many more updates.

Mike Janes and his whole crew headed to the bottom of ski hill today, 7800'. I heard from a couple of our guides that took a quick trip to the base of ski hill that the trail and lower glacier were in good condition. The were in base camp all day doing skills review and learning lots of the skills necessary to safely and efficiently travel on the glacier. Some of the groups go down into the crevasse when they are practicing, like in the above photo and some of them do it with out going into the crack. There are so many skills to learn and review that we usually do not do into the crevasse unless we are on a mountaineering course where we have more time dedicated to this. Crevasse rescue is review for all of our Denali climbers, where as many of our students on a mountaineering course are seeing it for their first time.
Here is what a typical kitchen looks like on Denali. This photo was taken on one of our Mountaineering courses that was at base camp earlier this season. You can see the North Buttress of Mount Hunter in the background. These tents have no floors in them, so the teams dig into the glacier so that they can hang out with plenty of room and style like some sort of subnivean snow creature, well sort of.





Melis and her team are doing really well she said. They went out to the edge of the world today for a little hike and a view down into the North East Fork of the Kahiltna Glacier, where her and her asistant and Husband Joey, may be heading after this expedition, to climb the Cassin ridge on Denali. They are all super strong. They plan to make a carry to the 16,200 foot ridge tomorrow. After a rest day today they are all very psyched tio move a little higher. I am sure they are all a bit nervous, she didn't tell me this but I know. They had a pretty good wind storm last night but had nice beefy (bomber) walls so they were not very effected. The other day one of their thermometers that is on a pack was left out and in the morning was pegged at minus 30 F. That's all for now. Nate Opp, Larry Holmgren and Brian Skean started packing for our next West Buttress Expedition. Tomorrow we have two more Denali expeditions that will start packing. The guides on those are: Rodrigo Mujica on one and Todd Passey, Alex Stroud and Dustin Eroh. Mark Postle, Matt Montavon and Dustin English start the following day. Kevin Mahoney also starts packing tomorrow for his trip to Ham 'n' Eggs on the Moose's Tooth. Etc Etc Etc.

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