Berg

Hear Wally's Call from Denali

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So, hopefully, now we can go on climbing this mountain and not worry so much about rescues. In fact, we were doing that yesterday. Our team, myself, and Jamie, Joe, Basil, and Yian did a very successful carry up the infamous Headwall to 16,200ft. I'll describe to you a bit; you know part of what goes on up here, especially the last few years, is the guide services cooperatively take care of fixing, putting fixed line on this Headwall. And in fact, Jamie Pierce, with our team, and Wes, with the Mountain Trip team, went up early yesterday morning and fixed a particularly critical section of line over a big bulge of ice at the bergschrund. So, we proceeded on up in relatively good weather. The five members of our team handled themselves really well on the fixed lines, moved along quite efficiently. It's kind of demanding, real strenuous, you've got to use your feet well. The ice is pretty hard up there and of course they had loads on their back. Everyone's tired at the end of the day. It took us about five hours up and an eight-hour total roundtrip to get back here to 14.

Slept really well last night and, as you might imagine, with the good weather I've described, we will be going up to 17,000 feet today. We'll carry right past that cache we made at 16,000, and I'm hoping, in nine or 10 hours, we'll have moved across the ridge, the West Buttress, to the 17,000ft camp where we'll be in position for the summit. Don't know about the weather, it does look good today. We did have a low pressure here, my altimeter certainly confirmed that, but the snow that was forecasted over the last days didn't really develop and now we are told there is another low moving in from the Gulf of Alaska. But, we want to be in position to move in case that does not, once again, does not produce any bad weather that would cause problems with visibility or high winds.

Very serious up there, we're very aware of that. We're moving up to a camp where it's going to be critical we take good care our ourselves, build a good camp, prepare for wind, and perhaps wait some weather out in case it does get bad. At any rate, we'll continue to keep you posted. The higher we go, the easier it is to hit that repeater with the cell phone. So, you'll continue to hear from us and, once again, the five members of the Alpine Ascents team is in good spirits, good health, tired, but determined. We'll be moving ahead and keep you posted as we go.

— Alpine Ascents Guide Wally Berg, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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