Click here to view the photo + video album (part one) for this part of the trip

Click here to view the photo + video album (part two) for this part of the trip

Summitting is only half of the journey. To quote a famous mountaineer, “Going up is optional. Coming down is mandatory.”

After resting overnight at Seventeen Camp, we’d planned to head down to Fourteen late morning. The weather held up, but as we began packing our tents, we got news that one of the guides of another AMS group that had summited yesterday had fallen ill. Very ill – it seems he’d blacked out multiple times during their ascent, and had developed some kind of tumor. Colby, being the owner of AMS, played a large role in organizing a helicopter rescue at 17,000 ft. The rescue took a few hours, and Colby had to tidy up AMS’s cache before we could head down, so I idled for a bit. The rescue itself was incredible. The helicopter was operating at its max weight limit for this altitude, and the way it took off was straight out of an action movie. I genuinely thought it was going to crash! See the videos in the full album for more.

Unlike on the way up, our descent to Fourteen Camp had great visibility, giving me ample opportunity to take more photos. Traffic was pretty bad – mostly climbers on their way up – but the views made waiting more than bearable. There are so many unbelievable vistas on this mountain, it kinda blew my mind!

We spent a night and a day at Fourteen Camp before heading down all the way to Base Camp the following evening. It was an eight hour trek, climbing down through the night, but here again, the views entertained us all the way down. We stopped at Eleven Camp to dig out a cache, then continued the rest of the distance. Fifteen miles of distance, 13,000 ft of descent from the summit. Some teams go all the way down from Seventeen Camp in what’s called a Death March, but this felt pretty Death March-ey to me as it was!

Arriving at Base Camp around six AM the following morning, we open bivy’d on the snow. No tents – we just set up our sleeping pads and bags, and slept exposed to the elements. Luckily Base Camp is well protected, so I actually managed several hours of sleep before the first planes started arriving. The weather once again cooperated and by noon, we were flying back to Talkeetna. Some teams get stuck at Base Camp for days… and after having been stranded for eleven days in Antarctica, I was hoping to avoid a repeat.

Back in Talkeetna, events moved quickly. I called my parents, who graciously arranged a flight back that night from Anchorage, which meant I had to shower off, pack all my backs, say my goodbyes, and find a shuttle to Anchorage within two hours! I barely made it.

On the drive back, I got to meet several other AMS climbers, and one Italian guy who had lost several fingers to frostbite on the mountain. He was heavily bandaged up… Yikes.

To close, this was the most difficult and special adventure I’ve ever undertaken. It’s one I will remember for the rest of my life. I’d like to thank Colby, Fallon, and Ayla, as well as Caitlin and Anna and everyone else at AMS for giving me such an incredible experience this year. I wish I could’ve spent more time saying my goodbyes, but I’ll likely be back to Alaska one day, though probably not with any intention of climbing Denali!

What’s next? Well, in my journey to climb the seven, there is really only one left, if you ignore Kozy in Australia, which is a gimme. It’s Everest, and the current plan is to climb it during the 2024 season, with CTSS – Mike Hamill’s outfit. That will be the biggest challenge of my life, and one I look forward to with both excitement and a little fear.

Signing out,

Varun