Denali

Denali 2021: The Road to Talkeetna

May 26, 2021

I landed in Anchorage to blue skies and a light breeze. The sun never really sets in Alaska in the summer. It just kind of rolls around the sky and ducks behind the mountains surrounding the coast line for about three and a half hours, which would explain why everyone moves slowly. Anchorage has a laid back quietness about it. Seven cars at a traffic light is gridlock.

All the big climbers are rolling in from the US and Europe. The season which in April and ends in July when the crevasse bridges on the Kahiltna start to warm and become unstable. You can tell the guides at the airport, they are usually between 30 and 45, slim, tanned, unshaven with an uneasy soft gaze that comes from trying to make sense of it all after splendid isolation in the wilderness. The banshee screams for solitude in the middle of an airport, or a city center for that matter, even Anchorage where the seagulls drown out the traffic. You can spot them wearing flips flops or sandals that ease feet disfigured from years of blisters and wet boots.

Sunshine is a rare commodity in this part of the world. I’m closer to Russia than Seattle which gives me an unsettling feeling for some reason, even though there is more military in this state than native Americans who some seem to struggle with modern society here. Alaska is not for the weak; a great place to avoid support warrants and gun charges, most of the probation fugitives from the lower 48 live in the small four room shacks buried under snow from September to April. It’s a tough place to be homeless, but there’s many here, more than you would think for a town under freeze for 9 months. The locals don’t seem to mind. after all there is plenty of room and maybe 20 days a year can actually be spent completely outside for a 18 hour summer day.

The climb begins with a 3 hour drive to Talkeetna, the end of the railroad line before the Alaska Range divides the coastal plain from the interior plateau and eventually the tundra of the arctic circle. Main Street in Talkeetna dead ends into the Susitna River, a glacial runoff almost half a mile wide and running a good 15 knots flowing to Anchorage. From a sand bluff overlooking the river you can see her on a clear day dressed in a white veil of snow and clouds.

Tomorrow we will board a turbo propelled, retro fitted ski plane and land near the Kahiltna Glacier to start packing sleds for the pull up a frozen river on a hopefully frozen crevasse field where we will start acclimatizing for the weeks ahead. Tonight, I am content to just watch the Great Denali from the distant last outpost on the Alaska plain.

Denali 2021: Random Thoughts from the Coldest Mountain on Earth.

May 25, 2021

The old Sikh La hired to drive me to the airport was a sure sign that I was on the right path letting go of the past year. “Everything changes” he said with a slight Mumbai dialect I imagined imparted an eastern wisdom.  He was right. Of course, it all changes, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, but it all changes and like the Tibetans say: to hold on to the past is silly.

It’s been a year since I found myself among the high snows of an angry Ecuador volcano in a nasty fight with SARS at 14,000 feet. A full year without climbing left me aged and a little heavier mentally and physically. It was a year of change and unsettling thoughts every night at 3 am that arise in the unsettled mind of 55 year old father of teenager daughters in the age of ubiquitous media. This year brought endless reasons to live in fear: a viral fire-breathing dragon with matches, a president who advocated the medical benefits of bleach, Blackhawk helicopters that backwashed protestors in front of the White House, and cops with PTSD that shoot first and ask questions later. But, the greatest Kiwi climber since Sir Edmund Hillary, the Great Grassy, once explained in a tent on the Argentine Mendoza desert platte over a bowl of mule sausage:  “nothing to fear mate, up at dawn, fly to Alaska, land on a glacier, run crevasses, jolly time in freezing wind, diddly up to the roof of North America, diddly down, escape safely, back in time for tea and medals.”

We were lucky that very little actually touched us last year, not all were so fortunate. A few clouds from the forest fires out west last summer came through but listening to a combination of medical advice from the always intrepid LaLa and my mad friend, Doctor of Chemistry from UC Berkley, kept me off the ventilators, so far.

In the middle of it all, access to the great mountains closed. In July I signed up to make another run at the Great One, the coldest mountain on earth above 18,000 ft. It’s been 3 years since we retreated in high winds from 17k camp to catch the very last flight off the Khalitna Glacier before a ten day pressure system veiled the entire Alaska Range in moisture that not even the craziest Talkeetna bush pilot will fly in, unless the price is right. A week after our narrow escape that found me dragging a 250 lb thoracic surgeon from Alabama by a 70 meter rope up heartbreak hill with only seconds to spare, a Dehavalin Otter loaded with tourists flew into a mountain on the west side of the glacial airstrip we had taken off from.  According to the Park Service, they survived the crash but succumbed to the cold and months later were still there; a rescue operation was too precarious to retrieve bodies. But it’s 2021 and death by boredom, lung fluid or high blood pressure is no way to go out. 

I am scheduled for a 17 day expedition in Denali National Park where I will live in a tent on a frozen river until advanced base camp on the West Buttress, the rock spine of a million year old skyward collision of the earth’s plates. Although not as thin as the knife ridges of the Alps, the thoughts that run through your mind while looking over the other side of a rib 3 miles high can cause notable changes to brain chemistry and a sometimes involuntary shake in the inner knees. This is the vacation I have  chosen and like the good doctor says, you buy your ticket, you take the ride.

 “Why can’t you be normal” is a refrain I’ve heard for many years. I really don’t know why, but with old age and diminished cartilage comes a certain wisdom that  has convinced me that I don’t really need to know why. I have my tribe who called to wish me well with a countenance of happiness borne from the thoughts that one of us is going high after this crazy year. The crew reassured me that I’m not the only person who feels the need to see the roof of North America and better do it now. One can live more in 24 hours on the West Buttress than most live in a lifetime and after all, everything changes, you’ve got to keep on rollin.

Whether your name be Bixby, Buxbaum, Baily or Shaughnesy O’Bray

You are off to great places, today is your day

Your mountain is waiting

So be on your way.

• Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go.