Denali Memoirs - Part 2

Back on February 26th I posted part one of my Denali journal from our trip in 2003. I meant to post this second part much sooner than now but...well...I just slacked. But one week from today I'll be in Anchorage and heading up to Denali again so I figured I'd better get this second part done and posted. So here goes...

Carrying gear to the top of the headwall. Mt. Foraker in the background.

Sunday, May 25th - The temperature in the tent was -7F when I first awoke at 6AM. Damn cold. However, I utilized the "hot water in the nalgene bottle" technique which helped to keep my toes warm. We again slept in until the sun hit the tent before getting up. We dined on Blueberry granola cereal before gearing up to carry to 16,200'. We all left camp around 12:50pm. Janet, Bill Chris and I roped up for the carry while David headed up solo. He would not join us on the carry so he could spend the day acclimatizing. We all climbed together until 15,200'. Each step up was a personal altitude record for me, Bill, David and Janet. David turned back at that point while the rest of us continued up the fixed rope to 16,200'. The weather was warm until this point but clouds and wind rolled in. The [fixed] rope was 11mm static and in good condition with pickets every 30 feet or so. The headwall was primarily blue ice but had good duck footed steps set in. We reached my personal altitude record of 16,240 feet for our cache on the backside of the ridge. It took us 3 hours to ascend to the cache which seems quite fast compared to other teams we've watched go up. The descent was pretty straight forward on the down line. Ti took us about 1.5 hours to descend and the views from up there were astonishing. I could see ski-hill camp and a huge portion of the Kahiltna. Foraker dominated the view. Tomorrow is a rest day.

Monday, May 26th - Memorial Day. What was I doing last Memorial Day? I don't recall, how sad. Perhaps something on the opposite end of the spectrum like some canyon hiking. Oh, the warmth with a beer at the end of the day! I'm holed up in the tent in a warm (relatively) sleeping bag while a snow storm blows outside. It's been a mostly snowy day with intermittent sun starting with +1F in the tent this morning. A warm night. I used to think 1F sounded cold. Now I'm happy to see any temperature above 0F. Today was a rest day at 14,000' I cooked up blueberry scones for breakfast before spending all day cutting snow blocks and building bigger walls around our camp. We have a luxurious camp indeed...one of the biggest at 14k. I slept well last night after the sun set at 8:30pm. I never fully sets, though, so it's light all night. I had a dream about all of my immediate family and good friends and Allison. I you Allison. I can't wait to get back to you and hopefully grab a Frontier burrito with coffee. Oh yeah! The things you think about after 10 day of dehydrated food and melted snow for water. I will really appreciate the conveniences of civilization after this trip. But I'm stoked to be doing this and seeing this truly awesome part of earth. it's a great feeling to spend weeks away from a city and modern conveniences. Tomorrow is to be windy and snowy. Another rest day at 14k camp. Hopefully we move up on Wednesday and summit Thursday. Bill awoke at 5AM this morning with breathing trouble. Tight chest and coughing when he took a deep breath. He said he could hear/feel gurgling in his chest so we had him take a dose of diamox. He'll stay on diamox through tomorrow. He says he already feels better and he took the whole day off.

Tuesday, May 27th - Official tent day. At 2AM our southeast [snow] wall blew down in a major gust. The middle portion was scattered primarily onto Chris' tent with some blocks hitting Chris in the back. Small pieces smacked David and my tent and rudely awoke us all. The night was super windy with tons of light blowing snow. The day continues like this. The report is 4 feet of new snow at 7,800'. Hopefully our cache wand is still visible! Bill went to talk to John the doc about his HAPE symptoms. The verdict from John is to stay put through Wednesday and see how things are going then. If symptoms persist, Bill will be on his way down. I already volunteered to go down with Bill if he wants company. Bill said he wouldn't have a problem going down solo but truthfully, I wouldn't mind heading down myself. Staying put in this weather is not exactly the best thing I've ever done. Ha. A juicy steak and some Sumatra coffee sounds awesome at this time. I got up this morning to help Chris rebuild the broken wall and eat some hot granola. I then had to get my growl on which was enjoyable in this weather. However while out and about, I met a fellow named Bruce from Anchorage. He's up here from Anchorage for a repeat climb with Tom "the mountain goat" Choate. 67 years of age. Bruce is a very nice and outgoing self-described "climbing bum". Retired Navy since '94. The weather report is for more wind and snow tomorrow but not as intense with clearing Thursday and Friday. Hopefully we can move to 17k Thursday and summit Friday. Be out by Sunday. Man would that rule! Time to pee in the bottle...
The day has calmed down and we had spaghetti for dinner. Followed by cinnamon coffee cake for dessert. We all piled in the VE25 to eat the cake, play a few rounds of Uno and listen to Loveline. My resting pulse is 50. It was 46 when I fell asleep last night. It sounds like I have acclimatized well so far. We'll see how Bill is tomorrow and possibly go to 17k on Thursday.

Wednesday, May 28th - Day 12 on the mountain. A beautiful day. 12 degrees in the tent this morning. No snow is predicted so we got going early (9AM) and Chris, Janet and David moved up to 17k with the Wild Country tent. I cooked up pancakes to fuel them on their trek up. Bill and I hung back so Bill could recover a bit from his HAPE. He has no symptoms today and talked with John the medic about his condition and John said if the symptoms are gone tomorrow, head up! if the symptoms come back, immediately descend. Bill is going to give it a shot. Chris, Janet and David are going for the summit tomorrow and plan to descend back to here at 14k. Bill and I will go relatively light to 17k, drop off our sleeping bags in the Wild Country tent and hopefully continue to the summit, descend back to 17k and sleep in the Wild Country tent there and back to 14k on Friday. If Bill does not feel great tomorrow, he';l stay at 17k and I'll shoot for the summit if I feel well. The weather outlook tomorrow is great with 5F as the high at 17k with winds 10-20 MPH. A great outlook. Another low is on its way for Friday-Sunday so hopefully we can beat that and get to Talkeetna by Saturday! The lines up the headwall were crazy today. At one point I counted 80 people on the route. Out of control. Bill and I walked out to the edge of the world this afternoon. Awesome views! The Lama [helicopter] came in three times today. Twice to take climbers down and once for a resupply for the NPS.

Busy day on the headwall

Thursday, May 29th - Bill felt great today! I felt great as well. Bill and I left 14k camp at 7:45am and hauled ass up the headwall reaching the top of the fixed lines by 9:40am. We were both thinking about the summit. We picked up our food from the 16,200' cache and cruised along the ridge to 17,200' camp. The ridge was very exciting and offered amazing views to the north and south. A few section were literally two-boots-wide snow making for some adrenaline-pumping moments. Bill and I arrived at 17,200' camp 3.5 hours after leaving 14k camp. The time was 11:15am. Janet was sleeping in the tent as she felt faint--apparently she had gotten light-headed on her way to the pee hole and just laid down right next to the hole! This action got the attention of nearby climbers and had a few people concerned. So she stayed in the tent for the day. Chris and David had left for the summit only 40 minutes prior to us arriving at 17k.
Bill and I boiled some water there and left for the summit around 12:15pm. we caught up to David and Chris at Denali Pass. Obviously they were moving pretty slow. They had roped up the whole travers and, at David's insistence, clipped every piece of NPS-fixed protection along the way. This protection is placed every 2/3rds rope length or so. Chris finally became fed up with the slow pace near Denali Pass and told David they'd never make the summit at that pace. I think Chris was relieved to see me show up because as soon as I did, Chris took off! Ha! I told David about Chris' position--2nd time on the mountain and so close to the summit and I think David understood. Then I too off as well! At about 18,800', I put on my overboots as my feet weren't warming up. However the weather was beautiful with only a slight breeze and the temperature near 5F. I was feeling surprisingly great with Bill in tow as well. Bill, for having symptoms of HAPE and come from 14k, was hiking as strong as I've ever seem him. Denali must have turned him into some sort of mountain animal! We all (Chris, Bill and I) hiked strong to near Football Field. At that point, I had waited about 10 minutes for Chris to catch up. He told me he was slowing down and that I ought not wait. I didn't. I turned on the jets and passed at least five teams going across Football Field and up Pig Hill. Pig Hill was a killer but I still felt great. I danced along the fun and exciting summit ridge to reach the summit at 5PM.
I had the summit of Denali, the highest point in North America, all to myself for 30 minutes. I took a self portrait and a "group shot" with Aron as well as photos of the USGS summit marker and other trinkets that adorned the summit. I then took a moment to take in the view. Clouds, lots of clouds. However, Mount Foraker and Mount Hunter were protruding from the clouds which was an awesome view. The temperature on the summit was -3F with only a slight wind. (I'm at 14k camp now and it's snowing but full-on sunny.) Pretty cool. I began to descend but ran into Chris and Bill only 10 minutes down the summit ridge. I turned around and accompanied them to the summit at 6:00pm. We took some more photos and began down. I saw David in the middle of Football Field and watched him turn around. He had had enough but was very excited and elated to have reached 19,500' or whatever Football Field is at. I had ascended 7,290' feet in 10 hours all above 14,200 and I still felt great. We all made our way back down to 17k camp by around 9AM. The sun does not set until nearly midnight at 17k and rises around 7am. Bill and Chris boiled some water and then left for 14k camp. Leaving David, Janet and I at 17k camp. Bill and I had carried our sleeping gear to 17k in case we needed to sleep there that night. Apparently they got to 14k camp around 2:30AM but witnessed an awesome sunset along the ridge. I slept pretty poorly with three of us in the Wild Country tent with only a sliver of space in the tent. But it wasn't that cold. The overnight low @ 17k that night was near -20F but I slept so hard, I didn't feel it.

On the summit. NM represent!

Descending into 17k camp

Friday, May 30th - [Coming in part 3!]

Not a lot new to report

Adam, Devin and Andy running in the Pacific NM

It's been "business" as usual these days. Working Monday through Friday, running at lunch, climbing in the evening and then doing more climbing and running on the weekend. In other words, life is great still. Last weekend I spent the entire weekend up at El Rito, climbing. Saturday I spent the day leading graduates of the annual Los Alamos Mountaineers Climbing School up the fun two-pitch routes at the El Rito Trad area. I really enjoy doing this every year--it's always very rewarding to expose new climbers to the beautiful and rewarding multi-pitch climbing at El Rito. This year was particularly special when I climbed with a student that was initially quite fearful of multi-pitch climbing but found as she climbed higher she really enjoyed it. We topped out late in the day where it was clear she was completely psyched to have completed that climb and gave me a huge hug. I was very elated to have been a part of it.

Saturday night Allison and I camped up there at El Rito with our friends Hunter and Allison but instead of cooking our own dinner we drove into the town of El Rito for a super tasty dinner at the hole-in-the-wall El Farolito restaurant. Back at camp, the night was quiet and serene with the super moon illuminating the surroundings. We slept great in the nice, cool overnight temperature.

Sunday we spent the day sport climbing at the El Rito sport area. The steep conglomerate rock there offers super fun climbing and we climb many times per year there. We all climbed well, particularly Allison on her new project, Against All Cobbs. I finally sent an on-again-off-again nemesis route called Crack Attack so I left there pumped and pleased.

At work during the week I finally released a data sync script I had been working on for a while. Even after lots and lots of testing, and many revisions, I was still nervous knowing the script would affect 13,000+ user accounts but it turns out it worked brilliantly and did more good than harm.

We were back up at El Rito Friday with our friend Rick for some more sport climbing followed by guacamole, chips and margaritas at Gabriel's in the afternoon. A fine day all around!

I spent nearly all day yesterday packing food and gear for our upcoming trip to Denali. I was very productive and feel much better now having gotten that done. But I didn't do much else so I felt lazy. That said, I got up this morning and went for a hard run up my local time trial run and managed to set a personal record on the run. So yes, psyched! The weekend was pretty dreary and rainy all weekend so really it was a good weekend to spend inside packing and what not.

This week we'll be marking more of the Jemez Mountain Trail Runs (JMTR) courses in preparation for next Saturday's races! Looking forward to it!

Back into the groove of "real life"

I just noticed it's been since April 10th since I posted on my blog. Damn, the time is flying by as Allison and I returned from Spain and got back into the swing of real life home in Los Alamos. We had a great, great time during our Spain trip and it was nice to return home to family, friends, our normal routine and Smith's grocery store green chile and cheese bagels. I was seriously missing those bagels while on vacation. They're the best toasted just so and slathered with real butter. Mmmm, mmmmm! We've had a ton of fun around home since returning back to the U.S. We've gotten back up into the Jemez Mountains many times to my favorite NM crag, Upper East Fork, where I sent a couple of on-again, off-again projects up there; Cyclops and then the super fun Chupacabra. It was a great week for me up there and with the longer days of summer upon us now we'll be climbing there more after work in the evenings.

Chupacabra action

I've had some good times helping out instructing at a couple of Los Alamos Mountaineers annual climbing school sessions and this Saturday I'll be up at El Rito serving as a leader for the school's graduation climbing day. It's always a ton of fun leading the class students up their first multipitch routes and El Rito is such a fun, nice place to spend the day. Can't go wrong. And I've been running a great deal and running well, too. I'm getting psyched to run the San Juan Solstice 50 mile trail race again this year, for my sixth time, after taking last year off from the race. It's such a beautiful and difficult course it's hard not to go back year after year.
Andy ripping a turn in the Nambe Chutes

Oh, and yeah, there's this little trip up to Alaska to climb and ski Denali with five great friends coming up in just three weeks. Holy shit, better get cracking on those logistics. We've had some fun weekend mountain outings the past two weekends spending time up high and riding what's left of New Mexico's high country snowpack.

Sam and Aaron enjoying new spring snow on Lake Fork Peak

Losing track of time

Rainbow over Ager, Spain

A great indicator of really being on holiday from day-to-day life is losing track of time. In this regard, we've done great and, thus, consider this trip a huge success. It's already Tuesday night, day 11 of our trip, and we weren't sure what day it was when we woke up this morning. And we woke up to a partly cloudy sky after a few really enjoyable days the past few days.

Since I last posted on this blog on Saturday, we've done quite a bit of climbing and a little bit of tourism. Sunday we drove 45 minutes south to the village of Santa Linya to climb there. It was a gorgeous day with no clouds--a first for us since we left Barcelona. We climbed at the Futbol wall outside the village and had a blast. I'd best describe the rock as "chunky" limetone--slightly overhanging, soft grips and athletic climbing. This area was a favorite of ours in Spain thus far. We both really enjoyed the style of climbing and the scene. Sunday was Easter Sunday and it was surprisingly busy around the villages. Santa Linya climbing is really know for the spectacular Cova Gran, a gigantic cave offering huge enduro routes. Needless to say, we did not climb in Cova Gran but did enjoy going to check it out.

Allison takes in the view of Cova Gran

When we got back to our apartment we asked Gaspar, in my broken Spanish, if his restaurant downstairs was open for dinner. He said not normally but that he'd cook us steak and potatoes if we'd like that. Absolutely! So at 9pm, we headed down for a super tasty steak dinner with french fries. Gaspar and his wife (and another man that we don't his relation) kindly served dinner to just the two of us. In addition to the steak and french fries, we had a bottle of tempranillo red wine, bread and jamón serrano with olive oil drizzled on it. It was a pleasant and tasty meal.

Monday we had another leisurely morning before heading down to the local crag, Collegats, to climb a few routes at a limestone sector called L'Argenteria. It was cool and shady climbing in the morning but we still enjoyed three distinctly different routes--a slabby route, a bolted crack/dihedral route and an overhanging, heavily featured route sporting badass tufas and neat rock fluting out of a cave. After a few routes we decided to head north into the Pyrenees and to the country of Andorra to cross "visit Andorra" off our bucket lists. Granted we didn't see much of Andorra beyond the downtown area of its capital, Andorra La Vella, but we enjoyed a tasty lunch of pizza and Allison's new favorite food, tapas de ham croquettes. It's been a lot of fun driving the very European roads of Catalunya--narrow, winding and fast. In some of the towns great care must be taken on the car-and-a-half width roads. A driver with a poor sense of situational awareness wouldn't last long here.

Looking down at the town of Sort, Spain with Pic de Peguera (9,776') flocked in new snow

Today, Tuesday, we our most fun day of climbing yet. And surprisingly it wasn't at any of the "big name" crags of Catalunya but rather at a small, generally unimpressive-looking crag called Tartareu. For us, it was just what we were looking for--nice weather, slightly overhanging climbing with good holds on somewhat chunky rock. And what really made it nice is that we had the entire area to ourselves all day. No others smoking and no noises save the birds and winds. To top it off, we both climbed well and really ate up the athletic style of climbing. The soft grading didn't hurt our egos either.

Allison being lowered off a super steep and fun 7a+ route called Brom de Por at Tartareu

This is our last night in our fantastic apartment at Camping Beta. Tomorrow morning we bid Gaspar and the town of Baro adieu and head 90 minutes south to Lleida. Thursday night will find us back in Barcelona at a hotel near the airport and Friday we leave Spain and arrive back in New Mexico around 9pm (assuming no travel delays).

Hooray for clearing weather

The awesome Congst de Mont-Rebei

In my best Herbert Kornfeld voice, "What tha dilly yo, mah homies?" It's been a very enjoyable few days since I rapped at 'cha ya'll. Thursday we slept in until 8am or so, brewed up some coffee and had a light breakfast before heading out into the rain with hopes that we'd find something dry to climb. If not, we'd do some hiking and exploring some other area of Catalunya because there's so much to see anyway.

So we drove the few miles south to the crag nearest our apartment, Collegats. Collegats has a staggering amount of conglomerate walls as well as many limestone walls. We hiked up to the Sector Cine under dark clouds knowing that the short reprieve of rain would not last. Nonetheless, we found a route, Blue Velvet, that looked mostly dry and within our we-haven't-climbed-in-ten-days abilities. Rated 6a+ (5.10c), it was enjoyable romp up fun bulges of conglomerate cobbles for 60 feet. As I was leading it the rain starting to come down. By the time I had lowered back to the ground, it was a steady drizzle of rain. Allison chose to TR the line since wet cobbles tend to be very slick. But she was so psyched to be climbing that she TRed it twice despite water running down her sleeves each time she put her hands on the top-side of the bulges. It was fun to be climbing in a new part of the world despite getting soaked. We packed up and headed back to the car.

Desiring to see a bit more of the area we drove for about 30 minutes up the nearby Vall Fosco. In addition to seven lakes, each one above the other, there's a tramway up there and we thought that would be fun. Unfortunately when we got to the tramway, it was snowing hard, visibility was zero and the tram was closed. Oh well. We beat feet and returned to the apartment and then to the local grocery store in Sort. A homey kind of day. But the rain did stop around 5pm affording me an hour or so to get in a nice 7 mile run up the hillside outside of Baro through the small town of Arcalis. The clouds cleared long enough for me to get a great view down into the valley and see Baro and north to Sort. I didn't have my camera though.

We awoke to rain Friday but it tapered off so we loaded up the car and headed south for about 40 minutes to the superb climbing of Terradets. On the way we figured out how to fuel up our car. :-) Terradets was a blast and we got in a pretty full day of climbing there despite getting pelted by rain on our last route of the day, L'Ansia. We climbed six pitches of rock before the rain came in again so we were psyched.
We then headed to the impressive gorge of Congst de Mont-Rebei. It rained and snowed hard as we drove to the trailhead for the gorge but once we arrived, the rain stopped, the clouds lifted and the sun even came out for a while! We enjoyed a two-hour hike down to, and through, the gorge. It's very impressive and the blueish color of the water flowing through the gorge is mighty pretty.

Today we had another leisurely morning as it looked rainy outside but quickly cleared. We headed south from our apartment to visit the lesser-known crag of Coll de Nargo. It was sunny and nice to be out on some easy, single pitch routes. Nothing particularly inspiring but nice nonetheless.

Allison on a fun 5.11- at Coll de Nargo

After four routes there, we decided to go check out the world-class crag of Oliana. Oliana is the crag of multiple 5.15s and synonymous with high-end sport climbing. Last year, Chris Sharma sent two 5.15s in a day there and this spring it's been THE place for hard female climbing with at least three women sending "Mind Control".

Olina's main wall

Even though we'd be looking for the less-than-5.12 routes at Oliana, It excited us to see the area in person. It was an easy ten minute hike up to the severely overhanging, orange-with-gorgeous-blue-streaks wall. It's mind-boggling to see how steep the wall is at the top and see the tiny holds the best sport climbers in the world can hold on to. We headed to the far right-end of the crag and climbed a couple 5.10+ routes before moving closer to the center of the wall where I got on the lower part of some 5.ridiculous route. The route had draws hanging on it so there was no commitment. I managed to get up to the fifth draw, through the junky-rock climbing, to where the rock got beautiful. And that was it. A couple of falls and I was done. And we were done with the day. A fabulous day! Back at the apartment I cooked up some chicken paella and we filled our bellies. Buenas noches!

Hanging out at the right end of the wall. Can't beat the view.

Climbing at Oliana

Approaching rain storm over an amazing amount of rock

Established base camp

A roadside view of much of the Collegats rock

We fired up the 1.6L turbo engine of our rented Opel Meriva and enjoyed a leisurely day of driving a few hours to our basecamp--a four-person apartment in Baro, Spain at Camping Beta. It was a joy to meet the owner, Gaspar, after interacting with him via email a month or so ago to make our reservation for this apartment. Shortly after our arrival, Gaspar had us down to the bar for beers and olives where he broke out a map and showed us many suggestions for places to hike and explore. We told him we were climbers and he was very impressed and also boastful of the surrounding rock. And he should be--there's multiple lifetimes of rock around here. It's simply astounding. (Quite literally as I was typing this, Gaspar knocked on our door to give us a bottle of champagne on ice along with two glasses. A super classy and generous man! If you've got ideas on how we can "re-pay" him for his generosity before we leave, please leave a comment.)

Our apartment for the next seven nights

We're psyched about the apartment! It's very nice and spacious in an easy-to-access and scenic location in Baro along the banks of the Rio Noguera Pallaresa. It's a nicely-located place with many hiking trails and climbing areas within 45 minutes in any direction.

Beer and maps with Gaspar

We're very close to the Pyrenees mountains to our north, the country of Andorra to our east, loads of climbing to our south and more scenic trails and lakes to our west. We hit the three grocery stores in Sort, Spain this evening and cooked up a meal here in the apartment tonight. I can feel our wallets getting heavier already with all the money we're saving cooking "at home".

Champagne compliments of Gaspar. Very generous.

We haven't done any climbing yet but this trip isn't all about the climbing and we're enjoying the experience as a whole. The travel, the relaxation, the food, the company, and the surroundings.

Literally the sum total of climbing we've done in Spain

Run to the hills

Monistrol de Montserrat

Yesterday we rented a car from the Barcelona airport and headed out of town and to the hills on Montserrat. It was about an hour of driving from the airport, through one major wrong turn and to the hostel, Hostel Guilleumes, in the town of Monistrol de Montserrat. It was a rainy morning but dried up a bit for the afternoon allowing us time to hike the trails of the Montserrat mountains, explore the Santa Maria de Montserrat monastery and ride a funicular (the steepest funicular in Spain) up high into the mountains. We had hoped to some climbing on the cool conglomerate rock of Montserrat but the rain earlier in the day had left things damp and slick.

Exploring the hermitage ruins of Montserrat

We had a very nice three-course dinner last night in the restaurant below the hostel while watching Barcelona's futbol team beat Milan 3 to 1 with a spirited group of fans.

It rained hard, with plenty of lightning and thunder last night, so there will be no climbing today. Intead, we'll drive to Baro where we have arranged an apartment rental for the next week at Camping Beta. Hopefully we'll find some dry rock to climb later today but it's not likely. Tomorrow looks to be party cloudy while Friday looks to be wet again. However, the forecast for next week looks good right now so we're optimistic about getting some climbing in then.

The massive rock formations of Montserrat seen from Monistrol de Montserrat