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Published: April 6th 2012
Upper Buttress
Evening light on the upper West Buttress just below high camp.Years ago, in what can now be called youth, my comrade Eliot and I struck out for Alaska one spring as the Sierra melted out. I had an injured ankle but figured that I could stuff the thing into a kayak if nothing else. We worked at a greasy spoon in the Kenai, paddled the local coasts and rivers, clambered around the peaks of the Chugach, and lived off "da fatta da lan". After a few months of smelling like a hamburger, one day the axe just fell and we headed for the great north with scarcely more beta than what could be garnered from a few conversations with a retired long-haul trucker named Norm. Thanks Norm.
We took the Haul Road for the Brooks range and climbed the first big, imposing ridge traverse we could get on about 15 overland clicks south of Atigun Pass. Our minds were blown. Modern legislation has cordoned off countless hectares of designated "wilderness" terrain in the lower 48 but even long days spent in such environments cannot prepare one for the first moment when the very concept of wilderness makes itself so clearly defined. The North slope is a space full of beauty
with subtleties that must be experienced to appreciate. Like vast deserts, the steppes, grasslands, and the high alpine, that place has an aesthetic that is strongly environmental; full immersion is required. Thus, places like the deserts and the tundra fall into the ups and downs of obscurity. Few people will ever know this landscape, so fewer people will ever know its true value.......
We left the depressing, other worldly industrial hum of Deadhorse at 0200 and drove all the way to Denali. Our plans were humble enough we thought. With way too much gorp and massive beards we headed out for the Muldrow glacier. We had hoped to climb one of the lesser peaks off the lower glacier but a string of small yet potent disasters (which included a bad fall in the Mckinley river, torrential rain, and an unexplained super-high fever) shot us down in our prime. One morning, however, for perhaps three minutes (maybe four) the weather cleared between us and the massive spectacle of Denali, high in the clouds. It was like those cheap paintings in religious paraphernalia that suggest the presence of the center of the universe from which something profound
might descend. Only it actually was profound. In those moments the mountain spelled out quite clearly a message that was both humbling and uplifting. It was confirmation of all we had gained from our summer of rambling. We were awakened and defeated. It was time to go home.
A year ago, stepping onto a windless summit of Denali, I looked down on that spot by the Muldrow where I sat that morning. It seemed so close and yet I knew it was so, so far. Big summit pushes have a way of simplifying your emotional priorities. When you top out, it is easy to let it all go and big tears freeze in the squeeky snow, if not in the air above it. We had been holed up at high camp on the West Buttress for eight days waiting out a stack of wind events and we were not strong. Today was movement day, either up or down. For days we had watched our fellow climbers pick up their camps and bail with only small weather windows to do so. Their rations simply began to run out and they made the only reasonable choice. We
had a long supply of rations and fuel but we had another reason not to bail: we couldn't. With just two people of greatly different sizes on a short rope, the way down was no place to be in 100 km/h winds.
Our trip began as Tahoe Nord, a party of three climbers. Our third was Josef, a nordic skier with a keen interest in climbing Denali. Collectively we put the trip together over a couple of months. For Allison and I this was actually quite simple. No visas, just one objective, only a month, no tropical diseases, etc.... For Josef, with a full time job, and little previous expedition experience, the planning was a massive endeavor in and of itself. He also undertook event specific training and research for the trip and hand built/modified much of his system. With way too much gear we descended on the home of one Jim Sprott on the outskirts of Anchorage. Jim was a friend of a friend who could provide a place for us to flake out gear. A veteran of many Alaska climbs and more than a few epics, Jim was full of information and he and his cat Mallory thoroughly inspected our gear and gave us the "take less shit" feedback. We did pull quite a bit but we still hit the Kahiltna landing strip with way too much food. Much of it we cached in a big duffel right there at 7200'.
Our trip started on a warm, sunny day with a fresh thirty centimeters of snow covering the Lower Kahiltna. David from Sheldon Air Service had touched us down oh so smoothly the day before. Sheldon is sort of the new underdog in Talkeetna and the owners, David and Holly aim to please. We used their hanger to flake gear under the watchful eye of Don Sheldon's Super Cub, enjoyed David's enthusiasm for flying, and Holly's cookies! Holly is the Daughter of Don Sheldon and seems genuinely happy to keep the family trade alive.
Beyond the airstrip, there was little sign of heavy climbing activity on the route. Only a few groups had started before us and their tracks were mostly obscured by the fresh powder. The Alaska Range saw an abnormally low amount of snow last season and we had a good idea how thin the snow bridges were under the fresh dry blanket of obscurity. Rangers at base camp warned of multiple crevasse falls in the few groups who had gone ahead. We were all on alert and we made our way to the base of ski hill with great caution and attentiveness. Looking around at the few camps it was fair to say that we were aquainted with virtually everyone on the Kahiltna at that time. At this point in a climb, few are thinking about disaster as hopes are usually high but there was a strangely solemn air to the place as we all knew full well how little snow and how much ice lay ahead. That aside, none would have guessed that in the next month several of our newly found aquaintances would depart this life in rapid fashion.....
The first day was a bit of a kick in the pants. The fresh snow was cold and squeeky offering a maximal amount of friction against the bottoms of our heavy sleds. We single carried all of our gear until ski hill rose above us and made camp in deteriorating conditions. Allison and I were happy for every lap we skinned in the previous winter as we slowly progressed under stout loads. For the two of us, this was kind of another day in the park, albeit a pretty awesome park! Remote location, deep cold, big mountains, small frail humans.... Nothing new and all things well, essentially. For our team mate on the other hand, the experience, the environment, the remoteness, and the exhaustion combined to make the situation look a bit overwhelming. When we woke in the morning, he had been up for hours deliberating over a difficult decision. He had "that gut feeling" and it was time to bail. A large guided group was returning to Base for supplies and gladly gave him a ride on the end of their rope. At the time Allison and I were not shocked but a bit surprised. As the trip went on, however, we saw that he made a nice decision for himself and the team. We appreciated his role as a talisman in the conception of the trip and were satisfied to have had him on board, if only as an accomplice through the planning phases. While it was sad to watch him disappear into the snow that morning, our sadness was mostly for him as we knew full well our strength as a team of two. We spent the day downsizing our gear as the snow fell hard in big flakes.
Our next move was up to the flats above ski hill. We were double carrying now, meaning that we would move half the gear on one day and come back down to sleep before moving the rest of the camp, ideally, the next day. This is a tricky process as it is easy to become separated from needed gear in bad weather but skis made this process fun and expediant as we glided back down with empty packs aftering burrying caches of bacon and benzine under a meter of snow high above. At 9400 feet we found a nice camp freshly built and occupied by the first ranger patrol of the season. They suggested that if we were to stay there we would have the whole built camp to ourselves and so we did. For two nights we had the whole place, the whole massive view, and a deep cooking pit all to ourselves as we carried equipo to 11000 Camp. Many large seracs were collapsing as the days grew warmer and this made for brilliant displays of power on the slopes of adjacent peaks. One such collapse triggered a slide that ran to within 100 meters of our friends Broccoli and Rice while they camped below Kahiltna pass but, surprisingly, neither wizzed in their pants.
At 11000 Camp we found a few fresh, vacant campsites and our first dose of tent bound weather. After a day of chocolate pancakes and bacon we carried supplies to windy corner and returned in a short break in the weather. The next day found us moving in high winds with the rest of our gear. We had cached sleds, skis, and food at the corner but it had not been enough. Our packs were big and we moved slowly in windy conditions. At the corner conditions were boilerplate but the imposing rib of the Lower West Buttress cut off the wind like a valve and we sat for a break at the cache spot in calm evening weather. When we returned the next day to back-carry our cache up to camp, we found it to be far too light. Much of the gear that weighed us down on our move to 14200 Camp could have been cached, live and learn.....and sweat and grunt and cuss! Caching is an integral part of the West Buttress experience. The park service has tried successfuly to increase accountability and reduce the number of abandoned caches by issuing cache tags which are affixed to wands at the cache sites. This and other measures such as the much adored Clean Mountain Can seem to have made strides in preserving the quality of this very heavily trodden route.
On the move to 14200 we encountered a few parties descending from summit attempts. None had been successful, mostly due to weather, and a few had lost group members who had to be evacuated. We arrived in the 14200 basin to find several empty sites along with a large group site being shaped to fit by a friendly group from The American Alpine Institute. Despite an impending wind prognosis several groups had ascended to high camp and planned to summit the following day. The days that followed brought gusty conditions to camp at times but nothing like the reports we were hearing from the higher mountain where a disaster was unfolding. The details of the accident are best saved for this year's official reports from the AAC but the spectacle of helicopters attempting to extract casualties from the uppermost reaches of the mountain while a C-130 circled overhead was intense given the massive amount of spindrift pouring off the ridges. The feeling of responsibility on behalf of the park service and the rescuers involved is understandable but the extreme risks involved in such endeavors leave some to question the need to risk lives to recover corpses. In the end, one person with extensive, full thickness cold injuries was transported, alive, to Anchorage and another, deceased climber had presumably succumbed to exposure to temperatures of -35 C and 100 km/h winds. The lead guide in the group, who had extensive experience on Denali was treated for minor cold injuries and said that he was happy to have survived. He did not expect to. Throughout the day we noticed large pieces of snow blowing from the ridge above and later discovered that these were pieces of camp walls being blown away in the awesome power of the winds at high camp. In the morning several perfectly healthy teams were packing up and leaving for the airstrip. The sight of a limp body flying away on a long line beneath the NPS (A-Star) bird did not sit well with some and camp became a more lonely place. As the helicopter flew away that night, I was sharing a conversation with an older Italian climber named Luciano. He was no stranger to such things and shrugged it off as just another day in the mountains as he downed a last sip of tea and slipped into his one man tent......
We spent our days in 14200 taking light walks, preparing gear for high camp, and eating things with bacon. We took the first weather window to push a cache up to the top of the fixed lines at 16200. This involved a few hours of leisurly climbing followed by an hour of intense hacking sessions divided by breaks spent gasping for breath in a tripod position. There was very little snow on the Buttress and picking a hole into the ice with a tool was a worker, even next to big granite boulders. None the less, we were determined to bury our cache deep as ravens have been known to shred food supplies, even at this altitude. The climb to the cache opened up a new world of views down into the Peters amphitheatre. The sights are stunning from most vantage points on Denali but on the actual buttress, one can see what seems like half of the state of Alaska, down the barrells of several massive, heavily glaciated rifts, and out onto the endless tundra, dotted with lakes. We were excited to move and two days later we did.
The ridge above the fixed lines offers some of the only real exposure on the route and it is quite a perch. The going is just interesting enough to not feel like a plod as you weave through lovely granite boulders on hard snow and plastic ice with a thousand meters of relief curling off several meters to each side. We moved steadily, clipped protection, and caught up with some friends from a guided group at Washburn's thumb. Allison and I had been on a sixty meter 9.1mm rope on the heavily crevassed lower glacier to compensate for our massive weight difference, but here we were running a thirty meter piece of 8mm rescue line to save weight. We joined up with our friends as weather was deteriorating. Together, we had enough slings and clips to run protection and thus give confidence to the less steady in the group. The feeling of rock in our hands, the absolutely stunning views at our feet, and the heady feel of altitude combined to make this section one of our favorites, but we were loaded heavily and we would later pay the price.
Allison carried a massive amount of gear and did not meet her caloric, electrolyte, and hydration needs. In camp at 17200' we ate some potatoes and bacon from breakfast along with some power snacks but it was not enough. In the morning, as we built camp, she began an all too familiar cycle of vomiting, trying to re hydrate, and vomiting again. Her energy bubble immediately deflated but she showed no signs of severe altitude illness, only a need for water and food and an age old paradoxical resistance to consuming anything orally. We took small steps and by evening she had successfully kept down her first half packet of Emergen"C" and a cup or so of water along with a few bites of real food. I took a few moments from building snow walls to discuss the weather and the strategy with a ranger who had just arrived before us. This was the same group we had been moving with since the beginning. As we were chatting we watched a limp body slide from Denali Pass and down the entirety of the "Autobahn". The fallen climber came to a rest among crevasses in the upper reaches of the Peters glacier. None of the three of us harbored much hope for survival with this individual but we moved calmly into action. Altitude like this forces one to act slowly and deliberately, and we did just that as we began the task of making enough water and gathering enough ready-to-eat food to sustain us through a long, drawn out recovery. I packed my full med kit at the request of the ranger team but I did not expect to use it, at least not on the behalf of the fallen climber we had witnessed. Thousand foot falls over rough, icy, heavily featured terrain are not often survived and we were mindful of this as we proceeded, with caution, into the situation.
An 18 hour weather break was rapidly ending as we began to extract the body of our buddy Luciano from the upper Peters. He had only been on the mountain for seven days at this point and had been warned at several points to slow down his rate of ascent. His team had been retreating from a failed summit attempt in high winds when they arrived at Denali Pass. His teammates urged him to tie into their rope for the descent on icy terrain as self arrest was virtually impossible. He shrugged them off, took a few dozen steps, and took a fatal fall. I managed the protection and basic route finding for the recovery team which amounted to pickets that had to be pounded into icy struggi with a two kilo sledge hammer. A pleasure it was to be on a rope with a team of professionals. We moved slowly, deliberately, and systematically through the hazards of the terrain. The level of communication was excellent and we were able to greatly mitigate the risks implied in having such a large team in open terrain. We pulled the sled into camp and, not finding a body bag in the emergency cache, deposited our comrade's body into his tight one man tent. His fellow Italians were rather resolved with the situation and advisably made use of the last hours of suitable weather to descend the ridge. It is important to note here that many gave Luciano the benefit of the doubt due to his age (67) and extensive big mountain experience. Unfortunately for him, the physical world is a little more stoic than that and his moment came. Let us only hope that his last ride was a good one.
The storm that followed was a bit ferocious and sent us all into a frenzy of wall building and restoration. There were only four camps at this point: a guided group, two Frenchies, the rangers, and us. Everyone else had bailed in the face of a weather forecast of doom. Who could blame them? At 17200 feet, high camp is not the most inviting and hospitable of locales, especially in comparison to the sunny, calm 14200 basin which feels like the womb in comparison to the wind swept, frozen piss cone dotted moonscape below Denali pass. Ideally, a smart team would try to come up there with a three day window in order to move, summit, and jam back down to the beach. We knew that we would not get a window like that and we wanted to be poised to summit when a suitable time came. We had eight days worth of food with us and a descending group gave us a bit more. As the days went by the other teams began to run out of food, time, or both and descend. Our hearts went out to them as they were embarking on a sad task in high winds on an exposed ridge. For a day it was only the rangers and us and then three ghosts appeared on the top of the Autobahn. They were a Muldrow Traverse trip that had become estranged from their food caches and sleds at the top of the pass. We took turns watching as the team slowly descended to camp using fixed belays. It was painfully slow to watch but with the wind coughing up gusts well over 100 km/h, we could understand. As I sat there in our latrine, watching them slowly descend through a peephole in the wall, I had the tenuous feeling that they were going to fall. When they arrived in camp we were all relieved. None of us wanted any part of a rescue in those conditions and we were obviously "it". We welcomed them to town with a flurry of wall building just as the sustained winds began to sharply intensify. In the morning the walls were leveled. The three camps took turns building walls for each other which we doubled in thickness and buttressed. The previous nights wind had moved torso sized snow blocks across camp and a few had landed on tent occupants as they slept...or tried to. Our single wall tent was rigid and stout. We did not have to worry so much about the wind, especially with our meter thick double snow walls. What we did have to concern ourselves with was the danger of cooking in a small tent. It was a concentrated effort but the weather shot down any attempt we made at brewing up outside. There were no incidents and we were able to maintain ventilation but we are both fully cognizant of the fact that we took a considerable risk. Besides the sketchy cooking we had a pretty constant chore of clearing our tent of frost. This and a few books were our entertainment as we waited out a rack of storms. But as the days passed Allison's health improved and we became more comfortable as we went about our daily tasks. There was no denying that so much down time at high camp had taken it's tole on our strength and reserves but mentally we were coming around to an attitude cotangent with success. Just then, the weather began to clear.
A few teams arrived late in the evening of our seventh day at 17200. A forecast for decreasing winds was beginning to come true and many agitated teams, some of whom had been waiting at 14200 for ten days or more, had finally moved up. Many of the people we had met in the lower camps were not among them as they had long since passed the point of turning back to meet the typical 21 day time frame. Camp was inflated with human energy as we all made preparations for the morrow. It was probably going to be the best day to summit in weeks and we all knew that we were in a good position for success. On the morning of May 23rd we packed up for the final push as the day came on. Of the seven rangers in the patrol only two decided to attempt the summit, despite the ideal conditions. The rest were battered by days of sedate, subtle illness in a very cold, high place. We could relate but we knew we had something more to give and so off we went. The two volunteer rangers took a few pickets to fix on the new line up and around the bergshrund in the middle of dar Autobahn. I also took a few to fix and we teamed up to place a string of pickets at thirty meters spacing all the way to Denali Pass. This made running protection a no-brainer and gave us a bit of confidence for the descent, where we planned to have no brains. To say the least, we did not feel like champions as we moved. Many days at high camp had certainly weakened us and Allison was just regaining her strength from the illness of several days past. Our oxygen saturation readings were in the mid nineties, presumably from the many days of light (mostly wall building) activity, but our energy levels were decidedly low. Fatigue and acclimatization have a relationship that is noticeable and it is often difficult to differentiate between the effects of the two.
Just after reaching Denali Pass we joined up with two guys from Iceland with EXTREMELY different fitness levels. NPS staff had asked me to keep an eye out for these two as they were leaving at the same time as us despite recommendations from the rangers to recover for the day. The two had stumbled into camp at 03:00 with Siggi, the smaller and fitter, carrying his own load as well as a load he was ferrying for his exhausted partner Balter. Shortly after our convergence at Zebra Rock, Balter decided to turn back. Due to the icy conditions, our physical condition, and the recent events Allison and I travelled with our half length of 8 mil tied in short. Siggi was more than happy to tie in with us and proceed, slowly, to the summit.
Pig Hill was covered in the only snow we had seen in a week. Looking out over the Football Field, it was crazy to picture an A-Star touching down here with the wind pushing 40 knots and taking off with a 200 kilo payload. When I consider the risk/benefit perspective, such rescues seem, at best, heroic but more so, quite inane. On the other hand..... being the rescuer on the end of a long line soaring high above the range as the headwall drops out from under you seems pretty epic indeed! As we crested the ridge the whole world seemed silent. It was 20:00 and the three of us were alone in a very popular and glorious place. We passed and clipped several deply frozen pickets on the walk up the ridge. To our right, the world dropped away for thousands of meters down the south face and the range beyond was turning a deep shade of pink in the long, evening light. I could see other places I had been on the north side and imagined that is was possible to see the whole world. As I stepped up onto the summit block I dropped down on my knees and cried. I had given so much to be there, more than any other peak in my life actually, and had it been required of me to somehow give more...It would have been worth it and then some.
As I recovered from the experience of seeing such a marvelous sight I found myself a seat beside some old fixed pickets and tied in. I then anchored a locker to the pickets and started bringing Allison in on a Munter. When she reached me and sat down I tied her in as well and started belaying for Siggi on a new Munter. All of this might seem overkill, and it is, but leaving anything to chance was not in my repetoir at that point......I'll leave it at that. Just as Siggi approached the summit he classically stabbed his left crampon into his right boot and promptly fell off the South Face. I can imagine how that moment must have felt with that piece of 8 mil stretching out to dental floss and lots of sharp things in play. He climbed back up onto the summit on his hands and knees panting and laughing. We were happy to know each other and be together.
We descended slowly and roped up for anything that constituted injurous exposure. We felt like the only people in the world as the sun set over the tundra at 02:00. From just above high camp a thousand lakes out on the horizon turned hot pink and we felt the precious light of the mountain bless us as we slogged to our tents and collapsed.
Allison and I spent the next day leisurly picking up camp and aggressively digging up icy deadman anchors. We also helped several groups set things up and took photos for people with big piss cones in the background. The next morning we headed down not knowing that we would move almost non stop to the airstrip. We had a few caches to chip out along the way and we travelled cotangent with the Icelanders through the next night. The skiing was nice and fast on the soft new snow of the lower Kahiltna and we were able to pull far enough ahead to start brewing up in an old kitchen pit at 9400 feet and prep a meal for our mates. We all made water, drank hot beverages, and consumed a kilo of smoked King salmon that I had been defrosting in my bibs since 14,200 with some pilot bread. It was a meal our Nordic friends could appreciate and we all decided to take a half hour "sniper nap" as Siggi put it.
Our nap was cut short by the thump of the A-Star moving fast and low. After a half hour it returned, only to fly back again for another lap. By now we were seeing the first traces of the early rosy-fingered dawn and we wanted to get to the base of Heartbreak Hill before the sun hit the thin bridges. We rolled into camp in the morning to some pretty sad news. Those two flights we witnessed carried two severely injured clients from a guided group. The guide and the last of her three clients were found deceased at the bottom of the autobahn. All were roped together and unprotected. With the new line of fixed pickets in place it seems that her group traversed out onto the slope far below the pro and failed to ascend to make the clip. They were proably exhausted. Allison and I had shared a simuntaneous 'gulp' when they walked into high camp the day before. They seemed like extra needy clients and she was tending to them in every way possible. We saw a lot of clients like that in those four weeks and it always made me glad to be travelling with my tough, lovely partner as opposed to a group of strangers of inferior strength who expect a guide to somehow take the place of personal worthiness. In reviewing that recovery with Rich, the attending paramedic, he noted that he could ascertain little about the exact and full nature of their injuries because he was too distracted by their airway compromise. He did notice obvious signs of traumatic brain injury in all four climbers who, like Luciano Columbo, slid from high on Denali Pass to the Upper Peters. As Rich finished his story he looked at me across the table full of pancakes and subtlely patted his head. I patted back. In the whole length of the climb, Rich, Allison and I were the only three climbers consistently helmeted. Traditions tell otherwise, but traditions are for warm, cozy campfires and churches.... and they are always trumped by reality.
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Tot: 0.162s; Tpl: 0.018s; cc: 19; qc: 82; dbt: 0.0846s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
Jim Sprott
non-member comment
glad to read of your trip
I was glad to read of your trip. I was suprised that Josep turned back. He looked incredibly fit. Just probably wasn't what he expected. I am glad that I could be of assistance in Anchorage. It sounded like an epic trip and reminded me me of my trips up Denali when I was a little younger and of my work as a volunteer ranger on the mt. on several occassions. Makes me tired just reading about it. Unfortunately, my cat, Mallory, died a few months ago (old age) and I got a kick out of you mentioning him checking out your gear. You did have a lot of shit. I will never climb Denali again, but am planning another back packing trip in the park in Aug.- probably Wonder Lake across Mogonagul pass. You are welcome to stay here again if ever needed. My friend Karen and I are buying a second home in CA so maybe will see you in Lake Tahoe for some skiing tjhis winter.