Denali's Howl: The Deadliest Climbing Disaster on America's Wildest Peak Read online

  Later that morning, after Ranger Merry had left, their horse packer Berle Mercer stopped by the Wonder Lake campground and said he’d like to leave a day later. Wilcox thought an extra day of rest would do the expedition good. Everyone readily agreed.

  Wilcox, still ruminating over the dissenting opinions of his authority during the drive up and maybe Washburn’s letter, too, took advantage of the down day to call a meeting. He wanted to address leadership and organization concerns before they headed for McGonagall Pass and the Muldrow Glacier. “We seem to be a loose collection of individuals climbing the mountain separately,” he told them. Success would depend on their ability to work together and he pointed out that little work was getting done to prepare for their imminent departure.

  The response was notably muted. “No one even opens cans with gusto around here,” Walt Taylor said, agreeing with Wilcox. In contrast to the late-night team meeting back in Puyallup at the foot of Mount Rainier, Steve Taylor said almost nothing.

  They would be following the traditional route established by the Sourdough mountaineers fifty years before. But the Muldrow Glacier had surged a decade earlier and the sudden and swift—at least for a glacier—movement had left its surface a jumble of crevasses and ice blocks, making this route to the summit nearly impassable. The difficult passage forced climbers to seek alternate routes and subsequently, the West Buttress route on the other side of the mountain was becoming the preferred path to the summit. West Buttress climbers flew in from Talkeetna on the south side of the Alaska Range and landed at 7,400 feet. Though that route was easier, the cost of flying in a large expedition and all its gear was beyond the means of the young men who comprised the Wilcox Expedition.

  Though the Muldrow Glacier’s surge had slowed and its surface had smoothed itself out, the route remained longer, more difficult, and more dangerous. Three of the four men who had died on Denali met their ends there: two in crevasse falls on the Muldrow and another from a fall while descending Karstens Ridge at the top of the Muldrow. This was the route the group would follow.

  Berle Mercer, a fixture in the region since he came into the country during World War II, arrived the next day with his sons, Kirk, age thirteen, and Baxter, age sixteen, with a string of eight packhorses. Brown-haired and fit, Mercer was neither tall nor short at five foot ten and wore a ready smile that belied an intense and opinionated personality. He had been packing hunters, miners, and climbers throughout the region for two decades and was renowned for his knowledge of local plant life. He and his boys made quick work of the expedition’s gear, which weighed in at almost a ton, and set out for McGonagall Pass. Eight original Wilcox team members, along with Jerry Lewis from the Colorado group, headed out as well, each carrying 50-pound packs. Steve Taylor, for all his initial enthusiasm, was the last of the original Wilcox group to get to the mountain. He was sick to his stomach and waited with Snyder and Schlichter. They would hike in three days later when the Mercers returned for the rest of the gear.

  Baxter Mercer, now in his early sixties, still lives in Healy, just 20 miles from the park. The climbers didn’t seem much older than he was, but he didn’t interact with them beyond a few short conversations. “Dad told us they weren’t happy and to leave them alone. They all seemed to know what they were doing, but it was just like two groups of people that didn’t really want anything to do with each other.”

  Snow stopped the horses about 1,200 feet short of the 5,720-foot McGonagall Pass, so the loads were cached there and Wilcox and the other eight climbers began moving the food and gear up to Camp I on the edge of the Muldrow Glacier.

  The Mercers returned to Wonder Lake for the Colorado group’s supplies on June 22. Snyder described Steve Taylor’s demeanor during the wait at Wonder Lake as that of a man “in a continual state of depression,” and believes that Taylor was terrified by the sight of the mountain “and it was literally worrying him sick.” Schlichter agreed, saying, “I think psychologically he just wasn’t ready for this expedition and I’m not sure why he was there.” Once the horses were loaded, Snyder, Schlichter, and Steve Taylor shouldered their own 50-pound packs.

  The hike to McGonagall Pass did nothing to improve Taylor’s attitude or his health. Snyder and Schlichter quickly outpaced him, stopping to wait for longer and longer periods as Taylor moseyed along the trail. At one point he got lost and followed a caribou path up another valley. After Snyder and Schlichter tracked him down and pointed him toward McGonagall Pass, Taylor needed to stop and rest. The two Coloradoans, eager to forge ahead, continued up the valley. Taylor had not caught up when they rolled out their sleeping bags, donned their head nets, and went to sleep beneath a sky that never got dark. In the morning, they went on to the pass without Taylor, believing he’d have no trouble finding his way.

  “At a couple of places going up there these guys weren’t even hiking together,” Baxter Mercer recalled. “You had one on one side of the creek and one on the other. They wouldn’t even talk to each other.”

  Wilcox, McLaughlin, and Janes were descending from the camp to the cache when Snyder and Schlichter passed them, still without the struggling Steve Taylor, on the way to Camp I at McGonagall Pass. When they returned to the cache to help carry supplies, Steve Taylor had just arrived and Joe Wilcox was seething.

  Accounts of what had occurred along the trail differ dramatically. Snyder described waiting and at one point returning to search for Taylor, who dawdled incompetently along the trail. Wilcox said Taylor told him he had been goaded, ridiculed, insulted, and ultimately abandoned by his companions when he fell behind. A heated exchange ensued where Wilcox questioned their commitment to their fellow climbers. They, in turn, questioned Steve Taylor’s competency and ability to climb without delaying the others. Ultimately, Wilcox threatened to send the Colorado climbers back, saying, “It seems you’re still the Colorado Group.” Then he turned and hurried to catch up with Taylor, who was climbing toward the pass.

  The two Colorado men were again on the cusp of losing their opportunity to climb Denali, realizing Wilcox was more than a little upset. According to Snyder, “We both appreciated the position Wilcox was in as leader of the group,” so they caught up with Wilcox and Taylor and apologized. Taylor said there were no ill feelings on his part.

  Though Coloradan Jerry Lewis had no trouble hiking in with the Wilcox group, Steve Taylor’s slow pace and the apparent impatience of Snyder and Schlichter was a distinctly sour episode that threatened the cohesiveness of the group. The Mercers turned for home, leaving the twelve young mountaineers on their own. The expedition was at last on the mountain, ready to begin the ascent, about to step onto Denali’s unforgiving domain of ice and rock.

  And wind.

  The expedition set up Camp I at the top of McGonagall Pass and there, at the margin between green earth and blue ice, they got their first close-up peek into the snowy interior. Before them the Muldrow Glacier inched down the mountain to join the Traleika Glacier at the foot of Mount Tatum. Across the Muldrow, Tatum’s icy flank rose steeply to a high ridge that paralleled the glacial valley all the way to the Harper Glacier and on to the summit.

  Their initial ascent was right up the middle of the Muldrow Glacier, a monotonous stretch of slushy, featureless ice, with an elevation gain of just 850 feet over 4.5 miles. Relatively level and uncrevassed, the surface of the glacier is marked by rocky moraines and long, winding scars cut by flowing surface water. The walls rising on either side of the glacial valley are steep—the Muldrow’s nickname is the Wall Street Glacier—and harbor snow, ice, and the occasional hanging glacier poking a blue tongue out of a high, hanging valley. In summer the cold isn’t extreme but it is pervasive, and the confines of the valley give one the impression of walking through a giant chest freezer.

  Shortly after the last three men reached Camp I, cool, wet weather arrived, settling in for five days. The rain, however, didn’t put them off of their schedule. To reach the
top, each man would climb the mountain multiple times, moving supplies higher and caching them before returning for more, methodically ascending with enough food and gear to support the team as it moved higher and higher.

  The rain threw a pall over any excitement of finally being on the mountain and climbing. Clothes and sleeping bags became waterlogged, tent floors pooled with water, and when the sun made its brief appearances the men hustled to spread out their wet things, only to rush them back under cover when the rain returned. Walt Taylor, frustrated at the wetness, turned his face to the clouds and rain and called out, “C’mon, sun! Show us you haven’t forgotten your chillun!” He also suggested they all walk around naked to show their faith in the Sun God. No one took him up on the proposition.

  Jerry Clark led the foray up the glacier on June 24 with Luchterhand, Russell, and Walt Taylor on the rope team. While the others continued to move supplies from the horse cache to Camp I at the top of McGonagall Pass, the advance team checked their harnesses, clipped in to the rope at 50-foot intervals, and set out behind Clark, who led the way over the uneven terrain on skis. They established Camp II close to the base of the Lower Icefall at 6,500 feet.

  The Lower Icefall was the first of several they would encounter on the route to Denali’s summit. An icefall is the glacial equivalent of a waterfall. Like the water flowing over a cliff, a glacier moving over a steep or narrow part of its bed becomes broken and chaotic. Glacial ice is somewhat plastic and flexible, but where it bends sharply, its surface shatters and cracks, forming crevasses that vary widely in width and depth, some a few feet deep, others plunging all the way to bedrock. Intersecting crevasses form ice columns called seracs. Where the glacial bed flattens or widens out, the crevasses close and the surface of the glacier becomes smooth again. They would encounter six perilously crevassed icefalls on their route, three on the Muldrow Glacier and three on the Harper Glacier.

  Jerry Clark and Mark McLaughlin had brought skis as well as plastic Snowtreads and snowshoes and were using the skis for glacier travel. This did not sit well with John Russell, who let it be known to whomever would listen that he thought skis were unsafe for mountaineering. Already he was gaining a reputation as the one who picked battles, and though he tried to keep calm, another appeared to be brewing just below the surface.

  It didn’t stay there long. On Sunday, June 25, only a couple of days after the conflict among Snyder, Schlichter, and Steve Taylor, Russell lost his cool. Clark, McLaughlin, Russell, and Janes were roped together, ferrying loads of gear from Camp I to Camp II. Russell and Janes walked while the other two skied. The slope on that part of the glacier was slight, but one of the skiers—probably McLaughlin since Clark was leading—lost control and nearly pulled Russell and his overloaded pack to the slushy ground. The men exchanged words and Russell stewed in his juices all the way back. Upon reaching the McGonagall Pass camp, John Russell stormed up to Wilcox, face red with anger and said, “I want four days of food, a tube tent, and a stove. I’m leaving the expedition.”

  Wilcox listened and then convinced Russell to stay, promising to gather the team in the morning to work through the conflict.

  The sun popped out briefly on June 26, quickly followed by sleet and then snow. Under the pall of wet snow, all twelve expedition members huddled under shared ponchos and rain gear. Wilcox began with an attempt at fostering teamwork but Russell quickly jumped in, complaining that skis were unsafe. McLaughlin and Clark had asked to form a rope team of two for trips down the glacier to take advantage of the speed of their skis. Wilcox refused, saying downhill skiing was forbidden. The skiers countered that the thousand-foot elevation change over 4.5 miles hardly constituted downhill skiing, and a long argument ensued. Both Clark and McLaughlin had more experience skiing in the mountains than Joe Wilcox and contended that they were more qualified to say whether or not skis were safe.

  Howard Snyder, the leader of the Colorado group, tried to end the quarrel: “Tell you what, Joe. You take one skier on your rope and I’ll take all the rest of ’em on mine.” His attempt at a joke (there were only two skiers) broke the atmosphere of growing hostility.

  Wilcox had been lax in enforcing some of the expedition rules thus far, consciously abandoning the plan to rope up to cross the McKinley River and turning a blind eye to those risking giardia by drinking unfiltered water from tundra ponds during the hike in. They were low on the glacier, where crevasses were rare and those oversights might not have serious consequences. Higher up, though, there was less margin for error.

  “I know the rules are conservative,” he said as the wet snow did its best to find a way through his rain gear, “but we have to be overly cautious on a climb of this magnitude.” He continued, “I agreed to assume the responsibility of leading this expedition under a set of ground rules, and I am willing to continue only if I have your full support.”

  He asked if there were any other concerns, but the men grew quiet, then the ever-lighthearted Walt Taylor broke the silence. “I didn’t have any until we called this meeting,” he said. “Now I’m all wet.” Rueful laughter along with nods of agreement broke out as the meeting adjourned.

  Wilcox felt he had made it clear that he expected the men to follow the expedition rules, and then further established that the rules could be changed if the change made sense and didn’t compromise safety. The gradient over the 4 miles between McGonagall Pass and the Lower Icefall is nearly imperceptible whether going up or down. McLaughlin and Clark kept using their skis following the morning meeting. Russell had been overruled.

  The next day, still angry about the ski use, Russell refused to clip into a rope team that included Clark. When Wilcox heard about Russell’s refusal, he put his foot down and in the heat of the moment told Russell that he might be better off leaving the expedition after all. This time Russell acquiesced, though he managed to avoid Clark’s rope for the remainder of the climb. Russell was revealing himself to be a divisive force within the expedition, and Wilcox recognized it. Still, Wilcox wanted to get everyone up the mountain, and that included Russell despite his outburst.

  The piles of gear amassing at the top of the pass had attracted Russell’s ire two days earlier, and he suggested to Snyder and Wilcox that they were carrying too much gear and should leave behind both of the Colorado team’s stoves, one of the four stoves carried by the Wilcox team, and all the expedition’s shovel handles, using their ice axes as handles when needed. Wilcox agreed to jettison a stove and the shovel handles, but Snyder refused. He kept his stoves and would carry the expedition’s only complete shovel.

  “Consequently, the Colorado group’s shovel was in demand at every camp,” Snyder observed.

  John Russell’s preoccupation with weight seemed out of character for the man who, upon joining the expedition, boasted of packing 100 pounds above 10,000 feet and promised to carry more on Denali. Indeed, just days earlier he had carried a pack weighing 115 pounds from the horse cache to McGonagall Pass.

  Leaving the handles, shovels, and saws behind was a staggering mistake. Though their packs were lighter as a result, shovels and saws were essential for building walls and snow shelters to protect against deadly windstorms. More mundanely, they were needed daily to clear campsites, build tent platforms, collect snow for melting, and to keep tents from collapsing during heavy snowfalls. By leaving them behind they betrayed an ignorance of the power of Denali’s storms, and left themselves vulnerable.

  In the years since, snow saws and steel spades became mandatory equipment for Denali guides. Steel spades enable climbers to dig snow caves in the hard snow commonly found on the mountain’s upper reaches. A snow cave can be dug with ice axes, but it is a dangerously slow process. Snow saws remain the only tools that work for cutting snow blocks for shelter building.

  As is true for any group working together in a stressful environment, conflicts occurred, enemies were made, and friendships were forged. One conflict that has been overs
tated in various accounts of the story is the one between the original Wilcox team and the Colorado group. Interviews with Paul Schlichter and Howard Snyder in 2013 revealed that in spite of the commonly held belief that the Colorado men sequestered themselves from the others, they understood themselves to be part of the Wilcox Expedition.

  “I didn’t see us as very separate at all,” Schlichter said. “We had our own tent, our own meals, a cooking tent, and everything like that, so in that sense we were separate. But in terms of climbing, of the ropes that we were on, it was pretty well mixed around.”

  “We were three guys from Colorado who weren’t an expedition. We were part of the Wilcox Expedition,” Snyder said. He thought the Wilcox Expedition argument-prone, but Schlichter didn’t find the group’s behavior that unusual.

  “Well, you take twelve people, put them on a mountain like that with the weather, the fatigue, all the things that go on,” Paul Schlichter said, “you’re going to have some bickering back and forth, but I don’t think there were any major deals.” Throughout those first weeks Wilcox held regular meetings that sometimes led to heated arguments.

  “We had a couple of meetings where people aired out their grievances,” said Wilcox. “There would be a discussion, not every day but at least every other day, on how things were going. Not on how to climb; the route, the camps . . . that was all worked out in advance.” Still, some decisions fell to Wilcox alone. “I had the last word. But if all were opposed to something, there was no sense in doing it.” Wilcox led by example, serving on both advance and relay teams, and with the exception of weather delays, the party advanced up the mountain at a moderate but consistent pace without prodding from the leader.

  Joe Wilcox’s leadership style sounds loose compared to most modern climbs in which a professional guide has the final word on all decisions—from where to camp to what to eat to evaluating a climber’s fitness. Climbers can be sent back to Base Camp—with the assistance of a guide—for any number of reasons, including illness, attitude, and climbing in an unsafe manner. Professional guides are legally responsible for the well-being of their clients, who, even on Denali, are often novices who would not know what to do without a guide.