Denali: Top of North America

WE DID IT!!!!

Highest people in North America at 20,320 feet!!!!

Reached the summit just after 7pm on Saturday, June 2nd.

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And when we summitted one of the coolest things happened 100+ miles away....our Boss dog knew it.  From a dead sleep he jumped up and started barking gleefully and acting giddy as a school boy George and Leslie said.  He didn't want to go outside or want anything to eat or drink.  He continued on for several minutes.  They couldn't figure it out because he never tries to get attention vocally.  Minutes later, family from MT called to say our SPOT tracker showed that we had reached the summit!  They looked at Boss and said, "How did you know?"  And, he just smiled and wagged his tail.  That's our Boss Dog!

HIP HIP HOOORAY!!!!

We carried flags to the top that each set of parents from TN had given us.

YAY! ARNAUD!

Arnaud's naked summit picture!  He had to do this because he had just got one from the summit of Aconcagua (South America's highest peak) a few months ago.

Views from the top...no description needed, right?

More summit photos!

Happy people!  We shared the summit with three other people (two from Kansas City and one from Japan).  The weather was so awesome that we spent over an hour up there!

Happy birthday Andrew!  This was his belated 30th birthday present.

Finally going down....

Looking back at the summit ridge one more time.

Crossing the football field again.

Going back down the traverse from Denali Pass.  This picture was taken just before Arnaud fell!  Thank goodness we were good climbers and were clipped into the running protection the park rangers had left, so we didn't die.  He only fell about 20 feet, but if we would had not been clipped in, he would have ripped us all off the side of the mountain.

Several pictures of the 17K camp from the traverse.

Almost back to camp at 11:30pm. 

What an incredible day!

One happy, tired girl!

Alpenglow 

These last two pictures Jonas took....beautiful midnight sun!

All I can say about this day, besides WOW!, is that it was truly a gift.  Weather like this doesn't come often (weather like our whole trip overall) and someone sent us a gift. We were extremely lucky!  All those good thoughts from everybody and visions of a clear, calm, blue sky day paid off.  Thank you everyone for sending all those good thoughts and cheers of encouragement our way!