Hi, this is Mike Roberts from Alpine Ascents 9 on Denali. We've got a beautiful day here today. It's Monday the 17th of June, day 3 of our trip, and we're just returning from a cache that has been made at 10,700 feet and it's a cache of food and fuel.

Now we're heading back down the glacier to camp 1. Camp 1 is at 7,800 feet. So, backtracking a little bit, when everybody met up on the 14th, we met in the Roadhouse for breakfast and John immediately impressed us with his fantastic appetite. He was able to eat a full breakfast which is a rare thing at the Roadhouse, usually saved for people returning from Denali not heading up.

So anyway after we completed our formalities and did our briefing at the ranger station, bought our last-minute items, we were able to fly in with Talkeetna Air Taxi on schedule. We had a spectacular scenic flight and we were on the base camp of the Kahiltna Glacier by about 4:30pm on the 14th. Made camp that day and for the rest of that day and the 15th, we were going through training.

We did a training session on crevasse rescue, debriefed on how to rig the sleds, how to rope up, and just safe travel procedures, making and breaking camp and all these sorts of things. Then the morning of the 16th we got up at 2:00am and headed off the camp 1.

We reached camp 1 at about 20 to five and it was a beautiful day; the sort of day people can summit Denali on, as is today. One of the notable things about Denali is we do have a lot of smoke on the horizon as the forest fires have started up.

Walt cooked a spectacular meal down at base camp and left Matt and I to our chores so that was much appreciated. And to add to the meal that night we had a freshly baked apple pie from the Roadhouse and cinnamon buns so that was a welcome thing.

Xavier's impressed us all with his ability to use his reclining luxury camp rest and lie in the sun at every available opportunity. Dave Rosenthal, who is on the trip, is an artist and, as part of his program up here, he's doing a lot of sketching. He's up at all hours of the night checking on light and trying to find the sort of optimum pictures that he's sketching and later he'll paint; he doesn't actually have paints on the mountain.

Everybody else is doing really well. Don is loving hauling a sled and likes the rhythm and pace and we've certainly had uninhibited views of the spectacular peaks that surround the Kahiltna Glacier approach.

So just to let you know what our plans are: tomorrow morning, all going well, we will move camp to 11,200 feet. The forecast is fine and we are optimistic. The group feels fine although Xavier did make the comment that he wishes he smoked a little bit less and Walt expressing that he wishes he could have trained a little harder, but from Matt's and my perspective, everyone is doing really well.

So we have cell phone coverage tomorrow and we'll give a quick call in the morning and then while we're in the 11,000-foot basin for two or three nights, we won't actually have any cybercasts, but we will be on the air tomorrow. So our thoughts go out to family, friends and loved ones and people are often talked about during breaks.

So that's all for now. Cheers, Mike.

— Mike Roberts, Alpine Ascents International Guide and MountainZone.com Correspondent