Denali: Anchorage to Base Camp

I want to start by just saying how extremely lucky we were throughout the entire trip with weather and how our bodies adapted to the altitude.  Now, sorry for the length of time it has taken to get this post up and the length of the post itself....lots of pictures plus lots of stories and explanations!  I blame the altitude!  And I can still do that....after talking with the family doctor about why we have felt so sluggish since we came off the mountain and why we are sleeping so much and just generally feel "out-of-it," he says it's brain fatigue.  He said while we were on the mountain, constantly moving higher up in elevation and into lower levels of oxygen, our bodies were developing a tolerance for hypoxia, a condition in which the tissues are starved of oxygen.  Basically, it's like recovering from a head injury, a concussion.  Sleeping a lot and drowsy are common and it could take up to a few weeks to recover.
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So it begins.....
June 11th we picked our friend, Arnaud, up from the airport in Anchorage.  We spent several days getting last minute gear and groceries while using Eagle River State Park as a base camp for sleeping, sorting and organizing.

We packaged and accounted for 24 days of food.  We planned to leave three days worth of food and fuel at base camp on the glacier in case we got stuck there waiting to fly back to Talkeetna.  So, we had 21 days of food and fuel to lug up the mountain.

Here, Andrew is tying snow anchors onto our tent.  The idea is to dig a deep hole in the snow, fill the anchor with a snowball and bury it so the hurricane force winds, that are not too uncommon on the mountain, don't blow your tent away.

We also spent a couple of days in Talkeetna before we flew to the glacier.  The weather was beautiful....making us hopeful!

Weighing all of our gear!  We were allowed 375 lbs. of stuff, anything more costed more.  We ended up with 430 lbs. of gear!  Oops!

We flew with Sheldon Air.  I can not say enough about how totally awesome they were!  They were so enthusiastic everytime we dealt with them on the phone and even more so in person.  They allowed us to sit on their couches and use internet the days before we left.  Holly made us zucchini bread the morning we flew out and when we returned before we were even out of the plane she was there with fresh baked cookies!  Then, after we were all unloaded she sat us down with homemade soup with bread and butter (and bottled waters...HUGE...because for 20 days we had been drinking water melted from snow which tastes slightly of white gas and has mystery floaty things in it)!  

Holly's husband, Dave, loading our gear.  He flew us to base camp.  On our way to base camp I remembered that I forgot to drop a few things at the post office which were in our truck (not even stamped yet) and Dave agreed to retrieve them, stamp them, and mail them for me!  They are too awesome!

And we're off!

Beautiful, cloudless, blue sky day!  Couldn't be better!  That's Denali on the right, Mt. Hunter (~14,000) in the middle, and Mt. Foraker (~17,400) on the left.

BASE CAMP! 7,200 ft.
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Again, we were so incredibly lucky to receive the kind of weather we did.  Many days were clear and calm, the most beautiful blue skies ever, and many were partly cloudy with a little snow here and there.  We hardly had any winds the entire time.  The windiest days were are high camp and they were nothing like they could have been.  The temperatures were very mild...20s were the warmest temps we had on the lower mountain and the lowest temp was -25F at high camp....not bad comparatively speaking.  I actually wore more sunscreen on this trip than I have ever worn in my life and we still got a lot of sun on any exposed skin (faces, necks, and hands)!  We only suffered minor injures and illnesses....a few blisters on our feet, Arnaud got one sun blister on his face, fever blisters on lips, I got a nasty head cold, very minor headaches from altitude, and a little temporary numbness in fingertips and on the tips of toes from nerve damage, but that's all.  From the moment we landed at base camp, we considered it an honor to be there and to have gotten that far already.  There are a number of things that can turn a team around at any stage of the game.  The whole trip was a gift from above and we were so fortunate for it to work out the way it did.