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ms55401
Trad climber
minneapolis, mn
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Dec 11, 2014 - 10:01pm PT
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I think some major dudes dispatched an 8000-meter peak (one of the 'Brums? Broad Peak?) in real-deal winter (i.e. January, not March or April) a few years ago. I believe they found the weather a bit nippy. But if that can be hacked, I suppose Denali is hackable as well.
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
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Dec 11, 2014 - 10:07pm PT
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It's gonna be dark.
Check with Simone Moro. He loves winter climbs.
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Andy de klerk
Mountain climber
South Africa
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Dec 12, 2014 - 10:17am PT
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Cold is a great film. One of the best short films ever. G2 in winter was 50
+ below, and Alaska is much much colder. Roger Mears article in Mountain Magazine in the 1980s inspired us all, until we went there in the spring (May/June) and froze our butts off even then.
Any winter ascent of any peak in Alaska is worthy of respect. We toyed with the idea of the moonflower in winter for a while but decided it would be too cold and we went to Hawaii instead.
Good choice!
AdK
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Brian in SLC
Social climber
Salt Lake City, UT
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Dec 12, 2014 - 11:11am PT
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Who was that tall, bald character from Talkeetna that tried a winter ascent maybe 10 or so years ago? With a Russian guy I dimly recall? Didn't they get 10 or 15 miles in before callin' 'er good?
I dunno...Cassin in winter solo...no one to hear you scream...be a quiet place to die.
Bitter cold, funky conditions, gear that might not work, large, heavy pack and clothing, and, fairly technical terrain where a mistake would be fatal? Yikes.
Having climbed a small bit in Alaska and Canada in the spring on high, peaks...I can't imagine...hell, my partner and I got frostbit going to the summit of Logan on a windy day in June...
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John Mac
Trad climber
Littleton, CO
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Dec 12, 2014 - 11:14am PT
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I think it was Vern Tejes?
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Brian in SLC
Social climber
Salt Lake City, UT
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Dec 12, 2014 - 11:58am PT
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Naw, local Talkeetna character. Created a bit of buzz before his attempt. Came up a bit (!) short...
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MarkWestman
Trad climber
Talkeetna, Alaska
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Dec 12, 2014 - 04:10pm PT
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Brian is talking about Trigger. He's still around Talkeetna, hasn't climbed in years though. His partner was Artur Testov, who along with two other Russians made the earliest season ascent of Denali (and only January ascent) in January 1998.
What separates Himalaya and Alaska winter ascents is not only the shorter days in Alaska but also the total lack of heating quality of the sun during the few hours it's up. March on Denali is still brutal but it is still a far different affair to climb Denali (or any other peak in the range) in January. The psychological aspect is significant.
Puryear and I climbed a new route on Silverthrone around April 1st- when we started approaching from Wonder Lake a week earlier it was hitting 50 below at night. Thankfully it warmed up by the time we climbed. Just trying to drag a sled and make camps in those temps was insane. On my first Denali trip we went up the Muldrow and reached 15,000 feet around April 15th. We were pinned down for four days in one of the worst storms imaginable and the warmest temperature we had at that camp was -40. Every night above 9000 feet it was at least 25 below. This was in April, with 14 hours of daylight! Type 2.5 fun.
Denali in winter...no thank you!
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hobo_dan
Social climber
Minnesota
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Dec 12, 2014 - 04:33pm PT
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I met a guy who was on Denali in March and he said they had a month of -30. I can't even imagine it in winter.
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Bargainhunter
climber
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Dec 12, 2014 - 05:14pm PT
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I recall getting a bit panicky whenever it was below -15F and breezy and we needed to stop to adjust our sleds/packs/gear whatever. This was in June on the West Butt. I kept thinking if my hands got too cold and numb to light the stove, we'd be toast. If we had to spend more than a few minutes dealing with some field repair, out came the shovels and stove to make hot drinks to keep morale and the psych up.
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Larry Nelson
Social climber
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Dec 12, 2014 - 07:28pm PT
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The coldest big mountain in the world, with the worst weather and shortest days? Yikes.
Fantasizing the Cassin Ridge in May 20 years ago is the closest I got.
Great wisdom and advice from climbski2 and MarkWestman.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Dec 12, 2014 - 07:44pm PT
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Mark Westman
Artur Testov, who along with two other Russians made the earliest season ascent of Denali (and only January ascent) in January 1998
I seem to recall they tried the winter before also...Was that the one where they were really bummed when their hi proof Vodka froze solid?
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MarkWestman
Trad climber
Talkeetna, Alaska
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Dec 12, 2014 - 08:26pm PT
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Yeah, I think they tried twice.
For what it's worth, the year they did succeed, it was during a crazy 'warm' spell for January- if I remember it right, when they summited it was something like -7F. Still, they spent a significant amount of time climbing in darkness, starting as they did in late December.
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Lanthade
climber
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Dec 12, 2014 - 09:31pm PT
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Lonnie Dupre is going for his fourth attempt at the first dead of winter (December/January) solo ascent of the mountain. I'm not sure if he's climbing yet. Last year he turned around at 17K.
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hobo_dan
Social climber
Minnesota
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Dec 13, 2014 - 07:47am PT
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I worked with Lonnie for a year. That guy has a serious expedition jones. I hope he get's up it
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MarkWestman
Trad climber
Talkeetna, Alaska
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Dec 13, 2014 - 10:35am PT
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I think Denali is probably more harsh in winter because it tends to get more "arctic" air and, as you mentioned, Logan is closer to the ocean and hence relatively warmer. On the other hand, Logan is susceptible to bigger snowfalls for the same reason.
In Alaska in the winter, the clear spells of weather are typically brought about by an arctic air mass coming down from the north- which on Denali means insanely cold temperatures and, worse, often really strong north winds. That was Lonnie's undoing two years ago, he got to 17 camp and learned from Paul that a big high pressure was coming but it was to bring 60-90 mph winds. Stack that with 50-60 below temps and frostbite is the least of your concerns- survival in the open in those conditions is long odds. Lonnie wisely descended. The wind on Denali in winter is the big killer. In 1989 three world-class, Himalayan seasoned Japanese alpinists were apparently blown completely off the mountain at Denali Pass during what was believed to be 200 mph winds through the pass.
Jon Waterman called it a "cold with claws".
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MarkWestman
Trad climber
Talkeetna, Alaska
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Dec 13, 2014 - 10:49am PT
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Other than the backpack we found at the base, tracks way high on the route, and speculation, nothing was ever determined.
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10b4me
climber
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Dec 13, 2014 - 11:46am PT
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Other than the backpack we found at the base, tracks way high on the route, and speculation, nothing was ever determined.
I thought it was an avalanche.
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MarkWestman
Trad climber
Talkeetna, Alaska
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Dec 13, 2014 - 01:08pm PT
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I thought it was an avalanche.
Sue Nott's pack was found on the surface of the debris fan to the right of the base of the route. The only place on the route where a fall or dropped pack would have sent it here is about 1/3 of the way up the route, at a place where a bivouac would have been likely. But their tracks were found many thousands of feet higher in places that wouldn't have drained to that gully (and if they had, there is no way anything would make it all the way there having to clear 30-50' wide crevasses in a pocket glacier, then making a miraculous bounce into the side gully that feeds the debris fan).
Around the time they likely would have been high on the mountain, the range was hit with a tremendous wind event that lasted about 7 days. My theory at the time was that Sue dropped her pack at 11,000 feet and decided to continue anyway. Near the top they were lost to the storm, either by tunneling inside a snowcave and succumbing to hypothermia (Sue's pack included her sleeping bag which we found), or asphyxiation from burial. Or, they may have set up their tent and were blown off the mountain in it. Or a dual crevasse fall. But there was really no way of knowing for certain.
At the time (2006) that we spotted the tracks at 15,000 feet in the final gully, someone asked me if it was possible that the tracks were those of myself and Joe Puryear, who had made the most recent ascent of the Infinite Spur five years earlier in 2001. The "tracks" were actually 1' tall raised pedestals, indicating that when they were made the snow was deep, then a massive wind event had scoured away the uncompacted snow around them. Jim Nelson and Mark Bebie made the second ascent in 1989 and on their high bivi at 14K, just below this gully, they were beset by a 4 day storm. It snowed 6 feet then 100 mph winds blew all the snow away. After the storm, the tracks they had made into their bivi 5 days earlier were now the same sort of pedestals.
Anyway, I immediately discounted the possibility that the pedestals we saw from the helicopter could have been mine and Joe's.
Then, something interesting happened. In 2009, the NPS, who I was not yet working for, recruited me to help with the aerial search for a missing climber on the west buttress. Part of the search grid included the south and southwest faces, in the event he had skied or fallen off that side during the stormy summit bid from which he never returned. Colin Haley and I had climbed the Denali Diamond route on the southwest face two years earlier, in 2007. The route had not been climbed since then. As our helicopter passed by the face and I shot high res photos for later analysis back in Talkeetna, I was astonished to see the tracks, or rather, pedestals, from Colin and I, rising straight out of the top of the rock band at 16,000 feet and heading straight up the great couloir. Then, there was the snow ledge we had chopped for our bivouac in a side couloir at 16,500', exactly where I remembered it. The pedestals continued to the Cassin. 100% that they were ours- 2 years old. Along with this, old wind scoured tracks appeared on the Cassin from at least the previous year- nobody had yet climbed in the Cassin that season.
The takeaway from this was to make me wonder if Joe's and my tracks could actually have survived 5 years on the upper part of Foraker. If so, that would certainly change my analysis of what might have befallen Sue and Karen. One thing I can say is that we did see depressed tracks in soft snow just above the Infinite's "Black Band" at about 13,500', which could only have been theirs- this area is well below the normal hurricane scour zone of the summit dome and the tracks were clearly recent.
Unless some other physical evidence of them is found, though, I don't think any solid determination can ever be made. But, the wind storm that hit the mountain while they were on it I believe must have been a factor. It was the kind of wind that kills. And presuming that Sue had dropped her pack and continued without it (Sue was a very determined person), they would have been ill-equipped to deal with a prolonged stay at high altitude.
The upper altitude environments of the range have interesting weather patterns: essentially, most of the snowfall high on Denali and Foraker occurs between June and September. In the winter, it essentially all blows away in the winter winds, and it's usually actually too cold to snow up high, since cold air's ability to hold moisture is limited. This is why in early season on Denali the upper mountain is usually hard, blue, and swept clean. And in July, it's often deep and avalanchy.
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