Mission 'Seven Summits': Expedition to Mount Denali

It was a long arduous day but now we are now back at 17000 feet. All four of us are feeling fit and fine and it’s a proud moment for us as Indians. The day was long, started around 9 am and we got back to High Camp at 9:30 pm.  Very excited but also exhausted after a long 12-hour day!
 
This summit is very special as it was the last of our “Seven Summits”  and also because we attempted summiting  Denali in 2019 but we had to abandon the climb one hour short of the summit because of bad weather conditions then.  Thereafter, Covid ensured we could not attempt Denali in 2020 & 2021. So, yes we are happy that we managed to summit this year. Thank you for all the good wishes... We will share photos from Anchorage as soon as we get wifi..

(Summitting the seven highest mountains in all seven continents is considered a mountaineering challenge, first achieved in 1985 by Richard Bass, an American mountaineer.   This expedition marks the last of Deeya & Ajeet’s  “Seven Summits” effort, making them the first  Indian and the first  Asian daughter-father duo to complete this commendable achievement.)

It took us about 7 hours to reach High Camp today with our very heavy bags. Weather permitting we expect to attempt a summit tomorrow.

The idea was to spend the day eating, sleeping and preparing for the summit attempt. We’re waiting for a clear weather window to head to the High Camp at 17200 feet. Will Keep you posted.

Today we planned to do the cache at 16,300 feet and return to 14000 feet. But when we reached about 16000 feet, the team was still feeling strong and so we decided to keep going and went all the way up to 17,000 ft (High Camp). It was amazing being up at High Camp and the feeling that the summit was so close, but this also meant today was a very long day (over 9.5 hours!!).   We left Camp 3 at 10:15 AM and returned to Camp 3 at 7:45 PM. In our tents now. Rest day tomorrow before we (hopefully) head up again to the High Camp for the summit attempt.   

Today sure was a long tiring day. Hence, very tired. Ready to fall into my sleeping bag and sleep. Will send a longer message tomorrow :)

(Image: Asianet Newsable)

Rest day and acclimatisation day again today. We had pancakes for breakfast and then we just hung out around camp. We practised some climbing skills and walked to this “scenic point” (frankly everything is pretty scenic around camp) called “The Edge of the World.”

Some more question’s that no one asked but I will answer anyway:

What’s the toilet situation like?  We definitely don’t have toilets.  We dig holes and make walls out of ice so that we are protected from the wind and have a little privacy while doing our thing. There’s also a designated spot for peeing on all the campsites.   In an effort to preserve the cleanliness of the mountain the Denali Park Service Rangers have mandated that we carry the human waste back with us. While it sounds pretty gross, it is very cold, everything freezes, and I am glad to say it doesn’t smell!!   Also, it feels good to be doing our bit in keeping the mountain clean.

How are you sending these messages? We have a Sat phone to make calls (in case of emergencies) and an In-reach texting device that can send only messages. But we are taking lots of photos with our cell phones. We will share those photos with you when we get back to wi-fi. And we are using solar chargers to charge the devices!

That’s all the info dissemination for today. Over and out!!!

(A photograph from May 24 of Deeya, Ajeet, Purna & Verma loaded in the ski-plane with their gear, ready to depart for the Kahiltna glacier from Talkeetna.)

We went down to get our things from the cache - took us about an hour and 15 to get there and back. We practised some more technical skills and had the rest of the day pretty free. Played a very “cerebral” card game (as cerebral as Bluff) called Go Fish (I won the first game but lost the next few rounds to Dad and Varma sadly).

Some FAQs (no one has asked me these questions but I am going to answer them anyway because I don’t have much to do right now!) 

What’s the sleeping situation like? We’re carrying tents and we pitch them every time we head to a new camp.  This entails flattening the base with ice axes & shovels and making sure our tents are firmly anchored to the snow (using snow stakes)  so that it doesn’t fly away while we’re out for the day (or while we’re in it!!!). It’s always pretty bright out so we have to use eye covers while sleeping at night. We get into many layers of clothes as the sun goes down below the horizon. It gets really cold then as we are at 63 degrees north, close to the Arctic Circle. Though once we are in our tents it's cosy and we are warm. 

What’s for food? Breakfast and dinners are hot. Breakfast is usually bagels, cheese and a hot drink. Dinners range from burritos to freeze-dried meals where we just add hot water into the food and it’s ready to eat within 5 minutes. Papa is often showing off his cooking skills here  For water we just melt snow from outside! Lunch is on the go- so it consists of a lot of granola bars, nuts, chocolates and dried fruit.

That is all for today...

Today we had to lug heavy loads up to Camp 3 today. There are two extremely steep parts of this climb - motorcycle hill and squirrel hill. The third really dangerous (slightly scary) part is the windy corner which is a narrow icy path on a steep slope that falls directly into a giant crevasse. Though we had crossed all three of these parts on the climb yesterday, we had light loads so it felt a lot easier. Today we carried up our sleeping bags, tents, personal gear plus additional group gear and food which made the load a lot heavier and the climb a lot more intense. Apart from that, it was alternatively hot and sunny, and cloudy and windy. So we would sweat a lot and then that sweat would freeze.. which was well ..not much fun… 
Burritos for dinner. Over and out for today...

Today was a hot sunny day on the mountain. it took us about 4 hours to get to the cache point at 13,500 feet. We buried our stuff and made our way back to Camp 2. The way down was ridiculously hot, we were all sweating and pretty drenched by the time we made it back to camp.

The cache method makes moving the loads up the mountain easier but it also makes it feel like we’re climbing the mountain twice. Thankfully we switched to crampons (metal spikes that go under your feet) today. 

We were wearing snowshoes until now -- which make it easy to climb in soft snow, but they are very bulky (to disperse our weight on the snow and make sure we don't sink too far. The crampons are much more streamlined, lighter and more appropriate for the steep slopes towards camp 3 and beyond.

Apart from the crampons, we are now wearing avalanche transceivers (a type of emergency locator beacon) and we are using ice axes! The climbing is getting more intense!! 

Tomorrow we will head out to camp 3 at 14,000 ft! 

Almost forgot, we had butter chicken and tortillas for dinner today (because I know all of you are waiting for this most important update)... That's all for now... Zzzzzzz

Today was relatively relaxed. We woke up around 9 am and had pancakes for breakfast. (Unfortunately, the Nutella we brought was completely frozen so had to make do with maple syrup!) 

Took us three hours to go down to the cache and back.  Spent the afternoon practicing some snow skills since we are back in the mountains after three years. It gets steeper from here!   

Camp 3 is at 14,000 feet.  Tomorrow we will probably do a cache (at about 13,000 ft) towards Camp 3.    

We are happy that our entire team is acclimatising well. We have two more Indian climbers in our team.  Poorna Malavat & Varma, both Everesters.    

Poorna Malavat, our star climber whose Everest story inspired Rahul Bose to make a movie on her,  is doing extremely well  and has a  strong presence on the mountain. 

This is her seventh summit too and she is a happy solid camper!  Varma is also a strong fit climber and we have all bonded well as a team.

Another long day today -- 7 hours to get to 11,000 ft camp (aka camp 2). We have set up camp and now excited to eat dinner.   

A lot of the meals on the mountain are usually freeze dried because they are light and easy to cook. The companies that make them usually focus on shelf life and not taste. So they are my least favourite meals on the mountain. Basically taste like sawdust with cheese.

My cousin Bharat recently started a company in India (Yu Foods) which makes delicious freeze-dried meals as a preservative-free instant meal for people in cities. Bharat very kindly agreed to make special edition meals with a few of our favourite Indian dishes, especially for this Denali trip. We are having 'Palak dal' (spinach lentils) for dinner today and I could not be more excited.    

Tomorrow, we will go back to the cache at 10,000 ft and bring it back to camp. Over and out for today !
 

Today, we woke up to a very windy day. it wasn't as bad as we originally anticipated so we decided to do a gear and food cache at 10,000 ft. The idea behind this is that as the mountain gets steeper it becomes harder to carry the 100 pounds up in one go.   

A cache entails taking half our stuff 3/4 of the way to the next camp (11,000 ft Camp) and climbing back down and sleeping at the camp we started from (7,800 ft).

The next day we take the rest of the gear all the way up to the 11,000ft camp and set up our tents over there.

Finally, on the third day, we go back to the cache and bring it up to the 11,000 ft camp. Apart from helping with loads this also helps with acclimatisation. We will be doing gear and food caches for all the rest of the camps.   

It took us 7 hours to climb to the cache point today. We buried our gear, marked it with flags and took the GPS coordinates so that we can find it later. We were back in camp in 1.5 hours.

We are now going to drink lots of water, eat dinner and sleep. We plan to move to 11,000 ft camp tomorrow but this (as usual) is dependent on the weather.

We were supposed to fly out at 10 am yesterday but the departure kept getting delayed because there was fog at base camp. We finally got to the glacier by 2:30 pm.   

The landing was really amazing - the plane (De Havilland Otter) has retractable skis which allow it to land on the glacier. After landing at the glacier, we unloaded our equipment from the plane and then set up our rope line and packed our sleds and backpacks.   We had a quick dinner (some basil pasta with turkey meatballs) and then set up tents for a quick 2-hour rest before leaving for the next camp.    

We ended up leaving camp by 12 am, though there was light, the sun was below the horizon and the snow had hardened.    

Initially all of us, including our other team members Poorna & Varma -two very strong climbers also from India - were all a bit slow, we were wearing snowshoes which are big and bulky and we took some time getting used to them. We slowly picked up the pace and managed to get to the 7,800 Camp by 7 am all extremely exhausted as we had been awake for almost 24 hours. Also, our loads were the heaviest they will be this entire trip. About 100 pounds each. In the next few camps, we will be doing gear caches (more on that later).

We quickly set up our tents and immediately fell asleep exhausted after our long trudge. We had burritos for lunch (with guacamole, eggs and salsa) and then went back into our tents and immediately fell asleep again.  

Dinner was thanksgiving themed with turkey, gravy and mashed potatoes. We put some leftover guacamole on the turkey & gravy (it was actually a surprisingly great combination)   

Got back to the tent and played some bluff. Varma won the first game but quickly don’t worry - I made up for it and won the second game - It’s always easy playing when dad is one of the people in the game because I can immediately tell when he is “bluffing”.  But turns out the opposite works as well because dad ended up winning the third game.    

We’re all back in our tents now and warm in our sleeping bags. The plan for tomorrow is to be decided - dependent on the weather. I will message with more updates soon.

READ MORE UPDATES FROM THIS ADVENTURE HERE