This Denali Report is about Mount Foraker, the second highest mountain in the Alaska Range, but much less well-trodden than Denali. Here’s some Foraker history, for background on next week’s report from Melis Coady, who is climbing Foraker.  Voiced by Will Peterson.

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Listen to Full Denali Report:

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There are currently 440 climbers on Mount McKinley, that’s down from 489 last week. (more…)

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There are currently one-thousand-twenty climbers registered to climb Mt. McKinley, and 15 registered to climb Mt Foraker. This week the number of climbers currently on McKinley jumped to 234, up from 139 last week. 3 climbers are currently attempting Mt. Foraker.

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So far only 16 climbers have ended their attempts on North America’s highest peak, with only two making it to the summit. That’s a 12 percent success rate for climbing Mt McKinley at this point in the season.

A number of parameters lead to a successful attempt at climbing Mt. McKinley, and success is a combination of good circumstances and proper preparation. (more…)

There are currently 999 climbers registered to climb Mt. McKinley, and 15 registered to climb Mt Foraker. This week the number of climbers currently on McKinley tripped to 139, up from 49 last week. 3 climbers are currently attempting Mt. Foraker.

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The first two climber’s of the season have successfully reached the summit of North America’s Tallest Mountain. Jeremy Aschen and Adam Bartlett of Vail, Colorado ascended the west buttress route and made it to the top of Denali on May 5th. They reported cold conditions and some frostbite, but neither required significant medical attention. So far, 6 other climbers have withdrawn from the mountain without making it to the top. (more…)

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This is the final Denali Report of the 2011 climbing season.

A total of 1203 people registered to climb Denali this season.  Most of those people have returned from their climbs, although there are still about 200 people on the mountain.  They should all be returning within the next week or week and a half. (more…)

In this third week of June looks at some of the reasons that mountaineering rangers don’t get to summit Denali on a regular basis.  A couple of weeks ago, Tucker Chenoweth and his patrol were descending from what they thought was probably a good day – they had made it to the summit– but ended up rescuing three different climbers.  Chris Erickson explains why rangers don’t always go to the summit.

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