Climbers head up the West Buttress of Denali with Mount Hunter behind them
The native peoples of Alaska were long aware of the forbidding and mystical mountain in Alaska’s Interior. Although the Alaska Gold Rush put the territory on the map for the first time since its purchase from Russia in 1867, for the most part the pursuit of gold focused attention on other areas of the new 586,000-square-mile American property. The earliest excitement over gold strikes in Alaska sent prospectors scurrying through Skagway in Southeast Alaska and over the Chilkoot Pass into Canada and the Yukon Territory. Later, gold was discovered on the beaches of Nome on the western coast of Alaska, which was at the time mainly accessible by steamship. Denali was hundreds of miles from either place and was an unknown hunk of rock to the majority of Americans until prospector William Dickey emerged from the Interior without fulfilling his monetary prospects, yet quite dazzled by the extraordinary mountain he laid eyes on.
William McKinley, who was born in Niles, Ohio, made his home in Canton, Ohio and served as the thirty-ninth governor of the state. In 1896, McKinley was campaigning for the presidency as a Republican, and one of his campaign points was a desire to retain the country’s gold standard as a policy. Dickey agreed with this, and his empathy with the program led him to name the colossal mountain after McKinley. McKinley was assassinated in 1901, propelling his vice-president, Theodore Roosevelt, into the White House.
Yellowstone was created as the first national park in 1872, but the Park System steadily expanded. In 1917, the National Park then called McKinley National Park was formed. It eventually expanded to six million acres of landscape and saw the name changed to Denali National Park and Preserve in 1980. However, the McKinley name remained affixed to the mountain until 2015 when, following almost a century’s worth of lobbying, President Barack Obama switched the name to Denali. This delighted Alaskans, but disappointed McKinley’s longstanding Ohio adherents.
Throughout the long period of pioneering climbs on the mountain, it had been officially named Mount McKinley. For much of that time, as well, the official measurement of the summit was believed to be 20,320 feet. The height was officially changed to 20,310 feet in 2015 after measurement with more modern and sophisticated scientific technology.
Not long after Dickey’s naming of McKinley, which officially took place in 1897, the mountain became an object of great curiosity to adventurers who sought the glory that would accrue from becoming the first to stand on the summit. Also, from the start of those attempts, the mountain periodically shrugged off humans, buried them in snow, intimidated them with high winds, and repelled their worthy (and in some cases fraudulent) tries to reach the top.
Mount Denali (McKinley) was successfully climbed for the first time on June 7, 1913 by a small party of Alaskans led by Hudson Stuck, one of the leading figures of the period. Stuck was a native of England, and became an Episcopal priest with the mission of bringing the word of God to Alaska and Canada’s Yukon. He delivered his news by dog sled, covering more than 10,000 miles mushing for the Lord. Stuck; Walter Harper, an Alaska native; Harry Karstens; and Robert Tatum were the first people to absorb the view from the top. Harper was the first amongst the first. Tatum famously observed while gazing at the far-reaching landscape that it was like “looking out the windows of heaven.”
The time came. Finally, I was going to climb Denali. Mountain Trip was conducting a climb, and there was a cancellation late in the planning. I was offered a half-price deal and I jumped at the chance. The price of taking a guided trip to the mountain, a climb that was scheduled to be three weeks long, has increased steadily over the years, as has everything else in life. In May of 1978 it was much cheaper, although was still expensive for someone who worked odd jobs. Back then it cost $1,100. Now it is about $7,000.
The guides were Jim Hale and Mark Moderow, an Anchorage attorney. Jim had been a guide for Genet Expeditions, but then formed his own company. Ray Genet was hardcore. He understood that his business relied on a good success rate, so his theme was “To the Summit!” For him, it was a sign of failure, not necessarily good judgment, to turn back on a climb. He and Jim Hale had a falling out over that. On one trip, Jim decided avalanche conditions made it too dangerous to continue and turned back his group. Genet reamed him out. The way I recall the story, Genet was pounding his fist on his office desk and yelling, “We don’t turn back! We go to the summit! To the summit!”
Jim’s response to that was, “You can go to the summit and die if you want to. I’m out of here.” Hale took that confrontation as a sign that he was working for someone who believed money was more important than life. So Jim joined with Gary Bocarde, another famous guide, to form a new company, Mountain Trip. I knew Jim from the Mountaineering Club of Alaska and the Mountain Rescue Group. I had actually been living with Mark; several climbers went in together to keep the cost of apartment rental low.
The scheduled trip included a twelve-man team with the two guides and a very ambitious plan. Not only would we climb the West Buttress route to the summit, but we would make a traverse over the top. The idea was to climb from the south side, landing by plane on the Kahiltna Glacier, climb up and over Kahiltna Pass, and then descend to Wonder Lake. What would normally be a twenty-six-mile trip would have twenty more miles added on. The West Buttress is the most commonly climbed route on the mountain: the path to the top that guided climbs follow. It was pioneered by Dr. Bradford Washburn in 1951. Denali is an exception to the rule in mountaineering. Almost always the biggest mountains are climbed first by the easiest route. When Hudson Stuck’s party climbed in 1913, they approached from the north and other groups followed their route. Brad always believed there was a simpler way to make the climb, and because of his expertise as a mountain photographer, he pretty much proved it on paper before making the climb. Turned out he was right all along, and the naysayers of the mountain world who were convinced he would die trying were wrong.
The typical guided group gathers in the community of Talkeetna, which is about 110 miles from Anchorage. A core group of bush pilots established flight services and ferried climbers back and forth to Denali base camp in their small planes, landing on the Kahiltna Glacier. It is a support industry for mountaineers, although they also fly tourists around the mountain, sometimes landing in the same place just for the experience of seeing Denali up close. For a West Buttress climb, the planes carrying climbers and supplies land at about 7,200 feet of elevation on the Kahiltna. That is the jumping off point for mountaineers. For decades during the main Denali climbing season, there has been a full-time base-camp manager who maintains radio contact with the flight services and National Park Service rangers. That’s a sign of how much human traffic there can be on the Kahiltna.
One main difference between a guide and a citizen climber—what I was at the time—is experience and mountain knowledge. The guide knows the terrain. The guide has been there before. The guide is trained to handle people. And the guide recognizes the wrong behavior on the peak. The wrong behavior might be a personality problem, or it might be a tendency to make mistakes that could jeopardize an individual’s trip or even risk the safety of those around him.
From all of my training in the Chugach Range near Anchorage, I was in pretty good shape. However, I was climbing mountains of 5,000 feet, not 20,000 feet. When you get higher than 10,000 feet, and are not used to the altitude, you can become subject to pulmonary edema, which creates excess fluid in the lungs, or cerebral edema, characterized by excess fluid in the brain. They are both potentially fatal illnesses stemming from lack of oxygen. There are a lot of ways to die in the mountains. At that time, I didn’t really know anything about altitude. When I ran away to Colorado, I got sick once and ended up puking, not knowing what caused it. In retrospect, I am sure it was the altitude that got me. I went up too high too fast.
After scraping the money together for my first climb of Denali five years after first seeing the mountain, I was excited to be there, raring to go, and sure I was in terrific shape. I was totally gung-ho, but I did not really understand that it was a totally different animal going up beyond the foothills of 6,000 or 7,000 feet. Our first day on Denali, we were at Kahiltna Glacier, at 7,200 feet, as our starting point. I was not a very big guy; I was five feet nine inches on a good day, and my climbing weight was 160 pounds or so. I picked up a big load to carry to the next camp. I kept thinking, “This was my long-time dream and I am finally going to make it happen.” In my enthusiastic state, I grabbed more than my fair share of group gear and lashed it to my sled. I probably had forty-five pounds in a pack and another forty-five pounds on a sled. That’s ninety pounds of equipment. It was in the heat of the day, and I took off like a race horse out of the gate.
I’m just zooming along, boom, boom, boom, pulling up a storm. Soon enough, I was just grinding. Given that Denali is always snow covered, everyone thinks it is always freezing on the mountain. Not true. During the long periods of daylight in the summer, it can warm up pretty good. I had my shirt open. My face was getting just totally fried from the sun. I stopped eating. I got dehydrated. We climbed to the next camp, came down, a round-trip of ten miles, and I was exhausted, had diarrhea, and thought I was ruined for the trip.
All of this preparation time and after just one day, I looked at Hale and said, “Jim, I want out of here. Put me on the next flight.” I was demoralized.
Jim did a great job in the guide role then. “Vern,” he said, “you overdid it. I could have told you that in advance, but you wouldn’t have understood.” He was right. Given my excited outlook, I wasn’t ready to hear it. By the end of the first day, I was ready to hear it.
Jim acted like a coach with superior wisdom. Fortunately, he talked me out of flying out. He said, “Just spend the night. See how you feel in the morning. If you still want to go home you can, but I encourage you to stay in here and take care of yourself. Put the sunscreen on. Drink at every break. Eat every time we make a stop. Don’t take on so much weight at one time. We’ve basically got a month here. Slow down and enjoy it.”
I was forced to cool my jets, and the next day I had a better time. We covered only half the distance and we did not make a round-trip. I didn’t carry as much weight, and perhaps more importantly, I started taking care of myself. I drank and ate every hour and applied gobs of sun cream. I was able to take a step back and take a deep breath. I started to just enjoy being in the mountains and not thinking of the climb as this big challenge where I had to throw everything at it every minute.
That was a very big lesson for me, and what Jim said to me I still apply and say to my climbers today. It is more about taking one step at a time and one day at a time. The more I approached the trip that way that first time on Denali, the easier the climbing became, and the more enjoyable the journey became. I ended up having a great time and developed lifetime friendships with some of the people on that climb. Once I got acclimated, everything came much easier. It turned out I was someone who acclimates slowly. I got stronger the higher we went, and at high camps when others were tired, I was eager.
My enthusiasm returned, although I had to learn to temper it. I even had to hold myself back and keep a steady pace. Our high camp was at about 18,200 feet, higher than most people set up because we were going to do more than just go for the South Summit, the highest point. Having our camp higher than usual allowed us to be in position for traversing the mountain and a potential double-header. The South Summit is where the 20,310-foot absolute top of Denali is located, but there is also a North Summit, which few people go to. It is a little bit shorter at 19,470 feet, so most people don’t bother with it and are satisfied with only the South Summit.
Reaching the top of Denali was a special moment. I put on my cowboy hat and played “Old Susanna” on my harmonica. It was my first of many times on top, absorbing the view, and I loved it, but the day was not over.
Jim said he wanted to see what the North Summit looked like. He had never been there; very few people do both, much less in one day. Jim asked if anybody else was up for it. I immediately sprang up: “Yeah, I’ll go!” I was the only one. The other guys went to sleep while Jim and I went off and climbed the North Summit, un-roped, unsafe in retrospect: one of the foolhardy things people can do and somehow get away with.
The most intriguing Denali tale of the two summits relates to the so-called “Sourdough” climb of 1910. By then, a few expeditions had come to Alaska to climb Denali hoping to be the first to knock off the summit. They failed, although one inappropriately took credit for the first ascent, enraging some Fairbanks residents. Sitting around in a bar (many Alaskan grand challenges owe their origins to the creative thinking of drinkers) one day, a group of old-timers boasted they could make the climb. They set out to prove it, hauling along a tall wooden post they intended to plant on the summit as a signal to their friends back home.
Making good on their optimism, the Sourdoughs climbed Denali, installed the pole at the top, and returned to Fairbanks, having conquered difficult conditions with primitive equipment. Only they climbed the wrong peak, the North Summit. It was still a very big achievement, but their mistake left the way open for Hudson Stuck’s expedition as the first to the true summit.
Jim and I got to the edge of the Wickersham Wall, the huge face of Denali I had first seen five years earlier. We wanted to look down that wall, but we were not sure if the snow cornice would hold us if we walked on it. We debated whether or not we would fall to our deaths if we stepped out upon it. We compromised with the mountain and I crawled out on the cornice while Jim held my feet, then Jim crawled out on the cornice while I held his feet. As if we could have saved one another if the snow had given way.
The view was beautiful. There was nothing protruding in the way, so we could look down this immense mountain face that drops between 13,000 and 14,000 feet. We were totally in awe and had a wonderful summit day. It was much more than I could have expected five years earlier when I first looked at it, or even more than I could have expected five minutes earlier. I had no idea if we were going to die or see the most spectacular sight on earth. Fortunately, it was the latter.
As we walked back to camp, I just felt heroic. I had climbed both peaks of Denali. And I had climbed them with a very excellent climber who had good judgment and knew how to deal with people. I was enthralled with the mountain. I was enthralled with the man. I was enthralled with the moment.
It got even better. We trekked out to Wonder Lake, caught the Park bus and made our way to the train depot inside the Park. We were all starving, so we jammed into the dining car. When we told the tourists what we had just done, they treated us like heroes and bought us food and beverages. We were mountaineers, people who had climbed the mountain they merely looked at from afar. Climbing Denali was not as commonly done nearly forty years ago. It was very special that we had done it. It was just an amazing response. We intended to celebrate with our own cash, but they wouldn’t let us pay. “You want another hamburger?” “Yeah, I’ll take two.” We were chowing down. The train ride was actually one of the big highlights of the trip.
There was a special glow about that trip for me, but I didn’t have much time to savor it. Almost immediately when we got back to Anchorage, Jim Hale asked me and another climber from the trip, J.D., if we wanted to go right back to Denali and guide a client. There were supposed to be others on the trip, but they cancelled. Jim was still committed to one client, and that wasn’t worth his time, so he deputized us. I had just paid half price for a climb, and now I could go back and do it again for free. The trip was set for two weeks later, so in the space of three weeks of climbing, I went from novice Denali climber to Denali guide. It was an accelerated education.
J.D. and I went right back to the mountain. The client was Dave Walsh, an Anchorage guy who later ran for mayor. He got two novice guides. We got him to the top, but we rushed it along. I think we summited on the eleventh day. In the process, I think we hurt him pretty good. He was not happy on summit day. He had altitude issues and wasn’t walking straight. This was not a good thing. I learned that if you run your clients too hard, you could kill them, and if you run them too fast, they can kill you just as easily.
Just below Denali Pass, high on the mountain, there is a stretch between 18,000 and 17,000 feet called “The Autobahn.” It is called that because some German climbers fell and dropped 1,000 feet at high speed. It can be a dangerous place on the peak. As we descended, Dave kept slipping off the trail there, and J.D., who is about six foot two and a lean, mean fighting machine, was in front. Each time Dave slipped, I’d yell, “Falling!” to give J.D. a heads-up there was going to be a big pull on the rope, so he wouldn’t get pulled off the mountain. It became very unnerving when Dave kept slipping.
Finally, J.D., who believed he was going to get dragged to his death, stomped back to Dave, seventy-five feet behind him on the rope, and picked him up by the collar. He said, “If you do that again, I’m going to kill you!” He looked right into Dave’s eyes as he said it, and it cut through the high-altitude fog in his brain. Dave realized the precarious nature of the situation. He also figured J.D. was just as much a threat to his life as the mountain. He managed his footing better after that. He got his act together and negotiated The Autobahn with no more slips.
Dave needed our help, and I learned what to do in the future. Normally, if a climber is getting loopy on our way down from the summit through The Autobahn, I give a little speech. I tell people, “This is the most dangerous part of the mountain. More people have come to grief here than in any other place. Eat, drink, breathe, and stay focused.” But in Dave’s case I didn’t know enough to say that then, or to make him eat and drink before we went down. I was very harsh with him. I actually said he was so weak that I would never vote for him. In retrospect, Dave was probably one of the better candidates. He had a heart. He had a conscience. He made the summit of Denali. Hey, how many politicians go climbing? He probably limped for a month afterwards because we worked him so hard. And I did vote for him when he ran for mayor.
That was my initiation into the world of guiding. I learned and modeled myself after Jim Hale. He was excellent; he had charisma, good people skills, a sense of humor, and a real joie de vivre. He loved being outdoors. He really wanted to share the mountains because he loved being in them. We were about the same age and he implanted in me the feeling that not only were mountains challenging to climb, but they could be a fun place to be. So, as a guide, that has been one of my primary drives: to bring the joy out instead of employing a tough-guy act. I tried to soften the experience, tried to make it as comfortable and easy as it could be. Poor Dave. It’s still tough, a very tough enterprise, to climb Denali, but it’s tough enough on its own. Why scare people away? Why make it an ego trip? We were hard guys with Dave, but it did not take long to realize the better way to lead a climb is to enjoy it. After that, I’ve always made an effort to create the best mood possible for my people.
There are going to be times the weather is intense, where you are pounded by snow and wind, and you are fatigued and all you want to do is crawl into your tent for the night. The challenges of Denali should never be underestimated. But early on, I decided to inject some fun aspects. I became known as the harmonica-playing guide. Climbers don’t want to carry any more weight in their gear to high altitude, but a harmonica? It fits in the pocket quite readily. When we were at camp and had some bad weather, I’d break out the harmonica and make music. Then I moved on to the fiddle and, ultimately, a guitar, which was a little more complicated. A guitar can’t be too big or heavy, and you don’t want a valuable, marvelous instrument subjected to vicious elements. So I made my own fiddle from scratch or brought along skeletal guitars that could handle the extremes. I began carrying both a mouth harp and guitar just to hear the echo off the mountain.
In 2016, after the season’s climbing group finished and were hanging out at the bar at the Fairview Inn in Talkeetna, we talked the barmaid into letting us entertain. We had been practicing at 14,000 feet, and when we took the stage, we had the place stomping. One of the climbers was Ben Barron, an excellent guitar and banjo player. He made some good tip money that night.
Climbers head up the West Buttress of Denali with Mount Hunter behind them
When I arrived in Alaska, I wanted to climb Denali. I never imagined there was a career out there for me as a guide who could make his living in the mountains. I was a laborer who suddenly became a professional mountaineer, a Denali specialist. By following my passion, I was having the time of my life.