Denali Report for May 5th, 2018

The 2018 climbing season is underway on Denali. Currently, there are 852 climbers registered to attempt the mountain, and twenty-one are currently underway. Six climbers have completed their attempts, with two making it to the summit.

Eleven people are registered to attempt Mt. Foraker, and two have returned from their attempts. There have been no summits on the Alaska Range’s second highest peak this season.

This year, the climbing season got off to a slow start due to weather keeping air services from dropping off or picking up mountaineers. On Tuesday, I spoke with Denali National Park and Preserve South District Ranger Tucker Chenoweth about the longer than usual delays getting into the Alaska Range.

“Over a week ago was the last fly day. Right now we’ve got—it’s hard to say—somewhere around fifty to sixty climbers…in the Alaska Range, and a lot of those people are ready to get out. We’ve got about that many or double that in town ready to get in.”

Once those climbers do make it to base camp, they will be expected to abide by updated rules regarding human waste on Denali. This year will have stricter requirements on the use of clean mountain cans. Tucker Chenoweth says that amount of human waste left on the mountain this year could be halved as a result.

“Full removal of waste using the clean mountain can from…14,000 feet down…that all gets flown out back to Talkeetna. Fourteen thousand feet and above, currently the policy is you are allowed to use a single designated crevasse, which has been the traditional way we’ve dealt with waste on the mountain.”

Chenoweth says the National Park Service is trying to change the old mountaineering mentality that once things were thrown into a deep glacial crevasse, they no longer needed to be worried about. He says recent discoveries and research show that is not the case.

“It’s like a giant conveyor belt. It’s just moving it, and when the ice melts or it reaches the terminus, generally it will come out in the same condition it went in.”

Tucker Chenoweth and his staff are optimistic about the changes, especially after a successful program last year that had climbers voluntarily adhere to the new rules.

Other than the clean mountain can changes, staff at the Walter Harper Talkeetna Ranger Station are not anticipating drastic differences from last season. Tucker Chenoweth says, once all the registrations are in, he expects somewhere around 1200 climbers to attempt Denali this season.