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Mt. McKinley Expedition: Mallory & Team Ready to Fly

Posted by: | June 23, 2011
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Mount McKinley
Elevation: 348'

The sky never quite darkened outside the drawn shades of the hotel rooms up here in Talkeetna last night and before long the sun was rising in the sky again. We met up at the Roadhouse Cafe this morning where Matt, the final member of our team and a local Alaskan resident, joined us. Over heaping portions of scrambled eggs, bacon, thick slices of toast, and steaming cups of coffee, we toasted the merging of the team and the beginning of the adventures. After spending some time talking through the details of the climb ahead we went over to the National Park Service offices here and checked in with the climbing rangers, collecting our climbing permits and discussing the most recent route conditions with the climbing rangers.

With permits in hand we walked back through the streets of Talkeetna, just starting to bustle with the midday influx of tourist arriving from the Anchorage area, and across the railroad tracks to the air strip where we spent the rest of the day organizing our gear for the climb. We unpacked, sorted, checked, rechecked, and repacked our personal clothing and climbing equipment, inspected our climbing ropes, fired up and tested our stoves, counted our 22 days worth of food, set up and examined our 4 tents, separated the shovels, wands, climbing pickets, and snow saws we will need, and then rechecked everything again - making doubly sure that we are feeling prepared with our equipment. Finally, by later afternoon, a pile of duffels, backpacks, snowshoes, tents, poles, and climbing equipment began to accumulate in the open entrance of the hangar of K2 Aviation. At long last the pile stopped growing and the final last minute items were added. Just before dinner we weighed out all of the bags, carefully checking the weights of each item in order to allow the pilots of the small prop planes we fly in tomorrow so that they can adequately distribute the weight of our loads.

With a full day of packing and preparing for the climb, we retired to the local and legendary eatery and watering hole of the West Rib, indulging in Caribou burgers and Halibut tacos before calling it a day. We are hoping that the clearing skies we see in the afternoon persist into tomorrow allowing us to make the 30 minute flight from Talkeetna into the Alaska Range to Denali Base Camp. There is always the chance that weather either here in Talkeetna or up on the mountain will not cooperate and not allow us to make the flight but spirits are optimistic and we are keeping our fingers crossed the weather shakes out in our favor.

RMI Guide Linden Mallory

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