Bargo Brothers Live Adventure Volume 4 July 3-8
Branndon Bargo / 24.07.2006
We have been here over 2 weeks, and I am getting impatient. The weather was not good enough to summit today. At this altitude, the weather is usually bad, and you have to be ready at any minute to summit. We have been keeping up with the weather reports and hope to summit tomorrow. We are very low on food, and need to pick up our cache at 16,200 feet. We are nervous after what happened the other day on the ridge. We decided to make a go anyway. We moved very fast, and made it down to our cache in less than an hour. We grabbed our food, and headed back up in about an hour. We ate two dinners in preparation for a summit tomorrow. We both feel for some reason that tomorrow is the day.
July 4, 2006 Day 16
During the night the winds and snow howl. That is not a good sign for a summit day. By 11 a.m. the winds die down, and we decide to go. Five other teams decided the same thing. We left about 12:30 p.m. with three teams ahead of us. We headed up the very steep and dangerous Denali Pass. The Park Service placed fixed lines with pickets that we could clip into. The problem is two of the teams were very slow in doing this. It took about 2 hours and 20 minutes to climb to the top of the pass, about 1100 feet. I began to fall asleep on my feet. At 18,300 feet the sun was out, and it was a beautiful summit day. Two other teams caught up to us because of the slow progress from the two teams ahead of us- one of which was Justin's team (our guide friend from Ft. Worth)
We decided to latch on to the other two teams and pick up the pace. One of the teams was two Alaskans, who tried to climb the more difficult West Rib route, but failed due to weather. Our team, and there team took the lead and never looked back. We moved quickly, and Greg and I felt great. The weather was perfect, and we moved through all the famous sections with ease such as Archdeacon's tower and the football field. But it got tough on Pig Hill! Denali is located at 63 degrees north Latitude. Mt. Everest is located at 27 degrees north latitude. Because Denali is located so far north, the barometric pressure is lower and it makes the mountain feel higher than it is. So a 20,000 foot elevation feels more like 23,000 feet. When I reached about 19,800 feet is when I began to feel funny. I didn't feel bad, just strange. I felt like I was outside of my body. If you were to take two bottles of Robitussin it would be the equivalent of climbing the highest mountain in North America.
Pig Hill is more than a hill. It is the last 800 feet of climbing before you reach the summit. It is where you must reach down, and decide if you really want to make it to the top. I have heard many times that the West Buttress is a non-technical route to climb Denali. I disagree. It is a less technical route, than say the West Rib or Cassin Ridge, but it has everything you could ever look for in a mountain. It has plenty of dangers and challenges lurking behind every corner.
SleepMonsters
