BEST OF LUCK ON YOUR EXPEDITION!

Below please find links to access our Trip Dispatch page, and contact information for the Mountain Trip office if anyone should need to get in contact with you in case of emergency.

We will post expedition dispatches every day or two so that your friends and family can follow your progress.  Each climber will have opportunities to call in and leave a message, so have some fun with it.  It’s always nice to hear details of your daily experience in a place so far away from the reality of those at home, and we encourage you to be creative, descriptive and detailed.

Mountain Trip Expedition Dispatch Page

In the first post for your team, we will include a link to the Spot GPS page where the virtual breadcrumb trail of your travels on the mountain will live.  We encourage followers to bookmark that link and refer to it for the latest, almost up-to-the-minute, information about where you are on the mountain.

We endeavor to post daily updates, however please adhere to the adage of “No News Is Good News” because many considerations can prevent the guides from calling in on any given day.  Mountain weather, terrain and the varying workload of each day can, and often will, transpire to prevent our satellite phones from making the evening call.

Our guides also carry VHF and smaller, FRS radios, which they use to maintain daily contact with other climbing teams on the mountain, as well as our operations manager in Anchorage and our headquarters in Telluride via satellite phone.  If they are unable to make a phone call some night, don’t worry–they aren’t stranded or lost on the mountain!  If they NEED to get word out, they have multiple ways to communicate.

We encourage your friends and family to post comments on your trip blog, but please let them know that we are not able to pass their comments along to you on the mountain.  If they need to get word to you, they should contact our office by phone or email.

If for any reason someone needs to contact a climber during the expedition, our contact information is as follows.   Typically, we can contact the team within 24 hours or less if it is an emergency.

Please keep in mind we are in the Mountain Time Zone. (GMT -7).  We monitor the phone 24/7 when teams are in the field, but please try to call during business hours if your message is not urgent.

Mountain Trip Office:

[email protected]

Phone: +1 970.369.1153

TRIP DETAILS AND ITINERARY

For those of you following along, you can find detailed information about the climb including a trip itinerary on our website at:

Mountain Trip Denali West Buttress Expeditions

Here’s a general overview.

Meeting Point:
Anchorage, Alaska

After arriving, the team will typically be in Anchorage for the first one or two nights of the trip.

 

From Anchorage, the team will drive about 2.5 hours to a small, end-of-the-road town called Talkeetna. The will then take a flight with Talkeetna Air Taxi(which may be delayed by up to a few days, depending on weather) onto Denali Base Camp on the Kahiltna Glacier.  We have very good communications with the team until they fly into the range,  after which time the guides will call our office to initiate communication. They just can’t keep the satellite phone on all day long to receive calls.

 

From Base Camp, the team will start up the West Buttress route from 7,200′, likely to four camps (7,800′, 11,200′, 14,200′, and 17,200′) before they reach the summit, weather permitting. The team will spend up to 22 days on the route.

 

If weather permits the team to stay on schedule, they could summit two weeks after starting up the route.

 

After summit day, the team will descend back down the West Buttress route of the mountain to base camp at 7,200′, where they will await a flight off of the glacier. They will spend one night at this camp before hiking out to the Park entrance and our waiting vehicle. They might continue back to Anchorage or stay that night in Talkeetna if they get out very late. 

 

We have built a number of contingency days into the trip itinerary, so we cannot accurately predict when the team will actually come off the mountain and back to “civilization.”