The Chugach mountain range is visible from Anchorage, Alaska
Even if the idea did not come to Vern Tejas from reading National Geographic, somehow it seemed inevitable that he would make his way north following his sojourns in Colorado. He had been steered to what was allegedly the most rugged corner of the United States’s lower forty-eight states, but soon enough he learned there was another part of the country more rugged yet.
Though Colorado was populated by several dozen mountains standing at least 14,000 feet high (not to mention the many more whose altitudes stretched to 13,000-plus feet), Alaska offered more impressive scenery and far more alluring mountains. Alaska seduced wanderers, invited them to a vast territory nicknamed The Last Frontier. Those of free spirit, as Tejas described himself, got hooked easily. They felt they must see it once. Often enough, one peek isn’t enough, and they stayed, for years or forever.
The signature geographic feature of the state is Denali, the 20,310-foot high centerpiece of the Alaska Range, a very large bump on the map that stands out in relief because no other mountain close to it is nearly as large. On rare clear days, Denali can be viewed from Anchorage to the south and Fairbanks to the northeast. Denali, called either “The High One” or “The Great One” in native languages, was referred to as Mount McKinley for more than a century in reference to President William McKinley. The mountain is singular as the tallest mountain not only in Alaska or the United States, but North America. Residents of Alaska often casually say, “The mountain is out today,” meaning the view is free of obstructing clouds.
Mountaineers come to Alaska each spring seeking to climb Denali and consider reaching the summit one of the great prizes in the sport. Likewise, the fittest and most adventurous of Alaska citizens spend years admiring the snow-covered slopes, and decide they absolutely must climb Denali one day.
Vern Tejas knew none of this background as a nineteen-year-old when, free from school, he headed to Alaska. His early friendship with one of the most remarkable of all Alaskan figures, the venerable Colonel Norman Vaughan, began early during his stay in Alaska.
During the period I spent traveling around the United States, I also dipped into Canada. It was a grand sweep, and I visited most of the largest provinces. I made my way by hitchhiking from Quebec to the Yukon Territory. In Whitehorse, the territory’s capital, I hitched a ride with a fellow named Robin Bowen who had just floated the Yukon River from Whitehorse to Circle, in Alaska, and was back to pick up his empty van in Whitehorse. His destination was Circle City to pick up his canoe, so off we went into Alaska, where Robin had lived for about five years.
On my second day in the state, August 2, 1972, we entered Denali National Park, taking the tourist shuttle bus because the road was closed beyond the first fifteen miles. We encountered some mountains, foothills really. We looked at one another and said, “Let’s go climb them.” Robin was energetic and my age, so we began ascending a 5,000-foot peak. It probably has a name, but we didn’t know it. It was just a dot on the map to us. All of the mountains around it were about the same height. There was a little bit of snow on top, and it seemed inviting.
While we climbed, a snowstorm blew in and buried us. There was probably about a foot-and-a-half of snow. I was climbing in a cotton cowboy shirt, jeans, and a straw cowboy hat. Talk about being ill-prepared. We crested the top of the ridge and descended the other side to a valley. By that time I was shivering uncontrollably.
Robin said, “I think you have hypothermia.” I didn’t have a clue what that was, I just knew I was really cold.
I replied, “I’m so cold I can’t stop moving. If I stop moving I’m gonna fall apart.”
Anyone with a minimum of knowledge of the outdoors knows how dangerous hypothermia can be. Hypothermia kicks in when a body loses heat faster than it can produce heat. If the normal body temperature is 98.6 degrees, a drop to 95 degrees can threaten your life.
Robin said, “Keep walking, walk around the camp site, and I’ll set up the tent and get your sleeping bag out. As soon as I get it set up, I want you to jump in the sleeping bag.” I did not know these basics. I stripped off my wet clothes, jumped into the bag still shivering and drank hot tea with sugar until I warmed up. My second day in Alaska, and I nearly died. And that was in summer.
Who could believe I wore a straw cowboy hat to climb a mountain in Denali National Park? Let’s just say it was not manufactured by North Face. It was early August, and that is the hottest month in Texas, and yet here in Alaska, I nearly froze to death.
I thought right away, “This place is going to kill me. You’re not in Texas anymore. You are in Alaska, and Alaska doesn’t care if you die.” That’s when I realized this level of being rugged was something new, and that hooked me.
A day later, we got back on the bus. We made a stop at a bridge on the Toklat River, a common stopping place for people to use the bathroom or stretch their legs, and there was a bull caribou on a river bar that had been attacked and wounded in the night by a wolf. Its flank was torn open, but it had not died. There were a lot of people around with cameras taking pictures of this otherwise wild scene. All we had left for food was some cereal, and Robin and I retreated into some blueberry bushes to pick some to sprinkle on our meal.
We sat down on a bluff overlooking the river, and Robin said, “Look, there’s a bear with cubs.” It was a mama grizzly with three cubs.
I thought, “Man, we really are in the wilderness. I am in an area with no bars, just bears.” We watched. They followed the blood scent of an animal upstream—the wounded caribou. The caribou was bleeding out, quite vulnerable, and didn’t have the strength to run away. The mama bear sensed breakfast for herself and the cubs. It may be a free lunch for a week. She came up on the caribou and charged. The caribou dipped its head, lowering its rack right into the mama’s face. The bear backed up, plotting a new strategy, then charged in again and reached a paw between the antlers. With one swat, she smacked the caribou in the head and broke its neck. Down it went, and it was feast time for the bears.
The cameras were clicking, and film cameras were whirring. I am sure I have seen that footage on television three or four times over the years. Sourdough was an Alaskan movie that came out about twenty years later. I’m sure I saw that bear-caribou fight in that film, too. It is classic footage of a mama bear knocking out a caribou so her babies can eat. To me, it was like, “OK, there are not only bears here, but there is life and death here.” It was part of the same message: the wilderness, the mountains, the snowstorm, the animals. I was in a wild place, the type of wild place where I wanted to make a life, where things are no longer cookie cutter. I was definitely no longer in Houston, where everything was flat and predictable.
I had been in Alaska just a couple of days, and it had already almost killed me. Then I saw Alaska kill something else. We continued on the bus to Wonder Lake and the clouds began to slowly lift as the snow tapered off and stopped. I knew there was supposed to be a great view across the lake. It has often been said that Denali reveals itself gradually, so we looked in the direction of the mountain.
“Whoa!”
All I knew was Denali was the biggest mountain in North America. I knew nothing else about its history or climbing. Up, up, the clouds go, and our eyes were as big as the mountain looking at its humongous size. Then we realized we were just seeing the foothills and barely getting the mountain in focus. What we thought was so huge was just the subrange in front of Denali. Everything was snow-covered, which made the smaller mountains appear bigger. The big hill was still behind those other hills.
The mountain continued revealing itself very slowly. Twilight sunset on August 2 is just past 11:30 p.m., and sunrise is just past 4:30 a.m., so there is some light in the sky most of the time that time of year. These were really long days. As it approached the end of the evening, the clouds completely disappeared. We watched the mountain become exposed, and we just sat there spellbound. We were making obvious comments like, “I can’t believe it’s so big.” When we glanced around, we saw a bear walking in one direction, and caribou strolling in another area. Looking back at Denali, we saw sunlight forming purples and oranges: alpenglow. We were at lower elevation just looking up. That’s when Robin and I both said we were going to climb that mountain someday.
There are a few reasons why Denali has such a stunning presence. It is taller than any other mountain near it by several thousand feet and is extremely wide with a huge mass. So it is common for the mountain to make such a powerful first impression on people the way it did on me. From base to peak, the elevation gain is around 13,000 feet, depending on the manner of approach. That is more than Everest, which from base to peak is 12,000 feet.
Although I never could have imagined it based on my first glimpse, it must be said that Denali is my mountain, my home mountain. Between 1978 and 2017, there were only two calendar years I did not climb Denali. It became the mountain most special to me, most familiar to me. I have climbed it more often than any other person in the world. Some of my greatest personal achievements, my most satisfying memories, and my most horrendous ones are linked to the mountain.
Obtaining my first complete view of the mountain with Robin in 1972, there was no way such things would have entered my brain. Denali was new and fresh and exciting, and, beyond almost paralyzing me with its distinctive natural beauty, I looked at it as a mountaineering challenge and a daring inspiration. Just right away, I had the thought that I must climb it. Certainly the thought was to climb it once, not fifty-seven times.
I did not know how important the mountain was going to become for me. I did know the mountain itself was gigantic; at the time it was the biggest thing I had ever seen. To me, it was like a dinosaur: old and huge. Denali is like being in an IMAX theatre; it paints the whole horizon. It is not as if you are looking at an object, but you are experiencing the immensity. The bigness just overwhelmed me. It was not only larger than anything I had seen, but larger than anything I had imagined. I felt so insignificant next to it. I was motivated by a desire to climb Denali, to see the landscape from the top, to show I was able to reach the summit.
But I put Alaska on pause temporarily. I continued my travels, left the state, and spent the winter working in a commune in Oregon. Around this time, I changed my last name after a big falling out with my father. I told him I would never give him anything to be proud of. In doing so, I hated myself for years until I grew beyond seeking vengeance. Fortunately, we were able to make peace before he passed away. I chose Tejas because it means “friend” in Caddo, the language of the original Gulf Coast native Texans. It is actually where Texas gets its name as well. Interestingly, and unbeknownst to me at the time, it also means “roof tile” in Spanish and “brilliant” in Sanskrit.
In 1973, I came to Alaska to live. It was in my mind to climb Denali, but I knew I did not have enough of a mountaineering background to even try. I understood Alaska was a special place. The wildness I had seen on my first trip gripped me. I went to work in Anchorage, the state’s largest city, which now has 300,000 people, but back then had about 200,000.
The east side of Anchorage is bordered by the Chugach Mountain Range. Every Alaska resident knows about those mountains, but few people outside the state do. They are not famous, but make up a large portion of Anchorage’s horizon. In Colorado, the highest mountains are around 14,000 feet tall. When one looks out from the summit, the surrounding peaks seem to be the same height. In Anchorage, most of the peaks are 4,000 or 5,000 feet. From the summits, they also offer the same perspective. To prepare myself for the day I hoped to climb Denali, I went climbing in the Chugach Range every weekend that I could.
I quickly began meeting interesting Alaskan characters. During my first year of living in Alaska, I got to know Colonel Norman Vaughan, who was not only a wonderful man, but one who never let age interfere with his imagination. Norman was already a senior citizen, and he lived his life by the motto “Dream Big and Dare to Fail.” Bankrupt and divorced, Norman moved to Alaska from Massachusetts when he was sixty-eight. It is often said that it is easy for people to get lost in Alaska if they wish to be, and it is a place people go to start over. In Norman’s case, he was starting over, but he was too social to remain anonymous. For anyone who cared to look it up, he brought a reputation with him.
In 1928, Norman dropped out of Harvard University to join Admiral Richard Byrd’s expedition to Antarctica as a dog handler. On that trip, Byrd named a mountain for Norman. Mount Vaughan is a 10,302-foot peak that Norman vowed to climb one day. Years later, this dream and my connection to Norman became a big part of my life.
In 1932, Norman was part of the Winter Olympics sled-dog exhibition sport. In the 1970s, when he was in his seventies, Norman competed in the 1,000-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska. I met Norman through a job I held at BJ’s Warehouse in Anchorage. I got to know some of the cashiers, and one of their husbands worked as a janitor at Alaska Pacific University across town. He worked with another janitor, an old-timer—Norman.
My buddy Robin was living in a cabin on the outskirts of town, and I lived next door in a five-man tent squatting on the property. I stayed there for two winters. The cashier and her husband came into possession of a large supply of salmon and invited several people over for a big fish dinner. I thought salmon was about as Alaskan as anything out there, so I went with my girlfriend at the time, another cashier.
There was only one Norman Vaughan. He had a forever-young spirit, even though he was way older than all of us, with a white beard that gave him a distinguished look, and he was always looking ahead. Alaskans loved him for that. Some called him Alaska’s Grandpa. Right from the beginning, Norman was friendly. This was a short while before he was going to try the Iditarod. Of course he knew quite a bit more than I did about winter travel and gear, but he talked to me as an equal. He asked my opinion about the type of footwear he should choose: the famous white, thick, rubber bunny boots, or mukluks, the Native Alaskan preferred footwear. He asked me because I was spending the winter in a tent. Bunny boots are very heavy when you walk along, but they are waterproof. If you wear mukluks, your feet can get wet. Sure enough, Norman choose the mukluks and ran across some river overflow—water that sometimes works its way through the frozen surface over a river, becoming treacherous—and his feet got wet. He could have frozen to death and was lucky to only suffer frostbite. He did get lost on the trail, though, and had to be rescued. But he returned again and again and raced until he was eighty-four.
Norman, who was later elected to the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame for his accomplishments, made a major first impression on me. He helped juice up my excitement about being in Alaska. The way he honored and respected me in our conversation, I felt an affinity not only for him and what he had done, but for a country that had people like him in it. It cemented a link between me and Alaska. What a great place that had people like Norman living on the edge. Sure, Alaska can kill you and nature is raw, but there are also these amazing people. I met many eclectic people during my first year in the state that made me realize I was home. It was a place I could fit in. I was a social misfit who found a new family there with people like Norman in it.
For a while, I did odd jobs to survive, to pay the few bills I had since I lived very frugally. I was a warehouse man, a construction worker, a carpenter, and a ditch digger. I cleared land, built roads, shoveled snow, whatever it took. Outdoors work was good for me. I joined the Laborers’ Union and went to work on the construction of the Alaska Pipeline in the mid-1970s. That was good money. I thought I had it made. We all did. People bought expensive trucks, bought farms, bought all sorts of things. I didn’t do all that. I saved. I did not anticipate double-digit inflation following.
I jumped with both feet into the Mountaineering Club of Alaska, the Kayaking Club, and the Alaska Mountain Rescue Group. The rescue group was just starting up, but I learned a lot, and the group evolved into a more elite operation where the people were well-trained to help others who had climbing accidents or were caught up in avalanches. When I joined, it was volunteer work, but I met the old, experienced Alaskans. People like Dick Griffith and Udo Fischer were good mentors. As a German, Udo was conscripted into the Army when he was very young at the end of World War II, but immigrated to the United States and became a survival instructor for the military through the Korean and Vietnam Wars. He sometimes said he lost three wars.
There was a lot of climbing in the near Chugach Range, including the peaks that can be seen from any office window in Anchorage like O’Malley, Flattop, South Suicide, and North Suicide (two mountains not named in friendly fashion), Ptarmigan, The Ramp, The Wedge, and others. Chugach State Park has many more mountains and many taller, but those are right there. When you look out from the tops of those mountains, you see the city. We also made trips to the Kenai Peninsula for other mountains. I learned to ski, although at first it felt like I was trying to learn to fall. I finally got to the point where I could ski downhill without nearly killing myself. Cross-country skiing was easier, and took me into the backcountry to explore. I couldn’t afford lift tickets anyway
The Chugach mountain range is visible from Anchorage, Alaska
I was young and full of enthusiasm and energy, and I was drinking in everything about the Alaska outdoors. I didn’t have a car back then, so I kept hitchhiking everywhere I went. It was a little awkward when they called out the rescue group, and I showed up after hitching a ride.
They’d ask me, “Where have you been?”
“The rides weren’t very good.”
Honestly, I got to know a lot of Alaskans by hitchhiking. Some people picked me up several times and I got to know them on a first-name basis. I volunteered for the Mountain Rescue Group for twenty years. Through the Rescue Group, I met Harry Johnson, which was a turning point in my life. The most famous Denali guiding company was operated by Ray Genet. Harry knew Genet and took over the company when Ray died on Mount Everest in 1979. Before that, though, Harry established a survival school for teenagers, and I went to work for him teaching in that program. With that opportunity, I was able to pull together a grub stake so that I could afford the cost of climbing Denali when the day came that I thought I was ready. It took five years from the time I first saw Denali in its splendor until my body, mind, and bank account were prepared for the climb I so desperately wanted to make.