In Talkeetna

Everybody is back in the relative civilization of Talkeetna.  Last I heard they were on the way to the West Rib Pub to have some food and beer before heading back to Anchorage. 

Congratulations to the whole team for a great trip and summit!

A plane is launching!

Though the weather from the TAT webcam doesn't look too promising, we just heard that Talkeetna Air Taxi is launching a DeHaviland Beaver to try to get in to Base Camp to get some of our crew.

The Beaver is an amazing aircraft that can fly higher than some of the other planes used to fly into the Alaska Range. The cloud cover is apparently rather low, so they think they can get above it with the Beaver. If they can make it to BC, they will pick up five of our team and bring them back to Talkeetna. We have transportation headed up to Talkeetna already (eternal optimists that we are!), so if they do get out, we can bring them right back to Anchorage to make scheduled flights, etc.

We'll keep you posted as we hear more.

Waiting in Basecamp

The team is waiting in basecamp for the weather to clear enough for planes to fly in and pick them up.  You can keep an eye on the weather from Talkeetna on a webcam, follow the link to the right.

We'll update if anything changes.

Moving Down to Basecamp

Dave Staeheli just called and they are packing up camp and heading down to basecamp.  They should be there this afternoon, and if the weather cooperates they will be able to fly out to Talkeetna this afternoon.  

The Wind...

The team is at 11,000 ft again tonight.  There is a pretty big storm with high winds moving thru the Alaska Range right now, and they are going to stay put until it settles a bit.  They are all pretty motivated to get down to cheeseburgers, beer, and showers right now, but the weather still rules all on Denali.  The wind is supposed to blow for another 36 hrs or so, and they should be able to move on down to basecamp and fly out to Talkeetna as soon as it settles down.  

SUCCESS!!!

We just received a call from Dave at high camp. The team reached the summit yesterday!!

They are busy breaking down camp and plan to head down to Camp 2 at 11,200 feet today. Tomorrow they will hike the 9 miles back to Base Camp and will hopefully fly back to Talkeetna.

I don't have much more information on the conditions they experienced yesterday. Satellite phone connections are not always that clear, but they did reach the top.

Congratulations to everyone for all their hard work and perseverance!

No news is GOOD NEWS

We didn't receive a call from the team last night, which I'm taking as a good sign. Summit day can be very long and grueling, so the fact that they did not call probably means that they went for the top and came back to camp very tired, ate some food and fell fast asleep.

If this is the case, we should know later today, as we have four other expeditions on the mountain and one of them should be in touch with our guys as they begin their descent from high camp today. Please keep in mind that no news is good news up on Denali. There are NPS rangers at high camp and if anything were to go awry, the rangers would call our office.

Today looks like a pretty good day, so if they did not make the summit yesterday, they might be busy heading uphill right now. If they did summit, they are undoubtedly busy packing up and sorting loads for the climb down the ridge to the fixed lines. They are probably all eager for a hot pizza and a fresh salad!

We'll post an update as soon as we know something concrete.