Mt. McKinley Expedition: Van Deventer Wraps up the May 8th Expedition
Posted by: Pete Van Deventer, Nick Sinapius, Ben Thorneycroft
Categories: Expedition Dispatches Alaska
Monday, June 2, 2025 - 10:30 am PT
After our last post after descending to 11,000', things happened quickly. We went to bed to moderate snowfall on the tents and woke to something of the same. With clouds all around, and a cloud cap above on the mountain, and after three big days, we didn’t rush out of 11,000' Camp, but took the time to get some coffee, breakfast, and repack into sleds, duffels, and packs for the snowshoe to Base Camp. By midmorning we were ready, and started out. That walk is always special, as the clouds and light played on the lower peaks of the range, there is a certain quiet and reflectiveness to the descent as we contemplate all we have just done, and how soon we will hopefully be home and this will all start to feel like a bit of a dream. We passed several teams headed uphill, still looking fresh, stubble only a day or two old, excited for everything to come. We made a brief stop at the base of Ski Hill to pick up our cache, then continued through the long flat stretches of the lower Kahiltna. Finally it was time for one more burn, the roughly hour stretch up Heartbreak Hill that would bring us to our destination. All day we had walked in and underneath clouds and didn’t hear much in the way of airplane traffic. Quite truthfully as we took our final steps into Base Camp, a message arrived via inReach from K2 asking if we were at Base Camp yet - weather hadn’t been flyable that day, but things were turning. So we arrived, but rather than sit and recover, we continued the movement and prep, quickly pulling apart sleds and bags, organizing, digging up our Base Camp cache, and shortly thereafter we got the news that two planes had launched to come get us. Just before 7 pm, the two red otters dipped out of the sky on the final approach to Base Camp. We loaded, and before we knew it, were being whisked back to town. Just as we seemed to swing into a stroke of luck with our summit day window (there hadn't been one since), we walked into quite a bit of luck with flying off as well. By 8:45 pm that evening, we were showered and sitting on the deck of the Denali Brew Pub enjoying a meal that hadn’t been boiled in water.
Nick, Ben, and myself would like to thank this team for the incredible dedication they showed throughout this expedition, to themselves, to each other, and to us. That teamwork and selflessness was the key component in the success of our climb and it was such a pleasure for us to climb with this team.
Signing off for this year,
RMI Guide Pete Van Deventer
