For a little background check out: Speedy Ascent of Deprivation on Mt. Hunter - 5/20/08 and Hidden Alaskan Peak Gets First Ascent - 5/13/08

Everything is calm. I can’t tell were I am; all the sensations of my body are gone except for a warm feeling all over. No more pain, no more sore muscles. Slowly I feel pressure building up in my bladder, and then my numb limbs come back to life. The pressure is soon too great, and my arm starts searching for the zipper pull. It’s nowhere to be found, but then I realize nothing seems to be restricting my movements. As I move, cotton fabric creates a nice tickling sensation on my skin. It feels like I am riding a cloud. I take a big breath and an incredible flowery aroma fills my lungs. My eyes pop open. I’m at home. Clothes, soft shell, and puffy jacket cover my floor. My journal, memory cards, and books cover my desk. Intense sun rays are coming through my window. Outside it is warm. It’s summer!

I had left home exactly a month earlier. Barely 10 days before that, I was in a depressed late-winter mood when I received an e-mail from Freddie Wilkinson. He and Ben Gilmore were going on a trip to the remote Yentna Glacier in the Alaska Range, and they wanted me to join them for an attempt on probably the highest unclimbed peak of the range. I had met Freddie years ago after my climb with LP [Ménard] on the south face of Denali, and since then we have been trying to get together to climb. Ben, on his side, is one of those Bad Asses that inspired me to climb in Alaska in the first place. It didn’t take much to convince me to go. They were going from April 19t to May 8. My girlfriend, Zoe Hart, was going to be in Alaska for her last ski guide’s exam and was going to be free from May 8 on, and we already had made plans to climb together. I couldn’t have asked for better timing.

On the 21st of May, Paul Roderick from Talkeetna Air Taxi landed Freddie, Ben, and me right at the wilderness boundary of Denali National Park, at the base of the Yentna, under a perfect blue sky. The high pressure lasted for the next three days, allowing us to set up camp and cache gear 2,500 feet higher, toward the base of the south face of the Bat’s Ears, our objective. As soon as we got back to camp from our little excursion, the weather crapped out and the poor weather lasted for about five days, until the pressure showed a shy little ascending curve. The next morning at 2 a.m. it was a go. We headed up for what ended up being one of those perfect alpine climbing days. We climbed a stellar-looking linear weakness that sears the face directly under the summit. The climbing went as smoothly as it gets, at about AI4+ M5+. Twelve hours after crossing the schrund we reached the summit, and as we walked and downclimbed down the steep west ridge the weather began crapping out again. What a perfect sucker hole! Twenty-three hours after leaving camp, we were back from a day of almost 6,000 feet of elevation gain.