“Denali – A Love Story” John Anderson

2DENALI—A LOVE STORY

John Anderson | 2nd Place

As we ascended from the Kahiltna Glacier, a constant 20 mph wind had been banging away at us for the better of six hours. The day had been a slog. This was day fve of our climb as we moved of the top of the 11,000 foot glacier trying to reach the safety of the upper base camp 2 at fourteen (14,000 feet). The ultimate goal was to summit Mt. Denali (McKinley), North America’s tallest peak. The big mountain tops out at 20,320 feet and was so massive it could create its own weather system. Its land mass is the size of the state of Delaware. The climb was not a technical climb, per se, such as Everest or K-2, where ropes and carabiners and ladders were involved. It was more of an assault, with long sustained days of walking. And because the mountain was so far north, the oxygen levels were extremely low and extremely dangerous the higher we climbed. The slow ascent was designed to allow climbers’ bodies to acclimate to the thin air.

Our client group was made up of fve fat cat oil executives from Texas. They were paying $20,000 each for their great life’s adventure of reaching the top of the mountain. Theirs was a world of ego, a world where money equaled power. You could almost see them sitting around their clubs after their adventure, crowing to anyone who would listen. They rubbed me the wrong way from the moment I met them. “Alaska ain’t so tuf. Why, we thought about breakin’ up some of that mountain and usin’ it for ice cubes to pour our bourbon over,” cackled Tilman, their team leader. He was a tall, imposing man with a crooked nose and a crooked personality, whose swagger told everyone HE was in charge. As he bit of the end of one of his Cuban cigars, he surveyed the landscape. “We should be up and down in about seven, eight days. Right, son?” he asked me. “I promised my wife we’d be in Paris by the end of the month.” I didn’t respond. I nodded politely and shook my head as I walked away. A normal climb took between twelve to fourteen days. We were at an age I was one of three assistant guides. All of us just a whisker under thirty. Alaska at the time was a young of self-discovery, state… in many ways, as were we. It had been a state for just over twenty years. The population was young searching I guess for some greater meaning too; the average age was 26. Alaska was just getting its traction as an economic giant. The Trans-Alaska Oil to life. Pipeline had just come online, and all that oil money was starting to pump through the economy. We were at an age of self-discovery, searching I guess for some greater meaning to life.

Marta, our frst guide, was a German immigrant. She was stocky, confdent, strong, and had a no-nonsense demeanor. She had no fear. None. The other assistant guide was a woman named Ellen. She had a personality that matched her red hair; a little fre, but not too much, just enough to let you know she meant business. She had long pig tails. She smiled with her eyes, which were bright blue and, in combination with her hair, always seemed to make you feel happy. She’d once managed a team of sled dogs for the New Zealand Science Team at the South Pole.

I was a thrill-seeking scientist new to Alaska. My biological research career, however, was in the past tense. It pained my mother, the nurse, horribly that my fve years of college earning a science degree had foated away like smoke from a campfre, gone on the wind. Nevertheless, on the frst day of the climb, perched on a mountain glacier at 7,300 feet above sea level fanked by two neighboring peaks towering well over 17,000 feet, it was not hard to I felt as though I was get a sense of being insignifcant in this world. I felt as though I was the luckiest guy on Earth. It just made me the luckiest guy on feel alive. earth. It just made me

Our team leader was a barrel-chested Swiss immigrant feel alive. named Claud LaMay. He was 35, had a big black beard, an oversized personality, and had pretty much written the book on how to guide a successful climb of Mt. Denali. He was a legend in his own time. LaMay was always the frst out of the tent in the morning. He was a born leader and if there was a problem, he was always… always the frst to respond. As assistant guides, we were essentially chief cooks and bottle washers for the expedition. Our job was to set up and break down camp, melt snow, and cook. We also had to make sure the oil boys were happy, make sure they got their money’s worth, and make sure they made it to the top. This was my second trip up the mountain. It was Ellen’s and Marta’s frst. The camp at 14 had an NPS (National Park Service) presence. There was a radio communications tent and a medical research team. The camp was situated in a football sized feld where climbing parties could R & R, lick their wounds from the frst part of the climb, and get ready for the assault on the summit. As we dragged into camp, LeMay began barking orders. “Get the tents sent up over there behind that little ridge. It will give us a break from the wind. I’ll report into the Ranger Station,” he said as he pulled ice chunks of of his thick black whiskers. “I’ll get a weather report for tomorrow.” The three of us got the tents up and began melting snow to cook the evening meals. “I’m worried about that Tom guy,” Ellen said as she wolfed down her dinner. “He could barely keep up the last few hours; he’s the weakest of the fve. He dropped his climbing poles four or fve times and fell at least twice.”

“I saw you back there,” I said. “Shit, there is no way he will make the big climb up that headwall tomorrow. That SOB should not be out here. He’s twenty pounds overweight and out of shape.” “What was LaMay thinking, allowing that guy out here?” Ellen moaned. “He can’t seem to breathe very well, either.” “Every day he’s worse than the day before,” I said. I had a bad feeling in my bones. “We are going to have to haul this guy’s sorry ass up the big hill tomorrow.” Five days into the climb and all of the bravado had gone out of the Texans. About seven the next morning as we were preparing breakfast, one of the oil guys poked his head out of his tent and started screaming. “Help! Help! Somebody get over here now!” As I got to the tent, I could see the guy was panicked. His dark eyes darted back and forth from me to the inside of the tent and back again. His face was beet red, and he spit as much as he screamed. “Something’s wrong with Tom! Something’s wrong with Tom!”

A minute later Ellen skidded up to the side of the tent. She calmed the guy down, got him out of the tent, and led him over to where LaMay was rolling up his sleeping bag. When she got back, she scrunched into the tent next to me. I looked straight at Ellen, shook my head and mumbled the words, “This guy’s dead. He’s not breathing, he’s got no heartbeat, and he’s as white as a ghost. He’s dead.” A deafening silence hung in the air between us for a very long minute. “You better go get LaMay,” I grunted. “He is going to have to deal with this.” We passed the next two hours trying to stay busy. We dealt with the four remaining Texans, who were really spooked, while LeMay sorted things out with the medical teams and the Park Service. The weather was down and combined with the thin air at 14, there was no hope for helicopter support to remove the body. “Park Service says these weather conditions will hold for the next fve to seven days,” LaMay said. “No chance of getting any air support for the foreseeable future. We can climb, but they can’t fy.” It was decided that LeMay and the four oilmen, along with Marta, would try for the summit. There was still $80,000 worth of climbing deposits in play, so the group would continue. It would be up to Ellen and me to descend back to Base Camp 1 at 7,000 feet with Tom’s body. “I’m not sure I can do this,” Ellen said. “Jesus Christ, it’s going to take us two full days to get down. We’ve got a dead guy wrapped up like a mummy tied into this small toboggan. The weather is shit. This is going to be a real test,” she growled. I didn’t answer. I just looked at her, shook my head, looked at the ground, kicked a pile of snow, and walked of. I knew this was going to be a test. I knew Ellen in only a casual sort of way before this climb. We had mutual friends but didn’t travel in the same circle. I shared the same fear, but somehow, I trusted her and was pretty sure that we could do this. It would have to be a team efort. By late morning, we were of.

The frst hour went well. The mid-day clouds helped warm the temperatures into the mid-20s. Winds were light as we started our descent. But as we rounded the shoulder of the ridge called Windy Corner, the wind picked up the light snow on the trail she would help steer. I was behind, with rope taut to keep the sled in a controlled descent. Part way down the ice feld, the 200-pound sled began to slide sideways. It kept jerking me of my feet, bashing me down onto the ice. We would slide twenty or thirty feet, which would in turn pull on Ellen’s rope, knocking her over as well. We had to jam our ice axes into the icy side hill to arrest our slide. Once stopped, we would start again only to have it happen again and again. This went on for over two hours. When we fnally made it of the ice feld to the snow-covered glacier, we collapsed into a giant snowbank, out of the wind. “We’ve got another twelve hours down this damn snow feld to base camp,” Ellen snarked. “Tomorrow is going to kick our asses. Let’s take a thirty-minute break, eat something, and try to make another two hours before we quit for the night.” I didn’t say a word. I was pissed at the world. My right knee was swollen and sore. I’d been knocked around and dragged for the past three hours. Here we were risking our lives dragging this goddamn dead Texan who had more money than sense, down North America’s tallest peak. What the hell am I doing out here? I screamed to myself. Two hours later as we made camp, I set up the tent while Ellen melted snow and cooked what was a tasteless, dehydrated noodle something or other. Between us, we drank a warm half gallon of Tang, the sickly-sweet orange favored circus water concoction that was invented for the early astronauts. To this day, I cannot even stand to look at it. We crawled into our sleeping bags, and I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. We were on the trail early the next morning. Overnight, four inches of snow had fallen, and by 10 am the wind had picked up again. We were now in a mini ground blizzard. Ellen was still roped to the toboggan. She was about twenty feet ahead of me. She would disappear into a cloud of snow for as long as ten minutes at a time. I’d get a glimpse of her red parka coming in and out of the whiteness ahead. Sometimes the tug on the rope was the only thing that told me she was still there. By now the dead oil man strapped into the toboggan had long ceased to be anything but cargo. As callous as it may seem, we were concentrating only on ourselves. We were both pushing our own limits. We snacked on dried fruits, nuts, and granola bars, eating on the move, not stopping as we struggled down the mountain—Ellen still leading the way. The Kahiltna Glacier is a dangerous place. It is a large bowl, anywhere from a half mile to four miles wide and forty some miles long. It’s flled with deep unseen crevasses that were covered by snow bridges. The trail skirted big avalanche felds that roll of Mt. Hunter and Mt. Foraker, fanning into the valley. Ellen was like a bloodhound on the path of an escaped convict. She never varied. How she stayed on that trail I will never know.

After almost twelve hours, just before dark, we struggled up the last little hill into the Kahiltna Base Camp. The rangers took our cargo, gave us a big meal, and stufed us into our sleeping bags in the back corner of the medical tent. We didn’t say more than fve words to each other.

The next day we learned from the camp at 14,000 that LaMay and the oil execs had experienced worse weather. Upset by the death of their friend and dangerous weather conditions, they’d canceled their summit attempt and were on their way down. We were ordered to wait for their return. Ellen and I spent the next two days relaxing, reading, talking, and catching up on sleep. Less than a week later, of the mountain, we were back in Anchorage eating very greasy food of of real plates with knives and forks instead of eating glops of rehydrated mush out of bags with plastic spoons. Quite a luxury. We learned that Tom had died of acute pulmonary edema, a not uncommon cause of death attributed to the thin air on the mountain.

This was my last trip as a mountain guide. I reevaluated things and started a small construction business building homes, a much safer occupation. This was my last trip LaMay continued his guiding career on Denali. He died two years later, on the slopes of Mt. Everest after his as a mountain guide. team had made the summit. The remaining Texans few home, without the ice of Mt. Denali for their bourbon. As for Ellen, she stayed in Alaska. She expanded her engineering degree and created the science and math program at a career and technical school just north of Anchorage. We were married a year later. At last report, we were living Happily Ever After.