Twins to the Tops: The Quest for the North American Country High Points

By Eric Gilbertson and Matthew Gilbertson

Ten pickets later, we found ourselves on the roof of North America. Yeeeahhhh! I roared at the top of my lungs. I yelled so loud that I actually knocked the wind out of myself for five minutes. At that moment, we were the highest people standing on solid ground in the continent
(excerpt from Denali report).

The quest to reach the most expansive vista of each country and explore the most remote parts of the world motivated the Gilbertson twins to be the first to climb the highest mountain in all twenty-three North American countries.

From the windswept glaciers of Alaska and the Yukon, to the tropical jungles of Central America, to the razor-grass-covered volcanoes of the Caribbean, Matthew and Eric share the stories and experiences that paved their way through their trip reports and itineraries.

They were born and raised in Appalachian Kentucky and later educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they joined its famous Outing Club. In this book, they share how they achieved their quest for the summits with both budget consciousness and strategic efficiencyin just nine trips!

This book is for those who share a thirst for travel, the outdoors, and the mountains. It chronicles a subset of the Gilbertson twins overall goal to climb the 195 world country high points. Stay tuned for more books in the Twins to the Tops series coming soon.

For more information, visit our website, http://www.countryhighpoints.com/.

Advance praise for Twins to the Tops

The Gilber-trons strike again! A great resource for mountaineering in North America
(Dan Walker, former president, MIT Outing Club).

Twins to the Tops is an inspiring read and an effort worthy of a world record
(David Rush, 50+ time Guinness World Record breaker).

Those boys never stop walking. I reckon these old Kentucky hills was a good place to start
(Tony Smith, Appalachian author of These Old Hills).

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546251132

Book preview

© 2018 Eric and Matthew Gilbertson. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/27/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-5112-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-5113-2 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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CONTENTS

PART I

Authors’ Note And Introduction

Which Countries Comprise North America? What Is A High Point?

About The Authors

Twins To The Tops: A Review By A World Record Breaker

PART II

List Of Our North American Ascents

Trip 1 – United States Of America

Trip 2 - Mexico

Trip 3 – The Lesser Antilles I

1.   Trinidad And Tobago

2.   Grenada

3.   Saint Vincent And The Grenadines

4.   Barbados

5.   Dominica: Matthew’s Ascent

6.   Dominica: Eric’s Ascent

7.   Antigua And Barbuda

Trip 4 – The Lesser Antilles Ii

1.   Saint Lucia

2.   St. Kitts And Nevis

3.   Jamaica

4.   The Bahamas

Trip 5 – Central America

1.   El Salvador

2.   Nicaragua

3.   Honduras

4.   Guatemala

5.   Costa Rica

Trip 6 – Hispañola

1.   Haiti

2.   Dominican Republic

Trip 7 – Belize

Trip 8 - Canada

Trip 9 – Cuba

PART III

A Note About Adventure Funding

Acknowledgements

Other Books By The Authors

AUTHORS’ NOTE AND INTRODUCTION

image1.jpg

Figure 1: Based upon the most commonly accepted definition, the continent of North America continent consists of Canada, the USA, Central America, and the Caribbean, for a total of 23 countries.

Stretching from the jungles of Panama in the south to the arctic of Canada in the north to the beaches of Barbados in the east and to the glaciers of USA’s Alaska in the west, North America offers an astounding variety of landscapes (Figure 1). Climbing the highest mountain in each of its 23 countries offers the chance to truly experience this diversity – from an unbeatable viewpoint. What’s more, reaching the trailheads offers adventure in and of itself.

We recently became the first people in the world to climb the highest mountain in all 23 North American countries. On June 11th, 2015 upon successfully reaching the summit of Cuba’s Pico Turquino (elev. 6,476ft), we celebrated the culmination of a 5-year-and-16-day (1,843-day) quest that began with our ascent of USA’s Denali (elev. 20,310ft) in May 2010.

To rewind a bit – on February 25, 2012, we stood atop Guadeloupe Peak, the highest point in USA’s Texas, looking out at the vast expanse of desert and mountains surrounding us, realizing this was the last mountain in our journey to climb all 50 US state high points. During that journey, we realized that highpointing was a great way to experience the beauty of our home country, and we decided to expand our travels to see more of the mountains in the greater boundary of our home continent North America.

In pursuit of our goal to explore the summits of North America, we embarked on nine separate climbing expeditions to various corners of the continent: one to Alaska, three to the Caribbean, three to Central America, one to the Yukon of Canada, and lastly one to Cuba (in the midst of studying mechanical engineering in graduate school at MIT) (Figure 2).

image2.jpg

Figure 2: Our 9 trips to complete all 23 highpoints

The goal of this book is to document the trips we took to each of the North American country highpoints, which importantly were nearly all unguided. The only mountains for which we hired guides were: St. Lucia and Cuba (both required by law), Nicaragua (due to the risk of land mines), and Belize (for protection from armed Guatemalan gold miners). These trip reports and itineraries give the reader extensive information that is the result of a tremendous amount of independent legwork.

Many highpoints lack any published route information apart from this book, which serves as a first of its kind. As of 2018 to our knowledge, no resource exists in print or online that compiles information on all of the North American highpoints in one place. For some mountains, the only available information is Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM)-based topographic maps, which can have errors significant enough to obscure the true highpoint location.

In instances of multiple disputed highpoints, we have aimed to resolve these issues to give the highpointer the full story. For example, in some Caribbean nations, the location that locals consider the summit is in fact only a low point on a crater rim of the tallest mountain. We provide reports on the routes we took to each mountain and detail our own field research and GPS measurements to provide clear information on which is highest.

The descriptive reports contained in this book also paint a picture of local conditions and difficulties that the mountaineer might encounter. For instance, we describe USA’s Denali and Canada’s Mount Logan (elev. 19,551ft) to be the most challenging of the 23 high points, both of which required ski plane travel on and off the glacier, plus two weeks of high-altitude mountaineering over heavily crevassed terrain. Next in difficulty was Belize, which involved a thirty-mile tractor ride through knee-deep mud and days of bushwhacking through jungle with an armed military escort. Cuba posed a unique challenge because at the time it was not permissible for US citizens to visit Cuba for the purpose of tourism (and still is not as of publication date). Our reports chronicle how we addressed such challenges.

Finally, we share how we achieved our mission for the summits with both budget consciousness and strategic efficiency. This book is structured to present the summits in the order in which we climbed them, grouped into the nine trips we took, enabling the reader to go for all the North American country highpoints with similar efficiency or to simply add a side trip to any vacation. Although a few of the mountains are multi-week expeditions, some are day hikes that are accessible to the beginner hiker. The back matter also contains A Note about Adventure Funding for additional budgeting information.

Stay tuned for future books in the Twins to the Tops series, including one in which we will present detailed maps and statistics for each of the 23 hikes in a guidebook format. In the meantime, the reader is encouraged to contact us via email with any inquiries about our trips, such as obtaining GPS tracks and additional photos. Contact information can be found on our website: http://www.countryhighpoints.com

WHICH COUNTRIES COMPRISE NORTH AMERICA? WHAT IS A HIGH POINT?

How did we arrive at this list of 23 mountains? We recognize that there are multiple definitions for the continent of North America as well as the term country. In choosing the mountains to include in our quest, we have utilized the most rigorous and commonly accepted definitions available for North America and country.

NORTH AMERICAN COUNTRIES DEFINITION

To define the boundaries of North America, one of the world’s seven continents, we use the United Nations (UN) definition. According to the United Nations Statistics Division, The continent of North America comprises Northern America, Caribbean, and Central America [1]. Furthermore, these three regions in total are comprised of 23 UN Member States and 20 Non-UN Member States, as shown in Figure 3.

The most commonly used definition of the term country is a UN Member State. According to the UN, its members are the countries of the world [2]. As of publication time, there are 193 UN Member States and 2 non-member observer states (Holy See and Palestine).

As a consequence of these definitions for North America and country, there are therefore 23 North American countries: United States of America, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Barbados, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, and the Bahamas.

Some confusion may arise for overseas territories and dependencies that are located within North America, but whose parent countries are in different continents, namely the Non-UN Member States listed in Figure 3. For example, the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon lie within North America (off the coast of Newfoundland), but they constitute an overseas collectivity of France. Because these territories and dependencies themselves are not independent UN Member States, we group them with their parent countries and thus do not include them within the North America list.

image3.jpg

Figure 3: Classification of the regions in the United Nations definition of North America.

HIGH POINT DEFINITION

We define the country highpoint as the highest natural point on any land owned by the country, excluding foreign embassies and consulates. This ensures, for instance, that the highpoint of the Bahamas is indeed in the Bahamas and not in its consulate in Switzerland, even though the Bahamas may technically own the land at its Swiss consulate.

Of note, as of 2018, according to both the Oxford and Webster dictionaries, the term highpoint is technically not a word; instead, the recommended usage is the term high point. However, the observant reader will note that highpoint is currently used extensively in mountaineering literature. In addition, some text editors like Microsoft Word do not object to using highpoint.

Because English is an evolving language, and the practice of reaching summits is rapidly gaining popularity, we believe that it is only a matter of time before highpoint is accepted into the leading dictionaries. In an effort to help this pseudo-word gain acceptance, in our book, you’ll notice that we use the term highpoint extensively, along with the more traditional term high point, to refer to the same thing.

CONCLUSIONS

Following these definitions for North America, country, and high point, we finally arrive at the list of 23 mountains that constitute our book. Notably, our list is the same list recognized by Guinness World Records in its record Fastest time to climb the highest points in all North American countries [3]. As of publication time, nobody holds this record, but our application for this record is pending.

REFERENCES:

[1] "Standard country or area codes for statistical use (M49)," United Nations Statistics Division, https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/, retrieval date 07/04/2018.

[2] "What are Member States?" https://www.un.org/depts/dhl/unms/whatisms.shtml, retrieval date 07/04/2018.

[3] Guinness World Records, accessible by conducting a Record Application search on http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Eric and Matthew Gilbertson were born in Berea, Kentucky, USA in 1986 and started hiking with their Dad in the nearby hills and hollers of Kentucky as soon as they could walk. Before that, their parents Keith and Mary Kay carried them on their backs on hikes.

With walking legs of their own, they started hiking and backpacking at the Pigg House, the Pinnacle, and Anglin Falls near their hometown. Twice a year, they would go backpacking in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina with their Dad and brother Jacob. In high school, they learned how to survive for days in the wilderness when they went to Philmont Boy Scout Ranch near Cimarron, New Mexico.

They started college in the fall of 2004 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they discovered the MIT Outing Club (MITOC), which opened a whole new world of adventure. MITOC, a group of more than 1,400 students and staff in the Boston area, offered companionship with other outdoor enthusiasts, an escape from the stresses of MIT, and energy for weeks of problem sets, hard work, and little sleep. Through organized trips called Circuses or even Circii, they soon started going on more extreme hikes throughout the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

MITOC’s Winter School program in January 2005 dramatically changed their perspective on hiking. Their first Winter School introduced them to the endless opportunities provided by snow. From experienced winter adventurers, they learned how to snowshoe, ice climb, cross-country ski, build snow shelters, hike above tree line, and survive in the winter. These skills would prove invaluable in their future highpointing adventures.

Before graduating from MIT, they successfully hiked the Appalachian trail, a 2,100+ mile trail stretching from Georgia to Maine. They hiked two-thirds of the trail in the summer of 2006, then finished the remaining third in 2007 and 2008.

After graduating from MIT in the spring of 2008, each with undergraduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering, they took a summer break from studying once again to travel and climb mountains. They flew up to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska and bicycled 3,000 miles south to Great Falls, Montana, climbing the Montana and Wyoming state highpoints Granite and Gannett Peak, respectively.

In Fall 2008, they settled down again back at MIT to work on master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering, developing a handheld, force-controlled ultrasound probe (Matthew), and a thermally-actuated, deep-sea, oil well safety valve (Eric). By then, they were trip leaders for Winter School and MITOC Circuses and could start passing down knowledge to the next generation of mountaineers.

Two years later, they finished their master’s degrees and both decided to stay on for PhDs in mechanical engineering, but not before another adventure (approved by their advisors). Within 12 hours of handing in their final theses, they were both on a plane to Alaska. Their first trip of the summer was to climb the USA highpoint Denali, which would require the culmination of all their MITOC Winter School skills. Next on the agenda was another 3,000-mile bicycle tour, this time in Europe to hit the country highpoints of Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, and Liechtenstein.

In the fall of 2010, they were back at MIT working on their mechanical engineering PhDs and squeezing in highpoints whenever they could. During spring or winter breaks, they hit many of the North American country highpoints. Within the year after they finished their PhDs in 2014 (with Matthew having designed an improved, handheld, force-controlled ultrasound probe and Eric having worked with autonomous kayaks), they had finished their final North American country highpoint – Pico Turquino in Cuba – in June 2015.

Currently, Matthew lives in California with his wife Amanda, also a member of the MITOC community and companion on a few of the high pointing adventures presented in this book. Eric lives in Washington state with his partner and fellow MITOC’er Katie.

TWINS TO THE TOPS: A REVIEW BY A WORLD RECORD BREAKER

This book is filled with an adventure. Eric and Matthew are the first humans to set foot on the roof of all 23 countries in North America. Some high points are easy hikes, others take weeks. For some, they were snowed into a tent for days on end with 50 miles per hour winds howling outside and others a hammock would have been better sleeping gear than their tent. They braved snakes and landmines, sub-zero temperatures and jungle heat. They faced corrupt border officials and had to hire armed guides to contend with illegal gold miners. They bushwacked through foliage so dense they couldn’t travel faster than a baby could crawl, sometimes only to be turned back after hours of effort. They fell off cliffs and slipped into crevasses. They pushed bikes up a mountain so tall and steep that actually biking was not an option.

They not only opened my eyes to the wonders of North America but brought to light the plight of the Chiquibul National Park in Belize. They had to work hard but they also had to get lucky - multiple times. And just as fascinating are their interactions with private flight companies and unreliable car rental agencies. And then there were the cars themselves, which were often as sketchy as the places they were taken. They had to avoid the authorities when camping where perhaps they weren’t allowed and had multiple police encounters on their journeys, *almost* all pleasant. And just as impressive is how they completed the endeavor on a shoestring budget spending tens of thousands of dollars less than a typical hiker might spend on standard hotels and guided tours all while completing PHDs and living life to the fullest. Twins to the Tops is an inspiring read and an effort worthy of a world record.

- David Rush, 50+ time Guinness World Record breaker

LIST OF OUR NORTH AMERICAN ASCENTS

1. USA: Denali (Mount McKinley) – 20,310’ (6,190m) – 5/26/2010

2. Mexico: Pico de Orizaba – 18,491’ (5,636m) – 1/3/2012

3. Trinidad and Tobago: Cerro del Aripo – 3,084’ (940m) – 3/22/2012

4. Grenada: Mount Saint Catherine – 2,756’ (840m) – 3/23/2012

5. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – La Soufrière – 4,049– (1,234m) – 3/24/2012

6. Barbados – Mount Hillaby – 1,115’ (340m) – 3/25/2012

7. Dominica – Morne Diablotins – 4,747’ (1,447m) – 3/27/2012 (Matthew); 12/31/2012 (Eric)

8. Antigua and Barbuda – Mount Obama – 1,319’ (402m) – 3/29/2012 (Matthew); 3/26/2012 (Eric)

9. Saint Lucia – Mount Gimie – 3,113’ (949m) – 1/2/2013

10. Saint Kitts and Nevis – Mount Liamuiga – 3,793’ (1,156m) – 1/3/2013

11. Jamaica – Blue Mountain Peak – 7,402’ (2,256m) – 1/5/2013

12. Bahamas – Mount Alvernia – 207’ (63m) – 1/7/2013

13. El Salvador – Cerro El Pital – 8,957’ (2,730m) – 3/23/2013

14. Nicaragua – Pico Mogotón – 6,909– (2,106m) – 3/24/2013

15. Honduras – Cerro Las Minas – 9,347’ (2,849m) – 3/25/2013

16. Guatemala – Volcán Tajumulco – 13,845’ (4,220m) – 3/27/2013

17. Costa Rica – Cerro Chirripó – 12,530– (3,819m) – 3/28/2013

18. Panama – Volcán Barú – 11,398– (3,474m) – 3/30/2013

19. Haiti – Pic La Selle – 8,773’ (2,674m) – 8/23/2013

20. Dominican Republic – Pico Duarte – 10,164’ (3,098m) – 8/25/2013

21. Belize – Doyle’s Delight – 3,852’ (1,174m) – 9/20/2014

22. Canada – Mount Logan – 19,541’ (5,956m) – 5/16/2015

23. Cuba – Pico Turquino – 6,476’ (1,974m) – 6/11/2015

Total elapsed time: 1,843 days (5 years and 16 days)

TRIP 1 – UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Denali (Mt. McKinley) | 20,310ft

Author: Matthew

Team MIT: Matthew Gilbertson, Eric Gilbertson, Dan Walker, Darren V., Woody Hoburg

May 16th -May 28th, 2010: thirteen days plane to plane

SCHEDULE:

JUST BELOW THE SUMMIT:

Let’s go see what the top of the country looks like, Darren said. Our elevation was 20,100ft—about 200 below the summit.

During the past eleven days, we had ascended 13,000 feet over 13 miles. But the final 2,000ft of climbing had been grueling. Even though we had tiny packs (compared to days ago), each step upward was now a monumental feat. There was one-half the oxygen here compared to sea level. Every twenty seconds of hiking you needed to rest for the next thirty to catch your breath and slow down your pulse. Imagine climbing 6,288-foot Mount Washington (New Hampshire) with an extra 200lbs on your back, while breathing through a small coffee straw, while the mountain is made of soft sand. That’s the level of exertion of the final 2,000ft ascent of Denali.

We paused for a few seconds to catch our breaths. You couldn’t speak a complete sentence without needing to refill your lungs. We had split into two groups; Eric and I had just summited while Darren, Woody, and Dan were on their final pitch to the top.

Me: Almost there…[gasp]…just watch out…[gasp]…for the Polish team [gasp].

Dan/Woody/Darren: Let’s do it! [gasp]…

DAY 0 - SATURDAY MAY 15TH:

The five of us had swooped into Anchorage on Saturday May 15th from across the country: Eric/Dan from Boston/Cambridge; me from Maryland; Woody from California; Darren from Virginia. Our goal was to climb Denali (aka Mount McKinley), the highest point in Alaska, the country, and the continent.

Eric and I were seeking the crown jewel for our state high points collection. We could worry later about our remaining 14 state high points (mostly the southern and north-central states). Since Alaska was on the list, we had to climb it. We invited Darren, Woody, and Dan to join. I believe that they all responded with an enthusiastic YES within 10 minutes of the invitation email.

We had all managed to push and persuade our advisors/employers to give us the three weeks off we figured we would need. We had all read trip reports or books warning that even three weeks might not be enough because of the high potential for bad weather. We heard people could even be delayed for days on either end of the trip because the glacier planes needed good weather to land on the glacier.

We thus set up a tight schedule and wanted to get onto the glacier as soon as possible. Eric and I descended upon Anchorage first, landing around 3:30pm on Saturday. Darren, Woody, and Dan would all land later that evening; before they landed, Eric and I embarked upon a food shopping expedition. We grabbed our bags and put them in the rental car. We each had about 130lbs of non-food gear. We dropped off the bags at Microtel Anchorage (best rates in town) and pulled in to Walmart for some hardcore food shopping. We each took a cart and a deep breath and stepped inside.

We had created a Google spreadsheet for everyone to list their food preferences. Here’s the food we bought that we ended up eating:

Dinner: For dinner, we picked up pasta, couscous, and some Ramen noodles. Couscous and Ramen are super simple because you only need to add boiling water, and it’s a cinch to clean up. We got some good sausage, pepperoni, and brought some meats we had dehydrated. We also dehydrated some vegetables and pasta sauce. Many thanks to Kate for the dehydrated spices which, along with some Dan-Walker-cooking, made our dinners particularly awesome.

Lunch: We picked up 20lbs of cheese split up into five gigantic bricks. We also had a cracker mix of Triscuits, Gardettos, Combos, and cheese crackers, along with some Tortillas.

Breakfast: A bunch of oatmeal for some and cereal/powdered milk for others.

Snacks: Soft fruit bars, cookies, Great Value chocolate chip/fruit/nuts trail mix, Jell-O (for a real tasty post-dinner dessert).

Eric and I got quite a few looks while we were shopping. I suppose that not too many people are pushing around two overflowingly-full shopping carts. We had about 10 boxes of oatmeal, 10 bags of mini-wheats, 20 lbs. of pasta, 30 boxes of couscous, 10 huge bags of crackers, 5 x 5 lb. cheese bricks, 20 lbs. of sausage, and about 300 Ziploc bags. On three separate occasions, people asked us for help because they thought we worked there. We planned on eating a lot of food in 20 days. On the nutrition facts, a box of couscous might say 3 servings, but when you’re working as hard as we would be, you can divide that number by three or four.

An hour and a half later, we traded $950 for 250 lbs. of food. For five hungry hikers and 20 days, that worked out to $9.50 per person per day, which we considered to be reasonable. It was comparable to what we paid in Boston. We knew it wouldn’t be quite as lightweight as Mountain House freeze-dried food, but it was one third the price and produced one third the trash.

When we got back to Microtel, it was time to repackage everything. We began the daunting task of pouring all the food into Ziploc bags. The original food packaging produces a tremendous amount of trash, both in mass and volume. By repackaging food into resealable bags, you can get rid of all the extra plastic and cardboard. Through years of trial and error and especially from the Appalachian Trail, Eric and I discovered by far the best bags are the Ziploc one-quart freezer bags. Eric and I cleared the room and began our assembly line.

We poured the food into the bags and lined them up into two huge matrices on our bed. Each column of the matrix was one person’s food. Darren, Woody, and Dan landed around 7:30pm and made it to the hotel around 9pm, after which they helped us finish up. In the end, we had about two big trash bags full of waste packaging. We ended up reducing the amount of trash we carried up the mountain from about 3 lbs./person to a few small, compact (and reusable) ounces of Ziplocs.

We’ve found that two pounds of food per person per day is about right. So, for twenty days that’s 40 lbs. per person. With Darren’s handy hand scale, we each picked out about 40 lbs. of our favorite food bags. It was like a little shopping trip all over again. We ended up with about 50 lbs. of extra food. I guess that’s better than not having enough. Bedtime finally came around 1:30am.

DAY 1

We wanted to get an early start, so we had reserved a shuttle to Talkeetna at 7am with Denali Overland Transportation for $160/person. Talkeetna is the town you typically fly out of to get onto the glacier for the conventional West Buttress route. In retrospect, it might have been cheaper to rent a big van and park it in Talkeetna during the trip, but we didn’t want another thing to worry about.

As soon as we got to Talkeetna after the 2.5hr ride, we started weighing our bags. Our air carrier, Talkeetna Air Taxi (TAT), required that each bag weigh less than 80 lbs. and have the weight written on it, for better balancing on the plane. Each person is only allowed 125 lbs. (supposedly a TSA rule; extra weight costs more), so we ended up with 625 lbs. of gear/food for the five of us. The flight was $500 per person roundtrip. For a grad student on a tight budget, the price seemed astronomically high, but TAT had good customer service. They sold us some discounted bamboo wands and let us store our extra stuff during the trip. They have a safe for valuables too.

Next, we needed to have a meeting with the rangers. As the park requires, we had registered for the trip more than 60 days in advance with the team name MIT. We each paid the $175 special use fee and sat down. Our ranger discussed the sanitation procedures on the mountain, which consists of using a Clean Mountain Can (CMC). You do your business in a plastic bag lining the small plastic cylindrical can, and when the biodegradable bag fills up, you tie it off and throw it into a deep crevasse. (That’s much nicer than needing to carry it out!) Our ranger didn’t even ask us about our mountaineering experience. I guess the assumption is that if you’re willing to pay that much money, you probably know what you’re doing. But we later discovered that there were plenty of people on the mountain who didn’t have much mountaineering experience.

Once we were done with the half-hour ranger meeting, we noticed a board in the ranger station with climber statistics. So far this year, 235 people had attempted the mountain and only 20 had succeeded. This doesn’t look promising, I thought to myself.

TAT informed us that the weather was too bad for flights at the moment. We were getting worried that we might not make it onto the glacier that day. But after a quick hour, we got a call from TAT; the weather had cleared and flights to the glacier had resumed. We were up. It was show time.

Four of us would be flying in a single-prop Beaver five-person plane. Darren drew a short straw and would fly in a different plane. The planes were awesome. They had retractable aluminum skis that allowed them to land on snow. There were a bunch of other bush planes with huge tires all around. These bush planes were Alaska-tough.

It was one spectacular ride. In a plane that size you really feel like you’re flying, unlike in a commercial jet. We flew over some genuine Alaskan bush thick with muskeg. Some lakes still had ice. We flew through a couple of clouds and finally The Great One was in sight. Denali. Mountains and glaciers stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, but Denali towered a full mile above everything else. It was absolutely massive.

We first followed the Tokositna River, then flew up the Kanikula Glacier. Soon a high mountain pass came into view; it was called One Shot Gap. That’s our gap, the pilot said. With what seemed like only a hundred feet to spare on each side we shot through the gap and were over the Kahiltna Glacier, which would be our friend for most of the expedition. We turned into a little valley and a small city of tents came into view below. Base Camp. We landed smoothly and the pilot cut the engine. We dragged our monstrous load of luggage out of the way.

Weeks earlier, I had thought to myself, Man, it seems lame that you need to take a plane onto the glacier — if you can land on snow, why not just land on the summit? Where do you draw the line? How high can you land and still say you climbed the mountain? We learned that the location of the 7200ft Base Camp is one of the closest spots to the summit free of crevasses and also outside the wilderness boundary. So, even if you found a crevasse-free landing zone higher up on the mountain, you’d get in trouble for landing there because motorized vehicles are not allowed in the wilderness.

But still, I thought, if your goal is to climb the mountain under your own power, wouldn’t it be much more honorable to start from a town or a road, rather than getting flown in to a seemingly arbitrary spot on the mountain? Before we left, we researched this option, but it would add a month to the trip. Imagine hauling seven weeks of food and 100 lbs. of gear through trees, bushes, and rocky terrain, then having to pick your own way around boulders and crevasses all the way up the glacier merely to get to base camp where most of the 1,200 other annual hikers start. Some people do it, and it’s admirable, but we didn’t have that kind of time to spare. Maybe we’d save a trip like that for next time.

If starting at 7,200ft still sounds dishonorably high, I said to myself, think about other state high points. For Mt. Whitney, you typically start at 8,300ft and climb to 14,498ft. For Mt. Rainier, you usually start at 5,500ft (Paradise) and climb to 14,410ft. And for Mt. Elbert, you generally start around 10,000ft and climb to 14,330ft. Plenty of high points even have a road to the top. With that reasoning, a net climb of 13,000ft for Denali sounds honorable enough to me. Not to mention the fact that it’s glaciers all the way.

We checked in with Lisa, the Base Camp ranger, and she gave us six gallons of white gas fuel that we had paid for back at TAT. Since we would be obtaining 100% of our water by melting snow, we had each brought a stove: three MSR XGK’s and two one-piece Coleman stoves (all used white gas). Through the MIT Outing Club’s (MITOC’s) Winter School program, we’ve found that one of the biggest pains of winter camping is huddling around the stoves after dinner and shivering while the snow melts into drinking water. It takes hours each day. So, with a stove for every person we could speed up the painful process substantially.

Next, we each picked out a sled from the well-used stack. Normally when towing a sled, you want a rigid connection between you and the sled so that if you go downhill the sled doesn’t crash into the back of your ankles. People often do this with two skinny PVC pipes. But since we would be roped up the whole time, for downhills we could attach the sleds to the rope by prussiking the front and back. For uphill, we’d pull the sleds behind us with a simple rope. Woody had the brilliant idea to bring some elastic cord, which absorbed some of the stop and go while walking and eliminated a lot of jerk from the sled.

As soon as we landed, we needed full skin protection from the sun. With clear skies above and bright snow all around and below us, it was like we had two suns shining upon us. We definitely appreciated our special glacier glasses and last-minute purchase of nose guards. We covered our heads and necks with hats and handkerchiefs. Woody won with a white Arabian explorer-type hat. We slathered on the sunscreen and got to work setting up the tents.

The sun was so intense that the tents acted like greenhouses. Outside it might have been in the 20’s (Fahrenheit) in the shade, 50’s in the sun, and 70’s in the tent. Later in the day, the sun went behind a mountain and thankfully we were in the shade again. We tried to sleep, but for those of us with minus 40F down sleeping bags, we had to lie on top of our bags all night to keep from sweating. Eric and Dan brought thinner bags with thermal liners which allowed them to customize the insulation of their bags. We all brought some kind of vapor barrier liner (VBL) which you would wrap around yourself before getting into the sleeping bag. This waterproof barrier would prevent body moisture from saturating the sleeping bag as you slept and would maintain its warmth. But lower on the glacier, most of us were too hot to need the VBLs.

Darkness never really came on the glacier that night, but we were all tired enough from two days of travel that we nevertheless slept 12 hours. It had taken us all less than 36 hours to travel from our origins all the way to the glacier, with enough time to purchase/repackage food and meet with the rangers along the way. Things couldn’t have gone smoother so far. Now that a big chunk of the logistics had been executed flawlessly, it was time to actually start climbing the mountain.

DAY 2

When we woke up the next morning it was time to put on the armor and prepare for battle. Suiting up for glacier travel with a huge backpack and sled is a lot different than suiting up for a simple climb up Mount Washington, NH. Eric and I were on one rope and Dan + Woody + Darren were on the other, with Darren in the lead. We heard that the glaciers were thick and the crevasses were deep in Alaska, so Eric and I tied in 40m apart while Dan/Woody/Darren were about 30m apart. We each had enough gear to build an anchor in case the other(s) fell in: a picket, an ice screw, an ascender, carabiners, slings, and a belay device.

With my wide-rimmed cowboy-like hat and handkerchief across my face, along with all kinds of weapons dangling from my harness, I felt like an outlaw in the Wild West. My gear jingled with each step and I could draw an ice screw like a handgun. We donned our packs and hitched our sleds and we were ready for battle. A battle with Denali. We buried two days’ worth of food at Base Camp and marked the cache with a bamboo wand and a flag provided by the Park Service with our team name on it. We would use this food if we came back to Base Camp during a storm and had to wait a while for a flight out.

Before we left, we got to see the National Park Service helicopter come in for a dramatic operation. First, the chopper landed near the ranger tent. Soon, it took off with a long rope dangling 100ft below it. One dude with a body harness and fighter-pilot helmet clipped in to the bottom of the rope and was hoisted high in the air. That dude was in for one wild ride. I hope he’s bundled up, I thought, otherwise he’d be a dangling human popsicle in the wind. He and the chopper disappeared down the valley and cruised up the glacier. We had no idea what they were up to. About an hour later, they came back and the dude unclipped. Weird, we thought. Later, when we got off the glacier we learned the reason for the dangerous mission.

Now it was time to head out. Eric and I marched in front with Darren/Woody/Dan (for brevity, I’ll refer to their rope team as DWD) covering the rear. We started down the only downhill of the ascent, Heartbreak Hill. It’s only heartbreaking on the way back when you have to climb it. Soon, we were down on the good old Kahiltna Glacier. Luckily, we were early enough in the season and the snow bridges were thick enough that we couldn’t see any crevasses in our path. This demonstrated the benefit of hiking on such a popular route: we could see where 200 people before us had walked this season and hadn’t punched through into a crevasse, so we felt confident we would be safe.

The sun blazed overhead and Eric and I stripped down to shorts and a t-shirt and slathered on the sunscreen. It felt like 90 degrees. The bowl of the Kahiltna Glacier acted like a heliostat with us at its focus. By mid-afternoon, another tent city came into view: 7,800ft camp. This would be our camp for the night. There were already a bunch of snow walls from previous climbers, which were built to shelter the tents from the wind and drifting snow during storms. What storms? we thought as we looked at the bluebird sky. But we knew that the weather could change in an instant around here.

We set up our hardcore MITOC two-person and three-person Trango tents in some vacant spots. It was only 4pm, so we still had some time before dinner. Dan rigged up a nifty shade canopy so we could sit without getting roasted. Woody pulled out the snow saw and started cutting snow blocks. The snow in the White Mountains is rarely compacted enough for blocks, so we were novices at first. In cutting out the blocks, you had to keep in mind the mechanical engineering principle of design for injection molding, which suggests we should cut the blocks with the right draft angle so we can extract them. If you angle the cuts the wrong way, it might be impossible to extract the block.

Either Dan or Woody cut the angles just right