Denali Team 5: June 13–July 3
Guides: Paul Ivaska, Richard Riquelme, Kristen Looper
Apprentice: Andrew Yasso
Climbers: Walt, Ann, and Luke Hampton (Canton, Connecticut), Caitriona Strain (Burnfoot, Ireland), Brendan McDyer (Glenties, Ireland), Skye O’Donnell (Sydney, Australia), Colin Stalnecker (Chicago, Illinois), Ryan Derrigan (Rickmansworth, England), and Stephen Williams (Oxon, United Kingdom)
Paul called on Monday, June 21st, at 4:15pm Pacific time with the following update. Posting of this update was delayed because Blogspot made some access and administrative changes to their software that left us without access until now. Sorry for the delay!
“Hello again. This is Paul calling from 14,000 feet. We arrived here yesterday at 5:00pm and had a good evening together. The team did really well. It was calm coming around Windy Corner, and we were grateful for that.
Today we did a back carry, bringing up supplies from our 13,500-foot cache. The itinerary for the rest of today has been a hike out to the “Edge of the World” for the great views. Tomorrow we’ll do fixed line practice, and on Wednesday we hope to climb the face of the Buttress and put in our cache at 16,000 feet.
The weather is very nice and the forecast is looking pretty good, so we’re all very happy about that. It looks like it will be a drier week over the next seven days than this past week which was not good at all. Winds are predicted to be 10-30 miles per hour for the next couple of days. That’s not too bad. How much of a problem the wind is depends on the temperature. Today at the 17,200-foot high camp the high temp was 10 degrees Fahrenheit; the low was –5 last night. The summit has a cloud cap today. The wind isn’t too bad, but visibility is an issue up there.
Here are some messages from us to you. First off, everyone says thanks for sending the messages. It’s a lot of fun to get them.
From Steve: Love to my family and happy belated Father’s Day! Enjoy Glastonbury!
From Luke to Abby: I’m safe. Watch your phone tomorrow. 1434
From Brendan: Happy belated Father’s Day. Lots of love. All is well.
From Colin: Happy Father’s Day!
Ann and Walt: We send greetings to the head jammers and lady head jammers and to our climbing friend Patrick Kral. And Happy Father’s Day!
From Ryan: Happy Father’s Day to Robert and Gary!
That’s it for now. We’ll call again when we can.”
We were able to pass on messages posted by Ryan, Rachel, and Trisha on Dispatch #9, and from the Dispatch #8 posted June 18, the comments posted there by rowingmum, Jim, antipodean, Abbey, Laura, Thisha, Katie, Birdie and Hugh, and Cary. Messages for Caitriona were not passed on because she has decided to head down the mountain (in the care of another guided group that was going down; our understanding is that is was a general decision she made and not a health decision).