The Storm

The storm has arrived on Denali. We are at the 14,000 feet camp. We had to build snow walls around our tents to shield them from the 50 mph winds and blowing snow. I remembered building snow forts as a kid and they were a lot more fun than this. Although, they were also not built at 14,000 feet in the Arctic. It took us 2.5 hours last night and another 4 hours this morning to finally secure camp from the raging storm. Yesterday, we were in a tough spot as we had carried all but one day worth of food up to our cache spot at 13,600 feet. Our plan was to pick it up on our way to 14,000 feet camp However, we received 18 inches of snow overnight, which made travel very difficult because we had to break trail the whole way. With a storm coming and almost no food left, we had no choice but to continue up the mountain, even in difficult conditions. We worked very hard and had a grueling day. The team moved up 3,000 vertical feet while breaking trail. At the same time, we felt as if we couldn’t breathe, due to the altitude. Once we arrived, we setup camp as described above and crashed into our sleeping bags.

One interesting fact the team was discussing about the route from 11,000 feet to 14,000 feet is the hill you have to climb called Squirrel Hill. I always had wondered about the name but yesterday we were reading Colby Coombs guidebook on Denali. He says, in 1993, a red squirrel was spotted on the hill surviving off dug up climber caches. So yesterday, we were trying to come up with logical explanations as to how a squirrel could end up at 13,000 feet on Mount McKinley. This is, of course, taking into account there are no trees within almost a 100 mile radius. The best we came up with was an eagle or some other bird of prey picked up the squirrel from a tree, was carrying it back to its nest, and dropped it over Mount McKinley. I know this is far fetched but it was the best we came up with. If anyone has a better theory, please email me at climbing@paulelwell.net. I will share the best theory on my website.