In 1998, I set out to climb what I knew would be the toughest of the state highpoints, Denali, or Mount McKinley, in Alaska. Here is my journal. Afraid it’s quite long, and written before the age of blogging, so you just have to scroll through it.
Pittsburgh Airport, Sunday, May 17, 1998, 8:20 AM
Well, it’s finally happening. After years of macho posturing and months of planning, I’m off to climb the big white hill in Alaska. I kissed my still-somnolent kids good-bye at 5:30 AM, begrudgingly conceded the sensibility of taking Jane’s ride to the airport, rather than bike there myself wearing the monster backpack and risk trashed spokes and a worse back, had a pretty (albeit rushed and hassled) farewell at the terminal drop off, saw my backpack and boxed bike safely (yeah, right) checked in, handed in my VISA frequent flyer-subsidized ticket and began what should be the greatest adventure of my life.
Of course, the timing is sub-optimal. Having accepted the position of acting director of clinical operations at my practice, my departure is at once fortuitous and irresponsible. The trip wouldn’t have been possible at all if I hadn’t been granted the last sabbatical that Given is likely to give, but I’m leaving just as a crisis in provider compensation is erupting. Jane, who graciously agreed to honor the Faustian bargain we struck to allow my month-long absence, has to deal alone with a sick toddler, overstretched budget, and disintegrating exterior trim paint. Rumor has it a snow drought has impacted success rates on the mountain. Two of the three med students who originally signed on have backed out, leaving one stalwart, Jason Lang, who is getting his med-school diploma as we speak. He and I have had to give up our reservation for a private climb and open it up to other clients, so that now we’ll be joined by four strangers from far-flung corners of the country.
All of this came down with enough time to back out, but I knew the peculiar convergence of circumstances that made this trip possible would not likely happen again. It was now or never, so here I am in the Steel City, waiting on that next plane, looking hopefully northwest. Wolfing down a breakfast croissant, I see my bike box getting loaded on the plane to Seattle. At least it’ll get that far.
It’s all Brian Sawyer’s fault, you know. A quarter century ago we took a spin through West Virginia to play on the Seneca Rocks, and as a lark drove up nearby Spruce Knob, the state’s highest point. No big deal—a little observation tower and some windblown trees. But the jaunt had far-reaching consequences, for there we agreed it would be a smile to try to do all the state highpoints, and make it a mock race. Easy for Sawyer to say. He already had Mansfield and Katahdin, a two-peak head start. We bagged the first few together, kicking off with a spectacular Presidential Range hike to do Mt. Washington, and a wintertime junket in the South just as the energy crisis hit, where we ticked off five in a week. Two years later, just as I was about to tie things up on Katahdin, Brian blithely announced that he’d driven up Greylock in Massachusetts the previous week.
That did it. The lark became a contest in earnest. On 7/25/77 I tied the score on Harney Peak of the Black Hills, South Dakota, the highest point east of the Rockies and west of the Alps, and two weeks later the go-ahead peak was Whitney, summit of the lower 48. I rubbed it in with a lewd postcard, and threw in Elbert of Colorado (and the Rockies) on the day Elvis died. I must have gone overboard with the gloating, for Brian never again tried to challenge, although he did draw up even in ’84. I should have wised up when he passed on doing Gannett Peak of Wyoming during an ‘89 backpack in the Wind River Range—his heart wasn’t in the contest.
But by then I was hooked. Egged on by a late challenge from Eric “C-Bo” Seaborg and his wife Ellen “Brillohead” Dudley, I racked up five more in the early 90’s, all this time under my own power, capped by Borah of Idaho and the great Rainier. So now I have 22, and it’s clear I’d better pick off the roof of the continent before I get any more decrepit.
So bagging another state highpoint was what got me started thinking about Denali, but I’d better keep mum about that. It’s uncool to admit that you’re climbing for a trophy. Everyone, from the guides I’ve used before to the writers of articles in adventure magazines, even to awesome old Charlie Houston, alpine pioneer and dear patient, scoffs at those who are just trying for bragging rights. It’s supposed to be about the experience, not the goal. Hmmm. Looking back on my big peaks so far, I do relish the pristine surroundings, people I’d met, and the exhilaration of effort. But it’s the summitting itself, the glory of standing higher than anyone else in that state, the actual achievement that sticks with me most. When I can’t sleep at night, I relive each one like counting sheep; I cherish my highpoints and 4000-footers like a miser hoarding his gold. Mine, all mine. Precious few others may be impressed by these achievements, but they can’t take them away from me.
I’m the first to concede it looks foolish. Many of the state highpoints are ridiculous, trivial rises that achieve notoriety only because of a surveyor’s arbitrary line. This one, however, is undoubtedly one of the world’s great peaks. It had better be, ’cause man what a sacrifice it’s already been for me and my family.
When I think of it, I have to admit that this trip is a monstrously selfish act. Not only is it costing over seven thousand dollars (when you add the guide fee, the top-of-the-line equipment, and all the transportation incidentals), but it means taking the first full month of leave I’ve had in eleven years and spending it away from my family, asking Jane to fend for herself, and the kids to live with the possibility that I might not come back. True, I’ve taken all the precautions—found the best guide, picked the best time, trained hard, but this mountain has a reputation for real danger. And honestly, I’m a little scared. I don’t seem to have the confidence I usually have going into my “grandiose expeditions”. I could have trained harder. I could have spent a bit more for equipment. I could have read more, practiced more. Will I measure up? What if I don’t make it? What if I get hurt? How can I possibly justify this risk?
Anchorage, Tuesday, May 19, 1998, 7:00 AM.
Well, it all begins in two hours: we’ll meet the guides and the other clients, lay out all our equipment, scramble to the outfitters for last-minute items, and get ready for tomorrow’s departure for the little outpost town of Talkeetna and the ski-plane ride to Kahiltna Base. I’ve already met Alan, an ophthalmologist from the Bay area, 52 but looking much younger, with a climbing resume far longer than mine. Jason got in at midnight last night. Two of the others haven’t shown up–just a missed connection, or are they bailing?
All of the above thoughts and doubts are swirling in my head, but there’s no way I’m backing out. Ultimately, I’m going because it’s a test. My last hurrah, physically. It’s all downhill from here. “We don’t do these things because they are easy, we do them because they are hard,” as JFK once said. Enough maudlin drivel. The kickoff meeting is starting.
Anchorage, Wednesday 5/20/98, 5:17 AM
I can’t sleep. We leave for Talkeetna in three hours and I should be cherishing my last minutes of sleep in a real bed, but I’m too keyed up. So much has happened, and this is the last chance to enter my thoughts directly into the Mac.
To back up a bit, let my recount what I’ve done since arriving late Sunday night. I found my luggage and bike and got a taxi into town with a minimum of hassle (Jane was right), checked in to the modest B&B, chatted with some girls about to leave for a month at the National Outdoor Leadership School, and cruised the grid of downtown Anchorage in the 10PM twilight, marveling at the straight, bleak streets, the ugliness of the 60’s urban-renewal architecture (the whole town was rebuilt after the devastating Good Friday earthquake in ’64), the numbers of kids still up riding around on a school night, and my inability to find a convenience store after 5 miles of looking. Slept quite well that first night.
Had a sumptuous breakfast Monday morning (this B&B, Two Morrow’s Place, named for owners Dave and Margo Morrow, is justly famous for their lavish morning spreads) of biscuits and gravy, chatted for hours with Dave, a quarter blooded Flathead Indian with an amazing career in naval intelligence and technical equipment installation, and learned with sorrow of Margo’s recent diagnosis of an ovarian tumor. Met fellow client Alan and his wife Barbara, who have come early so they can enjoy a vacation together before Alan’s big climb, and heard his slightly obsessive (I should talk) take on equipment needs and adventure travel. Left late for a 64 mile tour of Anchorage’s bike paths—a remarkable network of trails that follows the coast, snakes up creeks and around lakes, and follows the highway to the canyon-sited enclave of Eagle River. Felt strong and fast. Saw the requisite moose, who gave me a bad look as I got my camera. Lingered at a baseball game. Returned to the B&B to find Mike, Nikki, and Ray from LA, older tourists on the cruise & bus circuit, and watched old clips of the late Sinatra (daughter Nancy’s rendition of Sonny Bono’s “Bang Bang, He Shot Me Down” will rattle in my head for the whole trip) and Gary Cooper’s old standby, The Pride of the Yankees.
So Tuesday right on time the kickoff meeting begins, and I meet Scott Woolums, 40, our head guide and longtime friend of Geoff Tabin (my ophthalmologist colleague and Everest summiteer who helped me set this trip up), reputed to be the most experienced guide on the mountain. He seems totally relaxed and fun-loving, yet radiates a quiet competence that both Jason and I can feel right away. Turns out Scott is also a pilot, and we take him up on his offer of a quick sightseeing flight around the Knik Arm. Equally delightful is the assistant guide Brian Johnson (“BJ”), 31, who looks a bit like Lenin. Scott & BJ have guided a lot together, and it shows. They efficiently inventory our piles of stuff, and accompany us to the outdoor stores for last minute purchases, of which I have to make surprisingly few. Just a chest harness, sleeping pad, bowl, noseguard, and some vapor barrier sock liners.
More concerning are the other clients, or lack of them. We meet Hebert (he says “call me Herbert” but we all use the Spanish pronunciation of his name, “ay-bear”) from Orlando, 38 but looking over 50, a Uruguay native former bodybuilder and recently-fired cabinetmaker who is here under suspicious circumstances. There are two no-shows: Doug from Connecticut, a frequent client of Scott’s whose mother is ill, and Chris, also from Orlando, a chiropractor and erstwhile friend of Hebert’s. The story is still unclear, and comes in dribs and drabs, mostly over an otherwise-luscious farewell dinner at the Brewhouse: it seems Hebert and Chris recently climbed Mt. Shasta together, there was a mishap in a storm involving the loss of Chris’s pack and a falling out between the two of them. Apparently Chris has already paid for Hebert to go on this trip, so Hebert is here, Chris may join us late if he can recover his gear in time, but the two aren’t talking to each other.
Meanwhile Hebert puts on quite a show at dinner, saying he’s just had breakfast (thinking it was already Wednesday AM); he’s very “anxious” about the trip and his abilities; he doesn’t really want to be here and would rather do Everest, but hey the trip is paid for, he’s out of a job and has no place else to stay; he needs “tea” to relax him and melatonin to get to sleep; that he used to do anabolic steroids which caused osteohypertrophy of his wrists and necessitates bilateral splints. Oh yeah, and he hates sex, because the only time his ex-wife had sex was with another man. He lays this all on us over dinner, while Barbara and the rest of us share wide-eyed disbelief: is it all an act? Is this guy on drugs? Scott takes him aside for a chat when he drops us off, and later calls me to assure me & Jason that Hebert will be asked to return if he doesn’t appear physically or mentally up to the trip. I have my strong doubts about his mental state already, of course, but must concede that we owe him a chance to perform. If Chris does indeed show, it will be quite a dynamic.
Well, it all makes my anxieties seem pretty trivial. Alan says a couple of times that he’s “slow” and very concerned with keeping warm, and lets on he may elect to turn back himself. That leaves Jason, buff and calm, appearing mature beyond his years, as the rock of the clients. What a long, strange trip it’ll be.
OK. Now it’s 6:28 AM and it’s been helpful to vent all this. Right now we’re six, maybe seven, maybe five or even four. But I’ve got two great guides, a solid partner, and a ton of determination. Enough of this rocking: let’s roll.
[The next nineteen days are transcribed from the contemporaneous account in my handwritten journal]
Wednesday, 5/20/98 7:55 PM, Day 1; We Arrive, Sort Of
I’m off the Mac and back to longhand, and I see it’s been 11 years since my last entry into this journal, my last month-long grandiose expedition: the tandem trip with Jane down the West Coast. Right now we’re not six or five or even four; we’re three—just Jason, BJ and I.
It starts smoothly enough. Another high-octane breakfast from Margo, a pleasant, if uneventful, shuttle bus ride to Talkeetna (apparently the model for Cicely in the TV show Northern Exposure) with a stop to pick up last-minute necessities in Wasilla (which I’ll later learn is Sarah Palin’s hometown), the requisite National Park Service registration and cheesy PowerPoint presentation of The Dangers of Mount McKinley. Hebert, perhaps chagrined by his performance or chastened by his talking-to last night, is quiet and totally pleasant, Alan is overly inquisitive, Jason his usual laid-back self.
Most Denali climbs begin with a flight from Talkeetna to Kahiltna Base, a flat area on the Southeast Fork of the big Kahiltna Glacier at 7200 feet. I know, I don’t like the idea of an artificial leg-up either, I’d much rather climb the mountain from the bottom. But to do so involves a fifty-mile trek through dense, swampy, mosquito and grizzly-infested brush, crossing several snowmelt-fed torrents that are more hazardous than the climb itself, and picking our way through the gravelly slush of the glacier dregs. It also adds two weeks to the trip. So we wolf down cheeseburgers, pick up a few postcards to send back home by giving them to climbers going down, and hustle to the airport.
We can see the ceiling is dropping so we try to get a plane ASAP, but we’d lost time with the NPS preliminaries and are told they’re about to close the glacier airstrip. Doug Geeting, the legendary pilot who owns the company we’re flying with, says he’ll fly us himself if we can leave right now, so we pile our stuff in fast and BJ, Jason and I take off in the first plane with the others 5 minutes behind. The ride is noisy and without comment from old Doug. We pass the glaciers I’d studied so much, wave good-bye to the last green we’ll see for weeks. One Shot Pass is spectacular but less scary than we’d been led to expect. We curve around awesome rock-ice walls, pass a few climbers toiling up Heartbreak Hill, and land at K-base on an uphill strip, Doug hanging a U at the top. It’s the noise, gasoline fumes, and bumpy ride that make me nauseous, I tell myself, not the altitude.
But no plane lands behind us. Our friends’ plane had to turn back in the worsening weather. We 3 dig out an old camp, have pasta and freeze-dried chocolate mousse (courtesy of Bob from the office), and shiver through our first cold night.
Thursday, May 21, 1998, Day 2: Carry to Camp 8. Reunited for the Long Haul
Use my pee bottle for the first time but still have to visit the latrine at 4 AM. I’m treated to my first beautiful view of the SE fork of the Kahiltna (nicknamed the “Kahiltna Hilton” for the scores of tents clustered here), all bathed in the pink sunrise, including the rounded dome of Denali herself, a mere 13,000 vertical feet above us.
BJ cooks pancakes while the others finally land, and we get a late start for our first “carry” to 8,000 feet (Camp 1 technically, though everybody refers to the camps by their elevation, as in “Camp 8”). Scott likes to “double carry” rather than carry all the gear up at once: the latter approach would involve loads well over 100 lbs. each and moving half as fast, with the need to set up twice as many camps. So we take half our gear to site of the next camp, bury it as a “cache,” and return to the base for the night. This “climb high sleep low” approach aids acclimatization as well, and is referred to as “expedition style” (to distinguish it from the other “alpine style”).
We have to start climbing Denali by heading down the 600 foot “Heartbreak Hill,” so named for the obstacle it presents to exhausted returning climbers, down the SE fork to the main Kahiltna glacier, where planes can’t land because of a wilderness boundary. Then it’s a 4-mile gradual uphill trek, winding around crevasses to cache our food at 8000’. We’re roped together, towing sleds, separated by 75’. When we stop for breaks, the two roped teams of 3 pull up side-by-side, so that at least we can talk to one team member. My partner is Hebert, and we talk of our lives and plans.
Alan abruptly sinks to his knees in what will turn out to be the only mishap of the trip—he’s half-fallen into a minor crevasse that was covered by snow. This we’re told is not at all unusual, that falling into crevasses hidden by flimsy snow bridges is one of the major hazards of the trip. Jason and I have taken an ice-climbing/crevasse rescue course in Smuggler’s Notch last winter, but Alan admits he never got a chance to do that. In this case, though, he has no trouble extricating himself, and the guides mark the place with crossed bamboo wands.
We pass other teams that did decide to “single carry”. It’s painful to watch them tottering under crippling loads, plodding laboriously uphill at a snail’s pace. One odd guy is all alone, and is carrying a 12’ ladder around his waist, having put his torso between the center rungs and holding it level so that equal lengths stick out front and back. That way, ostensibly, if he falls through a crevasse, the ladder will catch him. Scott & BJ scoff at the setup. What if he hits a crevasse obliquely?
Just as we arrive, I encounter two people I know. The first is Jeff from RMI Guide Service, who led me, Renée, and Barry to Columbia Crest on Rainier 4 years ago, my last highpoint. He politely inquires who my guide is this time, and I belatedly realize it’s a bit odd I didn’t choose RMI again. The other is Ken and his friends the Catamounts, the group of six independent climbers who left on May 6th from Vermont. Ken, an FAHC cardiologist, had scoffed at my plans to use a guide. “We’re planning to really climb the mountain, not be led by the nose by people who’ll do all our work for us.” Both Jeff and Ken are heading down, defeated by the unusually bad weather this year. Ken spent many days at Camp 11, and was lucky to retrieve his cache at 13,500. No one has summitted this season so far, Scott can’t recall another year as bad as this. Jason and I resist the urge to say to Ken later, “We know we didn’t really climb Denali, but here’s a picture of us at the summit.”
At the cache, I make a faux pas. Alan says he’s tired, and asks how I feel. “Great,” I reply, truthfully describing my relief that at least in the first plodding stage my fitness has not been found wanting. But my flip response sends Alan into a tailspin of self-doubt. He keeps wondering aloud if he’s physically and mentally up for this. I try to apologize and buck him back up at Kahiltna Base. We have a fine dinner of Chow Mein with noodles in the “Mega-Mid”, a 7’ square pit dug 5’ deep into the snow, with shelves carved out for cooking, covered with a pyramid-shaped tent propped up by a center pole. We can stand around inside and talk, keep warm, and relax. It’s the focal point of our group, and many outsiders pay social calls as well. What a wonderful way to spend time in camp.
Friday, May 22, 1998, Day 3: Move to Camp 8-The First One Bites the Dust
Despite my and Scott’s efforts to reassure him, Alan has decided to bail out. It seems Barbara’s mother is ill, and he feels he ought to be with the family, in addition to his concerns above. He’s touchingly concerned about holding the rest of us up, and knows this is the last chance to drop out without tying up BJ to bring him down. I secretly wonder how committed he really was to the trip to begin with, if he could punt so easily, despite his huge outlay for the finest equipment. Anyway, we watch him take the first plane back to Talkeetna, along with Ken and the Catamounts. Too bad, I kind of liked the guy, hyper and anxious as he was. He leaves us with a gift, a name. He’s made a hobby of collecting obscure words, and tells us that a “merkin” is a female pubic wig. Since the National Park Service requires that every climbing party be named, we pick “The Merkins” as our moniker. I tell everybody, “I’m proud to be a Merkin.” Love it or leave it.
So down go the tents and the Mid, and we bid the noisy Base Camp a none-too-fond farewell. We take it very easy on this replay of yesterday, the sky is clearer and we have good views up and down the Kahiltna: of Foraker (AKA “Denali’s Wife”, second highest in the Alaska Range, first climbed by my octogenarian patient Charlie Houston, Scott is impressed because he’s tried and failed three times), Crosson, Francis, Kahiltna Dome and the East Kahiltna peaks. We arrive at the base of Ski Hill about 3, Scott and BJ carefully probe our campsite for crevasses, and we begin the busy routine of setting up a new camp: dig the Mid, set up the tents, make a latrine from a snow cave and a bucket lined by a plastic bag with a toilet seat lid. (When the bag is full, we’ll toss it down the deepest crevasse we can find, the only waste we’ll leave behind. Later, the NPS will require that all waste be packed out.) Scott & BJ have a finely tuned system. One shovel is kept separate, used for scooping snow for meltwater, and never gets near the latrine. No shovel is allowed within 5 feet of the tents once they’re set up, for fear of causing a tiny rip, which could quickly be enlarged to a massive tear by the relentless winds. The guide company, Mountain Trip, buys new tents for each Denali expedition, then uses them for their less-intense trips. These 3-person domes, made by Wild Country, are state-of-the-art. Even so, the guides wouldn’t trust them on a second Denali climb. At altitude, a torn tent is a death sentence. Another reason why the $3,000 guide fee seems like a bargain.
The Mid is not nearly as pristine as the tents, being non-essential item, and already shows lots of tears. I set about mending them using dental floss as thread, and am treated to more unwelcome soliloquies from Hebert, who has an annoying habit of not pitching in. He fancies himself a droll observer of America’s little contradictions, frequently shaking his head and musing, “What a country.” (Hey Hebert, this has been your country too for the past 16 years.) He gripes about the racial tensions in Orlando. I take exception to his use of the “N-word” and he challenges my street smarts. Later he rationalizes his apparent bigotry by claiming to be a victim of the same. “Everybody makes fun of the way I talk”
“Well I haven’t, Hebert,” I say.
“No, not yet.”
Showing his skills at interpersonal relations as well as gourmet cooking, Scott defuses the situation by announcing he’s made ice cream. No kidding, he concocted it from sweetened condensed milk and fresh powder snow. Son of a bitch: it’s great. He and BJ follow up with a great dinner, featuring burritos.
We’re visited by two animals—what will turn out to be the only wildlife we’ll see on this trip. The first is a little yellow songbird who endlessly flits around the tents and tries to get in. It’s obviously been blown way off course; there’re no trees for fifty miles. Pathetically it tries to perch away from the cold snow, then freaks out that humans are so close. Twice we try to welcome it in, or warm it, but it always panics and flies out, only to return a few moments later. All night we see it fluttering between the fly and the tent; alas it’ll be dead by morning.
The other animal is an arctic fox, who’s a little more at home than the bird but still seems bewildered by all the people. The fresh snow is so deep it can only easily walk in the trodden path, but that puts it in the way of the passing climbers. Frantically it shuttles back and forth between parties, and finally forges a detour around one. We worry it’ll fall into a crevasse, but it seems to know what it’s doing. It shoots back and forth at an incredible speed, compared to the plodding pace all the people set. We’ll bury our food a little deeper tonight.
Late in the afternoon Ladder Guy plods slowly past and up Ski Hill; face downturned, he scarcely acknowledges our greetings. We’ll never see him again.
Scott and BJ have chosen our campsite a half-mile ahead of the main body of campers, which gives us a jump on the others for the next day’s departure. This is a strategy we’ll use throughout the trip, one that Scott claims accounts for his high success rate. Another is Scott’s almost martinet-like insistence on morning discipline. He gets up first, fires up the stoves to melt the snow for drinking water, and when he announces, “Hot drinks, five minutes!” you’d better be there. Fuel’s a-wastin’. Then it’s “full-on get-ready mode” time, where we struggle nonstop to get all our gear packed, Gore-Tex shells and multi-layer boots on, snowshoes or crampons, harnesses and ropes ready to go—before Scott assesses the conditions and decides whether or not we’re actually going to roll.
Saturday, May 23, 1998 Day 4: Cache at 9600–We Can’t Even Finish The Carry
Awake early to find a foot of new snow has fallen, not an unusual night for Denali. The tents and the latrine have to be carefully shoveled out. We rally to get on the trail by 8AM, we want to get our cache as high as possible, maybe even all the way to Camp 11. That’s not critical though, as we plan to have a rest day anyway there, and it would be a simple thing to retrieve the cache at that time.
Ski Hill is the first significant grade of the trip, and I’m keeping up just fine, almost giddy with relief. We use our snowshoes for the first time; Scott has to break trail, an exhausting job. The snow continues and ultimately produces “white out” conditions—Scott struggles to find the next wand marking the route.
It takes us 4 hours to reach 9600 feet, and Scott has lost the trail a couple of times. We’d hoped to get higher, but we decide to cache here (marking the spot with a huge wand, and also on the GPS), and hustle back down to Camp 8, arriving at 1:30.
Then we get a real treat: a hot lunch and an afternoon nap. The weather starts to clear, the report from Base Camp Annie predicts a “weak high,” clearing skies and colder temps for the next two days at least. Great! Only four people have summited so far, and they did it in winter. Scott says he’s never seen the weather stay this bad this long.
Scads of people are heading up Ski Hill late, and our friendly fox returns and puts on quite a show shuttling between us and some climbers skiing down. Dinner of spicy pasta, bed by 10—tomorrow will be a busy day. I wake at 1AM to pee. It’s as dark as the night will get and cold (0 degrees) but crystal clear. I can see the Denali summit 12,000 feet above us, dwarfed again by the closer peaks. As it happens, this is the last view I’ll get of it from afar; we’ll see it only once more—on summit day.
Sunday, May 24 1998, Day 5: Move to Camp 11–An Ominous Drone
It’s 21 degrees in the tent when we get the wake-up call at 4AM. “Hot drinks, five minutes!” I have to struggle non-stop to pack up my stuff and do my “morning routine” and I still wind up making people wait—this is a real problem, one I’ve taken to calling “dyspacksia”.
The process is complicated by another bizarre exchange with Hebert. We notice he’s been having trouble urinating—at every rest stop he attempts to pee, and appears to have a lot a hesitancy and minimal force of his stream. He keeps mum about it till now, when he mentions it in passing to me. I figure it’s best not to say too much. He then tells Scott that the problem is so bad he’ll have to quit, and that I’ve refused to help him.
As the rest of us exchange surreptitious glances, I can tell the same thing is on all of our minds: “Well, Hebert ol’ buddy, it’s been real, but you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.” However my charitable side prevails and I reluctantly take a history. It seems he’s had some kind of urethral stricture dating back to a case of VD in his twenties, and has balked at the recommended surgical repair. His current symptoms sound prostatic, but he refuses a rectal exam, much to my secret relief. He does let me look at a urine sample, which is grossly clear. The better part of valor is to treat empirically; Scott has a supply of ciprofloxacin he’s purchased with his own money, and donates it to the cause. I write Hebert a script, so he can replenish the supply when we get down.
At the same time, Scott mentions a molar of his is hurting, and allows he had a cavity filled a week or so before our trip. When the pain persisted, the dentist told him it was too early to tell what was going on, it would either get better or it wouldn’t. The only way to be sure would be to proceed with a root canal, an option Mr. Woolums understandably declined. The tooth still hurts, not really better, not really worse. Scott’s medical kit has no penicillin but does have erythromycin; I suggest he take it. He demurs, preferring to skip the ensuing GI intolerance. I guess I can’t blame him, even though we’ll all live to regret his choice.
All of this notwithstanding, we get on the trail at 7AM, and make good time up Ski Hill in the clear weather. We reach our earlier cache at 10 and pick up the shovels. Beyond that the going gets rougher, a cloud envelops us and pretty soon we’re back in Whiteout City. What we’re doing is “rounding the corner” (turning from north to east) just below Kahiltna Pass–notorious for these kind of conditions. Even Bradford Washburn’s remarkably clear Denali pictures usually show a cloud lurking at the Pass.
BJ takes me separately and pushes hard. I’m fully at my limit when we reach Camp 11, but immediately start digging the “Mid” to keep from getting cold. Later I try to help set up the tents, but keep screwing up in the constant wind—the whole setup process is exhausting. Finally we’re battened down and BJ and Scott revive us with a great meal of stuffing/tuna and even cheesecake for dessert!
During all this we notice an ominous difference in the background noise. All along our climb up the Kahiltna, we’ve been assailed by the sound of sightseeing planes flying overhead, the same planes that flew us in. Even during whiteouts they buzz almost incessantly, definitely detracting from the “wilderness experience”. But now the skies rattle with a deeper-throated drone, one that sounds like the lumbering old four-prop transports that occasionally fly around Burlington. Scott confirms it’s a C130, used to coordinate search-and-rescues. Soon it’s accompanied by the higher, angrier whine of Lama rescue helicopters. It’s unnerving, knowing something’s going on up there, but being unable to see or hear what.
What’s happened, as we’ll later find out, is that two people, Daniel Raworth and Mike Vanderbeek, have fallen to their deaths 5,000 feet above us on the West Buttress Ridge. Raworth was a Canadian climber traveling unroped, and Vanderbeek was a Park Service ranger who had been asked to come to his aid. Both fell just below a prominent rock in the ridge called Washburn’s Thumb. I’ll paste the associated articles from the Anchorage Daily News here:
McKinley takes first life of ’98
Rescue ranger missing as storm whips mountain
By CRAIG MEDRED
Daily News reporter
Storm winds that have lashed Mount McKinley for much of the month are now being implicated in the death of a Canadian climber and the disappearance of a National Park Service volunteer who tried to come to the rescue on Sunday.
Dead is 25-year-old Daniel Raworth of Whistler, British Columbia. Missing and feared dead is 33-year-old volunteer ranger Mike Vanderbeek of Talkeetna.
Raworth is the first fatality on the mountain this year and the 90th since the Park Service started keeping records.
No ranger has ever died at work on the mountain, and Park Service officials on Monday were clinging to the slim hope that Vanderbeek would be found alive.
Both he and Raworth were on McKinley with climbing partners Sunday, trying to beat a retreat from High Camp at 17,200 feet during a break in the latest storm to pound the mountain.
“It was a reasonable risk descending,” said climbing ranger Daryl Miller, speaking by cellular phone from 14,000 feet on the mountain Monday evening.
At the time of the accidents on Sunday afternoon, winds were reported at 50 mph, gusting as high as 80 mph. Climbing in such conditions is possible but requires extreme caution.
“At 50 (mph), you start having problems,” said veteran McKinley guide Vern Tejas. “Fifty and 60 (mph) is where it becomes very hard to walk. … You have to be super aware.”
Gusts of 80 mph, he said, will knock climbers flat, but they can deal with that if they are prepared for the wind.
National Park Service spokeswoman Kris Fister in Talkeetna said Raworth and 24-year-old climbing partner, Jason Sinnes of Garibaldi Highlands, British Columbia, early Sunday had abandoned their hopes of reaching McKinley’s 20,320-foot summit. Because of continuing bad weather on the mountain above them, they made the decision to try to return to the safety of the lower mountain when disaster struck.
Descending from High Camp, the two Canadian climbers safely followed an exposed ridge to a point called Washburn’s Thumb at about 16,500 feet, Miller said. There they clipped into fixed lines placed to save climbers from falling more than a thousand feet to the Peters Glacier to the north.
“This is perhaps the most interesting and spectacular section of the climb,” guide Colby Coombs writes in “Denali’s West Buttress: A Climber’s Guide to Mount McKinley’s Classic Route.”
But Coombs also warns that “the ridge line receives extreme winds from all directions and should not be attempted under stormy conditions.”
Miller reported Raworth and Sinnes made it across the exposed stretch of snow below the Thumb and had just unclipped from the fixed lines when Raworth fell at about 2 p.m.
“I think it was more of a slip than the wind,” Miller added.
Tumbling down the mountain, Raworth dropped for 800 to 1,200 feet before coming to a stop. Sinnes, according to the National Park Service, then sought the assistance of Vanderbeek and another volunteer ranger descending on the route.
Vanderbeek, who has been to the summit of McKinley twice before, and his climbing companion were coming down after spending two days at High Camp, Fister said.
“They were cleaning up the camp,” she said, and getting ready to install a toilet intended to improve sanitation high on the mountain.
Vanderbeek had gained some notoriety for his previous goodwill services as a Park Service volunteer. He and a companion wrote a regular column for the Seward paper last winter about their experiences care-taking a cabin for the federal agency near Exit Glacier in the Kenai Fiords National Park.
Realizing that the Park Service would not be able to deliver the toilet in the bad weather high on the mountain, he – like Raworth and Seines – decided to drop back down the mountain to the protected Basin Camp at 14,200-feet.
When contacted by Sinnes on the ridge, Vanderbeek and his unidentified climbing partner attempted to go to the aide of Raworth. Vanderbeek then fell and disappeared, Fister said.
Shortly before midnight Sunday, other would-be rescuers found his pack about 20 feet from Raworth’s body. A physician who was with another party climbing on the mountain and had joined the search for the missing men pronounced Raworth dead on the scene, Fister said.
There was no sign of Vanderbeek. A search is continuing, but Fister said search conditions are difficult. Rescuers have been unable to retrieve Raworth’s body.
High winds have grounded the Park Service’s high-altitude rescue helicopter and stymied movement by climbers on much of the mountain. It has been that way for most of May.
El Nino-spawned weather has been so bad on North America’s highest peak that no one has made the summit all month, she added.
May and June are the height of the McKinley climbing season, and veteran guides said they can’t recall a year in recent times when someone didn’t summit in May.
So far, though, the only climbers to have stood atop McKinley in 1998 are four who made it during the winter, normally the harshest of climbing seasons, Fister said.
Paradoxically, hurricane-force winds and temperatures to 60-degrees-below zero on the mountain this May have often been worse than during the winter season.
“The weather’s been totally unstable all seasons,” said Dianne Okonek, the wife of climbing guide Brian Okonek of Talkeetna. The Okoneks usually have put several clients on the summit by this time of year, but so far in 1998 they haven’t even been able to get above 14,000 feet.
Others climbers have faced similar problems. Some of the more than 1,000 registered to climb McKinley this year have already given up, turned back and gone home. But as the climbing season approaches its peak, traffic is stacking up on the mountain.
Park Service officials reported 465 climbers trying to make their way up McKinley on Monday despite continuing bad weather.
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In retreat
McKinley storms stall ranger search
By PETER PORCO
Daily News reporter
TALKEETNA – The search for a Mount McKinley park ranger missing for two days ground to a halt Tuesday when a party of rescuers had to retreat before dangerous gales.
McKinley’s infamous weather continued to dominate all activities on the mountain as it has for most of the month – keeping searchers from learning what happened to Mike Vanderbeek and stacking up climbers by the hundreds at the two main camps.
Late Tuesday afternoon, rangers for the first time in days were able to get a Lama high-altitude rescue helicopter in the air. It landed at the medical camp at the 14,000-foot level and was waiting for better weather before starting to search for Vanderbeek.
Vanderbeek fell Sunday afternoon near the 16,000-foot level below the crest of the West Buttress while searching for a Canadian climber who earlier had tumbled down the same icy slope.
Daniel Raworth, 25, of Whistler, British Columbia, died from injuries sustained in the fall, National Park Service officials said.
Vanderbeek and fellow volunteer ranger Tim Hurtado were hundreds of feet above Raworth and descending on the north slope of the Buttress when Vanderbeek lost his grip, said JD Swed, Denali National Park’s south district ranger.
Meanwhile, another climber was injured Tuesday in an unrelated incident on a different part of the Buttress, National Park Service spokeswoman Kris Fister said.
The man, a 29-year-old Italian climber who was not identified by name, was evacuated Tuesday night, said Capt. Mike Haller of the Alaska National Guard. Haller said the man fell 350 feet into a crevasse and lost consciousness for an hour.
The man appeared to have broken ribs and also was being treated for hypothermia. “He seems to be in relatively good condition,” for such a severe fall, Haller said.
Rangers used the Lama helicopter to move him to the base camp at 7,000 feet late Tuesday night. A Guard helicopter transported him on to Alaska Regional Hospital.
In each of the last two years, the month of May on McKinley has thrown frustrating weather at climbers and kept the summiting rate low, according to Park Service statistics. This year, only one person has claimed to have reached the summit since a pair of winter ascents, and park officials said they seriously question his claim.
Many mountaineers this year have simply given up hope of standing on McKinley’s 20,320-foot crown. One of them is Jurgen Egervari, 32, of Pforzheim, Germany.
“I can’t stand. I fall down with all my gear,” Egervari said of winds that pummeled him. Egervari and his teammates started their climb May 12 and had reached the 17,200-foot High Camp on the West Buttress route, but abandoned the summit attempt due to wind and cold.
Furious gusts dogged them nearly all the way down, Egervari said. Particles of ice flew at them horizontally at 13,200-foot Windy Corner, where they noticed two other climbers hiding behind a rock, whimpering.
“I never seen that before. ‘Help me, help me,’ they cry,” Egervari said. “But I can’t do anything. I have to crawl.”
Two rangers eventually aided the two, he said.
Friends and colleagues of Vanderbeek were holding to “a thin thread of hope” that he had survived the fall and sheltered himself in a crevasse, said Pam Robinson of Talkeetna, a friend.
Vanderbeek, who recently had bought land in Talkeetna, was lauded by colleagues for having extensive mountaineering experience on difficult routes in the Alaska Range and elsewhere.
He and Hurtado were in retreat from the 17,200-foot camp on their way to the 14,000-foot mid-mountain camp Sunday in blowing snow and whiteout conditions.
At about 16,500 feet, Jason Sinnes of Garibaldi Highlands, British Columbia, ran down to them to tell them his partner, Raworth, had slipped off the Buttress and disappeared down the north slope, said Swed, the chief mountaineering ranger.
Vanderbeek and Hurtado began their descent. Sometime after starting, Hurtado heard Vanderbeek’s ice axe, crampons and body scraping against the steep blue ice of the slope, Swed said. Hurtado never saw his partner fall and did not know exactly where it happened because of snow and fog, he said.
Another climber, Adrian Nature, had been standing at the ridge crest at the 16,200-foot level relaying radio traffic between Vanderbeek and rangers at the 14,000-foot camp. He heard Hurtado yelling, Swed said.
Nature persuaded another climber, guide Rowan Lavier – also in retreat from the weather – to join him and climb to Hurtado. The three descended the north side to find Raworth’s body and, 20 feet away, Vanderbeek’s pack.
Raworth’s body remains on the slope. The Park Service will try to remove it when the chance arises, Swed said. The top priority is to locate Vanderbeek, he said.
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As I understand it, they never will find Vanderbeek’s body.
On this Sunday evening, however, we know nothing of this. We just finish our tasty meal and bed down. It’s my special fortune to have been paired with Hebert while we’re at Camp 11. I’m treated to first-hand accounts of his various infirmities. His urination has improved a bit, he says, but his back pain (the reason he knew his erstwhile chiropractor friend) is worse than ever. Would I massage it for him? And would I grab his foot and pull real hard?
Later he announces he can’t get to sleep, and asks me to read to him from my novel, Michener’s “Alaska”. And so, 4000 miles from my own family, I find myself reading bedtime stories.
Monday, May 25, 1998, Day 6: Retrieve Cache at 9600—Incommunicado Blues
The whiteout continues all night (and will last for 48 hours total), but at least it’s warm. Today’s task is fairly easy—we go back down and get our prior cache, which would have been impossible without Scott’s GPS fix. I’ve brought mine, too—it’s contraband, really, since Scott said it was unnecessary weight—and decide I’d better mark these waypoints too. 11 days from now I’ll be glad I did.
The uphill slog is a little less tiring than before, I’m slowly acclimatizing, but Jason seems to be dragging a bit. 11,000 feet is the highest he’s been, and even that was via ski lifts. Other climbers are passing us, and so it will be for the rest of the trip. Oh well, you won’t last long on this mountain if you’re easily discouraged by the completion. Denali is a magnet for the supremely fit.
We’re pretty exhausted when we return to Camp 11, but have the remainder of the day to rest. Coffee ice cream is a definite pick-me-up. We hear, but cannot see, almost constant avalanches—it’s eerie feeling the mountain walls so close without ever having seen what they look like. The C-130 continues to drone mournfully, the first reports of the tragedy above are filtering in over the radio and from descending climbers. I’m less anxious about the episode itself (we would never be so stupid as to travel unroped) than my family’s reaction to the news that two are dead on the very route we’re taking. I have no quick way of getting word out that I’m OK, but do give a postcard to someone going down, stamped and encased in a plastic bag. He promises to mail it as soon as he arrives in Talkeetna.
I’ll find out later just what agonies my family did go through today. My 8-year-old son Jason came running into Jane’s bedroom at 6AM crying, “somebody died on Denali”. Jane thought he was just having a bad dream until she heard the same report on the radio. She spent the next two days frantically calling the Park Service trying to get some word. The postcard didn’t arrive for ten days.
Tuesday, May 26, 1998, Day 7: Cache at 13,100—King Lear at Windy Corner
The whiteout continues but clears at 9:30 and we’re out in 30 minutes. We’re told that this is where the climbing really starts—up till now we’ve been hiking to the mountain, now it’s time to climb up the mountain. We’ve come 9.5 miles so far and climbed 4,000 feet; we only have 7 miles left but we still have to ascend 9,300 feet.
The route gets down to business immediately. The first pitch is Motorcycle Hill, so called because some clown once tried to take a dirt bike with special snow tires up Denali, and this is as far as he could get. Scott breaks trail up the steep slope, marking crevasses with wands, and we’re elated to top out at 12,000 and catch our first downhill view from Squirrel Point—the Peters glacier a dizzying 6,000 feet below us. We grab a bite at Lunch Rocks and the grade lessens a bit, we’re able to ditch our snowshoes and proceed on crampons atop the wind-packed snow. Soon things steepen again and we’re struggling up to Windy Corner, a hurdle if ever there was one. The air blasts down from this gap like a freight train, sending drifted snow, ice pellets, even bits of gravel down on top of us. I’m carrying the shovel and it acts like a sail, jerking me around and making me fall frequently, holding up Scott and Hebert. “Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks!” I want to cry, like King Lear raving at the tempest on the blasted heath.
With all my travails, however, Jason appears to be struggling more. Now clearly affected by the altitude, he and BJ lag far behind. We finally round the Corner and wait for them at 13,100; many other teams come by but no sign of our teammates. Scott had hoped to cache 400 feet higher but decides to make the stash here and go back down to check on them.
The wind now at our backs, threading the Corner is less exhausting but no less dangerous, always threatening to pitch us headlong down the steep slope. We switch positions so Scott can belay us from the rear. Coming down hills this steep is a new experience for me in these boots, my toes scrunch forward and I can feel blisters beginning, but checking is not a realistic option in these harsh conditions.
We don’t find Jason and BJ until we’re back at Camp 11 at 4PM. They decided to cache their load at the Corner itself and head down early. Jason felt pretty bad; a photo I’ll later see of him at the Corner could qualify him as the poster boy of acute mountain sickness. Back at camp he finds his O2 sats have dropped, he decides to start acetazolamide. With rest, ibuprofen and much fluid, he begins to feel better and the guides are optimistic about his future chances.
A very tough day. Dinner of turkey with veggies and noodles is a real pick-me-up; thank god for our tireless leaders. It’s clear for now, with sweeping views into the west Alaskan tundra and we hear and see the C-130 and Llamas buzzing on in their solemn quest. Spooky, but not demoralizing, yet.
Wednesday, May 27, 1998, Day 8: Storm Day Angst
We’d hoped to move to 14,200 today, and Scott orders “full-on get ready mode” even though it socked in again overnight. The dreary routine in the cramped, wet, smelly tent begins: contact lenses, inhaler (to prevent exercise-induced asthma) deodorant, foot powder, sunscreen, 2nd layer of long underwear, 2 pairs of old socks (they’re pretty rank now, but we all save our clean ones for summit day), wind shirt, Gore-Tex bib (overalls), fleece parka, cram the sodden sleeping bag into the compression stuff sack, deflate and roll the air mattress, pleat the foam pad, organize and pack the gear, boot liners, boot shells, gaiters, balacava, fleece hat, Gore-Tex storm parka, glacier glasses, try to back out of the tent without getting it full of snow and condensation, cook and eat breakfast in the Mid, clean your dishes, use the latrine, finish packing and divvying the food, harness, crampons.
We hold off on striking the tents until we’re sure we’re going to move—and the moment never comes. The whiteout remains dense, the gusts strong, and we don’t want to try Windy Corner in these conditions. Besides, Jason is still a bit green around the gills. So we take the first of our allowed-for “storm days”—we have enough extra food for seven of these, but hoped to save them all for the high camp. I spend an hour trying to shovel out the drift-filled latrine before Scott tells me they’ll probably dig another one instead. There’s nothing to do but hang around the tent and the mid, catch up on reading, sleep, postcards and journal writing. My thin liner gloves have worn holes in the fingers already, and I use Scott’s sewing kit to attempt a stitch job. Mostly I’m trying to avoid having to talk with my oddball tent-mate. Hebert has neglected to bring a book, so he reads my Evidence Based Medicine textbook out of sheer boredom, he quite possibly winds up reading more of it than I do. Condensation keeps collecting in a small puddle on the tent floor; Hebert scoops it up with his pee bottle lid. Charming.
Idleness is a bad thing on a trip like this, so they say, and now I see why. Self absorption creeps in, ruminations of fear, anxiety, disgust at all the discomfort and indignities, lurking thoughts that maybe it’d be nice to bail and get out of this damn wet cold stinking hole.
We’ve been here a week—one week without showers, wearing the same clothes. We’ve gotten exactly as far as Ken Brown’s team got. They were far better prepared than we are (as clients, anyway). They just got pinned down for a week here, and used up their storm days. Who says we’ll do any better. Who says we deserve to?
I scratch down these observations:
I’ve worked hard (11 years at Given, persistent requests and negotiations) to get this month off, this “sabbatical”
I’ve chosen to spend it away from comfort (warmth, dryness, surrounded by people who love me, daily routine, sex), relaxation, and anyone I know.
The original point of climbing this peak (beating Brian up all the state highpoints) has become moot.
The trip is already unpleasant and promises to be more so.
There are specific concerns (blisters, altitude adjustment, inadequate down jacket, wetness, weird client, unusually bad weather, my post-infectious reactive airways syndrome) that make success less likely.
I can elect to go down at any time.
Disincentives: embarrassment, personal failure, knowing I’ll never try this again, letting team members down, uncertain what else to do with my time remaining in Alaska vs. expense of voiding super saver rate and going home early.
What if I fail?: a) my fault b) circumstances beyond my control
Guide’s expertise/reassurance vs. annoying martinet style
Quest for self improvement: Evidence Based Medicine, journal writing
Two people are already dead up there. My God, what would happen to my family if I died?
Am I tough enough? Do I really care?
–Ultimately, I decide not to bail. You could argue the decision is more cowardly than brave. But truth be told, it’s more simple inertia than anything else.
Thursday, May 28, 1998, Day 9: Move to Camp 14–Punching Through to the Basin
The day starts just as stormy as before, and we glumly eat our breakfast, more than a little stir crazy at the prospect of spending another storm day here. At 11:30, however, the wind dies down, the sun pokes out, and it’s “full-on get ready mode” once again.
Indeed the storm does break and by 1:00 we’re plodding up Motorcycle Hill for the last time. The strong winds of recent days have so packed the snow that we can leave our snowshoes at 11,000, and proceed on crampons alone. The familiar landmarks of Squirrel Point and Lunch Rocks go by; Windy Point is less fearsome than on Tuesday. It’s completely clear as we pass our cache and thread a fairyland of deep crevasses and seracs, and negotiate one more steep pitch. Scott says, “a little effort here will save us lots of work later”, meaning we can squat in an abandoned camp if we beat the crowd, rather than having to build a new set of snow block walls. I “floor it “ and we do pass a few others, but I’m gasping as we arrive at Basin Camp (14,200 feet) at 7PM.
Sure enough, there’s a couple of empty tent sites with elaborate walls already built, and we claim them as Jason and BJ pull in about 40 minutes later. We still have to dig the pit for the mid, though, and saw out and lug over around 30 snow blocks to secure the sides. This proves to be a hugely tiring task, and I realize I’ve only been this high on three brief occasions before (the summits of Whitney, Elbert, and Rainier). Those times I wasn’t even carrying much of a pack, and I remember being pretty poofed. Hebert once again spends more time socializing with other climbers (his Spanish is a real asset, more people here don’t speak English than do) than helping out.
Finally dinner is ready, burritos buffet style. I get seriously chilled using the box-like latrine the Park Service has set up here, and it takes me over 2 hours to get warm in my still-wet sleeping bag. Thankfully, my tent mates are BJ and Jason. Scott magnanimously tents with Hebert.
Friday May 29,1998, Day 10: Retrieve Cache at 13,100-The Edge of the World
The weather holds and we’re treated to a gloriously sunny day—a chance to dry out our gear and really look around. We’d barely had the chance in the rushed tasks of last evening.
Basin Camp is the largest campsite on the mountain, there’s well over a hundred climbers here. We are indeed in a two-mile flat basin, bordered by the West Buttress looming 3,000 feet above, and a sharp drop-off grandiosely dubbed The Edge of the World. The Park Service has a real presence here, with a number of latrines and a rescue/medical facility complete with Quonset hut, helipad, solar panels and propane tanks. Spread out before us are the famous climbing routes we’ve all been reading about: the Headwall we’ll need to tackle with fixed ropes tomorrow, the West Rib, Cassin Ridge, Messner Couloir, and the Orient Express, so-named for the many Asian climbers who’ve skidded to their deaths down this gully. The summit itself is hidden from this angle.
We dispose of the day’s primary business–retrieving the cache at Windy Corner–in an hour and 36 minutes, getting a better look at the huge crevasse fields that lie just below Basin Camp. Lots of time to laze around in the sun, we even take our shirts off to mug for pictures before donning them hurriedly to ward off the intense ultraviolet rays. The sun doesn’t come out very often here, but when it does it’s a real hazard, what with the thin air and the snow in the valley walls acting like a parabolic mirror, reflecting the rays back at you from all angles. We meticulously sunscreen and cover ourselves, even wearing those dorky noseguards, but we’re still fried on our exposed skin, and the roofs of our mouths have that scalded feel like you just sipped some too-hot coffee. Gotta remember to keep my mouth closed when huffing and puffing in the sun.
I go over to the medical tent and chat with Colin Grissom, a pulmonary doc from University of Utah who spends a month here each year. He tries to sell me on the deal—you volunteer for a month and your expenses are paid from Anchorage, a month on the mountain in relatively luxurious accommodations, but seem to be always “on call” for rescues and minor medical problems. I do note an almost constant stream of climbers stopping by, and I myself am trying to score some extra ciprofloxacin and phenazopyridine for Hebert’s “UTI”. Colin mentions that he’s involved in high-altitude medicine research, and sure enough I’ll find a couple of his articles when I later make my grand rounds presentation (along with Jason) on this topic.
Next we make the easy stroll over to the Edge of the World, keeping roped up over the flat but potentially crevassed terrain, and gaze down to the Kahiltna Glacier and Camp 8, 6,000 feet below. We don’t know it yet, but this will turn out to be the last really awesome view of the whole trip. The pictures we snap here will headline our slide show. It’s a bit startling gazing back across the mile we’ve come at Basin Camp. The makeshift village of over 100 people is dwarfed by the icy walls of the Buttress. This spot, perhaps the most developed of any on the mountain, looks pretty meager against this foreboding landscape. What on earth are we all doing here? The Edge of the World indeed.
The last task is to practice the techniques we’ll need tomorrow on the fixed ropes. The ascender, or Jumar, is one of the pieces of equipment I’ve borrowed from Geoff Tabin. It’s a kind of a one-way cam that slides easily up the rope, then grips tight as you use it to pull your body up the steep ice slope of the Headwall. Simple enough. The tricky part is using it coming down. It’d be useless if you pointed it downhill, so you reverse it and release the cam with your thumb as you slide it down. This would be tough enough while you’re planting your crampons and ice axe carefully and not trying to look too far down, but you’ve got your heaviest mittens on—mine are clumsier than oven mitts. I’m unable to master the contortion required on our little practice slope at camp before the others tire of the exercise (they’ve all been practicing at home with their own equipment). Scott sees me struggling and lends an extra-fancy Jumar he has. Nice, but I get no chance to practice with this model.
Dinner tonight is joined by Scott’s buddy Rodrigo, who has just guided a solo private client, Bob, to the summit in a Herculean one-day push from here. Bob must be 55 but looks incredibly fit and “well tended,” and brushes off his feat like it was no big deal. In fact, he was one of the first on the summit this year.
Saturday, May 30, 1998, Day 11: Cache at 16,400–Up the Headwall
I’m awake at 4AM, to excited to sleep. Today, if the weather cooperates (snow and wind predicted) we’ll scale the Headwall and cache at 16,400. I’ll climb higher than I ever have, and encounter the hardest part of the trip—the fixed lines. This is what will decide most if I can make the summit. Many turn back here.
The weather is iffy but we do decide to make the carry. The first 1500 feet is nothing but a steep slog. I’ve set my altitude alarm for when we pass 14,494 feet (my previous personal high on Whitney), and get a thrill when it goes off. At least I’ve gotten this far. The route takes a big zigzag to the right to skirt a crevasse, and we rest for the first time. Far below, we get a birds-eye view of Basin Camp, and notice the hordes streaming up behind us. Good old Scott, he’s given us a jump on ‘em all again.
We see the clouds insinuating themselves around the glaciers below like water rising in a bathtub, but for now the sun is blazing. It’s almost hot as we clip in to the ropes at 15,700. Right off the bat we have to scale a twenty-foot vertical wall of ice that marks the bergschrund, the start of the ice proper. This is supposedly the most technical part of the whole trip, requiring some stabs with our axe picks, but we negotiate it without incident. Then it’s almost easy duck walking up the 55 degree Headwall, stomping our high tech crampons into the ice, sliding our Jumars along and leaning back against them when we stop to rest, our bodies cantilevered over the abyss. I’m so focused on the ten-foot patch of ice in front of me I almost forget where I am. But then I happen to look down. Not a particularly good idea.
The clouds catch up to us as we crest the wall at 16,200, so we’re denied (and never will see) the views from here, atop the knife edge of the West Buttress itself, said to be among the finest in the world. Instead we’re rewarded with a blizzard, and the blasting wind and horizontal snow saps what little stamina I have left. Scott exhorts me up the final 200 feet to our cache site, which offers precious little shelter. I don’t dare sit down to eat lunch for fear of freezing. The weather is just bloody awful, and the predictions gloomy. I do take the time to glumly unfurl the “victory” flag I’m carrying—this may well be as far as we get.
Coming down the fixed ropes is the worst experience of the trip so far. As I feared, I can’t master the cussed Jumar in its slide-backwards mode with my clumsy mittens. My goggles keep fogging up and I stumble frequently. Totally decompensating, I curse the Jumar, start getting careless and take a couple of real tumbles. Thankfully Scott sees my frustration and has braced himself to arrest my falls. Finally he yells from his position 75 feet behind me to forget the ascender and just wrap the fixed rope around my left arm one turn, letting the friction slow my descent in a kind of half rappel. This gets me down to the schrund, where after a brief scramble the ordeal is over.
It’s still exhausting plunge-stepping down through the deep snow back to camp, but my real discomfort is mental. I’m so ashamed of myself. Scott had to catch me twice, or I’d have fallen to my death. I encountered a difficult situation and was found wanting. I wouldn’t blame him if he says I have to go down. How could I be so careless, and endanger the others that way?
But Scott shows once again what a professional he is. He brushes the whole thing off, said it was horrible weather and he should have let me practice more with the Jumar, that he’s sure I’ll get the hang of it. He does his best to reassure me, but he’s distracted by a more ominous development—his toothache has worsened.
He mentioned this first last Sunday, and declined the erythro. He stoically endured it all week, using the toothache remedy in his medical kit, but now he’s in real pain and can’t hide it any longer. Concerned for him and what this may mean to our whole trip, I take him over to the medical tent and have Colin confirm what I fear—it could be an early abscess. I advocate as hard as I can for IV cefazolin, but Colin rightly points out that only extraction or root canal can help him if it’s indeed abscessed, and besides he needs to save his IV stuff for major cellulitis or acute abdomens. He does give Scott some codeine and some oral amoxacillin/clavulinic acid. Now all we can do is hope for the best.
Sunday, May 31,1998 Day 12: Move to High Camp–Oh Captain my Captain
I don’t sleep too well, what with my fingers being crossed all night that somehow oral antibiotics will undo days of festering dental caries. What little hope I muster is dashed by Scott’s early footsteps outside the tent. “I’ve had the worst night of my life. The codeine’s done nothing. I can’t take it anymore. I’ve got to go down.”
Oh God. Oh my God. I know Scott well enough to realize he’s not kidding, that if the pain were even somewhat tolerable he’d tough it out. I don’t even presume to ask him to reconsider. It slowly sinks in: the guide I came here for, the one recommended by Geoff Tabin as the best on the mountain, is not going to be there for us. Sympathy, fear, and outrage compete within me. How could he have been so thoughtless as to jeopardize our trip by leaving a simple but vital dental problem unattended? Bitterly, I must concede I wouldn’t want to have a root canal “just in case.” But damn it. Is it sane to even consider going on with BJ alone? He’s a self-proclaimed neophyte, and has only been up Denali once, to Scott’s 28 times. OK, OK, we’ll go down. But I want my money back. Damn, to come so far, to go through so much, just to be turned around for a stupid reason like this.
Such are the thoughts swirling around I my head, but Scott is acting like nothing is really wrong, that we’ll just proceed with BJ. He’s even found a third guide, Robb McLean, to join us. Robb, a 22 year old Harvard graduate slated to enter Indiana Medical School this fall, was the third guide on the Mountain Trip group ahead of us, and had to come down from 17,200 because one of the clients got AMS and had to bail. He had planned to take the client down today, but was happy to have Scott take over that task, and join up with us. Maybe he’ll get another chance at the summit. Jason’s all for it, and even Hebert, complaining about fatigue and insomnia, seems game.
Wait a minute. I pull Scott aside, look him in the eye, and ask for his assurance that BJ is ready to be the leader. Simply and earnestly, Scott tells me he wouldn’t have chosen BJ if he wasn’t. I swallow whatever trepidations I might (should?) have, finish packing, and rope up. It’s tough saying goodbye to Scott, he’s been all I hoped for and more. I’m truly sorry he’s suffering so, and wish him well.
All these machinations have delayed our departure, and we’re far back in line as we tackle the fixed ropes for the second time. The day starts off clear but clouds up as we reach the top of the headwall, and it’s cold and blowing as we pick up a few things from the cache at 16,400. At least there’s no more double carrying from this point on.
Too bad. This is supposed to be the most spectacular part of the trip, the famous West Buttress of Denali, a catwalk with 3-4000 foot drops on either side, the Knife Edge of Katahdin on steroids. For us, it’s just a slog through the fog. BJ is taking extra precautions to minimize the precariousness of our position—he’s placing pickets. These are 4-foot aluminum stakes that he pounds into the ice every 75 feet, the exact spacing of climbers on the rope. A stout webbing sling connects the picket to a caribiner, through which is threaded the climbing rope. A team of three is thus always connected to two pickets, each strong enough to hold us if we all fell at once. It’s reassuring, but the coordinated dance it necessitates greatly slows our progress.
As the middle climber on the lead rope, when I reach the stake I yell “anchor!” to stop the line. As I nervously transfer the biner to the rope leading off behind me, BJ hammers in another stake, and Hebert at the end unclips from his picket, which is shortly picked up by Robb on the next rope. Jason has the unenviable task, as the last guy on the team, of pulling out and collecting the pickets; periodically he passes his collection back up to BJ. Quite the production.
A dark shape materializes from the gloom, the notorious Washburn’s Thumb, a hundred-foot step capped by a vertical rock slab. This is where Daniel Raworth slipped and skidded to his death exactly a week ago, and where Mike Vanderbeek presumably lost his life trying to save him. We’re all too pooped and dazed to get very creeped out, but take extra care to lock our ascenders into the old fixed rope that helps us scramble up the pitch.
As we snake our way along the granite spine of the Buttress, I dimly realize this is the most rock we’ve encountered on the trip, up till now we’d primarily been dealing with ice and snow. The fog never lifts, and eventually the slope lessens and we descend into a slight saddle, the High Camp, at 17,200 feet. By now Robb and Jason are far behind, we wait for a long while before BJ goes back to look for them. Hebert and I don’t say much, just stamp our feet, shiver, and peer anxiously into the blank void for our teammates. Even just standing around, we’re breathing hard. Where are those guys?
It’s less than half an hour before they emerge from the murk, but it seems like an eternity. Together we lurch through the dreamscape of High Camp, noting the pile of boards that marks the latrine that poor Vanderbeek had helped set up, and find the remnants of an ice wall that seems a good start for a camp. Getting the tents set up in a brisk gale takes an impossibly long time, I continue to be amazed at how winded I get from seemingly minor tasks. No kitchen tent here, we’re lucky to anchor down simple shelter before we collapse for the night.
Monday, June 1, 1998, Day 13: Rest Day at High Camp—I Hope They’re Not Looking
I’m so bushed I can’t believe I’m sleeping so restlessly. I keep waking with a start, a feeling like I can’t breathe. Jason tells me my respirations are trailing off to nothing as I doze off, and then I snap awake gasping. It takes a while to dawn on me that this is Cheyne-Stokes breathing, a pattern usually associated with severe brain damage but also a sign of altitude sickness. My morning 02 sat confirms it—67%, my lowest ever. Time to take the acetazolamide. Great. This means even more encounters with the pee bottle.
Not that there’s much else to do. Today is an enforced rest day, a day to acclimatize to this impossible height before making our summit push. I’d told my partners at work to look northwest and wave on June 1, but our storm day on the 27th has put us behind schedule. I hope they’re not looking, wondering where I am.
BJ has us secure our tenuous hold on this wind-swept plain. We cannibalize a few other ice blocks from ruined walls to reinforce ours, rather than cut new ones. I’m assigned to the simplest of tasks—filling stuff sacks with snow to bury and use as anchors for the tents—but even this wipes me out.
We have a few visitors. Todd, the leader of the first Mountain Trip group, the one that Robb came down from, tells a sad tale of his summit bid yesterday. They got to within 300 feet of the top, but high crosswinds on the summit ridge forced them to turn back. They were headed down now, trying not to look too disappointed. My heart goes out to them, to have come so close. At least one member of their party, an Italian math professor named Carla, made it to the top, climbing semi-independently. Impressive, if not too sensible.
If you have to be cooped up, it helps to have great tent-mates. I’m lucky to have Jason and Robb (selfless BJ is bunking with Hebert), and we shoot the breeze lazily, reverting to juvenile expressions. Jason’s word for cool is “sweet”, Robb’s is “stylin’”, and I reach back for that old standby “solid.” Despite our common medical backgrounds, the talk gets no more clinical than arguing about who gets to be Hawkeye and Trapper John, and who has to be Frank. Hey, what to you want from a trio of hypoxic reprobates?
Tuesday, June 2, 1998, Day 14: Rest Day #2 at High Camp—Another One Bites the Dust
The wind is howling, the forecast miserable, so we all sleep in. We’re almost disappointed to wake up to clear skies—now it’s too late to get going today. If you aren’t on the trail by 8AM, forget it.
Just as well. We could hear from the next tent all night that Hebert’s constant litany of somatic complaints had intensified, and sure enough, this morning he says he’s had it. His back is killing him, he hasn’t slept in 4 days, his bladder thing never really got better (indeed, his tent reeks of urine), and nobody cares. Despite our admittedly halfhearted attempts to dissuade and encourage him, he calls it quits.
And he does it in his inimitable style. He insists on a helicopter rescue—he’s got insurance and his back hurts too much to walk. BJ knows that a helicopter landing at 17,000 feet is too risky to justify for anything other than a true emergency, but radios (or pretends to radio) the base anyway and gets the expected refusal. Hebert has to walk down, and his next stunt is to refuse to carry any group gear. It takes BJ half an hour to convince him of his obligations—that we have no other way of getting the stuff out.
The one we really feel bad for is Robb, who once again will be denied the summit so he can take a client down. It’s well past noon before things are arranged, our gear consolidated into one tent, the packs loaded. “Take a picture at the summit for me,” Hebert mutters bitterly as he leaves. We wish him the best, but as he trudges off we’re thinking, good riddance, bucko.
BJ will see Robb and Hebert down the Buttress as far as the fixed ropes, Jason and I promise to be careful while he’s gone. It’s just a few feet to the edge of the cliff, where we’re treated to a birds-eye view of Camps 14 and 11, and a great profile of the Buttress, with ant-like figures ascending and descending. The Cassin Ridge prevents us from seeing the summit.
BJ returns and it’s just the three of us in one tent now, the same three who arrived that first day. Jeez, if we’d known we could have just started up the mountain. This leaves me with mixed feelings. I’m comfortable with the team now, no wild cards. I’ve come to totally trust BJ’s leadership. But I don’t like the trend. Our group size has fallen, between no-shows, disease, and attrition, from eight to six to five to four to three. Funny, in their own way, all five dropouts have helped to get us up here.
Only a handful have summited this year, and hundreds have already turned back. Two are dead. Who the heck are we, to think we can beat those odds? Two complete greenhorns and an assistant guide who has only been to the summit once. Most of the 30-40 people up here waiting for their chance look like total pros.
But hey, the weather is holding clear and the forecast is for more of the same. A hot dinner of Backpacker’s Pantry black bean tamales snaps me out of my funk, and once again I’m full of beans. Who the heck are we? I’ll tell you who we are. We’re a lean, mean summit machine!
Wednesday, June 3, 1998, Day 15: Yet Another Rest Day at High Camp—Enough Already
We should know better than to trust those forecasts. Denali is so big it makes its own weather, and this morning it pulls another of its trademark switcheroos. We get all packed up early and ready to go, but as we emerge from the tent BJ looks up and says, “Uh oh, lenticular.”
Lenticulars are lens-shaped clouds that form over mountain summits (like the “cloud cap” on Rainier) and signal snow and high winds, even as the valleys are clear. I look for myself: clear all around me, but above 18K the nasty lens hovers malevolently. Drat! We keep checking it hourly, but it just gets worse, and by ten we’re engulfed in another snow squall.
Nothing to do but reinforce the ice walls and hang out in the tent. We’ve been pinned down here three days now, and the routine is definitely getting old. It begins with one of us getting awakened by a cold splat on the face—a bit of the exhalation vapor frost that lines the tent. That person has the happy task of scraping the frost off with a pot lid and dumping it in the vestibule, taking care not to cover the pee hole. That’s right, you heard me. Between the diuretic action of the acetazolamide and the need to keep maximally hydrated we each are up three times a night, filling our pee bottles. Let me tell you, if you haven’t had someone fill his bottle four inches from your face in the middle of the night while cooped up in a soggy sleeping bag in a tiny, smelly frozen tent, you haven’t lived. Anyway, no one wants to brave the eighty-below windchill out there, so we’ve learned that if you pour it quickly but very carefully in the floorless vestibule, the warm liquid melts a channel two feet or so straight down through the snow, and collects in a kind of self-made cistern. Others can then use the same channel, and with care, keep the olfactory impact to a minimum.
The boredom and discomfort put me in no mood for the relentlessly upbeat Michener, so I haul out my little textbook, Evidence Based Medicine, and surprise myself by getting two thirds of the way through. How much I’ll retain in my hypoxic state is another question.
There’s only one reason why you’d want to go outside today, and nature finally compels me to go. I suit completely up and stumble to the new latrine a helicopter brought up last night, during a lull in the windstorm. I visit some of the other hunkered-down camps, and learn that two guys actually made the summit in that same lull, hitting the top at midnight where it was 40 below in a dead calm. Another party left two hours after them, but were turned back at Denali Pass by the high winds of the developing lenticular.
The forecast is grim for the next 3 days, and that’s all the food we have left for storm days. We muse that maybe we should have left yesterday with that first party, that that was the only chance we’d get. Maybe so, despite having all our ducks in a row, we may be denied our chance. But at least it won’t be our (or my) fault. With only that for cold comfort, I drift off to sleep.
Thursday June 4, 1998, Day 16: Summit Day
The funny thing is, today begins just like the last 3 days, with little hope of success. BJ pokes his head out @ dawn, sees clouds, and goes back to sleep. The forecast remains bleak—two bad weather fronts coming, with possibly a break between them on Saturday, June 6. D-Day. Seems appropriate: we’ll climb a major North American peak on the 30th anniversary of RFK’s death. Bobby, after all, was the first to climb Mt. Kennedy, the peak in the St. Elias range named for his brother.
So we’re lazing around, enjoying a leisurely breakfast (oatmeal and hot drinks, of course), when BJ pokes his head out again and says, “Let’s take a walk.” The clouds have largely lifted, and it doesn’t look too windy. Scores of others have already started up the mountain. Surprised but delighted, we struggle into all of our warmest gear (I use my new socks and vapor barrier liners for the first time) and get underway by 10AM.
At least 30 others are ahead or immediately behind us, apparently scores were waiting for a day such as this. We descend briefly, then begin a moderately steep traverse to Denali Pass, 1000 feet above us. We’re walking across a slope that’s maybe 45 degrees, along a narrow catwalk in the ice. It seems safe enough, unless you slip, which would send you skidding down into a deep crevasse hundreds of feet below the climbers have named “Jaws”. We clip into pickets for protection, calling out “anchor” as before. At a switchback in a rocky stretch, a bunch of Eastern Europeans make a break to pass our slower group, digging their axes deep into the ice to gain purchase off the catwalk. At one point I get hot and take off my outer hat, this sends my “Given Health” baseball cap tumbling down the slope into Jaws, the only other cap I own says “Fletcher Allen”. How emblematic of recent events.
We arrive at the pass, which separates the North and South Peaks of Denali, around noon—just barely on schedule. Everybody else leaves before us, so now we’re last in line. We see the route from Wonder Lake, via the Muldrow glacier, coming in; this was how all the pioneer climbs were made before Washburn found the West Buttress route. I’ll realize later that this is my “northern frontier”—the furthest north I’ve ever been in my life. The next section is dishearteningly steep, and I’m as winded as I can ever remember. We are taking six breaths for every step. Called the “Autobahn,” the route twists by an erector set-like weather monitoring station and gives out onto a flat space. Could this be the famous Football Field, launching pad for the final summit push?
No, BJ says. He sees we’re both bushed, and is doubtful about our chances of success. He counsels us to turn around now. It’s still mostly cloudy and pretty windy, and at best we wouldn’t get back till late tonight if we pushed on. Jason suggests we head as far as the Football Field, call it a victory, and come down from there.
Nice as it sounds to be able to stop struggling, I’m devastated. Is this how it’s going to end? Does BJ mean go down to try again in a couple of days? No, he thinks this will be our only attempt.
The Football Field turns out to be only a short rise away, and as we climb I’m planning my appeal. “Look”, I say when we get there, “I have every respect for your expertise, I have no desire to do anything stupid, and after you hear me out, all you have to say is ‘no’ and I won’t say another word. But I’ve been planning this trip for a year, and dreaming about it for 25. You’ve heard what I’ve had to pay, to negotiate, to agree to for this. I admit I’m a bit too goal-oriented. But, slow as we are compared to the others, we’re actually on pace. We left late, so we should expect to return late. It never gets dark in June this close to the Arctic Circle. I’m tired, but otherwise I feel fine. Won’t you reconsider?”
My suit is helped by two serendipitous events. First, the clouds break. It’s still windy, but it’s clear, and the summit headwall and ridge is laid out before us. Second, one of the women, Ellen, in the party that passed us at Denali Pass, breezes by on the way down. “Oh it’s fine up there,” she says. “We made it up in about 40 minutes.”
So BJ relents. Overjoyed but still apprehensive, we ditch our packs and water bottles, put on our down jackets, and begin the final push. First obstacle is the summit headwall, a 600-foot face that’s no steeper than the other wall, but just more daunting in the thinner air. This gives out onto Pig Rock, where the Cassin Ridge comes up, and we face the knife-like summit ridge.
It was here that the earlier Mountain Trip group, led by Todd and Bill, turned around, for fear of crosswinds. For us, the wind blows lengthwise, so it’s do-able, but still spooky, to walk the tightrope edge. One side drops 9,000 feet to the Kahiltna Glacier, the other just 600 to the Football Field. Usually you’re a bit to one side so you can at least plant your axe for balance; sometimes you don’t even have that. It’s over in about five minutes, and then it’s just a matter of short steep climb over a cornice, then a couple of milder rises.
The last of the other parties ahead of us are coming down, and issue encouragement and congratulations. I gasp that that’s it, I can’t take anymore, I’m turning back; I’m not sure they know I’m joking. Finally, I just run out of “up”, and realize that this inconsequential-looking little crease of snow and ice, marked by nothing but a couple of trail wands, must be the summit of North America. Oh yeah, and state highpoint #23. It’s 6:38 PM. Back in Eastern Daylight Time, Jane is probably watching ER reruns. Can she see me waving?
Far out. Twenty thousand three hundred and twenty tweetin’ feet (since resurveyed to measure 20,308. Pooh). The acme of my life, I’m sure, ‘cause ain’t no way I’m trudging up this high again. I’d often mused that if I reached here I’d mark the occasion with the solemnity it deserved by mooning North America. Hell, my mountain bib does have that drop-seat. But ultimately, I take a pass. My hiney is cold enough.
I’m third on the rope, and BJ and Jason have already been there a few minutes. Glancing around, I see the North Peak, Foraker, and a few other summits poking out of the clouds, but don’t feel the need to identify them. It’s like looking out of an airplane. We snap a few hurried photos; the special family flag Karen made for me won’t flatten out properly, and will probably look like a crumpled blue rag. I use my GPS to see how far I am away from home, it’s 4300 miles to the northeast. Huh? Vermont is well to the south of us. I later check the great circle route, which does arch up to the northeast before coming down. Then we all agree it’s time to raise dust. I’ve been there a total of maybe five minutes.
They say the summit is only the halfway point. It is long, tedious, nerve-wracking and painful coming down, but at least I’m not limited by my lungs. Only one person seems to be heading up behind us. The evening light is beautiful, if you bother to look. Pulling up the pickets on the way down from Denali Pass slows us a bit, but most enervating is the little 100-foot rise getting to camp at the end. I stiffly coil the rope, pull off my harness and crampons, and collapse into the tent about 11:30.
This is definitely the most whupped I’ve ever been. It takes me two hours to stop coughing and hyperventilating. The O2 sat is 77 with a respiratory rate of 40. All I can choke down for dinner is chicken broth. My blister has worn through the Compeed, and is so gross I can’t bear to look. But under it all is a giddy elation that just now starts to seep through. Throttle back, white boy. You’re not out of this yet.
Friday, June 5th, 1998, Day 17: The Long Way Down
We don’t even wake up till almost noon. The weather has worsened again, but there’s still some visibility and things are supposed to get a lot windier tomorrow. Time to blow. We all hurt in new places, so we strike camp with grim determination but no enthusiasm. We hope to get to 8,000 tonight.
The wind whips up just as we start down the West Buttress (later I’ll learn that Chris Hooyman, an RMI guide that was with Ellen’s party, unclipped here the day after we passed to help a client and was blown to his death), and more than once I have to get down on all fours to steady myself, but BJ has placed his pickets carefully and I never feel really unsafe. Each hairy part passed gets me closer to home free. A gust blows my lunch away when we stop, though. It looks like I’ll master the downhill Jumar technique, for it works around Washburn’s Thumb, but the same fiasco develops on the Headwall, worse actually with the heavy pack, and I do the arm wrap again. It’s grueling, plodding work, lightened only by the knowledge that I’m passing this way for the last time. Once the schrund is clear, the technical (but not the dangerous) part of the trip is over.
Down the headwall and into Camp 14, where we learn more of the exploits of the hapless Hebert from the next Mountain Trip guide coming up, Kirby. It seems that as Robb paused to recover the cache on the way down, Hebert just wandered off downhill on his own. When Robb told him he had to wait to be guided down, they almost came to blows. Finally, Gary Bocarde, the owner of the Mountain Trip company, was called and some kind of compromise hammered out. Meanwhile, poor Robb told Gary he didn’t want to do any more assistant guiding. What a country.
BJ heats up another round of Backpacker’s Pantry specials, my first real meal in two days. Despite the ensuing killer heartburn, we plod on, this time with ski poles and sleds in tow. The giant crevasses. Windy Corner, on reasonably good behavior this time. The steep slope down to Squirrel Point and finally Motorcycle hill itself. I’ve got three pairs of socks and a new layer of Compeed on, so at least my blister isn’t screaming, but boy what a hotfoot. Off go the overboots and crampons at Camp 11; on go snowshoes and new cache loads. Now I’ve gained the tent, Mid, Mid pole, poop bucket, and a sled to drag it all in.
As we descend to 10,000, however, Kahiltna Pass bites us just as it did on the way up: total whiteout. BJ can’t see the next wand. After some blind thrashing, we break out my GPS. I can’t even read it in the flat gloom, but BJ can, and it leads us on a serpiginous path to the top of Ski Hill. Later BJ remembers to follow the wind, which always blows straight up or down the glacier, and our path becomes straighter. Still, it’s a surreal scene: three climbers strung together by a rope floating in an utterly featureless void. It seems to take forever, we’re often tempted just to stop where we are and camp, but the GPS logs us as getting closer. It’s after midnight, and the sun (if we could see it) has dipped below the horizon, but it just stays dusk until the sun rises two hours later. Luckily this is not an area of crevasse or avalanche danger. Finally we stumble across the upper camp above the hill, and we can follow the wands again. An antalgic trudge down Ski hill brings us at last to Camp 8. It’s 4:30 AM. We consider zombie-walking to base camp, but ahead lie the most dangerous crevasses of the trip, and no one’ll be flying in this soup anyway. BJ and Jason get the tent up in a flash, and we pass out, ignoring the aroma of breakfast French toast coming from the next tent.
Saturday, June 6, 1998, Day 18: Down But Not Out.
I awake with a start at 9AM, thinking I hear the drone of a plane. Sure enough, the ceiling has lifted somewhat, and the Alaska State bird (no, it’s not the mosquito, it’s the light plane) is flying again. Maybe we can catch it before the clouds drop again. We wolf down a few bites of cereal and get underway.
I’d fantasized about flashing a “summit smile” to all the poor suckers coming up, but a clenched-teeth grimace is all I can manage. I’m too sore and too tired, my pack now weighs 100 lbs. and my sled about 30, something is happening to my left shin, and BJ is rightly pushing hard. All I can think of is a hot shower, a laundromat, and a good meal. I only whine a little bit. At the bottom of Heartbreak Hill he radios “Base Camp Annie” and she says a Geeting plane is due in about an hour. So we push steadily up the Hill, it’s long but not as cardiotoxic as advertised. Something drones overhead but we don’t notice anything landing. My fingers are crossed as we pull up alongside the runway and wait, just 2 1/2 hours from Camp 8.
After a while Annie comes out and says that Doug tried to land, but turned back. No one else is trying. The forecast is for a three-day snowstorm, and winds of up to 100 mph on the high mountain. We hear for the first time about Chris Hooyman, who got blown off the Buttress this morning. Glumly, we erect the tent in a pre-dug snow cave, and hunker down. BJ makes some cheesy pasta, which buoys our spirits a little. Oh well, maybe I’ll be forced to finish EBM after all. At least I’m done lugging that cussed load.
Sunday June 7, 1998, Day 19: By the Skin of Our Teeth
We all sleep 12 hours that night. When we awake, over a foot of snow has fallen and the tent is half-buried. I go out and shovel it off; that’s my effort for the day. Annie has no trouble rallying most of the camp, including Jason & BJ, to stamp down the snow on the runway. The snow has turned to rain.
Then a glimmer of hope—it’s gotten a bit clearer. Two planes are on their way, one is Doug. Hopefully but warily we rush to pack our soaking wet gear, we won’t strike the tent until the last minute. I stand there on the runway, feeling like Tattoo of “Fantasy Island” looking for “The Plane!” Next to us is another party (from the Fantasy Ridge guide service, oddly enough) who arrived two days before us but didn’t drive as hard through the bad weather at the lower elevations, didn’t make it to high camp until last Wednesday, and never summitted. They got back to base just after us, and are next in line to get off. A plane appears, but it’s the wrong color, a Talkeetna Air Taxi who bumps around on the landing. The pilot says the wind shear is bad, Annie calls and turns the other planes around. Does she catch Doug?
No! His beautiful red plane pops around the ice wall and comes in for a determined, if bouncy, landing. He’s brought the turbo-charged model. “I can take you, but not your gear, it’s too much weight for these conditions” he announces as we rush out to him. Huh? All of our expensive stuff, laid out here under the snow? “We’ll get it later…sometime.” Of course, we still want to leave. I hurriedly grab my books, toilet articles, and a water bottle and climb in the back. It takes a breath-stoppingly-long time to get airborne on the takeoff. Doug immediately calls to cancel all further flights for today. The light is flat, the wind shear even worse, the ceiling coming back down.
We’re not home free until we can get out from over the glacier. BJ’s eyes are clenched against his fist in silent hope. We just clear some fin-like ridges. One Shot Pass is closed. But Doug’s plane is powerful and the man, who in body habitus and voice, if not demeanor, is the spitting image of John Candy, is the best pilot on the mountain. He takes us the long way, following the outwash of the Kahiltna, and after a few crossed-finger minutes we see green. The blessed color rolls out like a carpet beneath us, we are truly going home. Doug helps us snap some victory pictures from the front of the plane. We come in low over some small lakes and hunting camps (God, I never thought a bunch of trees could look so wonderful), make our final approach over the shacks of Beautiful Downtown Talkeetna, and touch down on something other than ice or snow. Yes! It’s finally over. I’ve climbed Denali.
Tumbling stiffly out of the plane into the humid, rich air of Talkeetna, it feels like the stench is rising from us in waves. I expect the dozens of waiting climbers at the airport to draw back in repulsion, but they seem to be able to tell at a glance that we’ve summitted, and smile and nod their congratulations. It takes awhile to find my carry-on in the massive pile in the hangar, and there’s a funny exchange where I pick up what I assume is a call from Jane with a smart-ass remark, only to find it’s someone else’s wife, who’s hubby is still on the mountain. Well, maybe not so funny.
A double shower in the laundromat, a recoil from the gaunt, hirsute, sunburned image staring back at me in the mirror, a couple of quick gloating postcards to Brian & Eric, a finally-successful attempt to reach Jane, and we’re shooting down the highway in search of salmon and beer. We find it back in Anchorage at our old haunt the Brewhouse, where the food is so good I almost pass out. Ah sweet victory.
One little hitch. We can’t enjoy the beer, the acetazolamide, still in our systems, is a carbonic anhydrase inhibitor, which messes with the way that carbonated beverages taste on your tongue. It’s so awful we have to spit it out.
Epilog
Predictably, I toss and turn that first night in a real bed @ Dave & Margo’s B&B. Jason and I kick around Anchorage for a couple of days, shopping for family presents. Margo books us on a rail & boat excursion to Resurrection Bay in Seward, the train ride is spectacular despite the rain, but the precipitation keeps us from seeing much from the water besides sleeping seal lions and comical puffins, some with bellies so full of fish they can’t take off from the water. One night we spend in an absurdly-1970s place with a pretty view of the lagoon. We enjoy a few snatches of celebrity: an ER doc who spotted us as summiteers (our weird sunburns, scraggly beards, and idiot grins were a dead giveaway) at the mall food court, and the train tour guide who announced to all what we had done, sparking a standing ovation from the passengers, along with many pictures and questions.
Kirby from Camp 14 stops by looking for his clients, with info about a Japanese climber who bivouacked alone at Squirrel Point for 2 days in a storm; he doesn’t think anyone else has summitted and estimates there’s about 70 people stacked up at the base now, waiting for a plane out. That would put the summit percentage at about 17%. Ain’t we cool. Ain’t we lucky, I mean.
At the last possible minute before Jason has to leave, BJ and Scott appear with our gear, all sorted out, and we take them for another victory dinner at the posh Elevation 92, a mere 20,228 feet lower than we were six days before. We’re joined by Carla, the Italian math professor at Boulder who had summitted the day we arrived at Camp 17, and Bill, whose party had to turn back at the summit ridge. Scott was in unremitting pain until he saw his dentist in Hood River for a root canal. He reached Alan, who was happy to hear we had made it. No further word from Hebert. Jason has to rush off to the airport with his meal in a doggie bag. I say good-bye to all at the curb (Scott leaves tomorrow on the next Denali climb, and wants to take us all on a quick flight, but I’ve got an early plane to catch and a ton of packing to do), and walk home one last time along the glorious coastal bike path. All the way home I am dumb-struck at the enormity of Scott and BJ’s routine. The clients are so happy to be down, still so exhausted, but the two of them are doing a massive grocery shopping trip and getting ready to start the whole process all over again.
At the B & B I find Margo curled on the bed in pain, I talk with but don’t examine her; I’m afraid she may be obstructing from her ovarian mass. This keeps me from fully packing until almost 1 AM, and I wind up keeping Doug up, who’s filling in for her at the B & B and is sleeping on the floor in the garage.
All week long I’ve been trying to get a glimpse of the Big White Hill, to no avail. We hear the mountain is out from an ice-cream vendor, and Margo drives us quickly to the waterfront to have a look, but we’re too late. Even when I take off Thursday morning, one full week after our summit push, I can’t see the mountain I’ve struggled so long and so hard to climb.
And now it’s over, save for a few airline connections and baggage hassles. The boys apparently have been keeping their classmates updated on my exploits, and I’m coming home a couple of days early to be able to talk about it on a class trip to Button Bay. I’m sure the mountain of paperwork waiting for me back at the office will put Denali to shame.
I was concerned about an emotional crash after all I’d focused on for so long was in the past tense, and wondering if the accomplishment of something that was so hard would give me a new inner peace and self-confidence. But it hasn’t happened yet. I’m just blandly content, looking forward to getting back to a normal life. Well, pretty normal. After all, there’re still 27 state highpoints to go…
[Here’s the vignette from our Christmas card letter that December, that probably wraps it up as well as anything:]
Moment of Truth at 19,500 feet
June 4, 1998, 4:30 PM
“I advise you to turn back now”
So said Brain Johnson (“BJ”), our guide. The three of us (me, BJ, and Jason Lang, just married and graduated from UVM medical school) were at the “Football Field”, a small plateau a mile below the summit of Denali (Mount McKinley). He’d looked at our faces, noted the time and the slow pace we were making, and said we’d be lucky to get back to camp by midnight if we pushed on.
For a moment, I was at a loss for words. My body was crying out, “do what the man says, get out of here.” We’d been at it for seven hours today, and I’d never been so cold, or so tired. This was day sixteen of our expedition: sixteen days of hauling heavy loads up an endless snow slope, of sleeping in a claustro-phobic mummy bag, sharing a six-by-four foot tent with two other guys; sixteen days without a shower or a shave. The last five days we’d been holed up at high camp, 17,200 feet, higher than I’d ever been, wait-ing in that tiny tent for the weather to break so we could make this summit push. The conditions were so hostile we’d only spent 5 minutes a day outside (guess what for).
Attrition had cut the original size of our party in half: where six had started, only three remained. Even our lead guide had had to bail, suffering with a dental abscess. He was back in Oregon now, getting root canal work. Two people had already been killed on the mountain this year–blown off the knife-like West Buttress ridge (which we’d traversed ourselves five days earlier) by the 100 mph winds that dogged us all, a remnant of last year’s El Nino. A third would die there in two days. Only one in six were making it to the summit, and we were as green as anyone on the mountain.
Up here, the air was so thin I had to take four full breaths for every step. The total barometric pressure was 15 inches, half that of sea level. We’d brought along an oxygen saturation monitor, the same we use in the hospital to gauge how critical a patient’s lung function is. Usually, a reading under 80% meant you needed to be intubated and placed in the ICU on a respirator. The other morning in the tent, my reading was 67%. Oh well, it’s just a number, I told myself. Then that night I kept waking with a start, feeling like I was suffocating. It took a while to realize I was Cheyne-Stoke breathing, a pattern where your respirations stop every minute or so, a pattern associated with a comatose state at sea level but also a sign of acute altitude sickness (AMS). That did it. I started taking acetazolamide (Diamox), a mild diuretic and glaucoma medication that also treats AMS, and my breathing improved.
Most of my brain was saying it was time to go down, too. I’d read Into Thin Air, the bestseller about the Everest tragedy of 1996 where eleven people died in a single night, mostly because they refused to turn back when so advised. I’d promised myself and my family that I wouldn’t be that stupid. Certainly I’d been selfish enough to take things this far, to abandon my wife and three children for a month while I took this expensive and dangerous trip. The night of my departure, my oldest son had tearfully pleaded with me not to go, that he didn’t want me to die, yet go I did. And for what? For bragging rights? Even now I couldn’t explain why this was so important to me. Especially now.
Jason, a former Dartmouth track and field star, certainly heard the voice of reason. “Let’s call it a victory here, and head on down.” He and BJ were making sense. Who was I to disagree?
And yet. We’d come so far, and suffered for so long. BJ did this for a living, and Jason was so much younger. I knew I’d never get another chance to climb this puppy. I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if I didn’t at least explore the options.
“Look BJ, I have every respect for your expertise. I have no desire to do anything foolish, and after you hear me out, all you have to say is ‘no’ and I won’t say another word. But I’ve been planning this trip for a year, and dreaming about it for 25. You’ve heard what I’ve had to pay, to negotiate, to agree to for this. I admit I’m a bit too goal-oriented. But, slow as we are compared to the others, we’re actually on pace. We left late, so we should expect to return late. After all, this close to the Arctic Circle it never gets really dark. The summit is just 800 vertical feet above us, and the weather seems to be clearing. I’m tired, but otherwise I feel fine. Won’t you reconsider?”
Well, BJ relented. We slogged that last mile, up one more headwall and over one last knife-edge, and got to the top of North America about 7. Knowing that the trip was only half over and that most of the accidents happen on the descent, we spent a scant five minutes looking at the handful of summits poking through the clouds and snapping a few quick pictures (that’s me on the left, Jason on the right) at 20,320 feet before heading down. We were back at our tent by midnight. It took me two hours to stop coughing and hyperventilating and get to sleep.
As we trudged back down to base camp the next day, I reflected on what I’d learned in the past 2 ½ weeks. I’d learned what it was like to be unremittingly short of breath, and felt more empathy for those patients of mine who labor to breathe all the time. I’d had time in that tiny odiferous tent to read a textbook on evidence-based medicine, though I was unsure of how much I’d retain in my hypoxic state. I’d felt the giddy thrill of achieving something that was really hard, that took months of planning and weeks of toil and discomfort. I learned humility at the awesome power of nature, and seen what the human spirit can do under duress. I’d met dozens of people from around the world, and learned a little of what motivates them. I would soon learn that despite gorging myself on all manner of sweets and fatty foods, I lost 20 pounds in 18 days (I’m definitely NOT recommending this as Dr. Luria’s Diet Revolution).
And I’d learned that in the final analysis, I wasn’t cut out for high-altitude mountaineering. Not so much because of the cost and suffering, or the lack of skill and stamina. No, those things could be overcome. But at the Football Field, I’d learned I couldn’t count on myself to make the right decision in the crunch. Sure, we’d made it. I’d have a story to tell my grandchildren. But the lure of the summit clouded my reason, and led me to take a risk I shouldn’t have. This time I’d gotten away with it. On the slopes of Denali, I learned that my family, my friends, my career, and my life were too precious to me to roll those dice again.
The Ends of the Earth 