Denali 1998

[chameleon]

Going through old pictures, I ran across some from one of my favorite adventures. When I was 19, attending junior college in Wyoming, I applied for the NOLS alumni Denali Expedition.

Luckily, I applied for and received a scholarship, and worked hard at local Tony's Pizza to raise money for gear and travel. Eventually the day came. I drove from Wyoming to Alaska (an adventure itself), and met my teammates at the Alaska NOLS farm.

We packed up, headed to Denali National Park, where we sat through the required lecture on how stupid decisions on Denali get people (and their potential rescuers) killed. Then we boarded the tourist bus, throwing our packs filled to the brink in the back, and were transported to Wonder Lake.

Just on the bus ride we passed at least 9 grizzlies, wolves, foxes, and dall sheep.

From Wonder Lake, we forded the dreaded McKinley River, and spent three days lugging our enormous packs through grizzly-territory on the tundra, to reach the base of the mountain.

There, we began an expedition style assault. We moved up the mountain slowly, establishing several camps. And eventually...we summited.

Our summit day was gnarly enough to keep all other parties (climbing from the other side - the West Buttress - we were the only ones on the North at that time) in their tents. There were 80 mph winds, very little visibility, and a nasty windchill when we reached 20, 320 ft, the highest point in North America.

Anyway, it was a fun adventure. Thought some folks on here would enjoy some old pics from a short ways north.

Here are some pics. There are all taken with cheapo, point and shoot, camera tech. I hadn't learned about real "photography" yet.

-Zach Forsyth

denali 5.jpg (123.46 KiB) Viewed 3180 times

denali 6.jpg (101.94 KiB) Viewed 3179 times

The last two pics are me, the first below Karsten's Ridge, and the second on the summit. And don't try that at home kids - I'd only taken my gloves off to take a few pics, then put them right back on!

[Peder]

Cool Zach! So you came up the Muldrow Glacier? That is a lot more adventurous than the West Buttress! You must have great memories of that expedition. Thank you for sharing and (belated) congratulations for doing Denali the hard way at the age of 19!

[chameleon]

Thanks Peder. And yep, we took the good ole (historic) Muldrow Glacier route up the peak's north side. It certainly took longer than a West Butt trip, but it was worth it. I loved the river crossing, the tundra, and the fact that we were largely alone for the majority of the climb. Hauling loads up Karsten's Ridge was a wee bit harrowing, but we survived it.

I can't locate some of my more harrowing pics of it, but at places you're climbing a 40 degree knife edge snow ridge dropping 2,000 ft to the Muldrow on one side, and 5,000 ft to the Traileka (sp?) on the other.

I was pretty new to that type of situation, and I can still recall vividly our first day up it. I was leading a rope team, and at first, the wind cut over the ridge, completely obscuring what lay below the right hand side (with blowing snow). The left side was chilling though, an ever steepening plunge down several thousand feet. Eventually the wind died down, and we saw that the right side was little better... Good times.

[Splintercat]

Wow! That is cool, Zach! That's a truly gnarly climb! Great photos, too -- even if they are "retro"...!

Thanks for posting!

Tom

[Roy]

I worked at Tonys Pizza 19 years old and a harder route, way cool stuff a memory for the books. Thanks for sharing love those kind of stories.