West Buttress Patrol

On the airstrip in Talkeetna. This is our patrol, from left to right Paul (paramedic), Jody (Canadian SARTech and paramedic), myself, Chris (Mountaineering Ranger), Scott (Kluane Park Ranger), John (Mountaineering Ranger).

Kahiltna Basecamp from the airplane on the way in. The camp got much larger later in the season.

Leaving Basecamp. The face in the background is the north buttress of Mt Hunter.

Traveling up glacier to the 11,000 ft camp.

The horde slowly creeping up Motorcycle Hill.

The Lama dropping off supplies to set up 14 camp. The Lama made 9 trips on this day to get us all of our stuff. There is a lot that goes into setting up 14 camp; medical tent, comms tent, cook tent, all our medical supplies food for multiple patrols, rescue gear, extra tents, and so on.

Scott and Jody on the fixed lines above 14,000 camp. We had to replace two sections of worn out line.

Me, Paul and John hanging out in the communications tent at 14,000 camp. This tent was the best place to be lots of room to stretch out, good company, and best of all a heater.

Heading out of 14 camp and up towards the fixed lines.

This is the best part of the climb right along the West Buttress proper. The mountain drops away thousands of feet on both sides of the ridge. The climbing is never too steep but the views are incredible.

This is our tent at 17,200 ft. Denali Pass is in the background, the trail is just visible under the rock band in the center of the photo. The trail leads up from camp to the pass.

No I haven't collapsed, I'm clipping the rope into a fixed anchor on the traverse up to Denali Pass. This is not an especially difficult traverse but its very time consuming clipping all of the anchors. But you do not want to skip any of them because there is a lot of exposure below the traverse and this is the site of a lot of accidents.

Finally on the summit ridge. This was a pretty spectacular part of the climb. Its a shame I was too hypoxic to really enjoy it.

The Top!!!

Back in the tent at the end of summit day. It was a long 12 hour day. A little 2 hours after we got to sleep some other climbers came and woke us up to report a "big problem" up high. It turned out to be nothing but first thing the next morning we had to start an evacuation for another injured climber.

This is just above 11,000 camp on the way back down.

Back at basecamp. The plane landing is coming in to pick us up and drop off another patrol.

This was such a great trip. We couldn't have had a better crew. The guys I got to work with are incredible people and great climbing partners. I'd go back to the mountain with them in a heartbeat. Overall we had pretty good weather with only just a few stormy days. The coldest it got at night was probably between -25 and -30 degrees. I had a great time and feel very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to participate in this patrol.