On the 14th may, forty-two hours after leaving the UK we landed in Denali base camp on the Kahiltna glacier. On arrival, we discovered that a Swiss team had climbed our main objective the Z-buttress on Mount Hunter the week before, so with an excellent forecast and reports of good conditions we decided to 'warm-up' on the classic Mugs Stump Moonflower route on the north buttress of Mount Hunter. Starting up the route at 3am, we reached the first icefield at 1/3 height in the early evening, where melting ice put paid to further progress for the day. Following a so-so bivy, we started again around 5am, reaching the top of the technical climbing in the late evening. After a brew stop in a convenient crevasse, we continued to the summit arriving via some unacclimatised gasping and crawling about 3am. With a quick stop to admire the view, we started the descent of the West Ridge which initially went very quickly but slowed as more technical ground, poor snow conditions, our underestimated food supplies and general fatigue took their toll. Reaching the glacier in the late evening a long slog back to base camp led to a well deserved steak and collapse. The Mugs route gave superb continuously high quality and very sustained and varied technical climbing- the finest route any of us has yet climbed in the mountains and Tony put his productive scottish winter to good use, freeing all the aid sections at approx scottish VII 7 with the exception of the pendulum into the McNethery ice dagger. It was a great season for the north buttress of Mount Hunter, with at least half a dozen ascents. The Moonflower route had at least two other ascents and while we were on it teams also climbed the French route, Deprivation, and the Wall of Shadows. After a few days rest and a stormy day, we tracked down the Swiss who's description of the objective dangers posed by cornicing and snow mushrooms on their new route decided us against further investigation on Mount Hunter. Instead, we switched our aims to the south face of Mount Foraker, but were irritatingly thwarted less by the actual weather than by the weather forecast, which kept predicting the arrival of a big storm system within the next couple of days. Wanting to keep some acclimatisation we made an overnight trip to the 11'000 ft camp on the west buttress of Denali, then watched several days of excellent weather slip past at base camp as the forecast storm held off, though Steve and Viv had a fun day traversing Mount Frances via the classic (and excellent) SW ridge. With the storm still forecast the commitment factor of Foraker was uninviting so we decided to try and explore other options on the much easier to retreat from north buttress of Hunter, but this plan was scuppered by the belated arrival of the storm system. Grim weather tent bound boredom was interrupted by the ranger, who requested our help extracting a suspected heart attack victim from 7'800 ft on the West Buttress. Teaming up with another climber we towed a stretcher and medical supplies to 7'800ft then helped bring him back to base camp where we made major inroads on the rangers supplies of pancake batter. After a few more storm days, the weather started to clear but remained unsettled with high nighttime temperatures leading to very poor snow conditions. After waiting out a few more days the forecast of further bad weather decided us to pull out of the mountains as Steve had to make his flight home a few days later. Back in civilisation with a few days to kill, we hitched north to Fairbanks then hired a car to go in search of some rumoured rock climbing in the Chena valley. An afternoon hike into the hills led to a bothy in a spectacular landscape of slightly crumbly granite tors, on which after some exploration we eventually located a good looking route. Next morning, Tony led the route- a sustained crack leading to a bold finnish (approx E4 ish - despite some research we haven't been able to find the name of the route- though it has certainly been climbed before) then we hiked down and headed to the Chena valley's main attraction- hot springs- for an afternoon of R&R. Next morning, Steve headed back south to the airport and the UK, while Tony and Viv encouraged by a better forecast hitched back south to Talkeetna. A brief negotiation got Tony and Viv a bargain two day fly-in to the Ruth gorge, so following some more frantic packing we headed back to the mountains. With limited time, we set out the next morning to try the much talked about but seldom climbed Cobra pillar on Mount Barille. This slightly failed to live up to the hype with the first six pitches ranging from merely scrappy rock to disintigrating rotten gravel- notably on the crux 5.11 pitch... Above, the rock improved with some excellent climbing and the infamous 5.11 offwidth leading to the top of the pillar feature and the end of the major rock difficulties at about 3am. After a quick snack, with the way ahead looking scrappy and uninspiring and very warm temperatures we decided to apply 'chamonix ethics' and abseil off to enable us to cross the avalanching Japanese Couloir at a sensible hour. Back at base camp the weather closed in but thankfully Paul Roderick of Talkeetna Air Taxi managed to snatch a break in the clouds to return us to the fleshpots of Talkeetna for a beer or three... Huge thanks to the Mark Clifford Award, BMC and NZAC for funding support. Thanks to Rab, Lyon Equipment, OMM, Chocolate Fish, Crux, DMM, Wild Country, Anatom and Mountain equipment for help with kit. Thanks to Paul Roderick and everyone else at Talkeetna Air Taxi for their help and to the base camp rangers for good times and pancakes. Vivian Scott, Tony Stone, Steven Fortune | 
