Our May 16th team arrived in Talkeetna yesterday (May 17), but as anyone who has climbed in the Alaska Range will tell you, the weather often has plans of its own.
Arriving in Talkeetna kicks off a sequence of logistical steps that every team has to work through before they can fly. The order of those steps shifts depending on when each team is scheduled to meet with the National Park Service (NPS), but they all need to happen before climbers can reach the glacier. Every climber attends a pre-climb orientation with one of the NPS climbing rangers, where they receive a briefing on current conditions on Denali and the latest beta on the glacier. Alongside the orientation, the team also has the job of unloading, organizing, and weighing every piece of equipment and food they’ll need for the next several weeks. Once all of that squared away, there’s only one thing left to do is wait for the call up from Talkeetna Air Taxi.
Getting onto the glacier might sound like the easy part of a Denali trip, but it’s actually one of the first major logistical hurdles a team has to clear. Throughout the climbing season, storm systems funneling between Talkeetna and basecamp on the South Fork of the Kahiltna Glacier can shut flights down for hours, days, or even longer. It’s not unusual for climbers to spend the better part of a week grounded in town, watching the weather radar and waiting for a break. The flight itself is short on paper; roughly 45 miles in a small single-engine plane, with travel time ranging from 30 to 45 minutes depending on conditions and the route the pilot chooses to fly. But Denali is no ordinary mountain. Sometimes called the “Great Massif,” it’s so enormous that it generates its own weather, and the airspace around it can shift dramatically within minutes. Plenty of climbers have stood on a sunny tarmac in Talkeetna only to find the glacier completely socked in. The bush pilots who fly this terrain are some of the most skilled backcountry pilots in the world, so when they pull the plug on a flight, it’s a clear signal that conditions are genuinely bad.
When weather does ground the team, there’s at least a silver lining: a chance to spend time in Talkeetna itself. This little town at the literal end of the road has served as a launching pad for Alaska Range climbers for generations, and despite its small size, it punches well above its weight in mountaineering history. Quiet, tucked away, and largely sustained by the flow of climbers heading to and from Denali, Talkeetna has a character all its own. It’s the kind of place where you can grab a coffee in the morning and end up trading stories with a climber who just came off the mountain or someone preparing to head onto it. For many in the climbing world — regardless of whether they specialize in alpine, ice, or expedition climbing — Talkeetna is more than a town. It’s a place that has shaped the culture of the sport, and simply being there is something a lot of climbers spend years dreaming about.
Here’s hoping the skies open up soon and our May 16th team can get on the glacier!
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