, and Dave Staeheli said they all had time for one beer in Talkeetna before rushing off to Anchorage and beyond.

Welcome home guys! That's the last trip on Denali for this season, so we are all relaxing a bit finally after a great year in Alaska.

The Planes Are Flying!

They are heading in to base camp to pick up the first load right now. The weather is still marginal, and they've tried to get in once already today only to be turned around by clouds, but things are looking up for the crew!

Still Waiting at Base Camp

They are still at base camp waiting for a chance to fly out. It was cloudy and rainy most of the day in Talkeetna, and clouds blew in and out of base camp. The team is going a bit crazy sitting at bc now and are quite anxious to get home. We hope they'll be able to fly out this afternoon, the weather is supposed to break up and the clouds lift a bit later today.

Yesterday afternoon they moved about 3/4 mile up the glacier to the "Upper Airstrip" where they will get picked up by the ski planes. They have a lot of food and extra equipment that was left at base camp, so the guide team made several laps to shuttle all the loads. They aren't in danger of running out of food or fuel, but I'm sure the base camp beer supply is getting low.

We'll be waiting for them in Talkeetna when they arrive to whisk them back to Anchorage and hope to catch flights home tonight.

Waiting Patiently(?) at Base Camp

Still cloudy in Talkeetna, but improving. Hopefully they'll get a chance to fly out today.

Back to Base Camp

They had an adventurous day getting back down to base camp today. Dave Hill jumped into a crevasse, but was pulled out right away and is laughing about it now. It's always exciting to have someone fall into a crevasse, but that's why we travel on a rope on the glacier.

The weather is continuing to work against the climbers, and the planes couldn't fly into the Alaska Range today due to low clouds and bad visibility. The small planes that fly into base camp and land on the snowy glacier can only fly when they can see where they are going. There isn't an instrument approach to the Kahiltna glacier, so they fly by Visual Flight Rules. You can check out the view of the Alaska Range from Talkeetna on the link for the webcam to the right ---->

Their biggest concern now is running out of the beer they stashed at base camp before the planes can pick them up.

Here's Dave Hill from BC this afternoon.

Camp 2, 11,200 ft on the way down

They made it down to camp 2 this afternoon, and lead guide Dave Staeheli called to check in after dinner. They had a mix of snow and sunshine today, and there were some pretty tired climbers coming down. They'll get a good night sleep tonight in the thick, warm air of 11,200 ft after 6 nights at high camp.

Tomorrow they hope to get to base camp in the afternoon, and fly out to Talkeetna if the weather permits where we will be waiting for them.

Heading down

Dave called from high camp this morning and said it was blowing even harder up high on Denali today and they were going to have to descend. They've given it a good shot, but just got unlucky with the weather. It has been an unusually long stretch of wind and snow up high on the mountain and they never got a chance to summit. It's unfortunate, they all worked very hard to get to high camp and be in position. Possibly the hardest part is waiting around for the weather when there are no guarantees that it will ever get nice. They gave it a good shot, but part of climbing big mountains is that the outcome is never guaranteed and sometimes you just need a bit of luck.

They plan to descend to Camp 2 (11,200 ft) tonight, and then keep going to base camp tomorrow morning.