The May 12th West Buttress Denali Expedition is enjoying nice weather and good company at Camp 2 (11,000′) on Denali!
Expedition team member Marcel called in to give us an update!
The ending of the recording gets fuzzy, but it sounds like the team hopes to put in another cache between Camp 2 and Camp 3 (14,000′) in order to set themselves up to move to Camp 3 in the coming days.
Moving from Camp 2 to Camp 3 involves navigating the treacherous and aptly named “Windy Corner”, a part of the route where the trail takes climbers across a narrow section of the upper Kahiltna Glacier. This section forms a pinch point, where the path of travel is squeezed between the huge rock buttress that forms the beginning of the West Buttress proper and the precipitous drop off where the mountain falls away 4,000′ down to the Northeast Fork of the Kahiltna below. Due to the exposed nature of this section of the route, it can be, you guessed it, VERY WINDY, as you round the corner to get up to Camp 3.
Windy Corner, living up to it’s name.
Need a better visualization of this section of the route? Then check out SummitDenali.com where we have an interactive map of the West Buttress route!
