Welcome to Mountain Trip's dispatch blog for our June 7, 2009 Denali Climb!

In the far north lies one of the most magnificent ranges of mountains in the world. The Alaska Range stretches 400 miles across southcentral Alaska. It is a wild place, covered in glaciers and punctuated by rugged peaks. The crown of the range is Denali, at 20,320 feet (6194 m), the highest peak in North America. Located so close to the Arctic circle, Denali can present some of the most challenging and rugged conditions of any mountain on earth.

Each year a relatively few climbers from around the world migrate to test themselves on the slopes of Denali. Mountain Trip has been assisting these climbers achieve their Denali dreams since 1976. We love what we do and are happy to help provide you a taste of what these climbers are experiencing by updating their progress in this blog. Following the expedition, we will post numerous photos from the expedition, so please keep checking in.

Rob Durnell from Girdwood, Alaska
Zach Johnson from Anchorage, Alaska
Jules Hannah from McCarthy, Alaska

Let's meet the climbers!

Corneels Otto from South Africa
PW Otto from South Africa
Werner Nienaber from South Africa
Yuri Ivanov from Russia
Maria Ivanova from Russia
Bengt Lagergren from Norway
Frampton Simons from The US
Doug Kenny from the US
Sara Koffarnus from the US


We encourage you to follow the team's progress. Please post comments for the climbers, but realize that we cannot always get those messages to your climber in a timely fashion, due to the challenges of communicating from the Alaska Range.

Keep in mind that no news is good news. We will do our best to post each day, but many things could conspire to prevent this from happening. Feel free to contact our office with any questions or concerns and enjoy the posts!