Freak weather and unforeseen hardships mean that only 58 percent of those who attempt to summit Denali succeed. Emma Lyddan, a 22-year-old Californian, is among those who\u2019ve won in the battle to reach Denali\u2019s peak.<\/p>\n
Becoming a mountaineering guide on Denali hadn\u2019t been a goal of Lyddan\u2019s until coming to Alaska. In the fall of 2014, as a sophomore, she left her environmental studies program at Humboldt State University and came on exchange to the University of Alaska Southeast, in search of adventure.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing to Juneau was life changing\u2026 one of the greatest things I\u2019ve ever done,\u201d Lyddan said. \u201cI\u2019m madly in love (with Alaska.)\u201d<\/p>\n
She immersed herself in the Outdoor Studies program offered at UAS. It wasn\u2019t always a smooth transition: Lyddan learned how to ski at Eaglecrest in January 2015 during one of the worst snow years recently recorded.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was terrifying,\u201d she said. The other students in the group had been skiing \u201csince they were like three,\u201d leaving her with a lot to catch up on.<\/p>\n
In May 2015, her first ODS capstone course requirement was a trip up Denali. Her group made it to their cache drop at 16,000 feet before alerts of bad weather sent them skiing back down to the safety of base camp. Later Lyddan and her group learned that two people in the same area they\u2019d been in got stuck after triggering an avalanche and were unable to find a safe way down.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were really lucky we left the day we did\u2026 we were running out of food, and we were running out of time,\u201d said Lyddan.<\/p>\n
She planned to stay at UAS for a year, but after the realization that she was receiving college credit for walking across the Mendenhall Glacier, Lyddan decided to transfer.<\/p>\n
During her junior year, for another capstone, Lyddan went skiing for two weeks in Hakuba, Japan with the ODS program.<\/p>\n
Return to Denali<\/strong><\/p>\n The following year, during the summer of 2016, she landed an internship with a business based out of Talkeetna called the Alaska Mountaineering School (AMS). ODS program coordinator and teacher Forest Wagner used to work for AMS and facilitated Lyddan\u2019s internship as an apprentice guide. Only three other students from the ODS program had interned with AMS, Wagner said.<\/p>\n Initially Lyddan began her internship cleaning and fixing gear or helping AMS clients and trail guides get organized before sending them on their trip. \u201cI was the every-man,\u201d she said. \u201cI was the classic intern.\u201d<\/p>\n During her time with AMS, Lyddan went on two different Denali trips. The first trip she was accompanied by the man that runs AMS, Colby Coombs, who has taken more than 30 trips up Denali. \u201cHe knows the mountain like the back of his hand,\u201d Lyddan said. That trip also didn\u2019t end in a summit celebration, however. Her group made it to 14,000 feet but had to turn around because of one of the clients, the famous polar explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, was suffering from back problems. At the time he was 72 years old and attempting \u201cThe Grand Slam,\u201d a race to reach the highest summits on all seven continents – Everest, Aconcagua, Denali, Kilimanjaro, Elbrus, Puncak Jaya, Vinson – and reach both poles.<\/p>\n On her second trip with AMS she found herself in the worst snowstorm she\u2019d ever seen. Her group had to wake up every couple of hours just to dig themselves and their tents out of the snow.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was insane, I\u2019d never seen anything like that. And you can\u2019t really move in that kind of weather, so you just kind of like hunker down waiting for it to pass.\u201d That trip she was the apprentice guide alongside Mike Hammel, a man who guides on all seven summits. Another guide on the trip was a skilled ice climber. They had seven clients in their group. Some of those clients were \u201cseven summiteers,\u201d people who travel to and climb each of the classic highest peaks of the seven continents.<\/p>\n Hammel knew there were people in his group that had tried multiple times to summit Denali but had yet to reach its peak so they pushed it.<\/p>\n \u201cI was born at sea level and had never had to deal with altitude. It\u2019s not something you can necessarily prepare for,\u201d Lyddan said. This trip the group didn\u2019t have the chance to acclimate to their altitude. Climbing high and stashing gear (or dropping a cache) at intervals, then descending back down and sleeping low is the normal way to stave off altitude sickness.<\/p>\n Climbers hang out for a day at 17,000 feet (the last camp before summiting) to acclimate. When Lyddan\u2019s group saw the chance to summit, however, they decided to take it. Exposure to all the elements can be painful; the sun was so strong Lyddan said \u201cI sun burned my tongue… it\u2019s 10 times worse than burning your tongue on coffee.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, after 15 days, 20,310 feet, and with 130 pounds of gear on her back Lyddan summited Denali.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was such a reward,\u201d Lyddan said. Trips up Denali can take as long as a month to reach the peak. Lyddan\u2019s hurried third trip tested her strength. That whole summit day she had horrible headaches, couldn\u2019t think straight and ended up vomiting on the summit. \u201cTotally worth it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n It only took them a day to get down. \u201cIt sounds like a good deal but it is not a good deal,\u201d she said. \u201cWe (AMS) don\u2019t do this anymore because people have a really hard time with it. You\u2019re super exhausted from the summit day and then from the summit you go all the way down to 17 camp (the camp at 17,000 feet), sleep two hours than walk all the way down to base camp. It\u2019s called the death march.\u201d<\/p>\n She said her family has seen her transform and gain confidence. They are so proud and, of course, a little scared. \u201cPeople die on Denali,\u201d she said. \u201cI had a friend (who had climbed and summited Denali the year before) who told me I should write a will before I went on Denali.\u201d<\/p>\n Preparing for a climb like Denali takes work. Lyddan works out six days a week, two days with her 130-pound backpack on. She also does yoga, ski touring, rock climbing, running and strength exercises.<\/p>\n After she graduates from the four-year ODS program this spring, Lyddan plans to hike Marcus Baker in the Chugach range near Anchorage as a teacher\u2019s assistant.<\/p>\n When asked why people climb Denali, Lyddan answered, \u201cI think people do it because they want to test themselves physically and mentally. Overcoming suffering like that is really life changing; after I did something like that I realized I was capable of doing anything. That strength and confidence I gained from an experience like that helped me in the rest of my life. People also do it to see the views, feel what it means to be so insignificant in the world. Nature rules and you\u2019re just a player; (it) really puts your problems in perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n Contact Capital City Weekly intern Mackenzie Fisher at mackenzie.fisher@capweek.com. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Freak weather and unforeseen hardships mean that only 58 percent of those who attempt to summit Denali succeed. Emma Lyddan, a 22-year-old Californian, is among those who\u2019ve won in the battle to reach Denali\u2019s peak. Becoming a mountaineering guide<\/a> on Denali hadn\u2019t been a goal of Lyddan\u2019s until coming to Alaska. In the fall of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":14261,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-14260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14260"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=14260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}