The Max Kilcoyne 2025 Denali Trip Report with special guest Anna DeMonte and that Jack Kuenzle

We arrived in Talkeetna on May 18th. I arrived in the morning and Jack and Anna arrived in the evening. We spent the night in anchorage and began the process of unpacking and repacking our bags hundreds of times to get ready to fly onto the glacier. On May 19th we shopped in Anchorage for some last food items and took the shuttle to Talkeetna. We got to Talkeetna at 7 PM, Anna and I repacked all of our bags and weighed everything so we would be ready to fly onto the glacier the next morning after our ranger brief. Jack went for a heat suit run around TAT (Talkeetna Air Taxi) and garnered a nice audience that was pretty amused at someone running around in a full down suit and rubber gloves. On May 20th we had our ranger briefing in the morning and were ready to fly on at 11 AM. We were in the midst of a storm that had grounded flights the last 3 days so there was already a queue of 120+ climbers trying to get onto the mountain that we were behind. The flights continued to get delayed all day and then at 7PM we got a call saying that there was a hole in the clouds they were going to try to fly through and that we needed to be ready to go. We put on all our ski stuff and moved all our bags over to the plane. We got on and sat on the plane and then the hole in the clouds disappeared and we were told we would not be flying until tomorrow at the earliest. The queue of climbers at this point was in the 150+ and one of the longest queues TAT has ever had. Because of our party size of 3 we had jumped half the queue that evening to fly during the brief window. The next morning, May 21st we got a call saying that we were going to be the first to fly in on the scout plane. We had just jumped the whole line. The speculation is that the ladies in the office really liked our team name (Sugar Momma and the Yung Kingz) and the rappers really enjoyed the extra large bottle of tequila we had given to them the day before. And so on May 21st at around 11:30 AM we left Talkeetna in the scout plane with Paul Rodric, the founder and owner of TAT. 

            Once on the glacier Jack and Anna cached their race gear for their airstrip to airstrip record attempts, I rigged up our sleds to carry, and we headed down heartbreak hill. We left the airstrip at about 1 PM. The lower glacier was long, slow, and honestly quite horrible. Anna and I both got bad blisters from all the flat skinning. Anna and I had around around 110 lbs each between our sleds and packs and Jack had around 130 lbs, and he still dropped both of us……. We made it to the official camp 1 at the bottom of ski hill and had to stop to melt more water and make some food for all of us. We stopped in a nice hole someone had dug and began the tedious process of melting snow. After getting some more food and water we began trudging up ski hill to get as high as we could for the night. Ski hill is relatively low angle, low 30 degrees, but any amount of incline with that much weight just feels like death. We continued up past the top of ski hill to about 9300’ for the first night and made camp.

On day 2 we headed from our camp at 9300’ up to the established 11k camp. This was a long day. Somehow in the repacking of the bags in the morning I think I received extra weight than the day before. Anna and Jack will deny this, but I swear it felt much heavier, or I was just tired. I got dropped almost instantaneously. We arrived at 11k camp mid afternoon and made a nice camp complete with a cooking hole and bathroom we took over from a past party. 11k camp had maybe 8 - 10 parties at it. Griffin, Wes and Emmett showed up to 11k this evening as well.

Day 3 was the hardest day of the approach. We separated our essential gear and food and cached 1/3rd of our weight at 11k camp and began the death march up to 14k camp with sleds. We were nearing the end of a high pressure system so our thought was to get to 14 as soon as possible so that we could potentially go up high the next day or day after to take advantage of the good weather. Once the weather turned bad we would ski down to 11k and grab the rest of our food and gear. We brought up over a week's worth of food on the first carry so we had the ability to hang around 14 camp and ski high on the mountain if the good weather persisted. The carry up to 14 camp took about 3 hours which doesn’t sound that bad, but it felt bad. We got to 14 camp mid afternoon and began probing and digging out where our camp would be. The digging and setting up camp would end up taking us over 3 hours and we didn’t have a bathroom or cook tent setup yet. Shortly after arriving at 14k camp while we were digging our site, Griffin, Wes and Emmett showed up with their cache they were gonna leave at 14 camp that day before heading back to 11k camp for the night. We decided they should join onto the end of our camp so we could have one big camp together. 

After arriving at 14 camp: Anna explaining to me how she dropped the guided group and telling me I need to get back to work digging

On May 25th, day 4, Jack and Anna decided to go up to the top of rescue gully or as high as they could while the weather was good before the storm came in. I was feeling tired and decided I could stay back at camp and dig the cook tent since we needed that done before the storm. Anna and Jack ended up going up to Denali pass (18000’) and did a long 7 hour ski day so I didn’t see them again until dinner time. 

On May 26th, day 5, Jack and Anna wanted a rest day after pushing hard to get to Denali pass 4 days after landing. I felt fairly rested after hanging out at camp the day before. The weather looked decent and there was a party that had skied the Orient Express for the first time of the season on the day before. I had watched them ascend while I was hanging out around camp and figured I’d cruise up their track and see how high I could get. I headed out solo mid morning and cruised up to 16,800’ feeling much better than I expected. The weather deteriorated quickly and I was in a ping pong ball with no visibility right over the bergschrund within minutes. I decided it was wise to turn around and save the rest for another day.

On May 27th, day 6, the weather was supposed to have turned but it still looked relatively nice in the morning at 14k camp so Jack, Anna, Griffin, and I decided to head up Rescue Gully to wand the bergschrund so I could safely do it solo to set the boot pack for jack and Anna on their record attempts. We cruised up to the 17k camp wanding the entire section between the two bergshrunds generously. We then all skied it together and it was quite good. The top 400 feet was firm, but completely edgeable and then the snow got really good down low. I don’t know who Jack was trying to show off for or impress, but that was the best I have ever seen him ski before and it was the first time I was not able to keep up with him skiing down! The snow was so good that Jack and Anna went and skied another 2 hours after we got back to camp that evening.

On May 28th, day 7 on the glacier, Jack and Anna were feeling a little burnt ( probably cause they went and skied an extra 2 hours after we got back to camp the day before 🤣) and decided to take a rest day. I felt pretty good and wanted to get up to 18,000’ to continue to acclimatize so I had a leisurely morning waiting for it to warm up and eating a big breakfast, packed a small day pack with 1L of water, food for 3 hours and no warm clothes. I started up towards the Orient Express at 1PM from 14k camp. All the tracks from a couple days ago were completely gone from new snow. Luckily a group of two had headed up that way earlier that morning to climb the West rib so I had a skin track up to below the Bergshrund at 15,900’. I felt quite good and made it to the Bergshrund at 16,000’ in 1 hour. The weather was beginning to deteriorate but it was manageable to continue. I took a video of myself to explain the conditions and in the video I say that if I had more food, water, warmer clothes, and hadn’t started at 1PM I would have delusions of going to the summit and skiing the Orient from the top. I left the skin track at 15,900’ and began breaking trail to the bergshrund. I had my gpx track from the previous day showing where the snow bridge was, but my watch wasn’t working so I couldn’t tell where it was and my phone was down to 15% so I was trying to conserve battery. I just probed my across the shrund and it wasn’t too bad. I continued to boot up shin to knee deep snow in a whiteout for another 1200 feet and was beginning to think about turning around because it was going to be hard to ski down with no visibility. There was a hole in the clouds that provided some sun at 17,300’ so I decided I would stop there and transition in the sun to ski down. Once I got there the clouds really socked in below me and 14k camp completely disappeared, but I was magically above the cloud deck. It was extremely sunny and nice above me all of a sudden with what looked like armageddon beneath me, a totally surreal setting. I was sitting above the storm by myself with only the summit of Denali and Sultana visible. After getting above the clouds I figured I had to keep pushing until it didn’t make sense anymore. At 17,600’ the two guys who went to go climb the west rib popped onto the Orient Express to continue up. I stopped to talk to them for a minute, but they seemed wrecked and said they were going to start to descend soon. I was basically out of food and water at this point but so psyched that it didn’t matter. I ate my last food and drank the last of my water at 18,000 feet 4 hours into the day and decided I was going all the way up. I sent my last text to Jack and Anna at 19,000 feet letting them know I was going up and my phone was going to die. It died right after my text sent. I continued up the steep chute direct fall line off the football field into the Orient. I had been very comfortable in my soft shell and light puffy all day due to the sun and zero wind. When I crested the football field I was hit by 15-20 mph winds. The windchill dropped the temp well into the negatives immediately. I didn’t bring insulated pants, my big puffy, my big gloves or other extreme cold gear up because I didn’t think I was going that high. I threw on my hardshell to try and protect myself a bit more and began towards the summit block. I had to ball my hands up in gloves and walk with poles under my arm backwards towards pig hill cause the wind hurt my face too much to face into. I got to the top of pig hill and to the summit ridge (20,150’) and got blasted by even stronger winds. I was beginning to get worried that my hands were going to be too cold to take my crampons off and get my skis on and there wasn’t a single person in sight as I was the only one to go above 18,000’ that day. I contemplated if the last 150 feet were worth it especially since I had plans to summit at least 2 more times this trip and decided I needed to go down before my hands quit working entirely. I started to ski down at 6:20 elapsed from when I left 14k camp. So around 7:20 PM. The top roll of the entrance to the Orient was quite steep, low 50 degrees, and firm so I took that slow but then had one of the most euphoric skis of my life. Good boot top pow to knee deep pow for over 4000’. I descended from the summit ridge down to 14k camp in 40 minutes without thinking about going fast and with a stop to put my goggles on halfway down. I got back to camp at 8 PM and couldn’t stop shivering all night but was stoked out of my mind. I don’t have many pictures from this day as I was by myself and my phone died but I’ll have the memories of that ski forever.

The next day, May After my report of the amazing conditions on the Orient, Jack and Anna decided they should go check it out to see if it had potential for their record attempts. The weather had really started to turn and it was not a good day. Jack and Anna rallied in the cold and started early the next day. I was smoked and decided to hang out at camp with Wes, Griffin, and Emmett and build our walls around the camp since we were supposed to be hit with 40-50 mph winds the next night. We had planned to check in via radio every 2 hours to see how things were going. Everything was going smooth for the first two check ins, just stormy. I had just made lunch and was getting ready to check in via radio again. I radioed Jack to see where they were. He radioed back and said that Anna took a fall and tore her MCL around 16,000 feet and that I needed to go meet them with a sled to help her get down the last bit. This had happened over an hour ago and Jack was trying to radio me, but I had the radio off and in the tent while I was building the walls. I met them as quickly as I could, but Anna had already had to ski down close to 2000 feet. We took her the rest of the way down in the sled and went to the ranger tent to see how bad it was. They did a field assessment and decided it seemed like a torn MCL and Meniscus. This assessment yielded that they would heli evac her as soon as the weather cleared. This left the rest of Jack and I’s trip up in the air.

After lots of discussion Jack and Anna insisted that no matter what I was going to stay on the mountain, which I couldn’t be more grateful for especially given how much they supported me and helped me get to Alaska. Anna insisted that Jack should stay on the mountain as well and race and that she would be fine by herself, but Jack, as chivalrous as he is, decided he wanted to be with Anna when she got down to help her and make sure she had a smooth trip back to SLC. So two days after the accident, on May 31st, Jack headed down to the airstrip to fly out to Talkeetna and Anna and I waited at 14k camp for the weather to clear so she could fly out on a heli. Jack flew out that day while Anna had to wait until the morning of June 1st to fly out. Anna ended up with a full ACL tear, Meniscus tear and a femur fracture. In all technicalities the rule of the national park service is that if a member on the permit has to be treated by the rangers, such as getting flown out on a heli like Anna, then the permit is revoked for the entire team and everyone must leave the mountain. The rangers were kind enough to not enforce this on me and let me stay “solo.” Although I essentially just joined Griffin, Wes and Emmett’s expedition.

Griffin, Wes and Emmett all summitted on June 1st, the day Anna flew out, which ended up being the last decent day of weather for 4 days. From June 2nd to June 4th the weather was terrible and all that was possible was to go for short skis up to the base of the fixed lines at 15,800 feet. On those days we would have a leisurely breakfast, put on all our layers and then head out for an hour or two to ski until the risk of frostbite forced us back to the tents. On June 5th the weather was still supposed to be bad with a “polar low” forecasted to settle on the mountain, however there were rumors from other forecasts that winds would be low enough to push higher on the mountain for a portion of the day.

When we woke up on the 5th it looked decent enough to go up high. Wes, Emmett and I headed up towards the fixed lines to try to ski straight couloir down to the sunshine face from 17k camp and Griffin headed up to go summit via West Buttress again at his own pace. This day was my lowest point of the trip, it was freezing cold when we started, we had been in a storm for the last 5 days with no sign of a high pressure system in sight, and I had felt moderately accomplished for already skiing the Orient Express. Going up towards teh fixed lines I had decided I was going to head down tomorrow and fly off. To cap it off when we got the fixed lines Wes realized he forgot his crampons. Determined to get something out of the day I gave him one of mine and both ascended the fixed lines and the 16k ridge with one crampon.

We were disorientated at 17 camp and accidentally went and looked at the drop in for the dog leg couloir above the sunshine face instead of the straight couloir. It was rock hard and 50 - 55 degrees at the drop in roll above exposure. That combined with not having visibility for going top down on the sunshine face led us to bail to go ski rescue gully which skied phenomenally after the top 300ft and reinvigorated our psyche to stick out the storm. Once we got back to camp we had decided we would stay for another 4 days and wait for some good weather to appear in the forecast as ski conditions still seemed quite good.

One June 6th there was a one day break in the storm that wasn’t forecasted. We had decided we were going to wake up reasonably early for us at 14k camp and push up the Messner as far as it made sense if the weather was nice in the morning. There had been at least 4 other teams up on the mountain this year that had the Messner as their main goal and had already left citing bad conditions up top or not getting good enough weather to go try. The reality was that despite many people making assumptions from 14k camp no one had gone up higher than the base of the choke yet this year and had no idea what it was like. Wes, Emmett and I started up from camp around 11:30 AM. We broke trail from our camp as no one had gone up that direction since the storm. 

 We swapped leads breaking trail pushing hard while assessing the snow stability. We deemed it stable enough to ski safely and the conditions were all time. Perfect 3-4 inches of boot top pow on top of a rock hard wind slab. We made it up to the football field at 19,500ft and Emmett decided he didn’t need to summit again as he had summitted June 1st already and the winds were absolutely whipping above 19,500ft. Wes and I decided we would try to summit. It was the coldest place I have ever been. We donned all of our layers including down pants and big down jackets and pushed hard to the top without saying a word to each other, just sucking wind and shaking out our hands very frequently. On the summit ridge we were surprised to see another party of 2 up there for how terrible the weather was. We gained on them quickly and caught them before the summit. Turns out it was Nims Dai short roping a woman to the summit. Wes and I reached the summit 7 hours and 8 minutes after leaving 14k camp. We quickly transitioned and straight lined it down to Emmett to get out of the wind and get to the good skiing. The skiing was glorious, amazing snow and completely clear visibility. All of 14k camp was watching us as we opened it up for the season. We had decided on the way up that we didn’t want to risk trying to line up the bergshrund on the sunshine top down on the descent so we would just follow our boot pack back down lookers right. When the snow was so good going down we all unanimously decided we should ski the face. We picked the most notable features from a photo and then I got to make the first turns down. It felt committing not really knowing where you are on such a big face but it couldn’t have gone better. We all skied the face and, hopped the shrund and skied back to our tents. Another one of my best days of skiing I have ever had.

We had another 2 days of stormy weather forecasted on the 7th and 8th. The 9th looked ok, but good enough to launch the Cassin yet. It had just snowed close to a foot at 14,000 feet with high winds and we wanted the snow to have some more time to settle before we started questing down the Seattle Ramp. The 10th through the 14th looked like it was going to be an unreal weather window. The exact thing we had been waiting for the last 3 weeks. Griffin decided he wanted to go down to the airstrip to do an airstrip to summit and back in a day by himself so on the 9th we started to break down camp and went to go cache gear at 11k camp with Griffin to ease our descent after we finished with the Cassin. Wes and I decided we would start the next morning/afternoon on the 10th. The ambitious plans was to push to the hanging glacier the day of the 10th, bivy there and then continue to the summit on the 11th. We brought 3.5 days of food in case it didn’t go to plan and increased our bivy equipment in case we needed another night and more rest than expected. We brought a 2 person Black Diamond Firstlight tent, one -40 bag, and two inflatable pads. We left 14k camp on June 10th at noon. We made good time up to the West Rib cutoff and then struggled to actually find the Seattle ramp for a while. We wandered around for a bit and eventually settled on a 50 degree ice slope that we traversed down to get around to the Seattle Ramp from the West Rib. 

After some more mixed down climbing we found an area big enough to put our skis on and began our descent down the Seattle Ramp. It was a very technical glacier ski. Hard to navigate top down despite having many photos and very hard to avoid crevasses. We opted to ski blue ice whenever possible due to the fact that we knew there couldn’t be a weak snow bridge if we were on ice. We managed to get down and arrived at the base of the Japanese couloir around 5 PM. 

Wes and I had decided we were going to break the route up into 4 blocks for leading. The Japanese couloir would be block 1, The Cassin Ledge to Hanging Glacier would be block 2, the first rock band would be block 3, and the second rock band would be the last block. This allowed us to both lead some ice and some rock and we thought we were breaking the difficulty up evenly. We rock papered scissored at the base of the Japanese couloir to see who got what. I won so I got to take the Japanese and first rock band. I led in one block up to the base of the crux pitch placing one screw for about 4 or 5 rope lengths. We belayed the crux WI4 pitch and then continued up in another pitch to cassin ledge. We arrived at Cassin Ledge at 8:30 kind of wasted cause we didn’t stop to eat or drink since the base and the trail breaking was soul crushing at times. I opted to stop for the night and then push hard to the top tomorrow. We didn't use the “Cassin Ledge” and instead chopped our own small ledge into a hanging piece of snow/ice. It was tight but we were able to chop enough for the night

Above: Dan and Danny, another team starting the Cassin at the same time as us, following us down the 50 degree ice slope

On day 2, we waited until it was semi warm and we were in the sun to start because we weren’t super pressed for time. We ended up climbing around 11 AM. We pitched out the 5.8 Cassin Ledge pitch and the Wes took us up to the hanging glacier in a pitch. We brewed up, made some ramen and then headed up to the hanging glacier pitch which we also belayed up. After the hanging glacier it was my lead again. I started up through the first rock band. I lead around 500-600 feet before running out of micros and gear and belayed Wes up to me. I stopped to belay in the shade because that’s all I could find and completely froze. We were both kind of smoked from a long day already and had no idea how much further the first rock band was. We started to discuss stopping in between the rock bands for the night. I lead the last pitch up to the top of the first rock band and we decided we should start digging a ledge while we have some sun left and make our lives a little more comfortable by spending one more night up there and then going to the top the next day. We couldn’t find any good place to chop a ledge and we ended up hacking ice for over an hour and a half trying to get something suitable to sleep on. Once it became clear we were not going to get a very big ledge and the sun was disappearing we called it quits and decided we would just sleep on top of each other tied into an ice screw on a ledge barely big enough for one person. I slept on the outside edge the first night so Wes offered to take it for this night. He ended up getting the short end of the stick as this ledge was significantly smaller with much more exposure than the first night. As we were getting situated in the tent my bag with all my food for the next day tumbled out of the entrance of the tent and disappeared down to the East Fork of Kahiltna. Bummer. I still had the snacks I hadn’t finished from the day which included close to 500 calories including some caffeinated gels and Wes had a pro bar he donated to me so we were fine for the next day.

On Day 3 our feet were starting to hurt significantly and we opted to wait in the tent until the sun had completely hit us. We got climbing by 11 AM again and started up to get through the last bit of the technical climbing. Unbeknownst to us the second rock band ended up having the hardest mixed climbing on the route and we ended up having to pitch out 2 pitches. I believe we got semi off route and Wes ended up pulling a strenuous M4/M5 section while we were simuling with loads of slack out. We got up that and were then a bit lost. We traversed over to the right and found some 5.5 slab pitch that led us out to the top of the second rock band. We took a long break reveling in the fact that we had done it (mostly) All that was left was a soul crushing 3,000 feet of trail breaking up to the summit. When we started trail breaking it was mid thigh to waist level deep and I was convinced we would have to spend another night out. The depth eased though and our pace increased. We topped out Kahiltna Horn at 8:33 PM, put on all our layers, put skis on and ripped it down as fast as possible. Neither of us had any interest in going the last 150 feet on the ridge to the true summit. A skier had died on rescue gully in an avalanche a couple days prior so we were apprehensive of skiing anything steep especially since we were so fatigued. We decided we could ski the debris in rescue gully safely and headed down from 17k camp. We arrived at 14k camp at 9:30 PM. Ate a bunch of food and passed out. The next day we packed up and completed the worst part of the trip by far, taking the sleds down the mountain. We got down to the airstrip in the evening and didn’t make the last plane. We had a nice last evening on the glacier basking in the sun down where the oxygen is plentiful and it was actually hot. We were on the first plane out the next morning and that was the end of my first trip to Central Alaska Range.