After years of putting out feelers and propositions, I finally found two friends interested in attempting Denali. Quinn and Stefan, both with whom I climbed with in 2023, were game to make an attempt. My training began in the fall of 2023 as I was preparing for the Disney World Marathon in January, my first marathon since hip surgery nearly 2 years prior. The marathon went well despite my various concerns. After Claire’s and my very eventful first vacation together was over, I stopped running and started working on my higher level aerobic fitness by doing a BUNCH of skate skiing.
I had a workout plan for Denali that I created in February. It was a great plan!
Too bad I didn’t stick with it; I was having far too much fun skate skiing.
On February 1st Anchorage was deep in a cold snap. I woke up early and drove to the coldest part of Anchorage, Bicentennial Park, and skied a few miles decked out in my Denali clothing setup with a 60 pound pack. There was no wind, the temperatures were at least -20F, if not colder at times. Though incredibly cold, I stayed warm while moving without needing my puffy gear (coat came off after 10 minutes). I came into work a bit late that morning, but was also encouraged.
My layering system was as follows:
-Wind briefs
-Under Armor top, bottom
-Wool socks
-Wool shirt
-Smartwool bottom layer, Merino Wool hoodie
-Gortex bibs, jacket
-Wool hat, polyester buff
-Altimitts with fleece inner gloves (no liner gloves)
-Atomic Backland boots w/stock liners
–Neoprene Overboots
For the rest of February, I started pushing my limits. I bought new skate skiing boots and felt fairly unstoppable, so I started putting in 60+ mile weeks when previously I would rarely exceed 30. I was eating lots of cake battery oreos and enjoying myself until I suddenly experienced intense patella tendon pain on my left knee, after which I stopped skiing entirely. I had two 50km races coming up and wanted to be well-rested. Granted, I was sick during this time. I had gotten a cold mid-January at the end of our vacation and after a few weeks it turned into bronchitis verging on pneumonia. I was finally able to get antibiotics around the 6th week of being sick. I skied the Tour of Anchorage a few days later (still slightly sick) without any knee or hip issues, took a brief trip to Utah/Colorado to relocate my van, and skied the 50km Oosik Classic the following weekend (also with no joint pain).
After these races, I still wanted to skate ski, but knew I needed to start making my legs and butt stronger. I started by skiing on backcountry skis around Johdpur loop at Kincaid with a 35 pound pack and quickly realized it was a waste of time…I could barely feel the weight of the pack. I increased to 45 pounds, which still felt like nothing. Increasing to 55 pounds was the right move and I could feel my hips and legs adapting to the weight. During this time I was experiencing the tightness of new boots and had Rick of AMH punch out various spots a few times. After the 3rd adjustment, the boots were perfect. I was not planning to do a ski descent of Denali, but I did not intend on using my splitboard up there and wanted to learn to ski this season. I had gotten out a few times during the winter but planned to get more backcountry time in once the sun returned.
4 and 5
There’s a 60 day deadline (relative to departure date) for Denali climbers to pay the $430 fee and submit both the 10-930 “Application for Special Use Permit” and the “Expedition Planning and Preventable Search and Rescue” form. I submitted mine on February 28th, though I definitely should have submitted on Leap Day because it would have been cool. I even thought about doing so, but the anxiety of the day pushed me to just get it all done.
Just prior to 60 days before our departure, a climber named Kris reached out and asked if we wanted a 4th person. I had no experience with him but Stefan and Quinn vouched for him. I was excited about the prospect of having a second tent and more people to be roped to for the glacier travel on Denali. A few weeks later our friend Zach reached out to me, whom we’d previously propositioned to become our 4th member. He had been planning to climb with another friend this summer, but that friend broke his ankle and Zach was left (metaphorically) hanging. I told him I’d love for him to join, but we were inside the 60 day window. He let me know there was an exception to that rule, allowing the expedition leader (myself) to add one additional member between 60-30 days prior to leaving. I emailed the Parks Service to let them know we would be adding one extra member. I was happy to have Zach, his summer job involves hiking around collecting rock samples; he could probably carry one of us up the mountain if needed. He got his paperwork submitted and our fellowship now numbered 5.
TRAINING
Training eventually became a way of life. Wednesday was my anchor, my rest day, and always reserved for spending time with Claire. The rest of the week I tried to get at least one, if not two, sessions of physical therapy in for my knees and hips. Additionally, I started doing split squats and can credit most of my knee recovery/pain reduction to this simple exercise. I tried doing them each morning before work but wasn’t always able to stick with it, but so long as I got 3-4 sessions in a week I noticed significant improvement in my knee functionality as well as a reduction/elimination of pain. I also started doing hamstring curls, as my hamstrings were weak compared with my quads. This made a huge difference, my left knee no longer felt like it would hyper-extend randomly while walking downhill. In March Claire and I hiked Lazy Mountain and Flattop’s Sunnyside; I carried a 60 pound pack for training. As March progressed and Southcentral Alaska hit a warm spell, I started hiking Bird Ridge for the first 1,000′-2,000′, as well as the Butte once. Lazy Mountain was the real ticket to training, 3,700′ of elevation gain in 2.25 miles. I drove out to Lazy Mountain about 3 times in March and April and was always fairly destroyed by the effort required. My first attempt I only made it to the picnic table, but subsequent attempts saw me to the top. On my second attempt I carried a light pack and made it to the top easily, though I downclimbed most of the lower half of the mountain to save my knees. It was great training! On my third attempt I had 60 pounds of water in my backpack that I drained once I reached the top; my friend Nicole started up Lazy nearly two hours after I did and nearly beat me! It’s amazing how incredibly slowly you move with a heavy backpack.
In early April I began hauling a heavy sled with a heavy pack, usually along the Kincaid multi-use trail. Skate skiing was still hurting my knees, so (not counting a few minutes on Eklutna Lake scouting for crust) the only time I went skate skiing in April was one glorious day of crust skiing Center Ridge at the end of the month.
For my heavy pack skis with a sled, I started with 60 pounds of sand as weight, but had to increase it to 120 pounds because I could barely feel the weight due to lack of friction. 120 pounds provided a good training stimulus and I could really feel it in my hips within the first half mile. I started skiing a few miles, upping it to 3-4.5 miles twice a week. Every weekend in April I did something athletically awesome: I skied backcountry 6,000′ in one weekend, I climbed Panorama Peak with Stefan and his fiance Allison, I went to the Deltas with Galen and climbed Rainbow directly from the road, and went crust skiing at Center Ridge for the first time in 3 years. During the week I would continue my 3.5 hour sled drags on Tuesday and Thursday, which were exceptionally boring but a very good workout. People gave me weird looks, I smiled back. Most folks could guess what I was up to. As it was breakup, there were very few people on the multi-use trail and Delta and Serp very much enjoyed being able to run around and smell the emerging ground. Every time I went out for a sled drag I could feel my hips/legs were stronger than before, but the exercise was much easier on my body than skate skiing. By the end of April the snow was nearly gone from the multi-use trail at Kincaid and I quickly bought two kiddie sleds to continue sled dragging on asphalt and grass (down to 60 pounds in the sled). I upped my pack weight to 70 pounds the last week of April, though I didn’t expect to carry such a heavy pack on Denali. I figured I would train heavy/shorter and climb lighter/further, since I cannot train elevation as easily as distance/duration. I developed some serious side-butt, I’ve never noticed these muscles much but it was cool to feel how much stronger I had become. My first sled ski I was exhausting by just a half a mile, eventually I was doing 3-4 miles easily with more weight. My final pack weight was around 75-83ish pounds, I had upped it to 60 and eventually 68 along with my 64 oz water bottle and sometimes even more weight. The water bottle weighed more than I expected and I forgot to account for my backpack’s surprisingly heavy weight (7 pounds)
****add photos of expedition sled, summer sled****
MEAL PLANNING
Throughout April I began the logistical side of Denali planning, starting two separate Google spreadsheets (one very organized for the group, one very chaotic for myself) because my to-do list was getting far too long to track on my phone’s Notes app. I crowdsourced information about climbing in the Central Alaska Range from my good friends and various websites, compiling a large amount of information to sort through and organize. I had SO MUCH GEAR AND SUPPLIES TO BUY. It got overwhelming at times and felt like there was a Denali-sized hole in my bank account.
In addition to acquiring new gear, repair equipment, and miscellaneous items, I had to develop a meal plan for 5 people. Since we all live in Alaska and do not need to buy/pack food quickly (common for travelers), we could eat REAL FOOD on the mountain. My personal food preference is to avoid most dairy (cheese notwithstanding) because it causes me to break out in acne across my shoulders and chest. I don’t want to deal with that while carrying a heavy pack!
This was the meal plan I came up with. The main ideas behind the design were:
-No baking, quick meals
-Protein
-Easy for anyone to cook
-Repeated ingredients
-Use precooked/home-dehydrated ingredients when possible
-Real food 14k and below
-Dehydrated food 17k camp and above
-A few extra meals for 14 camp
-2 weeks of dehydrated meals
-Extra week of food cached at base camp
In theory this would allow us to eat well at lower elevations and reserve the dehydrated food for higher elevations. Two weeks of food for high camp seems excessive, but if for some reason we got stuck and needed more food, we could break into our dehydrated meals before we hit 17k camp and still have enough to spend many days at high camp.
After coming up with the meal plan, I made a breakdown of the number of meals and ingredients.
After THAT, I came up with a shopping list, mostly complete:
Seeing 2 weeks of breakfasts/dinners broken down by ingredients is a bit intimidating, but easier to manage once I knew what to shop for. Time for a Costco run!
At first, I was assuming we’d cook most of the food during the trip. The more I thought, however, the more it seemed prudent to precook the meals and dehydrate them. Fewer ingredients to pack and less water weight as well. I spent a whole week’s worth of days after work cooking 20 pounds of bacon, shredding 8 rotisserie chickens, cooking rice/quinoa, and spent the next week packaging meals. One long evening (5 hours) spent labeling/sorting/vacuum packing later and the meals were prepped.
LOGISTICS
I created a rough/ideal itinerary based on a guided company’s schedule. The main idea is to ascend 3,000′ every 3 days, moving every day to speed acclimatization. IF we have perfect weather for 2 weeks, theoretically we could be on the summit before the end of May. The schedule accounts for about 10 days of weather. I planned for 2 weeks of dehydrated food at high camp (unlikely), giving us much flexibility in adjusting our meal schedule. Our hard-out date is June 12th: Stefan is planning to get married in Fairbanks on the 15th. His fiance Allison would have been on this trip but for being in Scottland for veterinarian school.
I coordinated with Talkeetna Air Taxi (TAT) to get us on their calendar to fly May 19th. Our mandatory orientation meeting with the Parks Service was scheduled for 9AM that morning, we will hopefully fly later that day. Tickets were to be $732 per person, and $2 a pound over 125 pounds.
GEAR
I have no idea how folks would climb with less than this. Annoying to be heavy, but I figure better be heavy and prepared.
******add photos of cache bags and stuff***
I don’t know how to end this, it’s also this post is still a work in progress. I am a perfectionist, and I wanted these posts to be “perfectly finished” before I got them up. I’m going to add a fair amount more photos but I am not going to have time to do that for a couple more months. I feel that’s less important than actually getting this posted, so they’re going up The Denali post is what everyone is here fore, so head on over there and you’ll see some nice photos.
Wayne's Rangings 