Next Years Plans

Its sometimes said, only half jokingly, that climbing Everest is good preparation for climbing Denali. This may sound extreme but Denali is a very serious mountain, and one of the hardest of all the seven summits, it certainly shouldn't be first on your list, at 6194 metres (20,320 ft) it is only slightly higher than Kilimanjaro, and much lower than Aconcagua, but neither of these mountains demands comparable experience and effort.
From the Moment we arrive on the Kahiltna glacier we will have to melt every drop of water that we will need for drinking and cooking from melting snow.
We will be experiencing temperatures as low as -40 degrees with winds of up to 100mph.
We will need to put up our own tents and the end of each day after many hours of hard climbing.
we will need to build snow walls to prevent the wind from blowing our tents away.
There are many other serious factors in which we will need to consider but the rewards for all of this is to be in one of the most beautiful places on earth,
Denali's latitude, close to the Arctic circle, makes it harder to climb than any other mountains of comparable height, because the earth is not a perfect sphere, the atmosphere is thinner near the poles. At 4000m on Denali, atmospheric pressure and available oxygen is measurable lower than at 4000m on Kilimanjaro, physiologically Denali's 6194m has been found equivalent to about 7000m and with the extra challenges of extreme weather.
In May next year a team of us are heading to Denali for a month, we plan to climb the ordinary west Buttress route then if possible the West Rib or the Cassin ridge, this will be a very challenging and a hard climb and at these altitudes will need good team work,a stable head and a great deal of technical ability. But hopefully we have a team that is good enough to pull this off.
Preparations have started now with team meetings and kit organisation, travel is being looked at and Scott is meeting with equipment providers has I type, things are getting pretty exciting and starting to fall into place.
Ive been training hard with lots of running and upper body training, a few of us are also off to the Ecrins early January for some training and ice climbing.
I will keep you all posted on updated progress and also all the other climbing matters that happen in the mean time.

Denali in all its glory