{"id":1808,"date":"2026-07-20T12:55:02","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T16:55:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/?p=1808"},"modified":"2026-07-20T17:33:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T21:33:00","slug":"denali-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/2026\/07\/denali-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Denali 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Coming out of last year’s trip to Ecuador<\/a> I was more or less resolved to head to Denali this year. It hadn’t been a goal of mine but it’s a prominent objective among the people I’ve gone climbing with the past couple years so there’s steady discussion about it. Our guide Nicole also told a fetching story about how her dad climbed Denali when she was about nine and she thought it the coolest thing ever. Alice obviously couldn’t assess me any cooler (multiple ways to read that). But it did raise the point that, nearly eleven now, she’s mature and independent enough to be left home alone a bit so Caitlin would be able to go riding and do things if I was away a couple weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hut-style climbing in Ecuador also highlighted my tenet that it’s helpful to have an objective, and summits make conceptually simple and physically-technically interesting ones. But the true call of the wild is just to be out there<\/em>. Summits are focusing but the real draw is to be gone, to sublimate the whole of life into the real, the here and now. There’s a phase shift in the world that happens hiking\/biking\/running dawn-to-dusk or backpacking more than a long weekend, when you’re alone or alone-together and with tangible stakes in play. Set that in a barren mountainscape of rock, snow, cold and you’re in another, special, place entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s Denali. On a standard itinerary you’re out there for at least two weeks, plus weather delays, camping on the glacier and snow pack. It has a burly summit day, often estimated at 12–20 hours, and its share of hazards. But the climbing is arguably dominated by endurance mental and physical: Hiking and camping day after day, much of it in sub-zero temperatures intermixed with periods of uncomfortable warmth, under continuously blazing sun or harsh winds and snow, with only brief opportunities to let down your guard against frostbite, sunburn, blindness, crevasses, and any other manner of falling or injury. It’s a couple weeks on the move in the endless winter of a place humans don’t belong, under constant vigilance over foot placement, rope security, sunscreen, nutrition, hydration, and absolutely not touching anything metal with bare hands, let alone just breathing in enough oxygen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So this June I packed up my bags and headed to the Alaska Range. It did not disappoint. As a bonus, gifted with excellent weather and a strong team, our whole crew of ten all made it to the summit of Denali at ~20,300 feet and back in good order after 16 glorious days in the wild.<\/p>\n\n\n