Denali or Bust
- Aug 24, 2017
- 12 min read
Denali or Bust
By Erin Hilary Newton
June 19 – June 28, 2010
A story about suffering, even when everything comes out right in the end, should be enough premise to monopolize your time for a few minutes. But then, choosing to suffer as a means to an end, is way more empowering than just having it stuck to you. Having not slept for 30 hours, and unable to form proper words as my lower lip is blistered, my nose is bleeding, my arse is chapped as a result of awkward dry food digestion at altitude, my stomach nauseated, still struggling to process lowland foods, and with hands blistered from intense glacial sun exposure, having my big toes completely lacking feeling seems a blessing.
Mt. Denali, also known as McKinley to those who have some allegiance to assassinated presidents who never climbed but had a lot of sway back when nameless (to the whites) Alaskan peaks were the new Himalayan frontier, is a mountain of great beauty and intrigue for climbers who like a challenge, locals who like a spectacular backdrop, and Himalayan veterans who have a healthy respect for extreme cold. Rising 20,320 ft above the ocean making it the largest massif in the world, it attracts heinous weather from offshore that moves quickly and doesn’t discriminate between newbies and the ultra experienced. Loomis, the head ranger, told us the reason only 50% of climbers are successful is because most are not good at the waiting game. While hauling 130 pounds up the mountain in multiple load carries, climbers must ignore the lack of sleep due to excessive daylight, lack of appetite, and wicked headaches and dehydration. Meanwhile they burn 5,000 calories daily carrying more than their own body weight in gear and food up the glaciers, fixed lines, and upper ridges to reach 17,200 feet from where they might have a chance at summiting. Often then, climbers don’t see blue sky for days or weeks before they run out of food and have to go down again without even a view of the summit. The day our 21 day permit started and we flew onto the Kahiltna Glacier was the start of a fortuitous high pressure system that lasted the 9 days it took us to summit. The average time most parties require to summit and get down is 17 to 21 days, though in 1993, a climber summited from 7,200 ft in 14 hrs 22 min, obviously on a good weather day.
As we skied onto the glacier, grumpy climbers who had waited 8 days at the high camp hoping for a weather opening to attempt the summit, cursed the mountain as they trudged dejectedly up the final hill to the base camp where 130 other climbers were trapped, unable to leave the glacier since all planes were grounded through the two week storm.
Talkeetna, “where the road ends and life begins” (which would soon be proven to be true of my marriage), is the base for the world’s most experienced glacier pilots who fly prospective climbers the half hour across terrain where explorer Bradford Washburn initially spent two months wading through lowland brush, braiding wide streams, and glacial moraine to access the high glaciers and make the first ascent of the West Buttress, now the most popular route up the mountain. Bringing his wife up the Muldrow glacier, she became the first woman to summit Denali. Washburn’s ascent of the West Buttress followed when he accompanied Colorado geologists to perform research and take pictures. His aerial shots made while hanging his head out of a ski-equipped Cessna flown by the bold Colorado native glacier pilot, Don Sheldon, are now recognized as some of the finest mountain photos ever taken. While Washburn learned to utilize the skills of the daring bush pilots to make his approaches easier, others used husky teams to haul the two months of gear required to approach Denali. To prove that dogs could perform at altitude, in 1979 two Iditerod finishers even brought 7 dogs up the steep fixed line sections and the knife edge ridges to the summit proper.
Just so you can picture how a high altitude cold weather glacier traipsing expedition is different from a Rocky Mountain day hike, I’ll let you in on my summary statistics which wouldn’t be hard to beat if you had our fine weather, for you who are into such things:
Day 1: Base Camp (7,200 ft) to Camp 1 (7,800 ft), travel time 5:20, elev gain 1,600 ft (gross), we each pulled 100 lb sleds and 40 lb backpacks with 21 days of food and gas. It felt like we sweated off half our body weight while one large gas canister leaked on our food, so we were burping white gas for the rest of the trip.
Day 2: Camp 1 to Camp 2 (10,200 ft), travel time 5:30, elev gain 2,400 ft, camped solo at the top of the glacier, and sweated off the other half our body weight hauling loads in the heat.
Day 3: Camp 2 to Camp 3 (11,200 ft), travel time 1:45, elev gain 1,000 ft, headaches increasing from dehydration after all the sweat loss of apparently essential body fluid. Andrew starts to look like a scaly fish with cracking sunburn.
Day 4: Camp 3 to Camp 4 (14,320 ft), travel time 6:15, elev gain 3,120 ft, one trip hauling a huge load, blistered top of my hands, inside of nose, and lower lip in overcast conditions. Andrew’s sled tipped over 20 times and his language was not appropriate in a ladies presence.
Day 5: Rest Day, Thank Allah
Day 6: Camp 4 to Camp 5 (17,200 ft), travel time 6:30, elev gain 2,880 ft, load carry returning to Camp 4, burned a ton of calories from 100 degree temperature change between below zero in morning and glacial reflective inferno in the afternoon. Had my own meltdown in early morning cold-hypothermic hysteria.
Day 7: Camp 4 to Camp 5 (again, but with tent and sleeping bags) travel time 5:50, elev gain 2,880 ft (again, but this time I wore my heavy down jacket and handwarmer equipped gloves). Hoping to summit next day but alas…
Day 8: Forced rest day (good for the sore to the touch thighs and an opportunity to replace caloric deficiency). Holding pattern in whiteout and blowing winds. All parties grounded except crazy Lithuanians. They didn’t summit in blowing, frigid temps.
Day 9: Camp 5 to Summit (20,320 ft) on a wing and a prayer! Elev gain 3,120 ft, had a 3 ft snow dump the night before so shared kicking steps with a guided party on a sunny cool day with light winds. Started at 11 am and hiked 9 hours to the stunning geologist’s paradise summit. The Ruth pluton’s granitic intrusions into sedimentary black overlying flyash rocks make for a spectacular contact all along the summit ridge! 3 hours down. Went to bed at 12:30 am with no dinner and shivering in clear frigid temps.
Day 10: Camp 5 to Base camp,(7,200 ft) 13 hours travel with a break at 14,000 ft camp to wait out the heat. Elev loss 10,000 ft, hiked and skied through the night to see the sun rise, moon rise, then sunrise again though it never got dark. I discovered what Andrew’s cursing was all about when my sled tipped over 30 times while traversing slopes. His cursing prowess improved while managing two heavy sleds roped to me with both of us on skis traversing downhill through icy crust. Arrived at Base Camp at 5 am and made the only tourist flight off the glacier at 9 am before next storm system rolled in for days. The glacier was a mess, having melted out crevasse bridges, glacial tarns, and deep footprint impressions. Andrew and I both fell into crevasses, and luckily had tied our ropes correctly. Who knew!
Coloradans are prevalent on the mountain and while they apparently acclimatize better than the average lowland climber, the rangers roll their eyes at you in the screening interview and warn against going too high too fast just because you’re like, so fit. Apparently folks from 9,000 ft Leadville are the worst and have required rescues from the 17,000 ft camp with severe altitude sickness. The rangers and guides made sure to point out that we were yahoos for moving up the mountain so irresponsibly fast, but we were feeling good enough, despite the usual nausea, suppressed appetites, and headaches. We worked as a team, Andrew making meals and always melting more snow while I organized gear and helped set up the tent and organized its contents in pockets and well divided sides. Then he would clamber in with half dehydrated Backpacker’s Pantry meals, knock me in the head with his flailing limbs, and attempt to stuff his 6 ft 4 inch frame into a 6 ft long, low head space tent. Fortuitously we only had to wait out one day of weather, or it could have come to blows. I read Barbara Washburn’s exciting account of her illustrious life, The Accidental Mountaineer, detailing her first ascents, mapping, and travel with her famous husband. Andrew read Alaska, the exhaustive history written by James Mitchner, which allowed him to sleep obnoxiously well. Then to get in the suffering mood, I read Tisha, a true story about a Colorado teacher who moves to the Alaskan bush in 1927 to teach some real back woods kids. She falls in love with a Native American musher and they are happily married for 28 years after she convinces the local closed-minded prospectors that natives are people too. I then started Jack London’s White Fang but it made me miss Shiloh, our Alpha bitch if there ever was one, and so I flagged it and tried to tune in to the 8 o’ clock weather report and then NPR’s jazz station on my ipod, which we easily recharged daily with solar panels.
While most of Denali’s approach is a non-technical snow plod, there are some hair raising sections where you wouldn’t want to be reading a book while teetering along a knife edge ridge or clipping into fixed lines with ascenders or clipping fixed snow pickets that keep you from skittering down a steep 50 degree snow slope. An Arctic expedition organizer told me he thought the ridge to the 17,200 ft camp was a bit hair raising, Denali being his first attempt at mountain climbing. He and his two 60 yr old companions inspired me with their resolve to make the summit, though they started the same time as us and must have finally dragged themselves up the summit ridge 4 hours after we were already shivering in our -40 degree sleeping bags. Clipping fixed snow pickets while wearing cumbersome mittens, I was reminded of an important lesson of which most people are well aware. There are certain things one shouldn’t do with metal in cold conditions, one in particular being don’t put carabiners in your mouth if you want to keep your tongue skin.
We also encountered some Japanese cosmogenic ray physicists (one was 69 yrs old) who, between drying Alaskan fish outside their tent and having clam soup for breakfast in a maze of snow blocks they’d constructed to keep out the cold, were monitoring a weather station that according to the ranger apparently hasn’t worked for 20 years. Additionally, Andrew did an accidental summersault in 4 ft snow drifts over a 17 year old posh English bird who was attempting to be the youngest Brit to climb all seven summits. In her group was a girl from Berkeley who said she picked the guided trip up Denali because it looked like the longest summer trip in the brochure. She’d never been on a mountain. The guided Colorado group held their own, helping their guide prepare meals and learning new mountaineering techniques daily. The guides and rangers both agreed that Denali is a harder mountain to guide than Everest, due to the lack of additional staff and animals to carry gear, prepare campsites, and make food. However, the cost of climbing Denali with a guide is $6,500 compared with upwards of $65,000 to be guided up Everest. After offering a peace gift of animal crackers and Nutella to the Colorado group, we enjoyed cheering each other along for the rest of the trip as we ferried loads.
Bob and Wally, our buddies who attempted the more technical West Rib and Cassin ridges last year and got trumped by miserable conditions resulting in an average West Buttress highway walk like the rest of us, still rave about the West Buttress summit ridge. As Andrew kicked steps up the final steep Pig Hill that leads to the summit ridge, he gave me the lead along the precipitous untracked line. As the sun set, as much as it ever does 3 days after the summer solstice, I fixed snow pickets to protect us from the thousand foot drops on either side. We spent nearly an hour on the breezy summit bathed in evening light gazing immobile at the Alaskan mountains peeking out of a sea of low clouds. When the guided party arrived, the loud photographer who was on his third attempt cried as he reached the summit and Andrew and I couldn’t help joining him in shedding some altitude induced tears.
Had 3 liters of white gas not leaked onto all of our snacks on the first glacier-slogging day, we would have had plenty of variety to keep our taste buds from curling up and revolting in defiance. As it was, when we returned to the 14,000 ft camp, we still had plenty of dried dinners but were keen to make it to Talkeetna’s historic Roadhouse breakfast joint for beefy slices of homemade bread over sumptuous garlic eggs, thick bacon and fried potatoes. For the 13 hours sauntering back to base camp past all 5 camps it had taken 8 days to reach on the way in, my mouth watered with the thought of a hot, fully hydrated breakfast, and my clammy skin itched for a real shower, not just a snow scrub. In the low light at 2:30 am, an approaching solo silhouette looked out of place in the massive glacial expanse. I considered avoiding him as I assumed soloists are in it for the solitude, but he marched right up to us and said, “I’m Andrew from Pennsylvania. May I ask you a few questions?” Then he launched into a 25 minute interrogation about such piddly details as where the camps were located, how he might deal with falling in a crevasse if no one was around and his cell phone didn’t work, and proposed overly optimistic travel times. We learned he had spent 8 hours just getting his lumbering ill-packed load less than 2 miles up the glacier from base camp, and had spent the previous 10 hours asking the rangers questions then arguing with them about their advice. They said they hoped he at least made it through the crevassed section to the 14,000 ft camp so they wouldn’t have to put their necks out for him and so that Joe, the no nonsense 14,000 ft camp manager, could set him straight. We’d seen a Russian at the 14,000 ft camp who impossibly carried at least a dozen 12 packs in his belly to that rare air altitude, and a flouncy girl adorned with a blingy belt demanding that everyone worship the snow angels she created on the ground. Additionally, we watched three Bozeman, MT ski patrollers carry 30 days of food to 14,000 camp (and at least that much weed) then immediately ski unroped through crevassed terrain. One fell soon after and broke his rib only to be air lifted out within a day of their arrival. Joe declined flying two other climbers out with mild altitude sickness telling them if they couldn’t handle the altitude, they should walk down.
The ranger Loomis warned us that four people had died in various circumstances this year, but that they didn’t expect us to have to worry about the Lunch Rock incident, where an unroped climber, leaping to save his gear, was the first to take a 2,000 ft sled ride to the bottom of the valley. Loomis said, “Hey, you shouldn’t have to tell people not to jump off the Empire State building” implying that the tennis court sized platform shouldn’t require caged guard rails to keep people safe. We had great respect for the dangers and we certainly watched where we placed our crampon laden boots so as not to put the rangers out, and most importantly, ourselves.
Upon reaching base camp at 5 am we were hustled to the upper glacier at 8 am to catch a tourist ‘flightseeing’ landing. The lower runway was frozen and rutted so, much to our chagrin, we had to climb one last hill, stuffing our blistered feet into the confounded plastic boots one more time. I was in serious need of a bathroom break so I scuttled behind some boxes awaiting removal. Just as I got situated, wrestling my under layers out from my single crotch zip, a couple popped out of the only tent in the vicinity calling to us, “Wow! Are you mountaineers? (She must have known by how I negotiated my drawers) We were hoping to meet your kind. We’re camped here for a night, training for Shasta, but we were told we can’t walk anywhere, though now we’ve seen you come safely from base camp we’re going to march right down there to meet some climbers!” The woman wore huge pearls and as the plane landed she eagerly grabbed our bags and helped us queue them at the plane’s cargo door. While the pilot was packing our things and asking how our trip went, a zealous glacier explorer took herself a half mile up the glacier, past the marked off zone into crevassed terrain before the pilot noticed and frantically called her back. As wrinkled noses passed our ripe bodies while climbing back into the plane, the pilot said to us quietly, “Without being watched, these people only have about a 15 minute lifespan here.” Soaring over steep precipices adorned with snow and chossy rock-covered ultra-technical faces, I thought, “Put me in the wrong place out here, and I’d give myself less than 10.”
Despite our stellar weather streak and the relatively large crowds, I was surprised to discover that Denali is still in a wild stunning setting and with our poop bags we chucked into designated crevasses according to protocol, we left our hearts and our resolve to return someday, if only to drink wine at the swanky Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge and gaze out at the mountain, if we happen to catch it during the 25% of the time it’s visible.
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