Trip Reports
Welcome to the dispatches from the Mountain Trip 2011 Carstensz Pyramid Expedition. We’ll be posting updates here to allow friends, family, and armchair adventurers to follow this expedition to climb the highest peak on the continent that includes Australia, New Zealand, and New Guinea. There is some argument here, which is why I mention it,…
Hi everyone! Thanks for tuning into our blog and following the teams progress up and down the “big one”. We are all currently back in Anchorage enjoying our belly’s being full of delicious steaks and beer. To back track a little bit…after waiting out five days of high winds and accumulations of snow…
Everyone flew off the mountain last night back to the relative civilization of Talkeetna. They were all pretty tired after a long night of travel. It was a good effort by all the climbers, but the weather just never cooperated to allow them to reach the summit. We’ll get a good trip recap posted from…
They are all in base camp this morning and just waiting for flights now. They had a bit of a tedious journey down this morning, breaking trail in the new snow and pretty bad visibility early in the day, but they didn’t have too much problem with crevasses, and are happy to be in base…
All of our climbers are on the way to base camp this morning. They left late last night, and have been working their way around the crevasses of the lower Kahiltna glacier and are almost to base camp this morning. It has been a bit of work, with challenging conditions and weather (again) but…
The team is on the way down the mountain, but are still encountering snow and wind. They are getting pretty used to it by now, but have certainly had their share of bad luck with the weather. They continued down last night to the 11,000 ft basin (Camp 2) and spent the night there. The…
They had a stormy, snowy night last night again at high camp and after a windy morning they are heading down. It’s been a bit disappointing for the team, but they gave it their best shot and sometimes the weather just doesn’t allow you to get to the summit. With the snow and the…
Not much movement today on Denali, they were hoping for slightly improved weather today, but woke to new snow and even more wind this morning. It was another day of the same sort of weather they’ve been experiencing. Everyone is doing fine, but patience is wearing thin. It is often the most difficult part…
Our team is giving it their best shot, but were turned around on their way to high camp today due to high winds. They ascended out of the 14,200 ft basin to the headwall (15,400ft-16,200 ft) where they clipped into fixed ropes that lead to the ridge. They followed the ridge up to about 16,500…
They woke up to blue skies this morning, but the wind was raging up higher on the mountain throughout most of the day. Jared called in this afternoon to get the forecast, which isn’t any better for the next several days. They are still doing well, and trying to stay motivated to be up there,…