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Mt. McKinley: Haugen and Team Sport Eating at 11,000’

Posted by: Mike Haugen | June 18, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Mount McKinley
Elevation: 11,200'

Tuesday, June 18, 2013
We are getting beautiful weather day after beautiful weather day! We retrieved our cache from 10,000ft. We are now set to bring a load up to around 14,000ft. This will be great for our acclimatization since it fits into the climb high and sleep low model.
The team has really been doing a great job of taking care of themselves. We are doing a lot of sport eating and drinking as we sit around camp. I am usually a hydration nag, but this crew is on top of it!

Stay Classy North America!

RMI Guide Mike Haugen

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Mt. McKinley: Jake Beren & Team Rest & Refuel at 17,000’ Camp

Posted by: Jake Beren, Leon Davis, Josh Maggard | June 18, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Mount McKinley
Elevation: 17,000'

What a day yesterday was!  We were the only team to climb our route and truly enjoyed having the whole day to ourselves. It was a touch windy, but with warm air temps, it was perfectly manageable. The team climbed strong and stood on top in the afternoon with perfect visibility were treated to spectacular views the whole way up. The summit day is only possible with a combination of factors all coming together and we did a great job matching ourselves to the mountain. Bravo everyone!

Today really makes our call to go for it yesterday seem like the right one. The wind picked up last night and has been blowing hard ever since. We have been hanging out and resting at 17 camp and once the wind dies down we will tackle the Buttress and start the cruise home. We are going to wait a bit and maybe take off tomorrow after this spike in wind speed. For now we could use the rest after a few huge days.
 
Looking forward to seeing everyone as soon as Denali grants us safe passage.

RMI Guides Jake, Leon, and Josh

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Mt. McKinley: Beren & Team Return to High Camp

Posted by: Jake Beren, Leon Davis, Josh Maggard | June 18, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Mount McKinley
Elevation: 17,200'

Monday, June 17, 2013
Hello everyone.  We made it back to camp after a good day of climbing. Everybody is safe and sound. We’re just finishing up a little dinner before turning in for a little bit. Looks like we just beat the storm. We’ll move a little lower tomorrow. That’s all for now.

RMI Guide Jake Beren

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Mt. McKinley: Beren & Team Summit!

Posted by: Jake Beren, Leon Davis, Josh Maggard | June 17, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Mount McKinley
Elevation: 20,320'

Monday, June 17, 2013
Hello, this is Jake with RMI #5 standing on top of Denali with an awesome crew on an absolutely beautiful day.  We’ll give a shout when we get down but it doesn’t get too much better than this. Thanks everybody for the support, and will be checking in from down low. Over and out.

RMI Guide Jake Beren

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Mt. McKinley: Haugen And Team Settle in At 11,000’

Posted by: Mike Haugen | June 17, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Mount McKinley
Elevation: 11,200'

Monday, June 17, 2013
We are on the mountain! After walking up the glacier on our long approach, this camp feels like we are actually starting to make some headway towards the top.  We will be at this 11,000’ camp for a minimum of three nights, so we are dug in pretty solidly.
The plan for tomorrow is to do a back carry. This means we will walk back down to our cache at 10,000’, dig it up, and then bring it back up to our new camp at 11,000 ft. It shouldn’t be too hard of a day, but it is very important in our acclimatization scheme. 
Although there are no bad views in this place, we have an amazing view from this camp. From a safe distance, we get to watch some giant ice cliffs calving off some large chunks. The heat of the nice weather days has made for some dynamic snow and ice conditions.

Summit Team 6!  Led by RMI Guide Mike Haugen

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Mt. McKinley: Jones and Team Descend to 11,000’

Posted by: Garrett Stevens, Tyler Jones | June 16, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Mount McKinley
Elevation: 11,200'

Sunday, June 16, 2013
We woke this morning to another unbelievable day at 17,200’ camp on Mt. McKinley.  The sun was shining, there was no wind blowing, and folks were comfortable in soft shell coats eating their grits and Pop Tarts. If you don’t have a frame of reference for how unbelievable that kind of weather is, it’s more typical for people to be wrapped in every puffy coat and pant that they brought to the high camp, while the wind threatens to blow you right off the mountain.  Needless to say, we were psyched.

We started walking down the buttress route soon after breakfast, and make excellent time across the knife-edge, exposed walking from camp to the top of the fixed lines. A short, technical descent down the lines had us all sweating by the time we reached the bottom, and we stripped down to base layers for the moderate descent back to our cache at 14,200’.

After we grabbed all the group food and gear, we loaded heavy packs and headed down in the scorching sun towards our old stomping grounds at 11,000’. We arrived in calm, clear skies, and we quickly got up tents and got out of the sun. We’re drinking a ton of water, looking forward to the group food fry of leftover cheeses, meats, and breads this evening, and getting ready for the 3am launch down the glacier tomorrow morning. Hopefully we’ll have the weather to fly back to showers, greasy burgers, and cold beer tomorrow.

Until then, stay tuned for the latest and greatest from the team!
Hasta luego,

RMI Guides Tyler Jones, Garrett Stevens and the sore but happy team

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Mt. McKinley: Beren’s Team at High Camp

Posted by: Jake Beren, Leon Davis, Josh Maggard | June 16, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Mount McKinley
Elevation: 17,200'

Sunday, June 16th, 2013
Holy cow we made it up!  Leaving early, we passed RMI 4 at the base of the fixed lines, high fiving as we continued our climb. The team did a remarkable job making it to high camp in fine time. The West Buttress proper is the most fun part of the route and earns the namesake title. We cruised up to our cache at the base of Washburn’s Thumb and barely slowed down with the extra weight. Arriving at camp didn’t even require a coat once we stopped. The weather is perfect now and all we need is one more day and I’m sure the team will make it to the top. We are ready to outchill weather if it comes, but hopefully we can get one more day of this fantastic weather. Send us all good weather vibes if you please and we will check in tomorrow.

RMI Guide Jake Beren

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Mt. McKinley: Haugen’s Team Moves to 9,600’ Camp

Posted by: Mike Haugen, Mike Uchal, Katie Bono | June 16, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Mount McKinley
Elevation: 9,600'

Sunday, June 16th, 2013

Happy Father’s Day to all of our dads from Summit Team 6!

We bit off another chunk of the mountain this morning ascending to 9,600 feet. Only 10,600 feet to go! We arrived at our new camp around mid morning. Our team is quickly becoming McKinley camp experts, so it did not take us very long to dig in camp. We had some extra daylight (oh yeah, it is always daylight), so we decided to dig a monster posh house. A posh house is our version of a cook tent. It is like a snow cave where the cooking and seating area is dug into the snow below ground level. The roof is a big top-like tent that is held up by a pole that goes from the apex to the floor of the snow pit. Now we have room for company.

The weather forecast looks stellar so we should be able to move up to 11k Camp tomorrow.

RMI Guide Mike Haugen and Summit Team 6

P.S. Lance says thank you to his wife and girls for the Father’s Day card!

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Mt. McKinley: Beren & Team Travel the Fixed Lines to Washburn’s Thumb

Posted by: Jake Beren, Leon Davis, Josh Maggard | June 16, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Mount McKinley
Elevation: 14,200'

Saturday, June 15th, 2013
Big day here on Denali. A big congrats to Tyler Jones, Garrett Stevens and crew for a job well done going to the top!  We didn’t lounge around ourselves and made an early bid for our cache at Washburn’s Thumb. The team handled the fixes lines very well and we made great time up to 16,400 feet under perfect climbing conditions. It was a great day to enjoy the views and we relaxed up high before hitting the sauna on our way down. It was HOT and we were sure glad to be on our way back to camp by the time the temperatures peaked.

Naps followed our work day and we are tentatively optimistic that we will be able to move higher tomorrow and get in position to put all the hard work and experience to the test in the next few days. Keep some fingers crossed for us friends, we’re gonna need some good weather for a few days.

Over and out.

RMI Guide Jake Beren

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Mt. McKinley: Haugen’s Team Caches Supplies and Returns to Camp

Posted by: Mike Haugen, Mike Uchal, Katie Bono | June 15, 2013
Categories: *Expedition Dispatches *Mount McKinley
Elevation: 7,800'

Saturday, June 15th, 2013
After another early start, we made our way up to 10,000 feet and cached some of the food, fuel, and gear that we will not need until later. We started walking uphill around 4 a.m. this morning because even though we are camping and traveling on ice and snow, it can be quite hot with the sun beating down and reflecting upon us. We returned to camp just after 11 a.m. Katie and Uchal made some delicious breakfast burritos before we all turned in for our afternoon naps. Don’t judge, we worked hard!

The plan for tomorrow is to pack up camp early and head towards our next spot at around 9,600 feet. The mountain is pretty quiet since there are not many teams flying on the mountain right now.

Everyone is happy and healthy. Yvonne, Peter wanted me to let you know he is especially happy and healthy!

RMI Guide Mike Haugen

P.S. Congratulations to Tyler Jones and team for their summit!

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