Phoning home from a high camp at 16,300 feet. The West Buttress and its 14,000 foot camp are visible on the right. Note the clouds - stormy weather - below 14,000 feet. Storms on Denali are rarely tall enough to involve the entire peak. Todd Kube photo.

All Locations > Alaska > Interior Alaska… > Denali NP > Denali > W Rib (AI3 Steep Snow)

Phoning home from a high camp at 16,300 feet. The West Buttress and its 14,000 foot camp are visible on the right. Note the clouds - stormy weather - below 14,000 feet. Storms on Denali are rarely tall enough to involve the entire peak. Todd Kube photo.

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The Upper West Rib from 14K camp.

Navigating the icefall on the NE fork of the Kahiltna.

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Paul Crowder

Jun 24, 2007

“Phoning home from a high camp at 16,300 feet. The West Buttress and its 14,000 foot camp are visible on the right. Note the clouds - stormy weather - below 14,000 feet. Storms on Denali are rarely tall enough to involve the entire peak. Todd Kube photo.”

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Nearby Photos

The view up the Northeast Fork of the Kahiltna Glacier, from Advanced Base Camp at 7,800 feet. The sunlit ridge in center of the photo, bottom, is The West Rim. The West Rib is the second sunlit ridge back, just right of the center of this photo.

Looking down the West Rib from a hundred feet or so above a camp at 16,300 feet, into the Northeast Fork of the Kahiltna Glacier. The Kahiltna Glacier is visible, although somewhat obscured by low clouds, in the upper right corner of this photo.

View up the Northeast Fork of the Kahiltna Glacier. The West Rib is somewhat obscured, but this photo includes a very good view of the top of the route, including The Orient Express.

A team on the fixed ropes in the first rock band's couloir between 16,500 and 17,000 feet. The line on The Orient Express follows the left-most couloir to the skyline. The snow blowing off the skyline indicates high winds aloft.

Turn left below the rock outcropping and traverse to the rocks and the ridge proper at about 15,700'. You can continue past the outcropping and go up one of the middle gullies but it's steep, hard ice, and painful.

Steep snow over rotten ice at about 16,000 feet. Mid-May 2007. Todd Kube photo.

Starting up the "Ice Dome" above Camp 4, at 13,200 ft., on Denali's West Rib Route.<br>
Denali National Park, Alaska<br>

A tent platform shoveled out of a slope at 16,300 feet, just below the first rock band and a few feet above a series of poo-encrusted bivy platforms. Throw your waste off the route, folks, or use the Clean Mountain Cans issued by the National Park Service, so others don't have to live with your piles. Todd Kube photo.

The view up a boot track - the West Rib cutoff - from the West Buttress camp at 14,000 feet. There's a convenient West Rib high camp at 16,300 feet at the skyline.

Overview of the West Rib from below, showing our camps (including Camp V at about 16,500 feet).

Climbing steepish ice in a storm thru a rock band aprox 15k on west rib

The couloir

Tent platform dug in below a large boulder at about 15,800 feet.

Helmut Lenes starting up the Orient Express - June 1992

Looking up at the 1st ice dome (upper left) and 2nd ice dome (upper center)

Helmut Lenes at a campsite on the Upper West Rib route in June 1992. One of very few calm evenings that spring. Next day the winds at the top of the Orient Express were so strong we decided instead to descend the West Butt as we had all our gear with us.

In the NE Fork icefall

On the ridge at about 15,500 feet

Before the long slog to the summit, west rib Denali 2006

Todd Kube at about 18,700 feet on The Orient Express, May 2007. Note the angle of the slope, the wind slab that Todd is standing in, and his anchor.

west rib

west rib near 14+k

Summit June 1st 2006

west rib

The Upper West Rib from 14K camp.

Phoning home from a high camp at 16,300 feet. The West Buttress and its 14,000 foot camp are visible on the right. Note the clouds - stormy weather - below 14,000 feet. Storms on Denali are rarely tall enough to involve the entire peak. Todd Kube photo.

Navigating the icefall on the NE fork of the Kahiltna.

(505)

Rock band below Orient Express

climbing ice thru a rock-band around 15k in a storm

A fine view of Mt. Foraker from the slopes of the 1st ice dome

near 16k on west rib

At the top of the couloir

west rib

At the top of the couloir

Slumming in Alaska team motrin May 2006

Summit shot in really stormy conditions. Don't pass up an opportunity to advertise your beverage of choice.

McRib

At the top of the couloir

In This Photo

Paul Crowder

Louisville, CO

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