Wally Berg

18-Hour Days at 17,200'
Saturday, June 27, 1998

Hear the Satellite Call from Denali

Hey Mountain Zone, this is Wally calling you about 10pm the evening of the 27th of June from about 17,200 feet on the West Buttress of Denali. It's a beautiful evening. I have a bit of catching up to tell you about with how the group has been doing. At this point, we're in a fabulous location and our spirits are very high. We're enjoying the benefit in these days just after the Summer Solstice of course; very long light and sun at this high elevation which normally, from my memory, is a very cold and inhospitable place.

Summer Solstice [click to zoom] (photo: Darsney)

It hasn't been quite that pretty a picture over the last few days since I last talked to you. I intended three nights, two full days and three nights of rest at 14,000 feet. As it turned out, we took a full five rest nights there due to weather. We have not seen the kind of uncompromising harsh weather that this mountain can throw at people but we have seen far from ideal weather. We've been waiting to have better visibility and less wind to move up. Today we thought was our day. We started out actually in quite bleak looking conditions — snow. But I could tell the wind wasn't blowing as we left this morning up high and my altimeter indicated that the pressure was getting higher and I thought we would see an improvement in the weather. We climbed through the mist most of the day, up to where you hit the West Buttress proper at 16,200 feet and then we did what is one of the most beautiful mountaineering traverse I know about. We traversed the West Buttress from the 16,200 foot camp to the 17,200 foot camp. Unfortunately, we didn't have the visibility to allow us to enjoy what a spectacular traverse this is. It must be an omen or something about the upcoming summit attempt because just before we reached 17,200, we walked out of the clouds and as I'll describe to you now: I'm standing, looking across a cloud layer at the top of Foraker, looking up at a beautiful, clear, sunlit summit of Denali. We also can look down through the clouds at Mt. Hunter.

We're enjoying what seem to be very good conditions for our summit attempt. We will take a full rest day tomorrow. I have to brag a bit about how strong this small group of climbers we have with us this time is. We did a full carry without having carried anything to 16,200; we carried everything with us from 14,000 straight through to 17,200 today. So, we have a very strong group but we're not foolish enough to go dashing off in the morning even though the weather looks very good; we'll take a rest day. My sense and the weather reports we hear relayed through Kahiltna base and the park service is that we have a high pressure that is going to sit here for a few days and the plan at this point is that the day after tomorrow, as soon as it is warm enough to climb, soon as we can have some sun on us, we'll begin climbing. That will give us a full 17 or 18 hours of sun before we turn back to the 17,000 foot camp. Of course, it's light all the time but you definitely want to time your movement so that you're in your sleeping bag when the sun does pass behind the north summit and spends a few hours circling around before it comes back at you from the South.

So, spirits are high as you can tell and we'll continue to keep in touch.

— Wally Berg, Expedition Leader

EXPEDITION