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)
Andrew called on Sunday, June 19th, at 8:15pm Pacific time with the following update:
“Hi all! This is Andrew calling in with a dispatch from Camp at 14,000 feet. Happy Father’s Day to all those dads out there! Yesterday we took a cache up around Windy Corner at about 13,000 feet. We had a yummy dinner of Thai food with spicy sauce.
Today was such a beautiful climbing day. We moved up to 14,000, and the weather couldn’t have been better. It was sunny, and actually a little hot! We had to move quickly around Windy Corner to avoid rockfall that sometimes happens when things warm up. But we all made it safely to 14,000, and are just now putting the final touches on setting up the cook tent.
It is my turn to cook, and I hope everyone will be surprised by the after-dinner mints I’ve brought! And tomorrow, we’ll pick up our cache below, and then have a rest day. This will give us some time to acclimatize. We look forward to passing along some more messages to friends and family tomorrow!”