Entries By jess wedel

Windy Corner

By: Joanie Mayer Hope

11,000 Camp — Denali

On a mountain in the snow

Narrow cliff and rocks below

Waits a dreamer with a heavy heavy load

Shrouded summit in the sky

In the journey is the why

In the marrow of this life is sacrifice

Chorus

There is a place called Windy Corner which few will ever see
A passage from what was to what someday may be
Up at Windy Corner, steady steps gentle strength
Silhouettes of seekers, embrace the loss of living

Windy Corner is the place

Of acquiescence & of grace

Dare to fail, live to die, alone & loved

You must give all to get there

But but you may not succeed

Reckoning of wonder, earth’s breath under your wings

Chorus

There is a place called Windy Corner which few will ever see
A passage from what was to what someday may be
Up at Windy Corner steady steps & gentle strength
Silhouettes of seekers embrace the loss of living

Bridge

If the end of life is death

What is the meaning of success?

The legacy we leave

The sparks of joy we manifest?

The pain we heal?

The love we feel?

Adventures breached

Or summits reached?

The courage to jump fully in

Be naked in our humanness

Final Chorus

Up at Windy Corner steady steps & gentle strength
Silhouettes of seekers embrace the loss of living

Day 10 - Strong Winds and Snow Persist

Today is another weather day, so the blog is about birds.

Birding is the act of intentionally wandering around outside and looking for birds. People who engage in this hobby are called birders. There are many types of birding, some enjoy seeing local birds that are native to where they live, others enjoy making a life list of all the unique birds they’ve seen in their life, and for some - the most extreme birders their goal is to complete “A Big Year”. There are many types of Big Years but the most popular and competitive is The Lower 48 American Bird Association Big Year. The Big Year starts on January 1st each year and ends on December 31st. The goal during this time frame is to see or hear as many unique birds as possible in the contiguous United States and up to 50 miles offshore. There is a fantastic documentary about this competition available for free on YouTube called “Listers”, I highly recommend you give it a watch. 

Now here is a list of bird facts that I can remember to spice up the end blog…

• The Loggerhead Shriek is a small carnivorous songbird that uses thorns of plants and the spikes of barbwire to impale its prey.
• The Golden Finch is the state bird of Iowa.
• The Common Murre is a pelagic sea bird that can dive upwards of 300 feet below the surface.
• Horned Puffins nest on sheer ocean cliffs and lay eggs with a flat side on them, so the eggs don’t accidentally roll out of the nest.
• Blue-Footed Boobies have one of the top 5 funniest bird names.
• Bald Eagles have been known to sink their talons into fish that are too large to fly away with and are unable to release their talons, so they are pulled underwater and drown.
• Roadrunners are one of the few known predators of rattle snakes.
• At least one songbird dies every year on the West Buttress route of Denali.
• Varied Thrush can sing through two sets of vocal cords simultaneously, allowing them to sing incredibly complicated bird songs.
• Marbled Murrelets nest dozens of miles from their ocean habit, exclusively in old growth forests near rivers. This allows their chicks a higher survival rate due to the fact old growth offers more protection for nesting and when they’re pushed out of their nests to learn to fly, they plop into the river below.
• Red-Winged Black Birds are territorial and have been known to attack elementary school students walking to their friend Andrew’s house.
• The Steller Jay was the key to the first Russian expeditions knowing they had made it to Alaska as the Blue Jay family of birds is endemic to North America exclusively.
• And finally contrary to popular belief, the mosquito is not the state bird of Alaska, it is in fact the Ptarmigan.

Cheers,

Jack and the well-rested team.

We finally had a good weather day!

Everyone was stoked that we got to cache near 14,000' Camp. We lugged extra food, some empty poop buckets, summit clothes - such as the super warm mittens (or as Jenn calls them, the "oh shit mitts") and our ascenders a few thousand feet up the mountain. The weather was spectacular. A stark difference from the cold, windy, snowy weather we had the last few days. There were dozens of rope teams out and about caching or moving camps. We made it back to tent city at 11,000' and some of us finally got to change into clean underpants! It's a good day.

Hi to Goose (the best dog) Matt, Betsy, mom and dad!

RMI Climber Katie

white noise of the night

flapping prison of nylon

sky breaks evening light

- anonymous

MERVEILLEUX ENFER!

Cet oxymore correspond tellement bien à notre environnement. Lorsque le ciel est dégagé et que le vent cesse, nous avons l'immense privilège de contempler la merveille qu'est le Denali. Des glaciers à perte de vue, that's huge! Les pics rocheux gigantesques jouant avec les nuages, that's so wild ! La glace d'un bleu vif des séracs suspendus, that's so cool man ! Et la neige poudrée scintillante au soleil, for sure ! Ce soleil justement, nous apporte de la chaleur et une luminosité qui ne cesse jamais (masque obligatoire pour dormir !). Mais il est aussi notre première menace invisible ! Whaaat ? Sans protection, votre peau brûle littéralement. Même sous la tente, la crème solaire est indispensable, that's so badass! 

Les autres menaces, elles, sont bien perceptibles... Les crevasses sont béantes mais les plus dangereuses sont celles que l'on ne voit pas, that's so impressive!

Quand le temps se gâte, c'est à dire presque tout le temps..., le froid mordant vous glace jusqu'au os. Couplé aux rafales de vent, les gestes les plus basiques du quotidien deviennent un enfer avec nos équipements (non je ne vous parlerai pas du poop...). Enfin installés dans nos duvets pour quelques heures de repos, après avoir évacué la neige qui s'est infiltrée à notre passage, nous avons le plaisir de prendre sur la tête au réveil toute l'humidité de nos respirations sous forme de glace...

Bienvenue dans ce merveilleux enfer !

Les nouvelles du lundi 18 :

Hey buddy ! Aujourd'hui on s'est équipé et avons préparé nos "stuffs" pour aller les déposer à la 2eme cache, awesome !

Mais... les guides ont finalement décidé d'annuler car une nouvelle tempête arrive...

A des fins d'entraînement nous avons montés la Motorcycle Hill et, we figured it out une fois en haut pourquoi nous n'avions pas intérêt à poursuivre vers Squirrel Hill, Polo Fields et le fameux Windy Corner!

Alors, dans la lignée des derniers jours, we spilled the tea ! Des moments d'échanges joyeux, renforçant la cohésion de cette team maintenant bien soudée et où la bonne humeur et l'entraide règne. Et pour moi c'est cours d'anglais hundred percent!

Le délai s'allonge encore pour espérer rejoindre le sommet, fingers crossed!, mais nous préférons nos vies à la précipitation. La patience fait partie intégrante de l'expédition.

Il n'est pas possible de vaincre le Denali, notre plan est d'attendre qu'il accepte de nous laisser aller to the top, pour admirer de tout en haut ce merveilleux enfer! 

NB: tous les mots en en anglais sont ceux que j'entends des centaines de fois par jours, impossible de les oublier, Yeah Yeah !

Note personnelle : à ma famille, mes amis, mes collègues et tous ceux qui suivent mon projet OXYFIGHT, je veux vous dire que je suis en excellente forme, que je dors particulièrement bien et que les américains sont terriblement attachants et gentils avec moi ! A ma femme et mes enfants, I LOVE YOU

RMI Climber Thomas / OXYFIGHT (le frenchie)

5/17 - On any proper adventure, there comes a time—long after the bags are packed and the body has proven it can endure—when forward progress is no longer the prevailing goal. Instead, adapting to a new environment becomes the focus.

In those early stretches, adaptation is far from obvious. From mummifying one’s feet in athletic tape to hoisting an overstuffed pack onto weary shoulders, every action feels foreign. Eventually, though, progress seems less like a fight and more like the key to a secret world: frozen, strange, and infinitely explorable.

But this new world unfurls in unpredictable ways. Last night, I nodded off to the rustle of tent nylon in the breeze. An hour later, I was yanked from sleep by an intense blast of frigid wind. The gale persisted, an unyielding rhythm that drummed through the night. Snow puddled around us, transforming our cozy cocoons into claustrophobic reminders of who really makes the rules up here.

Today, we found ourselves stuck yet again at 11,000 feet—far from idyllic, but the best option given our forecast and supplies. We squelched back and forth between our group and personal tents, packs and sleds buried beneath reams of spindrift. Some of us read books, some took naps. Some typed long missives to the outside world on our phones.

The upside is that we are not yet working ourselves into paste hauling food and gear further up the hill. Instead, the tasks have been a light blend of the practical and absurd: digging, and then re-digging, our communal toilet out of the snow; downing carb-laden meals with competitive zeal until we are both proud of and embarrassed by our gluttony; shuffling our creaky bodies across a slick, uneven camp with all the grace of baby deer on ice; and generally extricating ourselves from our self-imposed predicament with routine bouts of only somewhat effective shoveling.

Days like today—and, indeed, trips like this—can easily be dismissed as pointless, or even wasteful: so much time and energy spent in pursuit of an ultimately frivolous goal. But in a world increasingly designed to be safe, comfortable, and instantly gratifying, there is something to be said for leaning hard in the opposite direction. What rare thing will we find up there? Or right here?

Getting to the summit is the goal, though today—our sixth on the illustrious flanks of Denali, our second battered by snow and wind—adaptation feels sufficiently ambitious.

—RMI Climber Tina Currin

P.S. Hi to Grayson and Rollie, Mom and Charlie, JK and the Little Gang. I love you all more than than you know.

5/16 - It’s 6:30pm and I’ve just turned off the stoves in the kitchen tent after finishing melting water. I step out, get sandblasted with snow as I sneak my way to the big red Hilleberg dining tent or “the hilly” as we call it.

It’s windy, it’s cold, the snow is spinning and spinning around.

I step down into the hilly and feel the warmth from the stove, the whole team all bundled together as Jack and Calvin use creative methods to cook delicious pepperoni and cheese pizzas. Everyone slides over and I slot in between layers of down jackets.

We spend the next couple hours slowly eating pizzas and chatting about a range of topics.

At 7pm, we listen to the weather on the radio and the nightly trivia question. Jack answered it immediately and correctly and ended the dispatch with “RMI RULEZ” so the whole mountain knows our lead guide is an expert on the similarities between sea horses and sea dragons. (you should ask him)

Today we took a somewhat forced but also perfectly timed rest day. Somewhat forced because more unsettled weather has arrived.

Perfectly timed because we have been working so hard nearly every moment since we landed on the Kahiltna glacier.

I keep thinking of the phrase “be here now” and it’s something so challenging in our daily lives but out here there is a forced nowness. We eat long meals together, we shovel walkways to our tents and then shovel them again. Our efforts and our lives are all revolved around a singular goal of moving the team forward. We are living in the now in the most raw way possible and there’s something so beautifully brutal to it all.

We will wake up tomorrow, look at the mountain and see what she says.

Maybe we will stay put at 11k camp, maybe we will have the chance to carry our gear to our 14k cache.

We’re open to what is. We’re in the now-cast.

RMI Guide Jess Wedel & Team

5/15 - Day Four on the Mountain was a Success!

Before we get into our activities from today, we are going to get to know the characters on this expedition a little better. There are 11 of us and we come from very diverse backgrounds.

We have representation from Alaska, Colorado, California, Utah, Washington State, Oklahoma, Iowa, Alabama, and also have a lone European from France. Aside from the three guides, our professional backgrounds include two physicians, a business owner, nuclear chemist, park ranger, Army Officer, consultant, and a business manager. The average age amongst the group is mid to late -thirties.

Despite our differences, we have a lot in common. We all have significant experience climbing mountains in various parts of the world. Between the team members, we have climbed on every continent and tackled six of the seven summits. To say we are all adventurous would be an understatement. We all enjoy going after new challenges, exploring the unknown, and meeting great people along the way.

Now that we have been together for four days we are coming together as a team. We have been looking after each other and motivating each other during the challenging daily hikes.

The witty banter within the group is starting to flow freely. The guides haven’t come out and said it but we are confident we are the toughest and best looking Denali group they have ever been a part of.

As for today, our goal today was to retrieve the food and supplies we cached at 9’600 feet two days ago. After waking up and coming out of our tents to see a sunny day with a gorgeous view overlooking the mountains, we enjoyed hot oatmeal courtesy of our guides/cooks. We got ready and prepared our gear for the hike down to the cache. Knowing we were going to recover equipment and it was going to be a shorter day, we packed light. Today was the first time this expedition we tied our sleds on the back of our backpacks. We departed our camp at 11,000 feet at 10 am and enjoyed the hour-long hike downhill to the cache at 9,600 feet.

The walk felt like we were wading through a winter paradise, surrounded by imposing mountains and impressive glaciers. After arriving at the cache, the guides dug up all the team and personal equipment and we set up the gear on our sleds. Then began the 2.5 hour hike back up to our camp at 11,000 feet. The hike was much easier than the previous day after having a good night’s rest and a shorter distance to cover.

The rest of the day was spent resting and improving our living situation in camp. Despite minor blisters, some initial effects of altitude sickness, and some minor sunburn, everybody is doing great. Morale is high and we are looking forward to the days ahead.

RMI Climber Scott Wyly

Thursday, May 14, 2026 - 11:23 pm PT

Hey yall! It’s Haley coming to you from Camp 2! Or 11 camp as it’s called way up yonder.

Why we chose this venture over someplace like Maui, we woke up to clear blue skies and a beautiful, windless day. This stunning and dynamic mountain is truly a place of wonder!

The team felt strong and enjoyed the glorious experience of only needing base layers as we made excellent time up to our next camp. It’s bustling up here already and we are even more thankful to have made it by day 3 after hearing weather pinned lots of teams down for days.

We must be a bunch of plants because the sun really brought us back to life! We plan to spend our next few days back carrying and caching up to 14 so stay tuned for updates on our wild and wondrous adventure!

Out here having a blast and a half,
RMI Climber Haley

PS I love you Kevin, Mom, Dad, William, Kayla and Abel

Hello faithful readers!

Imagine the inside of a ping pong ball. Now imagine yourself inside that ping pong ball. That was us for 8 hours today. Today the plan was to take all our excess gear and food and cache it at around 9800. After spending the morning organizing our gear, we took off slogging up “Ski Hill”. Slow and steady was the name of game. Navigation was difficult at best and a blind guess at worst. The team was strong both mentally and physically today. The effort was top notch.

After digging a very large snow hole and burying all our gear, we took off downhill. Home sweet home and burritos were calling our names. A relaxing evening and a filling meal. The simple pleasures of mountain life We hope to wake up to slightly better weather tomorrow, so please cross your fingers for us!

Cheers,

Jack and the Team