It’s taken me a long time to write about our Denali West Buttress trip. I spent so long preparing and training for Denali, that I feel like when we got off the mountain, I didn’t quite know how to focus my energy. And then some various injuries, medical issues, and travel popped up throughout the Summer which diverted my attention from writing. So here we are. The long awaited Denali blog post (or mostly for those who have requested, the long awaited Denali photos). 

I didn’t always know that I wanted to climb Denali, or really that it would be possible for me. My health is often too unpredictable to know what will be possible in a given year. I have a fear of making future plans because I’m afraid I will be let down. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t always had the lingering thought about making it out into the high mountains. With my health being better in recent years, the idea that I could actually pull off a big expedition, felt more realistic. 

When I was living in Boston for college, I got on a kick of reading books about Everest and other big mountains around the world. I was intrigued as to why perfectly healthy individuals would risk their health and lives to climb a mountain. That’s the classic question, right?  I work every day for my health. And my Crohn’s already does enough to derail my progress, what could be worth the additional risk? 

In Boston, I used to ride my bike to and from the public library quite frequently. My insider secret was that riding my bike to a destination kept me from pooping my pants as frequently as standing on the subway or walking did. Ahh, the fun days of having active Crohn’s and a jpouch with limited bowel control…Anyway, I digress. The library was a safe place for me. I could read about the life I wished I was out living, but I had access to a restroom at all times. And reading about others doing extreme things of which I felt I would never be capable, was a nice escape from my reality at the time. 

My other safe place was the gym at Boston University. Since it didn’t feel possible to be out climbing snowy mountains away from the safety of a restroom, I decided that I would read my books while climbing the stair master. So I would go to the library, check out a few books, and head to the gym to “climb.” That way I could picture myself out in the mountains.  But I still had access to the comforts of the climate controlled gym with a pretty nice restroom.

That routine lasted a winter or so until I became disenchanted with the topic. I think I finally came to the realization that I didn’t want to imagine myself doing things. And since I was stuck in a body where it didn’t feel achievable to go on an expedition, I needed to move onto something else. So I moved onto other activities, like riding my bike across the country (because remember, as long as I was riding my bike, I wasn’t pooping my pants). 

A few years passed. I continued on with activities that felt achievable, my health got worse, I had my ostomy surgery, my health got better, I finished school, and I moved to Alaska. I slowly gained back my self-confidence, my sense of adventure, and the idea that anything was possible with the right strategies in place. And I spent the last 6-7 years learning to downhill and backcountry ski, climb, explore backcountry terrain, and navigate glaciers, so that anything really was possible because I had put in the work.

Denali was always there, but there was never any sense of urgency to climb it. And then a couple of years ago, Tyler suggested we make an attempt. We had been to the Alaska Range before, and we felt ready in the sense of familiarity with the terrain. But I was only a year out from my most recent ostomy revision, and I didn’t feel ready physically. So we pushed the idea to this year. And we finally made it happen. 

I’m planning on writing a separate post about all my training and preparation that led to the trip because there was a lot, especially with an ostomy and Crohn’s. But for now, I’d like to share how the trip went. 

Spoiler alert…we didn’t summit. But we experienced what we set out to experience and we made it down safely. 

So let’s start from the beginning. 

May 15: Basecamp to 7,800′ 

On May 15th, Tyler and I woke up at 4am because we wanted to be in Talkeetna when Talkeetna Air Taxi opened. We were anxious to begin our trip. We had a sleepy drive up to Talkeetna, but the weather was looking good as we made our way north. We spent all morning and early afternoon hanging out, waiting for our flight. We met a team of six guys from New York. A couple of them had climbed the mountain twenty years prior and were climbing it again to support their younger team members. I also chatted with a gentleman on the porch at TAT who was waiting for his family to return from a flight seeing trip. He was excited to hear more about Denali and the adventure that awaited. 

Finally, around noon, we flew to Denali basecamp in the Cessna “Foxy” which I had the pleasure of almost throwing up in a year ago on the way to the Buckskin Glacier. Luckily, this year, I went unscathed. It was a fun flight because after two trips into the range, the terrain felt quite familiar and we were able to scout out areas for future trips. 

After landing and checking in with the basecamp manager, we got to work digging our cache (a snowy hole in the ground where you bury things you will need later) and organizing our packs and sleds. I knew there would be a lot of people on the route, but I felt overwhelmed with the amount of activity at basecamp and felt the urge to get out of there as quickly as possible. Looking back, it probably would have been better to stay the night at basecamp and start early in the morning because of our 4am wakeup. But we made the decision to push to 7,800′ camp. It was a long day, single carrying our gear. We each started with 163 pounds of gear (the joys of specific foods to decrease my risk for bowel obstructions and, of course, ostomy supplies), and I imagine after caching at basecamp, we probably were each in the mid 150s on that first day. 

It was slow going and we didn’t arrive into camp until 9pm after leaving basecamp around 4pm. We moved into a pre-dug camp so that we would have less setup to do. But given that it was our first time establishing camp on the trip, it took us until 1am to set up, eat dinner, make water, and go to bed. The winds picked up at night and we were in a full-on wind storm for the next 16 hours. The snow drifts did cover our tent vestibules which required a lot of digging out at night, but I was happy it wasn’t a full on snow storm like the Pika glacier a few years ago. Because of the high winds and our level of fatigue early on, we decided to take a rest day. Moving up the glacier and being blasted by wind all day didn’t feel like a good way to start our trip. 

May 16: Rest Day

We had a nice rest day and the teams we met at basecamp the day before made their way into camp throughout the day. We spent the day hydrating, fueling, and organizing our cache to carry up the glacier the next day. 

May 17: Cache Day to 10,200′

We spent the day moving our first cache up to 10,200′. Most of the day we were traveling with a group of PJs and the team of six we met on the first day. It was a beautiful blue-bird day, which ended up being the theme of our trip. It was also very warm. I was wishing I had worn lighter base layers as I was down to very few layers while attempting to keep my skin protected from the sun. We thought about caching at 9,600′, but we were feeling good, so we kept going to 10,200.’ The way back down to 7,800’ felt very freeing without all of our gear weighing us down. We practiced a variety of methods for towing our sleds and then ultimately carried our sleds back to camp strapped on our packs. 

May 18: 7,800′ to 11,000′

We made the push to 11,000′ camp. This day felt a bit harder than the cache day. That’s how the days moving camp always felt. But we seemed to be on the same timeline as the others that we had been with throughout the trip. The final push to 11,000′ camp felt a bit deceptive, but when we got there, it was an amazing experience (other than someone in the team ahead of us almost losing his sled down the mountain). Everyone was chatting and hanging out, and camp was looking really fresh and lively  which was very different than on our way back down. We moved into another pre-dug camp, but decided to set up our cook tent the next day when the guys behind us moved out of their camp, that way we could just take over their cook tent spot. We met quite a few different groups on this day and enjoyed the view as we started to envision the higher terrain of the mountain. 

May 19: Cache Retrieval

This was a really nice day with a lovely ski down to 10,200’ to retrieve our cache. We felt like we were back to camp in no time with plenty of time to rest and prepare to put in a cache up high the next day. We spent the afternoon checking gear and systems for the upward move.

May 20: Cache to 13,500′

The guided groups were up early and the line up Motorcycle Hill was quite long, so we waited until things quieted down. We’ve also had plenty of experiences freezing our butts off in the early hours of the day, so decided to skip that experience. Tyler led up Motorcycle Hill at a nice pace, despite how long it felt. It definitely felt longer and steeper the first time up compared to the next day when we moved camp. When we stopped to rest at the top of the hill, we met a group of three guys from Fairbanks, one of whom had climbed the mountain a few years back. We then transitioned, and I led up Squirrel Hill and the Polo Field. I felt pretty tired by the time we reached the Polo Field and the flatter terrain was a welcome site. After a rest with the Fairbanks crew, we all made our way up to Windy Corner. It was beautiful with hardly any wind and we took another break before making our way around the corner. Tyler led us around Windy Corner. There was a small amount of blue ice, but not as much as those who were descending had experienced a few weeks prior. We finally made it to the 13,500’ cache site and took turns digging and hydrating while a guided group practiced their ascending and running belay techniques in the background. We also decided to ditch our skis at the cache because the skiing down low was no good and we figured it would be a waste of energy if we had to carry them back down. The climb down went very quickly and we worked on organizing ourselves for the next day. 

May 21: 11,000′-14 Camp

This was physically the hardest day of the trip for me. We left a giant cache at 11,000′ camp because we realized we were carrying too much. We wanted to lighten our loads to make it easier to get up Squirrel Hill and around Windy Corner since we heard some others had been having difficulty. I led Motorcycle Hill to Windy Corner and was feeling great. Tyler was a bit slower in the morning. This was the beginning of a lot of frustrations. I find it interesting how I process emotions when I’m in exposed terrain and working harder than I typically work in my everyday life. I became annoyed by our pace and felt like my hands were colder than I wanted them to be as we slowly made our way up to Windy Corner behind some different groups. I was definitely not a considerate partner in those moments (sorry Tyler). Before going around the corner, I lifted Tyler’s sled and realized how heavy it was and then I felt bad about the mood I had been in earlier. So we decided to swap sleds and he led around Windy Corner with my sled. As soon as I moved out onto the traverse and the sled swung down below me, I felt like my back was going to split in two from the load. And it only got worse from there. I was cursing the fact that I have to carry more gear and heavier food because of my ostomy. I felt all of the emotions about my body. I think the physical load really ate at me mentally that day. I definitely have a lingering fear of re-injuring my back again or developing a parastomal hernia. And I had a lot of low moments as we made our way up to 14 camp. Realistically, that’s an understatement for how I felt and acted (Tyler can attest to that). I was so over pulling my sled when we finally made it to 14 camp. Tyler kindly put up with my negativity and ended up finding us an amazing camp site where we spent the next chunk of time on the mountain. It’s nice to have such a level-headed partner when my emotions are running high. 

May 22: Cache Retrieval

I felt instantaneously better after resting the night and part of the morning.  We had a much better time hiking down to 13,500’ to retrieve our cache, which included our skis. We were back up to camp fairly quickly and had a nice day building up our camp walls a bit more. Weather was still looking good with talks of high winds/storms possibly coming in a few days (this never really happened).  

May 23: Rest Day

This was our second rest day of the trip and a very welcome one at that. The British Royal Army (who had been at the earlier camps with us) made their way into camp and set up right in front of our campsite. We enjoyed watching how such a large group organized themselves. And how they survived on pallets of Mountain House meals throughout the trip. We also took a quick trip to the Edge of the World, but it was too cloudy to see anything. And we finished the day by reviewing our ascending skills and preparing for the fixed lines the next day. 

May 24: Acclimatization Day

Our plan was to put in a cache on the 16 ridge, but the morning was the coldest we had experienced and we had some stove troubles while making breakfast and water. We figured that if our stoves weren’t working, the trip was done, so we spent the rest of the morning cleaning and servicing the stoves. Then we took a trip up to 15,500’ to acclimatize. We had a nice slow hike up the lower headwall and sat and took in the scenery for a bit before descending back to camp. 

May 25: Cache to 16,200′

It was another beautiful day and our stoves were working fine, so we made the decision to put in our cache on the 16 ridge. I felt pretty good on the climb up to the fixed lines. It’s definitely slow going at altitude and takes longer than you think it might, but we finally made it to the base of the fixed lines. We got ourselves organized and headed up. I led the way up and despite having to stop quite frequently to catch my breath, especially when it got icy, I enjoyed the challenge and change of pace compared to trudging up the lower glacier and snowy slope of the headwall. The fixed lines were pretty quiet and everything went smoothly up to the ridge. Once we hit the ridge, the wind blasted us (or so we thought until we came up again to retrieve our cache). A group of British guys, (who had the fun expedition name “The Bog Trotters”) who had been our neighbors at 11 camp were already up on the ridge putting in their cache, so we said hello and started chipping away at the ice and snow. It took quite a while to dig out a solid spot to put in our food and fuel for the higher mountain. The snow was much more compacted and icy from the wind and weather compared to the softer lighter snow lower down. We made our way back down the fixed lines and the rest of the headwall in a fog as the clouds rolled in and out around 14 camp. We met some new neighbors once we were back at camp and enjoyed chatting with them while they set up their camp. We also met a guy from Mexico who had sumitted the West Rib the day before and went on to make two more summits while we were at 14 camp. He was really humble and came to our camp for the park service weather report over the radio each evening. 

May 26: Rest Day

We had a really nice morning and I was looking forward to creating a plan to continue on to 17 camp and the higher mountain. Our friend from Anchorage and his team also made it into 14 camp and it was fun to compare stories and see familiar Anchorage faces. As the morning progressed, I asked Tyler when he thought we should move up the mountain. The weather system that we thought had been looming, moved out further into the week per the weather report. It seemed like we would have a clear opportunity to continue up. But as I talked to Tyler, it turned out that he was having a harder time with the altitude than I thought. He was having difficulty breathing at night and his cognition was slower than he would prefer to continue into the higher more technical terrain. Ultimately, he didn’t feel that he could make the move to 17 camp. I went through a roller coaster of emotions, processing the fact that we would not be continuing on toward the top of the mountain. It was nice to have a cook tent and sleeping tent to have some space from each other to process our feelings. Going on a big expedition with a partner and no other team members definitely creates a different dynamic than a trip with friends. And that means there are a lot more layers to work through (for better or worse) when it comes to decision making, especially related to risk taking. After spending a lot of solo time during the day, we walked over and had dinner with our friends at their camp and then headed back to our tent for some welcome sleep. 

May 27: Cache Retrieval

It was Tyler’s birthday and despite waking up sad that we weren’t moving camp to 17,000′, I made the decision to enjoy the day and be proud of what we had accomplished. We celebrated Tyler’s birthday and then decided to try to do a day trip to 17 camp, so that we could at least experience climbing the ridge and get an idea of what the higher terrain looked like. This was one of the most fun days of the trip. We no longer had to commit mental energy to managing logistics and how to best organize ourselves for upward progression. We made our way back up the headwall and fixed lines, and got to experience the classic fixed line junk show. A group ahead of me was trying to climb under the lines, people were climbing up the down line while groups were trying to descend, the lines were super crowded with groups bailing from the ridge because of wind, and a gentleman in a guided group was having a difficult time staying upright. Overall, everyone made it up and down okay, but it was definitely an interesting experience. When we topped out on the fixed lines, we looked to our left and saw 40 or so people huddled in the rocks, deciding whether it was worth it to continue up the ridge on such a frigid and blustery day. Tyler and I joined the crowd to rest and figure out our next steps. We figured many of the guided groups would turn around as those before them had, but most actually decided to continue on. And that helped make our decision. We did not want to be stuck going slow on the ridge behind so many people. And despite our optimism, Tyler was still having difficulty with the altitude, so the risk of frostbite or worse was not worth seeing 17 camp. I dug out our cache, loaded my pack, and we headed back down to camp. Once we descended 600 feet or so and took a rest, Tyler was feeling much better. We sat and enjoyed the view once more as we knew it would be our last view from such a high vantage point on the trip. Back in camp, we organized ourselves and enjoyed our last night at 14. 

May 28: 14 Camp to 11,000′

We spent the morning taking down camp and then traveling around to give away as much food and fuel as we could to lighten our loads. We met an awesome group from Estonia who cleaned out most of our extra food sled. They had accidentally left their breakfast at their 13,500’ cache so they were ecstatic to have some different food to eat. There were a few other groups also descending that day, so there were a lot of trades happening across camp. Tyler took the opportunity to ski the lower portion of the headwall since we lugged our skis all the way up to 14 camp and hadn’t used them. He said the snow quality was just as it looked, garbage. We then trudged over to the poop crevasse to crevasse the last 7 or so days of poop (video to come). And then we headed down. It was sad leaving 14 camp. Not only because there would be no more opportunities to move up higher, but because we had enjoyed chatting, listening, and learning from others and their adventures. Watching some very bold individuals ski some really wind affected icy lines, talking to other incredible individuals who had already summited and were making second or third attempts via various routes (like the team from Mexico), talking to others like us who had worked hard to make it that far, and being in such a beautiful environment is a hard experience to match. 

But that sadness was quickly pushed away as the much anticipated torture of pulling a fully loaded sled down the mountain began. I had anticipated being able to ski down, but with the crappy conditions above Windy Corner, we made the decision to hike down. Windy Corner felt like a breeze on the way down compared to going up. We met up with the Fairbanks crew again at the top of the Polo Field. One of their team members had summited, but the other two had made it a little above Denali Pass and Zebra Rocks before turning around. We enjoyed chatting with them and sharing in the sled wrangling misery down to Motorcycle Hill and then to 11 camp. I’d like to say that after letting my sled drag me down the mountain while it rolled over on itself a million times, and trialing a bunch of different rigging systems, I figured out the right setup to avoid that for the future, but I can’t. One of the guys we met said that he had lucked into the right rigging on this trip, but had a terrible time on his first trip, so he also didn’t have any advice. Maybe a lighter load would have helped. We were pretty jealous of those who were skiing back down after caching at 13,500′ because the snow from the top of the Polo Field down to 11 camp looked amazing. We were just happy to have made it to camp to sleep for the night. 11 camp was definitely not as lively as it was on the way up. There were fewer groups and everything was melting out from the increasing heat on the lower glacier. We set up a minimal camp and cooked outside while retrieving our heavy cache. 

May 29: 11,000 to Basecamp

We were excited to finally put our skis on to ski down to basecamp. I promptly wiped out upside down as my sled got ahead of me, but enjoyed some nice turns lower down near 10,200’. And then it became slow going. I did not want to ski out of control so I purposely created a strong brake on my sled. But this made for a long day back down to 7,800’ camp because my sled moved so slowly. At 7,800’ we re-rigged everything, stopped to chat with some other folks we had met at 11,000′ on the way up (2 of them were headed to the Cassin and one was headed back to basecamp), and we made our way toward Heartbreak Hill. The lower glacier was extremely hot and melting out and we lost the main track for a while as we wandered around various crevasses. Despite feeling confident with my ability to navigate crevassed glaciated terrain after years of developing my navigation skills, I was hitting a low point in the day because of the heat, fatigue, and wear and tear on my body from the weeks prior. The human poop we passed on the side of the trail near Heartbreak Hill definitely didn’t help with the mood. Tyler crushed a mini Coke he had acquired from our Estonian friends at 14 camp and he took the lead up Heartbreak Hill. It took forever and I was so happy to see the tents of basecamp as I crested the hill. Tyler snapped a photo that he said was the happiest I had looked on the trip (I beg to differ). He was a little premature in his statement because we proceeded to meet two guys from Truckee who were flying out with Sheldon air service, so they gave us their cheese burgers and some drinks they had left over in their basecamp cache. We enjoyed our burgers while we watched all of the individuals fresh to the glacier prepare for their upward journey.

May 30: Flight Out

We slept well and awoke to a basecamp full of individuals who had made it into camp super early in the morning and bivvied out. Since we had been into camp the night before, we were first on the list for the flight out. We enjoyed the chatter and tales of the mountain before the TAT fleet came to pick everyone up. We loaded up our plane, hopped in, and took off for Talkeetna. Once were were back in Talkeetna we packed the car and headed to the ranger station to debrief. We did our debrief with a kid from the Seattle area who had summited solo in an impressive amount of time (the ranger specifically asked him not to share his trip length on the internet because it is not the norm). We had almost perfect weather and conditions were right for fast summits. After sharing our insights, we got some food in town to begin our slow re-integration back into normal society. 

Denali was incredible, full of many emotions, and difficult to describe. 

I am incredibly grateful that my ostomy was fine. My greatest fear was a bowel obstruction leading to complications. I only had one day where I was nervous I had a bowel obstruction, but that resolved and I had a plan of action in case something did happen. I had some skin issues around my stoma, but was able to manage them okay.

We made it down safely and fairly healthy (I had a small knee injury on the way down). The trip didn’t break our relationship ;). We  also had the most amazing weather. We met some incredible individuals and experienced the full beauty of the mountain. This blog post definitely doesn’t do it justice, but hopefully it gives you some insight into what it’s like to go on a classic Denali West Buttress trip.

I’m still not sure I am fully re-integrated into daily life. My leg healed with a couple of weeks of rest. I experienced the post-expedition blues. I distracted myself by traveling. I got myself into whitewater paddle boarding to allow my body to rest from mountain sports. I injured my knee from paddle boarding. That healed.  I distracted myself with more traveling. And I’m slowly figuring out what’s next. 

Denali was not a life changing experience and I didn’t have any great epiphanies. It was simply a beautiful and unforgettable trip. What I took away from the expedition is the solidification of something I’ve always known. My ostomy and my Crohn’s Disease are not barriers to accomplishing anything I want in life.