Denali : Dangerous Delayed Dream

​Building our camp in an emergency, it was the worst storm my guide with decades of experience and 23 Denali climbs had ever seen. There had been well over a week's worth of weather delays. Altitude was crushing my ability to breath, and HAPE was killing me. High Altitude Pulmonary Edema had caused my lungs to fill with fluid, drowning in the air, my blood oxygen concentration fell to 50%. There were non-stop logistical problems to the point that I wondered if people I had paid were actively working against me, and my feet were bloody shredded hunks, with each step causing enough pain to make me almost vomit. People kept getting swallowed into functionally infinitely deep crevasses, or were getting crippling injuries from falls and frostbite. It was 20 years to the month since I'd first set out for Alaska, and every time I'd been I'd almost died. Would this finally close the nagging thorn in the side of my psyche, or would it end like it started two decades prior, stranded on an Alaskan mountain? I was climbing Denali.


At 20,300 feet, I'd climbed higher, and at 3 to 4 weeks I'd slogged longer, but I didn't know if I'd done a trek or climb more grueling. Many climbers describe Denali as more physically demanding and difficult than Everest, with many would-be 7-summit completionists putting Denali off until the end. The National Park Service recommends that you are at least “able to carry a 70 lb backpack while pulling an 80 lb sled on mostly moderate terrain 8 hours at a time. In addition to the climbing and carrying of heavy loads, there is a lot of work involved with building camps on Denali”, to say nothing of the trudging up with ice axes or 14 hour summit days. In Harry Kikstra's book “Denali” he says “Some say, only half jokingly that Everest is good preparation for climbing Denali. The trail is beautiful but monotonous, you see no vegetation for weeks, you must endure cold, discomfort, high winds, carry heavy loads, and melt every drop of water you drink. You cross huge crevasses, you go from boiling hot to freezing in moments, there are no porters or mules; you have a full pack and a sled to pull, you must put up a tent in sometimes extreme conditions and build snow walls around it and go out in the night to clear snow from it. Due to the latitude it's harder to climb than mountains of comparable height. At 4000m on Denali there's less pressure, and therefore oxygen, that at 4000m on Kilimanjaro. Overnight temperatures can go below -40*.”


If I was going to have the highest chance of success I would need to go about this with absolute seriousness, with proper planning, study, and preparation. Immediately setbacks began. COVID happened, permits backlogged, and the only way to guarantee a permit was to get on a climbing team with a company. Teams needed validated experience and all mine had been solo. I would need some verified team training. Then my jaw and teeth were shattered. What started as a planned challenge with an estimated total cost of less than 10,000$ ballooned to 4 years of work, paperwork, training, and between 20 – 30,000$ USD. I had done everything one could do to succeed, but it seemed like the universal push-back only escalated.


When I had first started planning for Denali I had a couple of roommates and no cat, 4 years later none of that was the case. I needed to secure some kind of security for my place while I was gone. I had finished my mandatory training with the company I would be using, RMI, by training on Mount Rainier. Then I got an email from the company saying I wasn't eligible for Denali because my group on Rainier didn't summit, so they wanted me to pay a bunch of money and “try again”. This reeked of corporate money grubbing to me. I wasn't going to delay my Denali climb another year just so the guides could decide not to summit again, and repeat. I went straight to the head of the company and he said it was some kind of mistake and of course I could join the climb.


Now that I was accepted on the team I needed to have all fees, plane tickets, insurance, etc., paid by the first week of January. Of course the first week of January the hot water heater AND the clothes washer broke. Since my roommates had very recently moved out, this hit financially even harder than it normally would. It was definitely the fault of the hot water heater guy. I had a river running through the house for a couple of weeks, and they had to come back 5 times to fix it! I also needed to get a medical waiver signed, and even though I actively tried to get it signed via the proper channels, nobody would because they “didn't understand it”. I wound up having a buddy who's a head nurse sign it for me. I also renewed my Wilderness First Responder certification during this time. The day before I left for my class and it's test, I got a notice to call the instructor. Speaking with her she informed me that they had just changed the national standards... 2 days prior! She said “...you'll be the first person to do this. I don't really know what to expect, you're the guinea pig. We'll see how it goes...” Of course I would be the first and the standards changed right before I got there. It went how most anyone would expect, but I passed. Then I tried to buy some plane tickets back to Alaska. Why should that be hard? I tried to buy full featured airline tickets, but since there was no definite return date it was recommended I just get a one way ticket and go from there. I got what I thought was a great deal from “Expedia” and American Airlines...


Getting all my paperwork and gear together turned out to be way more of a hassle than it should have been. Aside from needing to lobby to get on the team, I also had paperwork troubles with the company. After filling out all my forms I got an email that said “In the last few months we have made some changes to our system, and there are some forms that have been lost.” They lost forms because they had just switched computer systems. From the guide company's website there is a link for equipment rental to a sister company on the same campus. The list for rental gear is auto-populated for the expedition you are on, with free shipping advertised everywhere. I rented all the items I needed, including the boots I would need. A couple months later I received an email from them telling me when they shipped the items they would tell me how much shipping would cost. I asked about all the “Free Shipping” banners and they said that's only if you BUY the gear. I said I was on the rentals page, and he said that's just how it is. I asked why they didn't charge me shipping at checkout and his response was “because we haven't shipped them yet, so how do we know how much to charge?” (which is dumb). I asked when I would get my gear since I was anticipating things going wrong. He said they wouldn't ship it until 2 weeks before I left. What about if I needed to change sizes or there was an issue in transit? That left zero wiggle room for corrections. “Company policy” is all I heard back, maybe they could ship a week earlier but that's it. Awhile later I get an email about sunglasses saying I ordered two pairs of glacier sunglasses and they wanted to know if that was correct. Well, it's YOUR packing list, and it said 2 pairs were needed so that's what I ordered, you tell me if that's right. A month later I get an email saying “we noticed you rented boots from us. Unfortunately they are not suitable for Denali and you will not be allowed to climb without the proper boot. Our website should not have allowed you to rent those. Our rental shop currently doesn't have a boot suitable for Denali. All our customers typically have their own boots for the climbs. We do have boots you can buy though. Glad I caught this when I did.” Glad you caught it when you did!? How about you catch it months ago when I placed my order! The list auto-populated so of course I would rent them. Every big climb I'd done I had rented boots, including from this company on Rainier. Now I was screwed. I needed boots ASAP. The ones he was trying to sell me were almost 2,000$ I hadn't budgeted for. I scoured the internet but couldn't find them cheaper. After receiving an email from the head guide on the expedition saying “let me know if you have any questions or concerns” I emailed the guide back for advice, but I never got a response. I wound up needing to buy them from the rental company, but was able to finagle “free shipping” by including them with my rental gear to save a few hundred bucks. Though I was reminded that I would still need to pay to ship my rentals back. My gear showed up about a week before I left. I noticed the item I rented, “snow shoes – trekking poles included” , had no trekking poles. I emailed about this and the guy said “didn't send it, most people arlready (sic) have them. My bad on not checking with you first.” Yeah, you're bad. I had been dealing with the same idiot this whole time, and he had to be the owner's nephew or something. It would have been all the same if I got charged for not returning them. I then asked this guy about my boots, since I only had them for a week before I left I wanted to make sure they were ok. I said “ I just wanted advice on the fit of the boots that were sent. They seem a bit snug as I have kind of wide feet and am concerned about them swelling as I ascend, but I don't know how snug they should be. They are a full size larger than my normal everyday boots as you recommended and just wanted to make sure they will do for Denali without likely complications.” He emailed his boss who assured me they were fine, and told me as long as I drank enough water my feet wouldn't swell. Sounded odd, but they were the subject matter experts directly affiliated with the climbing company, so I took them at their word. Plus, it was really too late to change anything anyway.


Meanwhile, during these cursed preparations, life continued to crack on. I went to some weddings, I met up with George in Chicago and went to my first Ninja gym, and my jaw “healed”, so I was cleared for exercise. A week after getting cleared I was engaged in a 10 man MMA Kudo fight challenge in order to finally properly join the federation after Azuma Jukucho's death. I then took on a short term student for a couple of months which helped add to the Denali fund. To add as much as possible, aside from everything else I was doing, I also had a few more acting/modeling gigs, and kept working at my buddy's valet company. Of course getting hit with a “once in a generation” bomb cyclone slowed the jobs down. The inside of the house I was living in was full of ice! I had heating, which I turned up to try and keep pipes from bursting, but the inside windows, door hinges, and door knobs were still covered in ice! Of course once the city finally thawed out I kind of wished it hadn't. The state and it's cities kept making national news. A recycling plant exploded into toxic fires containing asbestos and raged for days forcing thousands to evacuate. I wasn't forced to leave, but the prospect of getting out of the area was a tantalizing proposition.


Working downtown, I had front row seats to the city's continued worsening condition. In one day there was a bum stabbing another bum in the head, a guy dangling from the 4th floor balcony of the “mall”, and a guy pulled a gun out in the food court while another bum ran around flipping over chairs and stealing people's jackets and food off their tables. Another day saw knife wielding crackheads robbing people in the parking garage while another nutbar stalked one of my coworkers to a bar and started banging on the window with a gun. One of these crazy people smashed a guy's head in with a brick and then came by while we were working and started stabbing our drinking bottles with a knife. His brain was scrambled eggs so there was no reasoning with him. The owner of the restaurant we were working at wanted us to call the cops. The cops came, put the guy in cuffs, and then let him go... there's nowhere to take these people in the city. Just some normal days in the area.


During prom season there was a “teen takeover” riot. People dancing on cars and damaging them, massive groups of fist fights, and a kid with an AR in the parking garage we use for work, which caused the city to pull cops from all surrounding communities and to have to put our restaurants on lock-down while the situation was dealt with. The following weekend was JUST kids throwing milkshakes at a wedding party from the roof of an 8 story parking garage. I say just because sometimes it's beer bottles that get hucked off, or even 50+ pound electric scooters. The stress from working in this environment builds up and it does begin to wear on people. One of the valet guys finally snapped and got in a fist fight with an Uber driver in the road in front of the most famous restaurant in the state. The Ubers in the area do tend to have it coming, but not like that. My last day working valet before I left for Alaska, I had to pepper spray a raging lunatic as he tried to assault a restaurant manager and get in the restaurant. A couple of mentally unstable individuals were playing tag in the road and throwing full beer cans into traffic. One of them started to have a freak out and my coworker and former roommate grabbed his baseball bat he kept on hand for what I call “pest control”, and as the mad man lunged in to what seemed a few inches from my face as he screamed obscenities, I quickly blinded him and shoved him back to get him away from the manager and entrance, but not before he could spit into the manager's eye and mouth. The shove I gave may have been more of an iron palm strike as the guy went back way further than I intended and into the street. My friend with the bat said it sounded like I hit the guy back to 1985. The man he was playing tag with had just been arrested the day before causing the shutdown of the parking garage we use. As the cops where busy with that looney, a second city deployment arrived to drag a dead woman's body off the side walk 10 feet away from us. Before they had even left with the lady's body an older couple came in to the restaurant atrium to hide from a naked raving skinhead with nazi tattoos who seemed like he had smoked some spicy bath salts that disagreed with him. All that in about 20 minutes. Just another lazy Sunday afternoon. I wasn't going to miss any of this.


Right before I left I got an email from the climbing company saying I needed to submit all these pre-departure health forms that were time sensitive and super important. The forms never showed up for me to fill out, and it turned out to be an auto generated email from the COVID times that they never turned off or warned people about. The day before I left I just happened to check my email and see my flight had been canceled and re-booked without anyone notifying me. The email I got was an “early check-in” notice, but the check in was for a completely different flight at a completely different time. I had no notice otherwise!


This was a big deal since I needed to be at Anchorage at a specific day and time, otherwise I'd miss the rendezvous for the shuttle to Talkeetna and I'd likely be screwed. I'd booked my flight so I would arrive with leeway in the very likely event the flights had trouble. Now my time table was off and I wouldn't make it. If I hadn't happened upon that email and showed up at the airport “on time” I would have already been screwed. Everything was already going wrong and I hadn't even left yet! Expedia told me to call American Airlines, and American Airlines told me to call Expedia! No one could give me a reason why my flight had been canceled or even why no one had notified me. I had even purchased the highest level of flight insurance through them, and it got me nothing. They did offer to put me on a flight the following day, which would have caused me to miss the rally time by a full day. Then they offered to put me on a flight for the day before... which was the same day I was talking to them. It was already gone! They may as well have offered to put me on a flight yesterday! Eventually I found a flight with a connection in Dallas Texas that would get me there on time... supposedly. They booked me on the flight with no seat confirmation, but assured me I would get on because I had a confirmation number.. I had actual seats last time and still didn't get on! Even though I had layers on layers of travel insurance they assured me there was nothing that could be done regarding anything at all in the way of dealing with being inconvenienced, and I would still be charged 220$ for 3 checked bags and not be able to pick my seats even though I'd ALREADY PAID to pick my seats! 4 years and COVID may have changed the world, but everything seemed the same level of crappy to me. Everywhere I turned it seemed nothing worked and people couldn't handle their business. At least I had a reliable ride to the airport. They had even had their car's oil changed the day before to mitigate any potential problems. Aside from the mechanic being hours late to the appointment, they forgot to put the oil cap back on! If my ride hadn't caught it a few hours later when the car was smoking, we might have not made it to the airport! Thankfully I did make it to the airport, though my boarding passes printed off blank from the kiosk for some reason. Not even the attended who printed them knew what was going on, so they had to get someone to do some kind of override to get some boarding passes. I got to TSA and they confiscated my small jar of peanut butter. I was already exhausted, I just wanted this thing to be over. Successfully over. After 4 years, over 20,000$ and constant stress caused by me making an effort to do everything right and nobody else could be bothered, I didn't know if I had it in me to go through the logistics to try again. Win or lose, this would likely be my only chance to climb Denali. If this went bad it wouldn't be because of something I did. I refuse to look back and think “if only I had done this or that”. I've never had a regret and I wasn't going to start here! I had done everything right, the rest was out of my hands.
The flight was, of course, uncomfortable. I was for some reason sat in the middle of an Indian family of 4 with a fussy toddler. Mid-flight the mother pulls out a bunch of Tupperware full of home made Indian food, complete with curry and naan and paper plates. Then this family proceeds to have a picknick on the plane that smells like diarrhea. Sure, when I was younger I snuck a whole foil wrapped rotisserie chicken and a durian into a movie theater, but this was like both of those at once, times 4 people and a toddler, trapped in a flying tube. Meanwhile, I can't get a jar of peanut butter on the plane. A woman sitting behind me ordered champagne and the attendant forgot her card reader so just gave her the bottle for free... is it possible for someone one row behind you to be on a completely separate flight? I had a 3 hour layover in Texas and then a stuffy 6 hour flight to Anchorage.


I arrived 16 hours before the rally time. It was as close as I could get, and better early than late when planning for airline incompetence. I just slept in the airport. I had spent so many nights of my life sleeping in the Anchorage airport, if you added them all up it would equal about 2 weeks! Two weeks of my life living in the Anchorage airport. This time was a little different though. I was arriving basically in the opposite condition of 20 years earlier. I had 4 huge bags of supplies and gear, I was now old and had ample training and experience. A far cry from a kid with just a Navy bag and a karate uniform... or so I thought. I was still just as broke though.


I've always hated traveling according to someone else's packing list. I understand the necessity for it, but it always seems like way too much stuff, too much money for the stuff, and yet somehow like I'll be missing something. In this case, better over prepared than under. I would not have a repeat of Aconcagua. I wanted earned success.


After my 16 hour airport nostalgia trip, the group coalesced at the baggage carousel at 1pm, and we hopped our charter shuttle for a 3 hour ride to Talkeetna, the gateway town to Denali. On the way we stopped at a grocery where I procured a coconut with hopes of getting it to the summit and chopping it open. Arriving in Talkeetna we went to the “Swiss Alaska Inn” where we would stay for the night. All the rooms where doubles, but because there were 7 climbers on the team they found the odd one out a single room. The guides asked who wanted it, and suggested we arm wrestle for it. I said I was in, and stepped up to duel, but nobody challenged me so I got the room by default. After we dropped our gear we all went out to dinner at the pub to get to know the group. The group mixed pretty well. There were 7 climbers, a head guide, and 2 assistant guides for a total of 10 people on the team. The head guide was 49 or 50 years old and had guided 23 professional expeditions up Denali summiting 19 of those times. The assistant guides were women in their mid 20s, and the clients were all men ranging from 36 to 65, with only myself and 2 other guys being younger than 50. In fact, three of us were all the same age, the youngest of the clients. There were 4 birthdays during the climb, mine included. The group was as diverse as the age range, with a 65 year old retired nuclear submarine engineer who competed in iron man races, A banker, a So-Cal insurance guy, a retired archaeologist from Arizona who hiked a lot, A geologist from Nevada who worked in a copper mine, and a guy of Indian decent born in England, raised in So-Cal and currently living in Thailand working for wind farmers and teaching wing-suiting in his free time. The latter guy, Rich, and I became the closest due to our age and nonsense life styles.


The next day I got up at 5, did my morning exercises and met everyone at the airplane hanger for our all day gear check explosion. We sorted and packed, getting ready to fly out the next day. Once we had our gear cleared we were released to spend the rest of the day taking in the town of Talkeetna. Talkeetna is a small town with artsy old west vibes. It is an unincorporated municipality that has no official mayor so they chose a cat to be their mayor. He lives in front of the general store. The buildings are small and sparse with wide roads. People dueling in the streets wouldn't look out of place. If you aren't there for Denali, I'm not sure why you would be there. It's been described as “a drinking town with a climbing problem”. The following day we were to fly out. I got up at 5:30, did my morning stuff and reported to the airport hanger ready to rock and roll. We did neither. Snow came in and we wound up stuck in the plane hanger all day waiting for the “go/no-go”. There are only a handful of planes that can make the hour-ish flight from Talkeetna to Denali, land on the glacier, and return, and the planes are old. They aren't made anymore so they've just been doing maintenance on these 5 seaters since the 1950s. They do the job, but they fly line-of-sight, so if you can't see where you're going, you don't go. Fine, except mountain weather is notoriously bad, Alaska weather is notoriously bad, and Alaskan Mountain weather is the worst kind of gamble. You don't know what it's really GOING to do, you only know what it's doing right at the moment. So you wait. And wait. And wait. We wound up pushed back another day. While we were there a second team from the same climbing company, RMI, arrived since we were supposed to have already left. This one had Pete and Henry on it as guides, w ho were some of the guys I trained with on Mt. Rainier. Henry introduced me to someone as a “global martial arts adventurer type guy.” I'll take it! The group went out that night for beers, and we went to bed at 10pm.


The next day I was up at 5 for my morning exercises and then off to the airplane hanger to wait on standby all day. To add insult to injury any nights stayed at the inn, outside of the first night, weren't included in our fees so we were responsible for them. Sine I was the guy with the single room I wound up paying more than double what everyone else did! I hadn't realized this would be the case or I wouldn't have jumped at the chance to take it. There was more delays, and we were pushed back again. The record-breaking weather and the inn owner were boning me on time AND money. I did get to learn about a fun Talkeetna tradition where apparently if someone dies in the winter and the ground is too hard to bury them the locals put them in a truck and they go on a pub crawl with the body so everyone can take shots with them. In a town with a cat for a mayor I don't see why not. Some of the people may be way more fun as a pub corpse.


On one of the many days we were stuck in Talkeetna I ran into my first tweaker, which not surprisingly they supposedly have a lot of. As I walked into “downtown” around noon one day this druggie was screaming at some guy in a truck that he “was going to kill him” as he kicked in the driver side door. The driver just calmly drove away. After he did, the addict snapped his head around and started starring me down as I walked down the street. I had just come from a major city full of this guy, this one small fish was nothing. I crossed to the opposite side of the road to give the junkie some space, but locked eyes with him to let him know that if he crossed me the next time people saw him he would be on an involuntary pub crawl. Even in the most rural parts of the continent there's no escaping from this stuff.


A lot of the people on my climbing team just hung out at the only coffee shop that was open before the tourists officially come. While there I met a couple named Shannon and Ian at the shop and we hung out swapping adventure stories and drinking coffee. They were going to try and climb Denali as a couple! I hoped they were a really strong couple, literally and figuratively. I also found out from chatting with my group at the shop that 4 of the 7 climbers on my team had the same logistical problems with RMI that I had. I was really hoping the guides were better than the office team.


After another weather delay, and more money for my room, I asked the owner of the inn if there was any other multi-person rooms, a closet, or a wet cardboard box out back that I could stay in. Just anything cheaper! I didn't even want this room! “Can't be helped”, the owner who goes by “critter” explained. I felt like it COULD be helped. Not that it mattered, the guy played by his own rules. There were signs telling us checkout was round noon, but he needed us to settle up before 10 because he had errands to run. Also, we weren't going to be able to stay there another night anyway because tourist season had started and he had sold our rooms to them for double what we were paying, even though we were there first. Classy. We had no where to stay for the night, but thankfully it didn't matter, because just as we were about to break the head guide's record for delay days, at the decisive moment the weather finally broke and we were able to fly out.


It was late in the day by the time we landed on the glacier, nothing visible but ice and rocks, stretching for what seemed like forever. We decided to stay at base-camp. We quickly got to work shoveling out and leveling our camp, pitching tents, and by 6:30pm we were making our beds. There was a tent for the 3 guides, 2 two-person tents, and a three-person tent. The 3 person tent was really the proper size for 2 full grown men, but housed the 3 of us that were all within a few months of each other in age. In fact, it was basically like living with my same roommates from the house that had recently moved out, all over again! It was certainly the most lively, and smelly, of the tents. Day 5 of the trip and we finally had made it to the start. Our first day on the mountain we went to bed at 10pm.


I woke up at 6am to find out that, surprise surprise, it was very cold. Just because you're doing something like climbing Denali doesn't mean you don't train though, Denali was in addition to, not instead of. I performed my morning exercises and then we ate breakfast. Breakfast and Dinner were included in our trip price, which is why I was disappointed to find out that our first breakfast was frosted shredded wheats. I was hoping for something a bit more... than that. We broke camp at 9am, made all the more difficult that there were 3 of us in the tent. There was not enough room to efficiently move or get in or out of the door. We did eventually get into our groove and become the most efficient tent on the trip, but it took a while. A week maybe. Once we got ready to climb we separated our 7 climbers among the 3 guides and formed 3 rope teams that would move at their own speeds while still reaching checkpoints around the same time. Once camp was down we geared up and began a grueling 6 hour slog. Between the backpack I was carrying and the sled tied to me, I was carrying an estimated additional 140lbs, combining my own things plus the group gear we all shared. I had prepared well, but it was still tough. I found my feet really hurt in the boots that I had been assured were perfect and had no time to break in. I reassured myself that I only needed to get through that first day. I had heard the first climbing day is the worst, so if I could make it though that I new I'd be good. I wondered about a couple people on the team though. A couple guys seemed to be failing out already. Maybe it was conditioning, maybe it was altitude, or maybe it was the one thing I hadn't thought too much about: crippling heat! It was so ludicrously hot. There was snow and ice everywhere but it had to be well over 100*F and I was rucking +140lbs. It was so hot but you couldn't feel any air movement to cool you down, and you wouldn't expose your skin unless you were ready to be badly sunburned. All the ice and snow acted like reflecting mirrors, focusing the sun right into us. It felt like we had 10 suns pointed right at us, like I imagine being in a microwave oven would feel. We wound up stopping and making camp about an hour earlier than planned because one of our guys was struggling so hard. He kept stopping and asking for breaks, which didn't hurt my feelings any, and finally thy called it early because he was feeling so terrible. He had come from an altitude almost as low as mine, so I figured it was that. My problem was less altitude and more boot. My feet looked like they had taken a pounding. I didn't think the boots were fitting right. While the guides and I tried to trouble shoot what was messing my feet up we decided we would change my sock system, which had never been a problem before. One of my teammates gave me some liner socks to try, and I switched my load out accordingly, hoping that would help. Dinner that night was incredible fresh burritos! Now that's what I had pictured! We casually went to bed at 10pm.


I woke up at 5am to learn a snow storm had blown in, so we stayed in bed until 8 to try and avoid the snow and hopefully get some sun where the camp was. I learned that there was no point in getting up before the sun had time to shine around and warm things up. While it was late enough in the year that the sun never really went down and got dark, it did get low enough to go behind ridges and cast a freezing cold shadow. We weren't breaking camp that day, just caching our gear up high and coming back for another night, so we weren't in a huge rush. Breakfast was a warm bagel with smoked salmon and cream cheese. We were climbing up “Ski Hill” to bury our cache, and it too was grueling. I really didn't want to make this climb again the following day when we moved camp up. The same teammate from the day before was struggling even harder than the prior day. He constantly needed to stop because he was so out of breath, and was even thinking about tapping out. I reminded him that our guide got a 72 year old man to the summit, so he could do it to. Me on the other hand? My feet felt like they were being run across a cheese grater with each step. I had developed blisters and skin rips, even with the liner socks I was given. I was suffering in these boots and it was only our third day on the mountain and our second day climbing. Everyone else suffered in the usual ways: The whole day's climb was in a white-out and our cache spot was freezing. It took us between 5 and 6 hours to get up and an hour or two to get down. When we got back to camp it was hot and sunny again so we all circled up to hang out and do foot care. Other people had blisters, but I was developing injuries. The guides tried to figure out what was causing it while I dealt with my torn skin and blisters. Dinner was sausage and rice. The day had been grueling, and we were scheduled to make the same climb tomorrow to move up. “Fine”, I thought. Everyone was saying the first 4 days are the most difficult anyway, then you get to ditch the sleds and the snow shoes. I just needed to make it past then. I really hated snow shoes; my natural gate is not snow shoe compatible and adjusting was sucking a lot of my energy out. I stepped on my own shoes from every possible angle, even some you'd think could never naturally happen. I assure you, I did it. I went to bed at 10pm, imagining how much easier everything would be after the next day was done...


The next day started off... not great. Once I was done with my morning exercises I headed off to the C.M.C. To take care of business. The CMC or “Clean Mountain Can” are little 2 gallon drums issued to teams by the park rangers. These little green drums with a black lid are for pooping. They are not personal barrels, they are team barrels, so everyone takes turns filling one up, and while technically there are a few crevasses that had been designated as acceptable CMC emptying sites, our company packed out all waste. This meant a team of 10 people would be pooping into these canisters for a month, and then hauling these heavy containers of mixed dumps down the mountain. Using a CMC in extremely cold weather is certainly an experience. At most camps our group set up a single pole tarp tent to add a little privacy, but some groups used them wherever with no hesitation. Standing in the tight corridor of the tent and removing the lid from the bucket was like opening the Ark of the Covenant and looking directly inside. The literally steaming piles of shit would visibly and aggressively assault your senses, the tarp trapping the viscous ghostly vapor and sealing in the flavor. Then you had to sit down. Hovering for all genders was expressly forbidden as it always at some point in the trip results in someone missing their mark and contaminating the campsite and the outside of the can. Once the cans get full they are to be swapped for an empty. Supposed to be, anyway. Someone needs to notify the guides. On that morning when I went to the CMC I begrudgingly removed the lid to find the container at functional maximum capacity. I didn't know what any of the guides were doing at the moment but it didn't matter because there was no time to lose. Keeping my word not to hover I did what I had to do. Imagine sitting on a flat counter top and taking a full poop, except the counter top is a mixed pile of dumps from many other people. Not my preferred way to start the day, but it turned out to set the correct tone.


We had received word there was some kind of storm on the way, and we were making sure we got up Ski Hill again, passed our cache, and made it to 11k camp before it hit. By 10:30am we had broken camp and were on the trail with the rest of our gear moving camp. The guides had decided to change our rope teams, separating my increasingly bad feet, the guy who kept needing breaks, and the 65 year old who was slower than the rest of us. Previously we were all on the same rope and now all the rope teams would move about the same speed . On our way to 11k, the campsite at 11,000 feet, we got hit by the storm. We were maybe 2/3 of the way when it hit. First came the snow, increasing in intensity until it hit white-out levels. The path became covered immediately. We pressed on with head-guide Mike on point using GPS to navigate since visibility was basically zero. Then came the wind. After maybe an hour of trying to press forward and making virtually no progress as the conditions worsened at an incredible pace, we entered emergency status. The temperature had plummeted and bare exposed skin was in instant danger. Even the guides were surprised at how cold it was. We had to make emergency camp at our cache site and hunker down quick. Pitching the tents in blizzard conditions was difficult, not just because there were “too many cooks in the kitchen”, but also the wind threatened to suck everything into the white void were we would never find it, and also because the snow was accumulating so fast our gear was getting buried and disappearing before our eyes in moments. We had to keep rapidly digging our stuff out or risk losing it forever. A ranger later told us that we got 4 feet of snow that day, and we were in the heart of it. Head-guide Mike said that in his professional 23 Denali climbs, he had not been in a worse storm. Just my luck. Even after building our tents and digging out our vestibules, snow kept blowing in. Not only was new snow continuously falling, but the wind was creating massive creeping dunes that threatened to swallow everything. The guides were kind enough and professional enough to tell us to hole-up, and they went tent to tent getting our food bowls and delivering dinner in the blizzard. Ramen was our dinner. By 10pm we were very much in bed.


Foot pain had kept me awake, but I stayed in bed until 8. When I got up I found that our dug-out vestibule was now ground level and the snow had buried everyone's boots 3 or 4 feet deep. “Thankfully” I had my boots in the tent. I guess no reason to make a bad thing worse. I got up and did my morning exercises in the still-happening blizzard, and then ate a phenomenal breakfast of eggs, hashbrowns, and bacon. Then I built a snow wall around our tent. We couldn't travel when conditions were so bad, so we would be delayed at this camp at lest for another day. Since I was the only non-guide traipsing around I helped them go from tent to tent delivering food and water. I was pleasantly surprised by how good they were at their jobs and I asked one if they felt they were fairly compensated since they did so much, or if they were expected to make up the difference in tips. I didn't get a straight answer, but the implication was that they weren't paid super great. Apparently they get paid more for Rainier than Denali, and the guide I spoke with had questions about it themselves...


Since we were stuck for the day we had plenty of downtime. The head-guide said he wanted me to teach him some morning exercise Tai Chi when the weather got good and we had some downtime. I said I would, and spent some of the day drawing up a lesson plan based on what he said he was looking for. My tent mates and I took turns going outside to un-burry our tent, and then watching as it was reburied in an hour. The snow continued steadily throughout the day as we all sat functionally trapped in our “3 person” tent, wearing the same clothes we had been wearing since day one. Dinner was an absurd amount of Mac 'n Cheese, and by the end of the day I had finished the only book I brought. I hoped we could get back to climbing since I didn't have much left planned to do for downtime, and it was only day 5 on the mountain. We slumped into bed around 10pm.


I woke up the next morning to find more snow than ever! I got up at 8 to try and shovel out the tent, but it was coming down faster than it could be removed! We would definitely not be moving camp this day either. Somehow a little sparrow had made it up to where we were, during the blizzard, and taken shelter in our CMC tent. We couldn't decide if that was better than freezing or not, but we did our best to keep it safe and warm in there. Breakfast was a toasted bagel with cream cheese, and with nothing to do and trapped in the tent for another day I borrowed a book from Rich. I finished all 305 pages in a day, just as he had done the day before. The 3 of us in our 30's, trapped in that tiny tent hanging out talking and listening to music from Rich's phone had the vibe of teenagers hanging out in a small bedroom while listening to music. It was actually fun. All we were missing was some rad posters on the wall.


As the snow and wind continued battering our tent I wondered if I would be able to find my gear when it was finally time to move. Even the wall I built in back kept getting overtaken by snow. I had lent my trekking poles and snow shoes out to everyone to use as anchors during our emergency build of camp, but I didn't know if they actually got used or not. If not, who knows where they were in the constantly shifting snowscape? I had hoped the extra rest days would be enough for my feet to recover, but they were already FUBAR; I would need to suck it up now, and heal when it was all over. My tent mates had become noticeably lethargic by the end of the day, already too much time cooped up. Dinner was an un-appetizing over-watered mountain meal bag of broccoli and cheese. I tried to sleep at 10, but because we had put up our tent in a blizzard it wasn't exactly level and everyone was rolling toward me. I was scrunched in the corner while Rich was half on my sleeping mat.


Surprisingly the next day I awoke to clear skies! We were finally moving! We spent hours excavating our bags, sleds, and gear used for tent anchoring. I was grateful that I found all my stuff I'd lent out. We got all packed up, minus the tents themselves, and then at 11:30am our “go” turned “no-go”... Henry and Pete's team had left earlier than mine the day we set out for 11k and actually made it, beating the storm. They sat-phoned Mike to warn him not to come up because the storm had moved from where we were up to where they were, i.e. where we were headed. We were told to get back in our tents and be on standby. This was double frustrating because a couple other teams had built camps around us in the storm, and they had packed up and gone, though they likely didn't have the intel we did. I also had to unpack and move back into the tent and I hate undoing things I just did. At 1pm we got the official no-go for the day. Apparently 11k was now a total white-out. Counting this day and the days in the hanger we had now been delayed a full 7 days due to weather. Rich challenged me to write a haiku based on this and I instantly came up with:


“Snow, Wind, Midnight Sun.
Weather Delays Never Stop.
Denali is Cold.”


I honestly didn't care if we were stuck in a storm or delayed by any number of days, as long as I could fight my way to the summit. I had spent too much of myself, financially,physically,emotionally, and chronologically, to give up. Four years and 20-30 thousand dollars would not be for nothing! As long as everyone kept moving towards the goal I was fine. Delays didn't bother me, this was me we were talking about, I knew there would be delays and setbacks. Whether we summited in 15 days or 25 days it made no difference to me. Plus, I reasoned we only needed enough food to summit; most people can go 21 days without food with no adverse long-term effects, so we could summit and do a few days blitz down to base camp where we had a food cache. What's 3 days without food going downhill? I'd done worse for less... I was getting to that summit! The rest of the group didn't share my manic outlook and were getting frustrated with the delays. We counted 17 additional people pass us that day, moving to a higher camp... or trying to at least.


I spent the rest of the day tasking, trying to keep focused. I pre-made 30 peanut butter jelly burritos, so I wouldn't have to carry around the jars anymore. I wrote many lists of things to do. I also ate some suspicious salmon I had been carrying around that one of my teammates had given me back in the airplane hanger. I didn't want it to go to waste, but I wasn't sure it was entirely safe, so I chased it with some stomach drugs to hopefully temper the response. I couldn't afford to go sprinting to the CMC with my unsafe feet: the weather had worn the snow stairs that were made leading down to the CMC and turned them into a slick, steep ramp. One false move and you'd be careening 5 feet into a 3 foot pit of ultra cold pee, at best. We all went to bed around 9:30pm that night, but I got almost no sleep because of my tent mates constant snoring, moaning, gyrating, and rolling towards me. They had eye masks, earplugs, and melatonin. I had misery.


I trudged out of bed at 8 for exercise and oatmeal, but was quickly reinvigorated by camp movement. After a 5 day, 4 night blizzard stay we moved out! It was beautiful weather … which meant it was back to being blazing hot. I was just happy to be moving, and my feet even felt fine (they weren't, they just went numb for a bit), and no one requested an unscheduled break. In fact, the team even opted out of a break in order to keep going. We even ran into another one of the RMI guides from Rainier and we chatted. We had opted for a single carry up to 11k camp instead of cacheing our stuff, and while it was grueling it was worth it to try and make up some time and get fully settled in to 11k a day sooner. We pulled into 11k in less than 5 hours and began terraforming the land for our camp. Unlike our previous camps, 11k was packed with climbers, so we had to deal with all kinds of people and a lack of real estate. By 7 we were all relaxing, ready for our dinner of Mac n' Cheese with sausage, and by 10:30 we were in Bed. One of my tent mates and I agreed to switch sides in the tent to try and mitigate me being crushed.


The the next day began with a breakfast of hot cereal, a nice compliment to some exercise. Even though we had just powered up to 11k, we couldn't rest yet. The blizzard had set us back, and there were rumblings there might be another storm on the way, so we went and cached our stuff right outside our next camp, 14k. While we were out cacheing, a North Face sponsored climber fell into a crevasse because she was walking around unroped. She got lucky and it wasn't that deep, she just had a dislocated shoulder and was extracted and med-evaced. Even roped up climbing isn't' guaranteed to be safe. Our cache day was excruciating, not because of the effort, but because the heat was so extreme, even more than usual said the guides. Also, my feet ripped open in my boots. It felt like my feet where broken, except I've broken my feet and it didn't' hurt that bad. Every step was agony. I've climbed mountains barefoot with less problems. They got so bad I had to use my trekking poles as a cane for me to hobble around camp.


As my fellow climbers were venting there frustrations that night, I took the opportunity to complain about my boots and feet. Come to find out everyone who rented gear from Whitaker dealt with the same incompetent guy. They all had the same terrible experiences too. We agreed this fool must be the nephew of the owner or something. Even though 4 of the 7 climbers on the team rented stuff, I was the only one who rented boots and they were killing me. My feet had gotten so bad the guides were taking pictures of them to show as examples for later. My feet were just not compatible with these boots, full stop. When I told the guides about the rental people telling me “drink water and your feet won't swell”, the guides said “that doesn't make any sense. Those guys have no idea what they're talking about. They've never even climbed Denali.” What!? I trusted these people because they were direct affiliates! I fumed at the thought that all my work could be jeopardized by some dumbass in an office.


Dinner that night was ramen noodles and tuna. While I was doing foot care I took some time to do some full body care. I changed my underwear and shirt for the first time in 9 days, “bathing” with baby wipes, and cut my nails. True to the prediction of weather, snow started falling around 7pm and by 8 we were all back in our tents. We were trying to sleep by 9:30, but the sun never setting and my lack of an eye sleeping mask weren't helping. Whatever sleep I could get was plagued by increasingly worsening nightmares of death, betrayal, and burglary. I hoped I wouldn't have one of my infamous night terrors.


The next day was a perfectly timed rest day. We had pushed hard a couple days in a row, and this would allow us to recover and hopefully let the weather blow over. Not only could we chill out without feeling like we were slowing everything down, but breakfast was biscuits and gravy! Rich was now desperately trading his massive coffee stash for toilet paper, the most valuable currency on the expedition. I would have just used snow, but it wasn't allowed, and wipes were supposed to stay out of the CMC. Every expedition has to use a CMC, but most just take their contents and chuck them into a designated crevasse... not us though, so we needed to play by the rules since we would be hauling them around. I spent the day washing my clothes in the snow and hanging them to dry, re-sorting my gear, and exercising. Even though it was snowing it was unusually warm, so we put on some reggae music,made a tiny snowman incense burner and burned some incense, and chilled out like the middle of Denali was the middle of the beach. We even made lounge chairs out of snow, since Rich was the only one who brought an actual chair on the expedition. Everyone who saw it was quite jealous. We were having a blast chilling out, but I realized the underwear I had changed into wasn't going to cut it for climbing. I was hoping my freshly washed underwear would be dry and good to go for the next leg of the climb. When pressed on what the problem was with my underwear, I ranted to the group of the struggles of finding finely crafted underwear that will both survive the abuse I put them through, and feel comfortable. Head guide Mike said “… I finally figured out who you remind me of! Archer! From the show 'Archer'!” The world's greatest spy? Thank you. “No, like how he goes on these rants, and he almost dies all the time but somehow makes it. That's YOU! You even sound like him. We're calling you Archer from now on.” Still a compliment.


While we were lounging in our snow beach I got slightly sunburned while it was snowing, since I was doing laundry and whatnot I wasn't as covered as I normally would have been. Dinner was a delicious mix of meat and rice, but I couldn't eat as much as I wanted because I was still full from the lunch of “peanut butter ramen” Mike convinced me to eat. We were all in our tents by 8:30pm and Mike gave us a briefing, warning us that if the weather was particularly good in the morning we would be up at 5 to move camps. Otherwise up at 7 to see what we could do. I got ready by changing into some more appropriate underwear, and the guides came over to my tent at 9 to help field dress my feet, then straight to bed.


6:45am exercises, followed by a breakfast of frosted mini wheats and pop tarts. While breaking camp we saw someone fall in a hidden crevasse on a steep incline right outside of camp, and was completely swallowed. He was roped to two guys, but it still took about an hour to get them out. We left camp at 10:30 and made it to 14k camp 6 hours later. My feet were so gutted that I almost threw up twice from the pain. After my feet started giving out and not holding my weight I had to alter my gait, which really hurt my back. Passing “windy corner” on the way up, it really lived up to it's name with frosty arctic blasts formed by the natural wind tunnel that can create huge storms. Before that, Mike said “windy corner” had never been windy for him because he always traveled in good weather. Lucky me. The terrain was icy, meaning that more energy needed to be used just to keep from slipping. There weren't too many places for significant rest as the area is prone to rock slides and avalanches. By the time we arrived in camp I felt like I hadn't been so beat up and exhausted in a decade. I had wanted to do this as a challenge, but the problem I was now facing was it wasn't the actual activity that was the challenge. I was being sabotaged by the peripheral companies attached to the climb. I spent 4 years preparing for this, working specific jobs, saving, training, and figuring out logistics, only to be compromised at every turn by some office idiots. The logistics side of the climbing company wanted me to do Rainier again and hope the guides decided to summit this time. Then they lost my paperwork multiple times, and didn't update me on changes. The affiliate gear company then got my order wrong, messed up shipping, messed up my boot rental, and ultimately sold me a boot that was crippling me. Multiple guides had even said they had no clue what they were talking about. I'm not a mountaineer, that's why I went through the trouble of getting on a team. That team's company is directly affiliated with the gear company, so one would assume they knew what they were talking about. I didn't know so I trusted them as the subject matter experts. Woops.. I would press on as long as my body would hold out, and if I didn't summit it wouldn't be because I didn't do enough! I have never had a regret, because I do everything in my power and leave the rest to fate. I will say that as good as the guides were I couldn't recommend the company itself. A shame those fantastic guides were associated with business like that.


When we got to 14k camp I couldn't distinguish between the sky, the ground, snow walls, or elevation changes. Everything looked the same flat-white like we were in a void. I kept stepping in shallow holes because I couldn't see any depth. I wasn't sure if I had crappy glasses or crappy eyeballs! The glasses were fogging up just from the heat of my eyeballs, and that's not a joke or hyperbole. Nursing my wounds at 14k Dinner was ramen and miso soup. After dinner one of the assistant guides came by to check on my feet. They were bad. The guides said the next day was supposed to be a quick climb down to get our cache from 11k and bring it up to 14k, and she didn't think I should go. They put me on no-go for the following day, and I wasn't happy. She said not to take it personally, even the guides occasionally get sick or injured and need to take a day or two off. She said last year she hurt her back and had to stay at 14k a few days while people did other stuff. I hated it, but I understood. I just didn't want to get to the point where I was disqualified as a liability. Everything heals slower at higher altitude so I knew I needed to take what I could get. I focused on the goal as I hit the bed at 10:30pm.


The next day was a casual one. Morning exercises at 8:30, with breakfast at 10. The group went down to get the cache, and I was to stay back and rest. I'm not used to being put on rest, I don't like it. I found ways to be productive. Once my feet started getting damaged (the very start), I began taking a micro dose of 2 years expired ibuprofen. I never take medicines so I though that might be sufficient. It didn't seem like it was doing anything. Since I almost vomited twice the day before from extreme pain I though maybe I should try and get that in check, and obviously needed the day's rest. If the somewhat scattered 65 year old on the team could do it, I was sure I could as well. My orders for the day were to sit out and sun my gaping wounds, trying to dry and disinfect them. As I sat out I took in the ambiance of 14k camp. It was like a bustling little town, and even had it's own ranger station. 14K is the biggest camp on the mountain and functions as the base for rescues. Despite the frigid night, the weather was uncharacteristically good. Everyone was milling about having a good time. It was the perfect environment to air out gross wounds and try to focus on your PMAs (positive mental attitude). Once my team got back to camp the guides spent the rest of the day constructing a mess hall tent. They dug benches and built cooking shelves. It was nice. My tent mates joined me in my mandatory relaxation, and while were were hanging shooting the breeze a Swiss guy came by. He was ditching his excess food and going down. I procured tea, coffee, and trail mix. Rich snagged a whole roll of toilet paper. The Swiss guy told us it was his second time getting this far and not summitting. Even though he felt strong he said he was frustrated his team. He said his team was not good so he was just leaving because he'd had enough of them. I felt lucky my team and guides gelled so well and were as capable as they were. For dinner we all piled into our nice mess tent around 8:30pm for macaroni and cheese, and a briefing on the climb to 17k camp, the final camp before a summit push. We were in bed by 10:30. At night the mountain is so quite and the snow projects so well it sounds like everyone is sleeping right next to you whenever you lie down.


9am morning exercises led to a nice mess hall brunch of bacon, eggs, and hash browns. We would spend the day casually preparing for our push upwards. My feet were a little healed and we all spent some time doing group foot care. The team prep part of the day was spent doing drills for fixed line travel and practice with running belays, then sorting our team gear for the next day's cache up to 17k. The 17k cache day was supposed to be a 10 hour day, so we needed to be rested and ready. After team prep we all went off to do our own prep. I checked my gloves... they seemed too small, even though they were rented to spec from the gear shop... I just hoped they would work and I wouldn't get frostbite. As for the feet, I planned to dress them, build a gauze and moleskin brace, shotgun some “Aleve” and brute force my way through the next few days. I spent the evening doing some relaxing training and stretching, careful to mind my feet and not do too much for the following day, I used my martial arts breathing exercises to try and focus on acclimating and healing. Dinner was at 7 in the mess tent and consisted of 3 huge burritos. We needed those calories! Mike decided my nickname should now be “shredded beef”, both because of my build, and the condition of my feet... Since we spent the whole day getting ready for a 10 hour slog, I asked Mike what we should expect up there. Did RMI cache any tents up at 17k? “RMI didn't, WE did! RMI is a bunch of people in an office.” Though he said it with a half-joking tone, I could see he felt the same way I did. We were in bed by 10 to be up for a rally call at 6:45.


We ate our breakfast bagel bacon sandwiches in the mess tent and were marching up to 17k camp to cache by 9:30. Climbing to 17k gains 3000ft of altitude. Just outside 14k is a huge wall with fixed lines called the “Headwall”. It looks near vertical but apparently it's only a 50 degree incline or so. There is a fixed line on the right for people going up, and a fixed line on the right for people coming down, and it can be grueling even with the ice ax and an ascender. Ascending the fixed lines took us 4 ½ hours.


Then it was on to the running belays. A couple of the rope teams got caught in a freak mountain storm, mine included, that reduced visibility and temperature to functional zero. The head guide's team out ran it, but mine and the other team didn't. We had to emergency hunker down and were going to cache there, but it cleared just enough after maybe 30 minutes that maybe we could move. The cold was biting and the wind was fierce. One of the guides broke off with our 65 year old teammate and took him back to 14k because he wasn't moving fast enough in the harsh weather, so they judged him a liability in that environment. My team absorbed the remainder of his team and we pressed on. I was freezing and asked if I should put on my thermal puffy jacket because I didn't know what further up the mountain looked like and once you get roped up and moving on a belay you can't just change load-outs. The guide told me not to wear it because once we got going again climbing the ropes I would heat up.


I was cold and getting colder. We got stuck behind a slow group on a steep incline and the weather turned bad again, complete with plummeting temperatures. By the time we made it to an area where I could put on my jacket my core temperature had dropped too far. I put on my mittens and jacket, but could not stop shaking. I couldn't speak well or think straight, and my coordination was nonexistent. I was so bad off my 3 other teammates had to manually put some goretex pants on me. The guide gave me the option of cacheing there and going back, but I chose to push on. With great effort I made it to the 17k camp and relaxed for a few minutes during the cache, before we began the decent. While there, Rich and I were talking and looked over to see some guy pooping in a CMC out in the open. He made eye contact with the two of us, waived, and said “I'm rootin' for ya!”. Sure, why not? We slogged back to 14k, arriving at 9:30... 12 hours after starting! The day had taken us 12 hours. Everyone's face was wind burnt and frozen, making us all look like old coal miners. My feet were even worse of course, but they hadn't slowed me down. I was determined to brute force my way through the rest of this, and then sell those damned boots. Dinner was at 10pm, ramen noodles, and everyone seemed pretty irritable and tired. I really didn't want to eat Denali ramen again, but I'm glad I was pressured into it.


My PMA had taken a major blow and hit the wall that day. I was getting frustrated at what felt like unequal treatment. There was a guy with us constantly running out of breath, getting tired, and asking for breaks from his rope team and there was no problem. Then another guy who kept tripping over his team's rope, so they slowed the overall pace down. I mentioned that my shredded feet can't keep up with this girl's well conditioned hummingbird pace, and all I got was “Just do it”. It seemed like everyone else could get accommodations and modulated speed but me. It felt like bullshit, and it was frustrating because I was in the shape I was in because of the gear company. The head guide got a 72 year old to the top and it was very likely not by ignoring his individual cadence. I had shredded feet and bad knees but had not asked for a break once, yet I couldn't get my guide to slow up by half a step, but seemed to have no problems adjusting when other people were on her rope. The climbing motto is supposedly “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast”, but it seemed like I was frequently taking giant lunges with no breaks in order to keep up with this lady, but the people roped behind me were going their own speed, pulling me back and causing the guide to tell me to go faster. Stuck in the middle, taking the heat from both sides, I guess I shouldn't have expected any different. We went to bed at 12:30 in the morning.


I slept terribly, thick chunky coughs resonating through camp, some of them were mine . Was I getting pneumonia? HAPE? Did I just work too hard in the cold? An illness rampaging through camp? Everyone's breathing sounded like a crunchy gurgle. Rich woke up to find yesterday had given him frostbite on his ears, both of them looking like he had been on the losing end of a few fights. The left one had a huge blister on it the size of a small thumb. He had also badly sunburned his nose at the same time, and it was his birthday! Everyone slowly trudged into the mess tent around 11:30 for 2 big breakfast burritos. There was rumblings through camp that a couple of our guys might quit or get DQ'd. We were only 2 ascending days from the top! If everything went perfect we could be flying off in a week!


A guy came over from a group that started their trip 10 days after us. Their group had now caught up to us and were on the same schedule at 9 days on the mountain as we were at 15 days. They didn't have to deal with any of the delays we did. Lucky them? My group was recovering for the day. I cut my nails again, dressed my feet wounds, charged my camera, snacked and ate. With each new team that arrived, 14k became more and more like a loud crowded hippy commune. I mostly preferred when it was desolate. There were 4 teams there from my same climbing company alone! Looking out at all the people there it was easy to see that not everyone was up to the task, even if some had trained extensively. Train as much as you want, but if you're at sea level with no prior experience, moving up 20,000 feet is likely going to crush you. Dinner that night was ramen, literally the same ramen as the previous night. They just set the pot outside and then reheated it for tonight. We had cached most of our goodies at 17k, so we only had supplies left for 4 days down at 14k. Then we got the news that the following day's weather was supposed to be “rough” … We would be on an involuntary rest day. From then on we were told to be on standby to move up to 17k and then to summit. Trying to reset our body clocks after the other day we all tried to get in bed at 10.


Ferocious winds tore through the camp all night heralding the coming storm. After my exercises we gathered in the mess tent at 9 for our breakfast of cheesy eggs, hash browns, and bacon. We were told to make the most of our “rest” day as we waited for our weather window. This was now our 6th day at 14k! I wanted to make the most of it, so was checking my gear with the head guide. That's when I was told I wouldn't need separate gaiters for my boots... gaiters I was told to rent by the gear company that sold me the boots! They got even more money out of me! My resentment for that company knows no bounds. While I sat stewing, the sound of avalanches resounded through the camp. While I babied my feet I snacked on as much of my junk as I could. My diet on the mountain had been unmitigated trash since my arrival. The recommended list had been full of candies and what not, so that's what I got. I was just trying to get calories into my body, but they were so low grade it wasn't all that pleasant. Eating was just business at this point. Up until now I hadn't had to wear any thermal undies, but Mike said they were necessary going up to 17k. With my recent brush with hypothermia I figured this rest day would be a good time to change into them and break them in. Everyone else was also prepping for the ascent. Then we got the news. Our 65 year old teammate was officially disqualified. He had been judged as not being able to keep up pace, and deemed a liability. He would need to stay at 14k until our descent... the possibility of not summitting just got exponentially more threatening. Before there was a team mentality but now the group could officially be partitioned off. Some of us were on edge, wondering who else might be on the chopping block.


At 7 we had a tense dinner of jambalaya in the mess tent. We were reminded that from this point on we were on standby to get up to 17k and then summit. We were told to get up early and be ready to move, but if we couldn't we only had enough rations for 3 more days. If we didn't get up by then, the whole team would be DQ'd. As my tent mates and I sat out that evening before bed I was complaining about how there were now 4 RMI teams at 14k, one of which started 10 days after us, a guy from that very team heard me and came over. He said “Man, we were reading your team's blog and we were like 'man, we're so glad we're not on the mountain right now!'” Our guide Abby said “yeah, who brought all this bad luck!?” Me. It was obviously me. Everyone else seemed flabbergasted and it was business bees as usual for me. I just really didn't want the climb called off for something lame like weather and rations. I spent the rest of that night writing, stretching, and tending my feet in preparation for the “GO!”. We bedded down at 10.


We got our rally call at 6:45. We were moving up to 17k! We would have only been down one guy, the 65 year old, but the guy who kept getting winded and taking breaks tapped out that morning. “I'm just not up to it.” I tried to convince him otherwise, after all, he'd already been up to 17k once for the cache! “I can feel it. This is it for me. I need to be safe, and I can hang out with our teammate while everyone's up.” Just like that we'd lost another member. Two climbers down, we began our move up to 17k. Grinding our way back up the steep headwall, my rope guide Abby was looking really bad. She had come down with some illness and was trying to power through but was looking worse and worse. By the top of the headwall she could hardly stand.


The guides rallied up,and after reconfiguring the rope teams she was sent back to 14k camp. She would be down there with our 2 other teammates until we returned. We were now down a guide and 2 climbers, plus a German climber who paid for the trip but didn't actually show up to do it. We had left our camp at 9:30 in the morning and had walked into 17k at 4:30 in the afternoon. Along the way one of our teammates dropped his water bottle and it slid off the mountain and into a crevasse that may as well have been infinitely deep. Since we only carried two each, he would need to be extra vigilant with his second one. 17K camp itself is not a gentle place to be. Just being there is exhausting. My water froze while I was drinking it! Setting up camp was grueling as we all took turns just kind of blacking out mid-setup. It looked like a group of zombies milling about holding shovels. Once we finally got situated, rest did not come easy. We sat down to drink some water and the same guy dropped his other bottle, and it slid right out of camp in off the mountain! Same thing, twice in one day. While I was milling about the camp a heard a girl say “Hey.... are you Nash!?” Who should I run into but Shannon and Ian, the couple from the coffee shop in Talkeetna! They had already attempted a summit bid once and didn't make it, and were now reconfiguring for a second attempt. What a couple! We all chatted until bed around 11.


The unpleasantness of 17k extended to bed as well. Though everyone was thoroughly exhausted sleep did not come easy. Concerningly chunky coughs cascaded through camp, while we wore literally everything we had while in our sleeping bags: Thermal undies, sun hoodies, fleece, puffy jackets, thick parka, mittens, etc. Literally everything. Before noon it was too cold to even go outside. Icicles kept forming inside our tent, with ice stalactites dangling over us. We just stayed holed up all day. It was too windy to make a summit bid even if we didn't need the rest. Dinner was just sloppy pouch food. That night Mike came by to give us “the talk”: If the weather didn't clear in the next 2 days to attempt a summit, we would have to just leave. We only had 22 days worth of food for active climbing, and tomorrow was day 19 ….


Luckily the heavens smiled, and the time had come. The weather cleared enough and we were making our summit bid. Go time! The day was sure to be long, but this was the day everything had been leading toward. We split into 2 rope teams and took off. Climbing up, clipping into running belays, navigating rough terrain, all in literally blistering cold. I used every trick I could think of from spinning arms to hand warmers to mental imagery. My hand were still cold, and dexterity was an issue. I took every every precaution to make sure I didn't get sunburned, frostbitten, go hypothermic, break something, or go blind. I needed to succeed. The route had a scheduled elevation gain of 3,115 feet. Kikstra's book warns “despite being only 4km each way, this will be one of the hardest days of your life.” Not even he knew how right he would be.


One step at a time I pressed forward, until after many many hours of effort, I stood with my team on the top of Denali! 20,300 feet, I had finally reached the summit I had been striving for, the most physically grueling of the 7 summits, and I reached the peak on my birthday! Of the 7 climbers on my team, 4 of us had birthdays on the trip, the final one being mine culminating in my victory. I was elated that I was able to briefly align the stars to accomplish this. Everything had worked against me. I took a moment to celebrate with my usual nonsense, karate chopping open a coconut! Or at least that was the plan. There was nowhere to put the coconut! I thought there would be at least 1 rock up there, but it was all fluffy snow. I tried to chop it from on top of my boot, which was an angle I'd never attempted or even considered before! Also, the thing had frozen solid after a few weeks on the mountain, getting down to -40*. I would have had better luck chopping open a bowling ball! I felt a little better when I couldn't even get it with my ice ax! After several strikes with the ax I got it enough that I was satisfied, and my teammates and I began our descent.


It should have been smooth sailing from then on. After about an hour going down I started to feel off. I assumed I was just exhausted. I asked for a quick break since I was getting short of breath. After 5 minutes we started again and I was still short of breath and it was getting worse. I snacked extra hard in case it was blood sugar. No help. My breathing was becoming labored, my vision was pin-holing, and I started to lose coordination, tripping regularly. Through labored breathing I tried to explain to my guide I needed to stop. She just said “Everyone's tired. Get it together.” I thought “You bitch! I'm fucking dying! I'm using my last breaths to explain this to you!” Trudging a bit further we happened upon the other RMI team that had summited that day and was also heading down, lead by Pete. He looked at me and knew, as I did, what was likely going on. HAPE. High altitude pulmonary edema. Fluid was being pushed out of my tissues and into my lungs, making breathing difficult and ultimately impossible. If my lungs were filling with fluid I could drown in the air. He gave me some medicine, but it didn't seem to help. I thought I might be OK to at least get down. I quickly discovered that was not the case, and my condition was deteriorating rapidly. Coordination was way down, along with sight and cognitive ability. There was very little oxygen getting to my brain, making all functions virtually non operational.


It was decided that since I couldn't function on the team they would split me off on my own and reconfigure teams from both RMI groups. Short roped to a guide in front of me, and a guide behind me to help get me down. It was a slow laborious process and the guides were pretty shitty the whole time, like this was my fault and a state I had chosen to be in or done something negligent to cause. I had followed all protocols and trainings. This was why I was on a team to begin with, and this is what the guides where expected to do in situations like this. This would have been like an EMT berating someone for having a heart attack with no prior signs or symptoms! Many hours passed on the way down. The short-rope guides just left me in the snow field outside camp. Maybe they thought I could get back from there? I couldn't. Emerging from the blackness was Mike, followed by Pete, who roped me and dragged me back to camp like stray cattle. Pete radioed the rangers for some Oxygen. He asked Mike if we were going to drop me off at the ranger station. “We're going to drop him at his tent.” Sure enough, they did. The oxygen never came. The first group's summit bid that day took 13 hours round trip. I got back in 16 hours, literally dying. While trying to sleep at 3:30am, I shot up feeling like I was going to die right then. Air wouldn't move in or out of me. I reached for my pulse-ox and saw that even though I was trying to sleep my pulse had shot up to 101bpm and my oxygen concentration was down to 50% ! I WAS DYING! Panic set in, as breathing seemed to do nothing. I tried to calm down and remember some breathing exercises I had learned to coach people having asthma attacks and similar events. I cleared my mind and focused my breath, eventually lowering my pulse and raising my oxygen level. I dared not lay back down with the fluid in my lungs so there was no rest to be had that night.


My tent mates were relieved not to wake up next to a corpse. My breathing was still labored and I couldn't get through a sentence without running out of breath, but my sense of humor was intact. My teammates and I mingled with everyone else in camp, swapping tales of our summit. Shannon and Ian had made it up as well. Turns out tails of some idiot almost dying of HAPE had already spread through camp the previous night. Everyone heard Mike's radio go off for backup when he geared up to drag me back from the snowfield. Shannon said “That was YOU!?” It was a typical day.


I told Rich that for his birthday Denali gave him frostbite and sunburn, and for mine Denali gave me the Summit and HAPE. He said “Hey, remember at the start of the climb I asked if ya wanted some Diamox and you said 'Nah, I've never had it and it just masks symptoms'? And then I was like 'Hey do you want some medicine in case you got HAPE?' and you were like 'Nah, never used it, never needed it. We're climbing smart.' and then I said 'So you're just going to brute force your way through everything then?' and YOU said 'Sure, it's worked out for me so far.' HAS IT though? ...” Haha yes, I recalled the conversations. Still summited, still going to get down … somehow. So it was a win. I was honestly shocked I wasn't med evaced, given the state I was in. That's what all the fancy expensive insurance we had to buy was for! At least I was in arguably better shape than RMI team 2 that summited with us the previous day. One guy would wind up shattering his leg, one guy got frostbite on his middle finger to the point it looked like Hell Boy's hand only purple, and supposedly one guy got frostbite on his hand so badly he might lose it. I on the other hand would supposedly magically get better with descent. Best practice for an altitude illness like AMS or HAPE is to immediately descend.


We were scheduled to go back down to 14k that day, but I truly did not think I was capable of it, and told Mike as such. “Normally we'd give you medicine and med evac you, but there's serious weather on the way and the rangers aren't sure how reliable the chopper would be. The medicine they would give you would drop your blood pressure too low to self-extract. And since the weather is making an evac a no-go, that means you'll have to get yourself down, which means no medicine. Do your best. You'll be with me, and we'll take breaks. You should feel way better once we descend.” I could barely walk or breath. Now I needed to rope up and slog down to 14k with all my gear? I trusted Mike's expertise, though I doubted how good this would go. My breaths were short, crunchy, and gurgly, and my feet were gelatin, my physical performance reduced to the same output as some untrained rando, but with Mike's guidance we made it back to 14k and reunited with the rest of our team.


When we got back to 14k it looked like ALL the teams were packing up to descend, even the ones that hadn't been up further yet. Turns out that big storm was real, coming up from the Bearing sea, and was set to reek havoc. Everyone was racing to the extraction point, the “airstrip” at base camp, to get the hell off of the mountain. The other teams that were there having such a smooth time of it up to then wouldn't get to summit. You just never know what's a benefit and what's a set back. They spent 20-30 thousand dollars and likely at least a year of prep, plus a couple weeks getting that far and it was all over just like that. Even in my extremely battered state I was grateful, and I was more battered than ever. Now the underside of my big toe nail had filled with blood, just to add to everything else. Everything at 14k had been disrupted due to the moves and such, so now our cramped tent of 3 people had 4 people sleeping in it. Dinner was watery pouch food and we went to bed at midnight.


By noon the following day we were well into our Death March: The continuous single push from 14k back to base camp. We picked up our caches along the way, and trudged up “Heart Break Hill”. The hill is “only” 574 feet tall, but it functions as the final push before base camp, right when you really don't want to deal with it after an already long and grueling trip hauling all your gear plus canisters of a month's poop. Just getting there and seeing it is heart breaking, hence the name. It was all the worse for me because my condition hadn't magically vanished with decent, while I didn't feel ready to pass out at any moment, my breathing was still labored and gurgly. I suspected something secondary had crept in, like pneumonia. We arrived at base camp at 1 in the morning, and spent a couple hours making camp. While digging plots for our tents during our camp construction, the guide who told me to “Get it together” while I was dying of HAPE told us to “keep it down, people are trying to sleep”. I'm building a camp after a full day slog! It's an Arctic Base camp on a Glacial landing strip! No one got here on accident! Everyone here knows what to expect! With our moods temporarily soured once again, we finished building camp. Then everyone cracked open the beers they had stashed at BC to celebrate. I didn't have any to drink, but Rich had extras so he gave me one. It kept freezing while I was trying to drink it! It was after 3:30am by this point, and while it was still bright outside, it was time for bed. For so many reasons. My Arctic Tuberculosis kept me from getting any real rest though.


We were told to be ready for a food rally call by 7am, and then to be ready to get on a plane. Instead we were rousted at 8, and told to get up and “pack with vigor” because planes were on their way. We got sloppily packed ASAP, and a couple planes came... but they weren't for us. Then a snow storm blew in, stranding us and a few other teams at base camp. Ian and Shannon had actually made it onto one of the planes, but it couldn't take off because of the snow. Nothing was able to get in or out the mountain, so at 1pm we were told to re-pitch our tents. Because we didn't know when exactly we would be leaving the promised breakfast for the day still hadn't shown up, and now it was well into the afternoon. After complaining I was given some pop tarts. Snow continued to fall and we weren't going anywhere, along with the plane Ian and Shannon had been stuck in for hours. They were finally allowed to disembark, as the plane became buried in the runway and the pilot got stranded on the glacier in his civilian cloths. He huddled up in the ranger's tent for safety. The guides begrudgingly cooked some mac and cheese for us at 10, and we went to “bed” at 11, even though we had been sitting around all day, either on our bags getting snowed on, or holed up in the tent.


We all got up around 9, but there wasn't anything to do. We were totally socked in and there were no planes in the air. There was a whole mountain of people waiting to leave, every team from many different companies, plus independents like Ian and Shannon. One guy came over and said he heard on the radio there were over 60 people waiting to get ON the mountain just with our flight team alone! Looked like they would be waiting awhile with this storm and everyone trying to leave. To help “make it easier” for the planes to come and go a very large mob of people, most of the ones there, mobilized into a big group to stomp out and and flatten the “airstrip” after all the snow. To me, it reeked of a contrived moral booster, like a team building drill at some corporation. Even if I did actually think it would make a difference, there was no way I was going to put back on those boots and snow shoes that spent a 12th of a year FUBARing my feet. My crunchy lungs and messed up feet needed rest, not more stomping. Later in the day a plane managed to make it to the mountain, into camp from a different company than the one we were contracted to use. Mike said he knew the owner, and he's a great pilot, but was way too reckless for his taste. Sounded like my king of guy, his recklessness was the only reason he made it in. Though I understood it would look bad if something were to happen. RMI's preferred carrier at the time had nothing but new hire young pilots, and a fresh incident, so they couldn't risk flying in. They would be playing it ultra safe which meant we might be waiting awhile. We spent a couple days playing the “we're leaving, never mind” game.


Then, right at the end of a day, we managed to get on the last jumper out. As we were flying out, the storm came back, and was closing in around us. The pilot was deftly maneuvering through this twisting snow cloud worm hole when it finally closed up and sealed us inside. The pilot was quickly trying to get through, but was disoriented as the planes fly line-of-sight. When the clouds did break we discovered we were pointed right at the ground! We had been nosediving and we didn't even know it! Mike said it was the second worst flight he'd ever been on.


Once we landed we were told to go straight to dinner since we had no accommodations. There was no way of knowing when we would get off the mountain because of the storm so not much could be done planning wise. Mike scrambled and got 6 of us into a single rented room on the outskirts of town. Rich and I quickly took showers, the first in a month, and were then told to hit the bar were we partied from midnight until 1:30am. Then we left so I could make sure Rich caught his 2am ride to Anchorage to just barely make his 6am flight. I agreed to mail some stuff to his mother, and mail back his rental gear with mine, and he gave me a big wad of money to accomplish this.


I got a couple hours of sleep in the team's cramped single room before getting up and hiking to the post office to complete my new mission... except it was Saturday, and the post office was closed on Saturdays. Crap. I tried to figure out what to do, since our shuttle to Anchorage was leaving that day and I needed to be on it or I would miss my flight. I had fully intended to go to the hospital and get checked out with all the expensive insurance I was forced to get, but there was no time for me to get out that way before the shuttle and flight. I spent the few hours in town I did have getting souvenirs for people then hopped the shuttle with the climbers from my team and team 2. We stopped off at a UPS store outside of Anchorage and I used Rich's money to mail out all our stuff. It cost hundreds of dollars! I was just glad I didn't have to pay it, and to sever the last tie between me and the gear rental place. Next stop was the hospital to pick up the guys from team 2 who had gone straight there. The guy with the broken leg, and the guy with the Hell Boy finger got in our shuttle, but nobody had found guy with maybe dead hand. Next stop, airport.


Everyone said they hoped my flight back to the lower 48 went smooth, but by now we all new better. Just on this trip there was every force working against me getting there, then tied Mike's record for longest delay to get on the mountain, the worst storm Mike had ever seen in 23 professional Denali climbs, illnesses, injuries, HAPE, the storm on the way out, and the 2nd worst flight Mike had ever been on. This was all to be expected with me. Incidentally, trying to check into the airport I found my bag was 3lbs too heavy so they were going to charge me an additional 120 dollars! I quickly reconfigured some stuff, and wound up needing to carry those damned boots with me on the plane as a carry-on item. One final middle finger from those boots. Then my flight was 2 hours late to arrive, so I had missed my connecting flight before I'd even taken off. I wound up stuck in New Jersey for awhile while the airline sorted out whatever it is they pretend to do. They “assured” me I would be on the next flight out, but that “flight details could change because you're more than 6 hours early for your flight.” I said “No... you're 2 hours late for my flight” I was polite though, and they bumped me up to first class. What a joke. Same seats, no divider from the rest of the plane, same lack of space, LESS overhead space (!?), the only benefit is getting off the plane 5 minutes before anyone else. Those tickets would have been hundreds of dollars more if I'd actually bought them. That would be like paying hundreds of dollars for the best parking spot at Walmart; if you've got that much to spend, go someplace else!


I arrived back in the Midwest looking scraggly, limping slowly, breathing like I had Emphysema  , my nose, lips, and tongue burned, discolored, and split. But I was victorious. When I got back to my place and saw that I had not been burgled, and my cat was happy and healthy, there was nothing else in the world I could have wanted. With this crucible conquered there was seemingly nothing that could bring me down. Not the subpoena I received while I was gone regarding macing the crazy guy and shoving him into the road. Not even my old house mate coming over and asking my plans for the guest bedroom. “You looking to rent it?” I said 'no way, I don't want to live with anyone ever again, and I don't want anyone to live with me ever again.' Now that I was finally living on my own I was going to build an actual place for myself. “Well, me and the girlfriend broke up and I've just been huddled in the apartment looking for somewhere to go. Mind if I stay here for a month or two until I get a place?” Well there that went. If he'd done that before I left at least I wouldn't have had to jump through hoops to get the house and cat looked after. I decided to help him out, but was very clear we would not be living together; I would be living there, he would be my temporary guest. Then there was the fact my feet were so messed up for the first couple of weeks back... not only could I barely walk, but I couldn't even wear shoes! This meant no work, and no strenuous training. My lungs still had fluid in them too. After a couple of weeks I was finally well enough to resume real training in my home dojo, at which point my big toenail got caught on the mat and ripped entirely off at the root. It was a bloody mess, and continued to set me back. I would not be brought down!


Knowing that I had accomplished what I set out to do and that I needed to actually push hard to do it, was enough to tolerate all the nonsense of being back in the city I had left. Plus I needed to focus up since I heard a television network was looking for someone like me, and I was getting roped into supposedly the most difficult of the Spartan Beast races sooner than I had time to prepare for. With THIS challenge conquered, it was on to the next!


OSU!
-NASH