About our Guides and Fellow Climbers

When you climb a big mountain such as Denali, you get the opportunity to spend lots of time with your guides and fellow climbers, who are also responsible as a team for our success and in some cases, our lives. Here’s some afterthoughts on our team-members:

THE GUIDES: Nate Opp and Joey McBrayer

It sounds trite to say that these were the best guides that I have climbed with. They are both in their late twenties and were the right combination of laid-back and safety-conscious. Unlike other guides, they were both ego-less, had an outstanding relationship with each other, never talked bad about other clients or guides that they have worked with, never threatened us with expulsion or sending us down, spent endless hours melting snow and cooking without complaining and then of course, participated in the attempted rescue of the fallen climber from another group who had unfortunately already expired before their arrival to unselfishly help. When things got bad on our rope team one day coming down from the Headwall, Joey handled it well and said just the right words to settle us down. They REALLY wanted to have everyone summit (safely), which we did, and we were happy for them as much as for us. They were able to manage things quietly and effortlessly so that logistics were seamless for us as a group. It is such a tough job to be a guide for a mixed group like this on such a dangerous mountain for too little pay I’m sure, but I’ve climbed now with some world-famous guides and I would not have chosen better guys for this trip than Joey and Nate.

Some pictures of them:

PAULA

Paula and I have now done five big mountains together (Baker, Rainier, Elbrus, Aconcagua and Denali) – all in the course of less than two years. Paula was incredibly strong, focused and optimistic the entire trip. Even when I was down or sullen and not able to look even to tomorrow, she would look out 5, 10 or 15 days in the future and break down how we were going to get there from here. She is efficient in setting up the tent, getting stuff organized and was always ready early and on the rope early. Paula was the most religious in terms of hydrating and always drinking and encouraging the rest of us to do the same. We could always talk about anything including talking through things that might have happened during the day that were stressful. While I always doubted that we would summit and never thought I’d even make it to high-camp, she was unflaggingly confident that we would and never doubted that we would be successful. Paula also shares my obsessive-compulsiveness in terms of expedition preparedness, we talked through EVERY item on the gear list many many times and had the exact right gear and items from big to small. One of the endearing things she did was to cut down each and every gram of weight – continuously. This included removing labels from clothes, cutting down the amount of weight in each and every item (and encouraging me to do the same). Of course we also gave her a hard time for a fairly large baggy of shelled (save weight) pistachios that seemed to weight a lot, though we ate a lot of them and eventually stashed them at ABC. Paula shares the same intense passion on completing the Seven Summits, which we will do before long and are already talking through preparations for both Antarctica (Vinson) and Everest in the coming 20 months or so.