May 1, 2007 - UPDATE

TUESDAY, MAY 1, 2007

May 1, 2007 - UPDATE

Valorie and Wendy are back from their trip to Alaska and it is time to update everyone on the status of Don and Wes' trek up Denali. Valorie and I were fortunate to be able to scout out base camp for the guys. We booked a flightseeing tour out of Talkeetna on Sunday. We went up as "cargo handlers" with three climbers to base camp. This is very rare for the average tourist to do. We were able to land on the Kalhitna Glacier where base camp is located. It is a very beautiful spot about 7,000 to 7,500 feet high. It is surrounded by mountains including Mt. Foraker and Mt. Hunter. It was a very sunny day up there and cold. It was 15 degrees when we were there. The base camp was just being set up on the day we went up (Sunday). There were more park rangers than climbers at base camp on that day. We were lucky to even be able to fly that day. The planes and climbers had been grounded the previous three days because of weather. We also went to the ranger station in Talkeetna and as of Sunday, April 29th, there were 1,035 registered climbers for the 2007 climbing season, 18 on the mountain at that time (including park rangers), and 2 climbers from Italy had already summited the previous week. The summit success rate was 100% as of that day - the Italians were the only ones that have tried to summit so far.

Wes and Don left for Talkeetna on Monday, April 30th. We were able to meet the group of climbers and their guides. It looks like a good group of people. They were to drive to Talkeetna on Monday and see if they could fly out to base camp that same day. They called us at 8:45 pm Monday night and let us know that they had made it to base camp! They had arrived at base camp at 4 pm. They said they saw three bears running along as they were flying in. They also said it was minus 10 degrees that night. They were wearing all of their clothes and were in their sleeping bags and still were cold. Wes mentioned that they were going to do some crevasse safety training on Tuesday morning.

Hopefully we will get more updates from Wes and Don and will be able to fill you in, too! It is so cold up there that the satellite phone froze so we can only get updates when the phone is working! More later!