{"id":37309,"date":"2011-12-09T02:01:51","date_gmt":"2011-12-08T23:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mountainguides.pro\/?p=37309"},"modified":"2026-09-10T16:09:47","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T13:09:47","slug":"how-to-climb-mckinley-cheaply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mountainguides.pro\/ko\/2011\/12\/09\/how-to-climb-mckinley-cheaply\/","title":{"rendered":"How to climb McKinley cheaply"},"content":{"rendered":"
I’ll try to finish the expedition diary and publish it, but that will come later. For now, for reference, here is my personal view of the best tactics and acclimatisation after my two successful commercial expeditions out here. A client, as everyone knows, is a delicate creature who needs affection and attention, so the schedule described below is fairly gentle, and it allows for countless photographs and videos, discussions of sports medicine and teaching a few small mountaineering tricks along the way, starting with how to tie your bootlaces. In short, a lot of it can be cut.
\nClimbing McKinley, if you have a certain amount of experience, takes neither long nor much money. Read carefully; I’ve spelled it out as plainly as I can, but kept it short.<\/div>\n\n

– Register with the rangers AT LEAST 60 DAYS before the START of the expedition. Otherwise nothing will happen at all. Register here www.nps.gov<\/a> The deposit is 25 dollars.
\n– book the transport (see below) and the flight onto the glacier (also below).
\n– train and buy equipment. You can travel on skis or on snowshoes. Decide on the basis of your experience.<\/p>\n\n

So, day by day:
\n1. You land in Anchorage. There are buses and taxis into town. The bus is something under 5 dollars and runs around the clock. A taxi is 20-30 bucks. We stayed at Arctic adventure hostel – they collected us and took us back to the airport free of charge. Not as a group, but each of us individually. The hostel itself cost 25 dollars, and from the middle of May breakfast is included: a buffet, tasty and plentiful. The main thing is not to sleep through it =)
\n2. book a jeep or a shuttle (not on this day, obviously, but before the expedition) depending on the size of your group. The price for the vehicle is around 300 bucks as of 2011. Fuel prices jump about and prices change. Taxi services often calculate per person. The service varies. Talk to them; email is a mighty force! Where to book:
\n– our famous countryman Artur Testov. You can arrange it with him and get to know a legend into the bargain (the only person who, with a partner, was on McKinley in the “dead of winter” – look it up online, you won’t regret it). Bear in mind that he is not a taxi driver but a climber, though he never leaves his own people in the lurch.
\n– transport from the hostel mentioned above (a separate service, even if you are not staying there)
\n– https:\/\/www.talkeetnataxi.com\/
\n– https:\/\/www.gopurpleshuttle.com\/<\/a>
\nThen, in that same jeep or shuttle, you drive to the supermarket and buy everything in two hours. In 2011, without holding back at all, we spent exactly 200 dollars a head. The same supermarket (in the outdoor section, though, not with the food) sells the notorious mountainhouse and the rest of that packet stuff. I never went into the question of price and variety, since we only ate proper food. The same place has cheap gas in 220g canisters (3 dollars). We tested 5 canisters at high camp on an msr reactor – all perfect. But the pilots only agree to carry some particular MSR brand, on the grounds that it is safe to fly. Considering that nonsense, we simply hid the gas in our rucksacks and said nothing to anyone. Because MSR costs 8 dollars and has exactly the same gas inside. The equipment shops nearby are just as full of packet food. Plenty of it, and varied. Every day the clients would gather round and worship me, thanking me for real, non-packet food. In 2009 we lived partly on packets – money was tight – and my stomach problems never let up. Anyway, decide for yourselves..<\/p>\n\n

I stopped drawing up a food plan long ago; I just walk into a supermarket before a three-week expedition and try to meet a few conditions:
\n– weight per person per day – 800g (any more doesn’t get eaten – tested; any less and hunger may start to bite, and choosing between 700 and 800g a day is usually far too much bother)
\n– I count the number of meals for the period (for example, three weeks times three meals a day times five people = 45), walk along the supermarket shelves and take all sorts of pasta, rice, soups and muesli, working on 80-100g per person per serving. That comes to about 45*100=4500g. Supermarket pasta is particularly good when it comes packed with its own spices and flavourings. It is in no way inferior to special high-altitude food.
\n– add cheese, meat and treats (nuts, dried fruit, chocolate and so on), as many grams a day as you like. We added 200g of meat, 150 of cheese and 150 of treats. That’s the whole food plan. Among the treats, m&ms and American peanut Twix bars are especially resistant to freezing and easy to eat.<\/p>\n\n

Once the food is dealt with, you call in at a Liquor Store and buy a bottle of brandy, whisky or rum, working on 50g per person per day so that people fall asleep more easily (sometimes it is simply essential, judging by the clients – not everyone sleeps well with permanent daylight outside the tent, especially after several hours hauling a sled) and set off for Talkeetna. Around 200 kilometres. Evening, and a bunkhouse (a sort of hut, but with a kitchen, a shower and a lavatory), which is included in the price of the flight to the glacier.
\nEquipment can be bought and hired in Talkeetna as well as in Anchorage. Plenty of choice.
\n3. Morning, the rangers, the interview. Reflections on how to keep the mountain clean, attempts to catch you out guiding illegally, the issue of lavatory bags and of the plastic lavatory buckets themselves<\/p>\n\n

, a discussion of the state of the route, of leaving caches and of equipment. Another 200 dollars for the permit, and the permits themselves are handed over there and then.
\nStraight after that you can fly onto the glacier. We use TAT – Talkeetna Air Taxi<\/a>. I have often managed to get a DISCOUNT for friends of mine travelling out there. Drop me an email.<\/p>\n\n

You weigh yourself and your equipment before the flight and hand the figures in at the TAT office.
\nYou also buy white gas from them (liquid fuel, like petrol but super-clean, from Coleman). The fuel comes in 4-litre (1 gallon) cans. From experience, three cans between four people were half used up in 11 days. So three cans for an expedition of 4 people is about right. And if you fly in at the end of May or in June, plenty of climbers will be coming down and trying to give you their fuel and food. Sometimes without even asking you. But it is better to have your own, to be sure. Fuel costs 16 dollars a can and is handed to you on the glacier once you have paid in Talkeetna.
\nThey also sell wands, 10 dollars for 25 of them. I wouldn’t take more than a pack; there is little point in marking the trail, only the caches need marking – that takes a minimum of 4-5 wands and a bit of duct tape.
\nYou can leave your town clothes and anything else you don’t need right there, in the TAT store.
\nYou land on the glacier, get your sled and your liquid fuel (paid for in Talkeetna), wait until midnight (critical after 15 May) and set off for camp 1. The location is fairly arbitrary. 2-3 hours. The altitude, like that of the landing strip on the glacier, is 2400 m. One thing worth mentioning separately is the problem of the sled. It is very convenient to attach it to the back of your harness belt, right across the belt, with a big carabiner. The rope to the sled must be at least 2.5 metres, otherwise it will ride up with every step. Bring all your sled ropes with you: 10-15 metres of 4 mm cord per sled. On the descent there are two options – run several loops of rope crossways under the sled to create a brake and pull it downhill with slight effort, or tie a rope to the nose and the tail of the sled and clip that loop into your main carabiner, occasionally correcting the sled’s direction by hand. I have always preferred the second option.
\n4. Camp 2 (2700 m). Another 3 hours. You can skip it altogether and go straight on to camp 3.<\/p>\n\n

5. Camp 3 (3350 m) – 4-5 hours of dolefully putting one foot in front of the other from camp 2. Here you bury and mark, a metre down, the sled, the surplus food, the fuel, the snowshoes and the equipment. Some people carry on with a sled, which is a rare form of entertainment, it has to be said.<\/p>\n\n

6. from here there are options, depending on acclimatisation and health. We tried both. I liked the second one more.
\n– carry a cache of food and fuel for about two weeks up to camp 4 (Basin, 4100 m) and go back down to sleep
\n– hope that the weather and altitude sickness won’t hit you too hard, take only 5-6 days’ worth, go straight up to sleep at camp 4, leave the cache buried at 3350 until the descent, and save a day. You can nip down from camp 4 to fetch the cache in a day if you need to. We didn’t use that option on the second expedition.
\n7. camp 4, or a rest day at camp 4, depending on which option you chose.<\/p>\n\n

8. a walk up to the fixed ropes and out onto the ridge (about 5000 m) on the way to camp 5, or camp 5 itself (5200 m). Night at camp 4 (4100 m). You can swap this round with day 7.
\n9. Camp 5 (5200 m). On the way to the camp it is sometimes worth roping up. It depends on your experience, on the state of the ridge and on the wind. The grade is 1B-2A. Along the way there are sometimes snow pickets that the leader on the rope can clip into. Early birds have no trouble on the fixed ropes and take the best spots in the high camp, vacated by climbers on their way down.<\/p>\n\n

10. The mountain. Or a rest day. As you prefer. We, of course, never rested here. The route is not difficult, but it has its subtleties. Camp to camp takes 6-12 hours. You can take longer, since the sun doesn’t set, but if you need more than 9-10 hours to the summit, then this really isn’t your mountain. In terms of effort it is comparable with Elbrus from the barrels and back. The climb up to Denali Pass<\/p>\n\n

often has snow pickets in place, sized for a rope of 40 metres or more. You often need to bring your own carabiners for them. There is nothing special about it from a technical point of view, though. You can do it without a rope. But a lot of people die there. I have personally gone up that way and was never once frightened. =) Denali Pass is 1-3 hours from camp. The altitude is 5600-5700 m. After that everything is simple in any weather as far as the summit ridge.<\/p>\n\n

There are several pickets on the ridge, but you need your own as well if you are not very confident moving along ridges (the wind can be extremely strong). People have been blown off. I was nearly blown off. A wind of 50 km\/h can already be critical. Again, it depends on the state of the ridge and on the experience of the party. The ridge is 500-700 metres long, but that doesn’t stop some people spending an hour on it in one direction. It takes 15 minutes moving slowly on the rope.<\/p>\n\n

11. If you didn’t descend on summit day all the way to camp 4 (4100 m) but stayed the night up there instead, you now have a genuinely long stage ahead of you (10-18 hours) straight down to the landing strip. At camp 3 you will have to dig up and collect your cache. You will hardly want to spend another night on the way.<\/p>\n\n

All you will have in front of your eyes is the shower, the internet and a hot breakfast in Talkeetna. Feet rubbed raw have never yet stopped anybody, in my experience. You can sleep near the airstrip without a tent, because you can’t be bothered, it’s late, and after everything you have been through it is warm enough. At 8 in the morning you have to be alert enough to register first at the hut by the airstrip and so be the first to fly out, handing in the fuel cans and weighing all your baggage again, and yourself (oh, the horror, how much weight I’ve lost!!!).
\nThe total distance from the airstrip to the summit and back is only 90-100 km, provided you always moved proudly in alpine style. If you went back and forth for caches, add to that.
\nYou land in Talkeetna, spend 10 minutes with the rangers, return the hired equipment, shower, breakfast-lunch-dinner-bar-hangover..
\nAnd add about 10 spare days for yourself, as is customary. In case you turn out not to be as tough as you thought, or the weather pins you down.
\nFor some reason many people chronically fail to get up the mountain, running back down with cries about the wind and flying rocks, while others don’t even bother roping up, stroll up easily to the sighing of the morning breeze and spend an hour being photographed on the summit. Good luck to you!!!
\nThe expedition and this report would not have been possible without the support of Kayland<\/a> and their superbly warm triple boots, the Kayland 8001, the outdoor equipment chain “Otkryty Mir”<\/a> and the active involvement of Sergey Gorozhanin, the director of their Krasnodar office. Huge thanks to everyone!<\/p>\n\n

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What to explore next<\/h2>\n

View the programme:<\/strong> Climbing Denali (McKinley)<\/a><\/p>\n