We're headed to Denali in May.

This is Bill Berg, founder of Cool Works, a Minnesota-born person who came to Yellowstone for a seasonal job more than 30 years ago and now lives just outside of Yellowstone near Gardiner, Montana.

"We" is Mike Daigle (Seattle businessman and my brother-in-law), Colette Daigle-Berg (my wife and a Subdistrict Ranger in Yellowstone), Ann Rodman (friend and atom-splitting scientist/GIS person in Yellowstone) and David Thoma (Yellowstone alum, strong-like-bull friend and PhD scientist now living in Tucson), and me.

I climbed Denali in 1978 with NOLS via the Muldrow Glacier at the age of 25. We summitted on July 13th. With so big a World to see and so many things to do I never figured on heading back (as the saying goes "I didn't lose anything up there.").

That changed as Mike started gently prodding Colette and I a few years ago. Then our nephew, Kevin Wright, who had worked a couple of summers for the Park Service at Denali, took a shot at the summit in 2002. He made it in 2003 as a volunteer with Denali's climbing rangers in a trip that had them working closely with a film crew shooting for "Ultimate Explorer: Life or Death on Denali". Colette and I got inspired when Kevin showed his pictures at a family gathering in that fall of 2002.

With Mike as the ever-present spark-plug, we put out the word to climbing partners and family that we thought would have the juice, got a few takers, and started to scheme. Our first shake down was a winter trip with 6 of us on Sheep Mountain, near Yellowstone, in March of 2003. We followed that up with a July climb on Mt. Rainier. In January of 2004 we took a shot at Electric Peak, in Yellowstone.

Now we 5 are headed north.

Stay tuned for updates on the ongoing gear buying and logistics frenzy as we prepare and what we hope to be some audio updates called in from "The Mountain"..

Bill