by Emma Erwin ‘15.5
June 19th
So tired again & my feet have disintegrated. The inside arches, heels, and toes are all rubbed completely raw. They’re pretty grumpy. Another big night, but not too terribly long. We went back through the lower icefall to the cache and brought it up past the hill of cracks to below the great icefall. Snow/ice conditions were pretty stellar so much less sketchy than yesterday. The hill of cracks lives up to its name for sure: a solid running jump to catapult your body over is required to get past a least a dozen of the crevasses. Not too bad with solid snow, but I’m guessing it gets pretty sketchy when the snow is a little softer (which usually happens around 7am)—luckily we made it through just before then. It’s awesome hiking at night thought – better snow, cooler temperatures, no need to worry about sunburns, and the sky is in a constant state of sunset/sunrise.
June 24th:
Feels like Denali weather now. Cloudy at 3AM when we woke up, and now it’s pretty much whiteout with a decent amount of snowfall and winds. Getting back down the ridge to pick up the cache was actually really fun. The vertical climb down and back up is my favorite. Going back up along the ridge was pretty gnarly though. Plenty of fresh powder render crampons useless, high winds, and next to zero visibility.. plus you can’t hear anything. It wasn’t too bad until I got to a part where I wasn’t clipped into protection and the tracks were completely blown out and it was super steep and powdery and I couldn’t get a good grip on the edge of my crampons or ice ax at all.. So that was pretty scary. But I weaseled my way up and through that one and finally made it back to camp.
June 25th:
Today was quite a day. You have to be completely focused & on your a-game every single step. Cause if you take a misstep and a big fall we’re all dead.
July 3rd: Summit Day
We made it! The view from on top was unreal and almost everyone shed some tears coming around that last ridge. It took a hell of a long days work getting there and back from high camp. We left around 7am, stood on the summit at 7pm, and got back to camp well after 1am. The way up was rather chilly and windy- definitely had every single one of my layers on at the football field and keep them on for the way down, which was not too bad, just long. I was pretty exhausted the whole way – maybe altitude, dehydration, or lack of sleep.. who knows, but we didn’t take many breaks.. It was pretty awesome. Not the clearest of days, but felt pretty cool looking down on the north summit and standing on top of all of the clouds, and all of north America. Like TJ says though, its only because we have stood on the shoulders of giants that we can see further than most.
Coming off the summit ridge Jackson started rapidly exhibiting serious signs of HACE, so we had to get him down fast. He pretty much looked like a drunken toddler and couldn’t function much on his own, so TJ short-leashed him and basically pulled him down to the football field behind me. Everyone was pretty dehydrated and completely exhausted. Conor started hallucinating on Denali pass, but luckily David and TJ kept it together and we all made it down safely.
July 11th:
At Wonder Lake campground and it feels so good.
It is super surreal being here—Finally done! And kind of an overwhelming feeling of safety. No more obstacles to overcome—no crevasses, icefalls, avalanches, glaciers, bears, or raging rivers. Just a bus to catch in the morning.
The skies cleared up today a bit so we get a super sweet view of the mountain. It looks absolutely humongous from down here. Crazy to think we were standing on the tiptop just a week ago. But we worked hard for it—and the hard work paid off. And what’s even better is that we all made it safe and sound back to solid ground. Fingers and toes, too.
No wonder they call it the great one.