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Desire & Ice: Challenge on Denali
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We spend the next three hours fortifying the snow walls—blocks of ice cut from the surrounding glacier—that shield us from winds that have been known to launch tents into the void. As the sun dips behind the western peaks, the temperature plunges to 15 below zero. We scatter to our tents, already crammed with gear, clothing, and anything else we hope to prevent from freezing, including our water bottles, which accompany us in sleeping bags rated to 20 below.
My tentmates are Ken Coffey, 39, president of a Tulsa-based medical device company, and Nat Brace, 41, who left a job at Microsoft to spend more time with his family. Settling into our nightly routine, Coffey and I stick radio headphone buds into our ears while Brace studies pictures of his wife and infant son, Clark, and smiles.
A friendly dispute breaks out in the tent next door. It seems Bill Hatcher, 42, our photographer from Dolores, Colorado, has been eating salmon jerky again, and Dick Bowers, 61, the senior member of our team and a former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, is complaining that the tent smells like a fish market. Their third tentmate, Matt McDonough, 41, snoozes on, oblivious. McDonough, a real-estate executive from New Jersey, was asked to join the expedition—then abandoned—by a friend who listened patiently to the National Park Service orientation, calmly viewed the slides of frozen bodies and frost-blackened fingers, and then decided not to climb.
THE APPROACH TO DENALI BEGINS not with a trek through the lowlands—common to most of the world's great mountains—but at the airport on the outskirts of Talkeetna, a sleepy hamlet two hours north of Anchorage. On May 28, after running through the gear checklist one last time, we boarded single-engine planes for the 45-minute flight to base camp on the Kahiltna Glacier. Once airborne—our Cessna 185 laboring under the weight of three mountaineers, one pilot, and piles of gear—we banked left and bounced on thermals over the Talkeetna River. Seventy miles ahead, the greening Alaskan tundra abruptly surrendered to ragged peaks locked in snow and ice.
I glimpsed a narrow notch ahead. That's "One Shot Gap," yelled our pilot, Jay Hudson. As I estimated the distance to the notch against our sluggish ascent, my toes curled involuntarily inside my boots. Our wingtips cleared the pass, and I looked ahead to catch my first glimpse of Denali, presiding over a complex network of lesser peaks and cracked glaciers.
My eyes, shielded by glacier glasses, began to pick out features on the white expanse below. I saw the tiny forms of climbers, spaced evenly along 165-foot ropes, navigating around gaping crevasses and beginning the long slog to the summit. Then I saw a sprawling village of tents marking base camp at 7,200 feet and, just beyond, the tracks of ski planes slicing the landing strip.
As we exited the plane, another RMI team queued up for a return flight to the world of hot showers, cold beers, and warm beds. These weary warriors, bone thin, approached sullen and silent. Pinned in tents for seven days at 17,200 feet, hammered by high winds and extreme temperatures, they never even got a shot at the summit.
HOPING TO BE LUCKIER, we'd started climbing on May 29, following the relatively easy route that Bradford Washburn pioneered in 1951. Each of us hauled about 115 pounds—half on our backs, half in plastic sleds laden with fuel cans, food, cookstoves, and shovels. The sleds eased the strain on our shoulders but also tormented us by flipping over or slamming into our heels as we pulled them behind us.
The plan was to climb under full loads to 9,600 feet and then divide our loads to begin double-carrying—hauling half up to a new camp, returning to lower camp to sleep, then reclimbing the next morning with the rest of the gear.
From base camp, as we ascended the lower Kahiltna Glacier, temperatures in direct sunlight climbed to 90°F. We stripped down to shirtsleeves and tucked bandannas Foreign Legion-style under our ball caps to protect us from the sun. Laboring under a full pack, guide Kent Wagner, 38, leading our rope team, quickly settled us into the "rest-step," a technique of locking one knee with each step while resting the other to shift the weight from muscles to bones. Soon we pulled away from the other two teams.
"My God, Kent, you're climbing like a gut-shot cougar!" our third guide, Joe Horiskey, 50, gasped when we stopped for a rest break. "How about slowing down a bit?"
We spent our first night at 7,900 feet and our second at 9,600. On our third day, while descending from a double-carry, we were enveloped by our first substantial Denali storm. Heavy snowfall erased the boot prints we left on the way up, leaving us to navigate by following the green bamboo wands we'd planted to mark the route. Once in camp, we wrestled the wind to erect our tents, anchoring them with ice axes, snowshoes, and yard-long aluminum pickets.
The storm cleared, and the next day we reached 11,000 feet. Then, after a rest day, we topped Motorcycle Hill and rounded Windy Corner—a barren ridge of granite scoured clean by near-constant winds. At one rest break, the snow fell away beneath my boot, and I plunged in up to my thigh. As I scrambled to regain my balance, more of the snow bridge collapsed, and I peered down into a bottomless crack of blue ice, trembling. Talcott tightened the rope, and I climbed to safety, but for the remainder of the trip, I couldn't shake the fear that I would plunge to my death in a crevasse.
WE ARISE ON JUNE 13, our 16th day on the mountain, to clear skies and blowing snow. Forecasts are for improving weather, Talcott tells us. Finally we'll be heading up from our camp at 14,200 feet, where we've been hunkered down in purgatory for so long. Has our luck returned? After a quick breakfast of oatmeal and hots, we break camp—a three-hour chore—shake snow off stuff bags and shove them into packs, slather on sunscreen, and strap on our crampons. By 10 a.m., we're roped up and crunching steps to high camp at 17,200 feet.
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