DENALI EXPEDITION MAY/JUNE 2012

Arrived in anchorage yesterday after an epic 31-hour journey of connections! Yesterday was like supermarket sweep at the biggest supermarket ever getting some last minute additions for our food tests.

I am climbing Denali for the 3rd time. This time my climbing partner is my friend Nikki Skinner and we are testing some new clothing I’ve developed with Rab. I am also testing new MSR tent systems for my next project and writing a dehydrated food test article for a magazine with Nikki.

This is my first real test of dehydrated food at altitude in real mountain conditions, not just in my garden! My body is still a little disorientated with the time difference. We have just loaded our bags on to the Alaska rail road train which is like something from a 1950’s movie! Awesome!

Heading to Talkeetna today for our briefing with the Denali Park Rangers. Conditions aren’t great this year – cold, windy, and dry, which means icy conditions on the upper mountain. Very similar to when I summited in 2010. Perfect conditions to test new systems for me and a real test. We have had news that base camp is shut due to bad weather. Hopefully we will fly on to the mountain as soon as we can.

DENALI FACT: Only 20% of Alaska is accessible by road or by boat.

Further update from Rich later today: Looks like we have the green light to fly on to the glacier and mountain today! Fingers crossed the weather stats clear! Conditions are cold, lots of frostbite and worse incidents so far. Never the less conditions are better than last year so I’m positive. A few summits in the last few days is also positive.

Speak soon from the mountain! Rich.

Flew on to glacier last night. Confidence boosting climb through glacier to 7 camp. Glacier is in awesome condition due to cold season. Arrived in 7 camp today after a 5 hour push. Completely different to last year! Both of us are well but tired. Testing fusion meals tonight. Awesome to back on Denali. She has a special place in my heart.

Arrived in 11 camp on the 31st. Both felt good leaving 7 camp so opted for a single load carry..it was a heavy and challenging day as we had to climb in very flat light and poor visibility as the clouds came in. On arriving we took 2 hours building camp and snow walls for the high winds and snowfall predicted. We woke this morning (1st) to 3ft of snow and had to dig out the tent. Glad to be through the glacier and amped about the upper mountain challenges. Rest today. We are at 3450m now camp 11, camp 7 is 2300m. It is cold here, warmest minus 5, minus 20 now at midday, grim!

Sat in tent all day - bad weather. Snowing and a total white and now winds picking up. All good!

It’s been a tough 24 hours. Last night was rough, 70 mph gusts and heavy snow, virtually no sleep but tent held up well. Cold start yesterday at minus 15-20 and no visibility. Then the weather broke for us to carry a load to 4100m. Poor conditions and lots of people made it a tough day of safely passing slow teams and navigating down in a white out. We are both good and ready waiting for a window to move to camp14 at 4400m. Another team had a crevasse fall yesterday, no injuries.

It’s mostly been rubbish conditions, white out, flat light, snow, winds with odd breaks! Totally different to last year. Colder. I prefer these conditions, snow is good to settle upper mountain.

11am 4th June. We got a late but good weather window to climb to camp14 yesterday. The crevasses are epicly big this year and the route has changed from last year. Good to cross them late as we arrived at 4300m camp14 at 10pm. Spent 2 hours in minus 20-25 building snow walls for the predicted low pressure and poor weather due in the next few days. It was a tough day so much needed rest day today whilst we assess the weather and conditions to move up to attempt to summit. It’s currently clear, cold minus 20 and windy here but toasty in my Rab bag and MSR Tent.

A series of low-pressure systems means snow and winds up to 45mph for the week. We worked hard to get to camp 14 to sit the bad weather out and be ready to move when it opens for us. Been building snow walls all day for the expected weather tonight. It’s cold, minus 25. Other than Denali playing hard to get, all good here from 4300m.

Update for yesterday 6th. Been hauled up in our tent since Tuesday. Poor visibility, high winds above us, temperatures down to minus 25 here. Today we had a clear window and we collected our cache at 4100m. Low pressure set to stay through the weekend. We are good and waiting ready for a window to carry to top of headwall at 5000m. Then waiting for summit window to move to high camp. Summit looks horrible from here. We are in a good place to wait. Food testing, writing book is keeping me occupied!

Update for the 7th: Low pressure system set to hang around for a while. Looks like we’ll be using all our time to wait for a summit window. We snatched a clear window to carry gear to 5000m top of headwall. So we are ready to move to high camp and summit when it breaks. It is grim above us, in fact it’s grim here today. Snow and lots of avalanches around camp. It is a waiting and decision making game now. We are were good and ready and my MSR tent is strong.

Temperature has risen and with up to 100cm of snow forecasted, avalanche risk is high. There are so many going off around camp its unnerving! The snow is wet and heavy. We are considering moving our tent today. Forecast is same for the next 3 – 5 days. 50mph winds at 17 Camp.

Hi guys really sorry for the silence, I broke my sat phone, snapped the antenna so was unable to contact from the mountain since Saturday. I am back in Talkeetna after an epic 4 days stuck at high camp (17 camp) unable to go up or down the mountain because of the bad weather. We eventually managed to get off the mountain and had a 24-hour down climb. Haven’t slept properly in 4 days.

It’s been horrific, some of the worst conditions I have endured, -35c, 70mph winds, 1 metre of snow in 24 hours which caused many avalanches.

Lots to update you on but will write more tomorrow. We are safe and well. Rich.

Hi Guys, sorry for the Twilence I have been catching up on sleep and spent all last night travelling and I am now in Boulder in Colorado now.

My last proper update on Denali was from Camp 14 at 4,200m so here's what happened next;

We had been there a day or 2, weather was really poor above us and it looked like a low-pressure system was approaching which meant yet more bad weather.

We ended up spending 5 days stuck at Camp 14 with mixed conditions, which were pretty challenging. We had some rare good moments but mostly we spent the 5 days waiting for the bad weather to clear. You could see Camp 17 (high camp) and part of the summit above us and the weather looked terrible. We had reports down that people were having a bad time up there.

The low pressure was due to stay so we were sitting it out, we had a lot of snowfall at Camp 14 which meant a lot of slopes were prone to avalanches. There was a lot of minor avalanche activity at Camp 14 but towards the end of our stay at Camp 14 the weather forecasts suggested that there would be a small weather window on Tuesday (12th) that they were calling "Magic Tuesday" where there would be an improvement, nevertheless the conditions were still challenging and marginal.

Even if there was a weather window we knew the climb was going to be challenging just to get to Camp 17. The climb from Camp 14 to Camp 17 is one of the toughest parts of the climb as you are carrying a full load. The steepest part of the climb - which is called the Headwall is around 600 metres of vertical climb just to get to the top of the Headwall, then when you get to the top of that you have Washburns Ridge which is one of the most exposed parts of the climb, especially in poor visibility, high winds and with heavy packs on our backs.

On the Sunday before the Magic Tuesday no other teams were moving up to Camp 17 (Camp 17, also known as High Camp is called Camp 17 not because there are 17 Camps but because it is at 17,000ft) because of the conditions, but we were feeling acclimatised, strong and confident and had been moving well as a team. That Sunday (the 10th) we were the only team to move to Camp 17 (High Camp) in pretty poor conditions but we made a safe and informed decision to put ourselves in the best position to capitalise on the Magic Tuesday weather window which everyone was talking about to be in the best position to attempt to summit.

That day turned in to a tough day. It was around a 9 hour climb and as we got close to High Camp the visibility was total whiteout which made navigating the ridge challenging and we arrived at High Camp whilst it was snowing with high winds and still had to put the tent up and build snow walls to protect us from the weather. It was cold too, considerably colder than Camp 14, probably around minus 20 I guess.

On the Monday the weather cleared a little, it was still cold, windy and grim at Camp 17 (5,300m/17,388ft) is really baron, and there were only 3 or 4 tents around us. Most people had already come down from Camp 17 abandoning their summit attempt but a few had stayed. We took the day to rest, eat and were in good spirits and just as the weather started to break we went to bed a little beaten up, but very positive and feeling like we had a lot left in the tank to attempt the summit. We knew we might have to break trail because of the snowfall etc but were really confident but then we woke up on Tuesday morning and it was horrific!

We had over a metre of snowfall in 24 hours at 5,300m, it was very cold, all our sleeping bags were iced up, inside the tent was half a foot of snow and it was by far the worst day with really challenging conditions. We spent most of the morning digging ourselves out of the tent. We knew then that this weather window was not going to happen and we were not going to get the opportunity to summit.

The forecast had completely changed and there was reports of another bad weather system coming in, gusts up to 80mph, more snow, and even colder for the next week.

Conditions were bad even below us, we could see that Washburns Ridge below was a total white out and high winds meant we couldn't go up and attempt to summit but we also couldn't go down either, which was physically and mentally challenging for us.

With all the information on the table, we tried to take advantage of a small break in the weather on Tuesday evening. We packed up camp really quickly and tried to get down to Camp 14 but we got to the top of Washburns Ridge - we had high winds, it was snowing, absolutely no visibility, so we turned back as it wasn't safe to climb down the ridge, so we climbed back up to where we had been camping and had to rebuild snow walls and set up camp all over again.

We woke up Wednesday, conditions had improved to a point but the mountain felt sketchy and unsafe. Conditions were changing quickly and severely and weather reports were not accurate making decision making difficult, so we made the decision on Wednesday to get off the mountain as quickly as we could. We had a long, exhausting 25-hour down climb all the way to base camp to get on to the glacier to get a flight off as quickly as possible.

We left at lunchtime at high camp and went throughout the night, as we knew the mountain would be more stable at night. On our way down to Camp 14 we had learned that the day before on the Tuesday a team that were climbing down to Camp 14 the same day as us hadn't decided to turn back like we did, they continued to climb down the same day, they got caught in an avalanche on the Headwall that we might have got caught in. We passed the remnants of their accident, their rucksacks strewn underneath the Headwall. We also learned that every major slope had avalanched in the last 24 hours. We were getting extra information at Camp 14 as we had been quite isolated at Camp 17, this reaffirmed our decision to try and get off the mountain quickly and safely.

After the 25-hour down climb we flew off the glacier finally on Thursday morning.

On Friday we learned of the news that 4 out of a team of 5 Japanese climbers had sadly died in an avalanche. We were back in Anchorage when we heard the news. The avalanche happened on a slope on Motorcycle Hill, which we had climbed literally to the hour 24 hours before they were on it.

When we were down climbing through it we were climbing down through thigh deep snow.

My overall feeling of the trip it that it was a really challenging one. All things considered I am really grateful and happy to be safely in Boulder now. Of course mountains are extreme environments and are inherently dangerous places in which to try and perform in, never the less, it is really sad and tragic when fatalities happen on mountains.  It's a tough place to earn a living.

Overall Nikki (my climbing partner for this expedition) and I had a fantastic and really productive expedition. It was a really important research and development trip to prepare for my next project. I was testing an MSR tent and some new clothing I have designed with Rab and was also testing different dehydrated food products from different companies for my next project. My tent and Rab gear performed amazingly and the expedition has given me a lot of confidence moving forward...Remember guys it doesn't have to be fun to be fun!

So now I have arrived in Boulder, Colorado this morning (It's boiling hot!) I am spending the next few days with the Rab USA guys and tomorrow night I am talking at one of America's biggest retailers called Neptune in Boulder, talking for Rab as a Rab Ambassador. I am really grateful to Neptune and Rab USA for helping me raise further funds in aid of Marie Curie Cancer Care as well. My climbing partner Nikki has to put up with me for a few more days yet! Nikki is the Marketing Manager for Rab but an awesome climber and friend. We have spent 24 hours together in a tent for 16 days, the equivalent to 7 years of marriage we reckon! Ha! and we are still talking and mates!

I hear the weather has not been that great back home so I will try and bring the Colorado sunshine back with me.

Speak soon guys, sorry the update took so long but it's been an epic week! Thanks for all your messages on Twitter and Facebook. I am going to try and reply to lots of them over the next few days when I can. Rich.