The May 14th team is officially on the move! After getting their first taste of glacier life at Basecamp, the team rolled out early to take advantage of a stable weather window and put their first carry of the expedition behind them.
The push from Basecamp to Camp 1 is one of the longest single days a climber will face on Denali, covering about 5.5 miles with a modest 800 feet of elevation gain — from 7,200 feet at Basecamp up to roughly 7,800 feet at Camp 1. What makes this leg deceptively tough isn’t the climbing, it’s the hauling. Each member of the team is moving close to 120 pounds of gear, divided between a heavy pack on their back and a sled dragged behind them. Packed into that weight is everything the team will need to live and climb on the mountain for the coming weeks: tents, fuel, food, group gear, glacier travel equipment, and personal climbing kits. The good news is that today’s loads are about as heavy as they’ll ever be — as the team caches supplies and spreads loads higher up the route, the weight steadily eases off.
The route out of Basecamp begins with a descent down the infamous Heartbreak Hill, a stretch climbers don’t think twice about going down on day one, but quietly dread on the way home. From there, the team spread out across the relatively flat lower Kahiltna Glacier, traveling in two- or three-person rope teams to guard against hidden crevasses, sleds in tow. Between the soft snow, the weight of the loads, and the slow grind of glacier travel, this leg can take anywhere from 5 to 8 hours depending on conditions. With clear weather on their side, the May 14th team made the most of the window and arrived at Camp 1 ready for a well-earned night’s rest.
Tomorrow brings the team’s first cache day. They’ll carry a load of supplies partway toward Camp 2, bury it deep on the glacier, and return to Camp 1 to sleep — the classic “climb high, sleep low” rhythm that defines expedition-style climbing on Denali. Each cache pushes the team’s gear higher up the mountain while their bodies continue to acclimatize, setting them up for a faster, lighter move when it’s time to relocate camps for good.
Take a listen and get to know the May 14th team!
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