Tejas’s first summit of Denali filled him with an enthusiasm for mountain climbing that has lasted all of his life
Man has always possessed the innate desire to explore his surroundings. The first areas of inquiry were the immediate neighborhood. Then, as knowledge expanded and travelers appeared from afar, those who could plotted journeys to other parts of the world. They wanted to see what was out there.
The major prosperous European countries did so by sail. Whether or not Columbus really discovered America in 1492, he did at the least make a harrowing voyage from Europe to North America. Many others, representing various nations, did so as well. Gradually, curiosity shrunk the world and people wanted to better understand what was in their own backyard, as well as across the ocean.
By the twentieth century, the areas of the world that seemed to be of the most intrigue were the poles, North and South, and other frigid areas too cold to be hospitable. In those early days of the 1400s, 1500s and beyond, explorations were authorized by heads of state with the aim of expanding territory. Once an agent of the country planted a flag, theoretically it belonged to the king or queen of somewhere. By 1900, there seemed to be a lot of individual glory attached to leading a band of intrepid adventurers to an unknown place. One could become world famous by being the first to reach the North or South Pole. It is quite clear that there were also faked claims being perpetrated by such well-known individuals as Dr. Frederick Cook.
American explorer Robert Peary is generally credited with being the first to the North Pole in 1909. Dr. Cook announced that he beat Peary to the North Pole by a year. It took a long time to get the word out to the world in those days. He was later discredited. This was relevant because Cook also claimed to be the first to climb Denali.
In May of 1903, Fairbanks Judge James Wickersham, appropriately enough appointed to his federal position by President McKinley, sought to climb Denali. Accompanied by four other men and two mules, Wickersham’s group made the first recorded ascent attempt, but failed. In 1906, Cook announced he had accomplished the first ascent. Although there are those who still believe him, Dr. Bradford Washburn—perhaps the most important and influential figure to focus on Denali geology, history, and climbing—spent decades amassing evidence proving Cook had not succeeded. Cook’s alleged summit photo later became known as Fake Peak because it was proven to be at only 5,338 feet of elevation.
The Alaska Sourdoughs gave it their best shot in 1910. In 1912, attempting for the third time to reach the top of Denali, Belmore Browne, a renowned landscape painter, and his partners, including Herschel Parker, got within 300 yards of the summit before being turned back by a wicked storm. Browne and others retreated, and just as they reached the base, a massive earthquake struck. If they had lingered any longer to make another push to the summit, they likely all would have perished.
Once Hudson Stuck’s party reached the top in 1913, glory staked, history made, activity virtually ceased on the mountain. Periodically, climbs were made for the adventure—and Denali’s reputation grew only more fearsome as casualties accrued. The first two recorded deaths on the mountain occurred on a 1932 climb. Allen Carpe and Theodore Koven died. A New York Times headline on May 18, 1932 reporting the incident read, “Carpe, Koven Died in a Feat of Daring.” In early 1967, a team of Alaskans, including Ray Genet, Dave Johnston, and Art Davidson, undertook the particularly daunting task of climbing Denali in winter. In the end, the party succeeded, but not before suffering one death on the trip from a crevasse fall, and courting death themselves in weather so extreme that when Davidson chronicled the adventure, he titled his book Minus 148, representing the wind chill factor they endured. Later in 1967, in what was at times referred to as a “superstorm,” though surely not an official weather service phrase, swept across the mountain, killing seven young members of the Wilcox Party.
This place of such deadly beauty became Vern Tejas’s seasonal office. He did not escape the nearness of death or disaster on the mountain’s flanks, and as the code of the wild dictates, also selflessly contributed to against-the-odds-rescues.
I never planned to become a professional mountain guide. My first forays into the outdoors were really about escaping from people and the claustrophobia of suburbia on the outskirts of Houston. There was a lot to learn before I became an accomplished guide. I learned a lot from Jim Hale, but I also learned from experience. Gary Bocarde and Jim Hale of Mountain Trip were connected with Mountain Travel, a much bigger company that had a huge list of people in a data bank wanting to take adventures. Gary hired me and Nick Parker of Anchorage to be guides on a Denali trip in 1979. I knew Nick from the climbing community and we actually became housemates. I was twenty-six years old and younger than anybody else in the twelve-man climbing team.
This was my second commercial trip. Otherwise, I had been working menial jobs; I was a dig-a-ditch, build-a-house kind of guy. Guiding was more fun. On the trip with Dave Walsh, J.D. and I had felt we were practically stealing. We had a free flight to the mountain, free food. This time I really had to be a leader. It was an opportunity. The door opened, and I walked through and started guiding.
At that point in my life, I called Alaska home and liked the crazy people that lived there. It was starting to work out for me, and I’d been getting offered jobs, although most of them were jobs I didn’t want. When Gary asked if I wanted to guide a trip on Denali, I said, “Sure. Love to.” I didn’t negotiate the fine points.
It was as simple as him saying, “Do you want to do it?” and me saying, “Yeah.”
I didn’t even know how much money I was making until two days before the trip. I asked, “So, you’re gonna pay me, right?”
He said, “Yeah.”
“How much?”
“$1,100.”
That’s not really very much for three weeks. For a two-week trip, that’s not bad. For three weeks, it’s like OK. But you know what? I wanted to be there. I don’t do it because the money is great. I do it because that’s where my heart is, and, in this case, it was another way for me to get back into the mountains and particularly to Denali. That’s what sucked me in. I had that great experience with Jim doing the double summit. I went from thinking I was a failure at the beginning of that trip to being the strongest climber in the group. That really went back to when I was thirteen at the Philmont Ranch. It was something I excelled at. I didn’t know why the altitude favored me, but it did. I wasn’t a money grabber, and I got a lot of experience quick.
On this trip, I was improvising, making it up as I went along. This is when I truly began modeling myself after Jim’s lessons interacting with people. I tried to do things as he did and keep the same good attitude. I wasn’t as charismatic or experienced with leadership skills, but we pulled together a reasonably successful trip.
The National Park Service supervises climbing on Denali, and it also controls a limited number of concessionaire permits for commercial guide companies. There are not very many and the season has a limited window when the weather is not consistently too brutal to climb. Soon, I was running three trips a season, each planned for three weeks, May-June-July, May-June-July. At some point in there, I became an advocate for serving better food because I was eating climbing food for three months of my year. Everybody else was only putting up with bad food for a month. It was crappy, but that was the norm for all the companies. No one had given much thought to providing food that tasted good. Most of the meals were packaged, boiled in hot water, and processed. It didn’t go down well, and ramen and tuna only go so far.
By then, I was working for Harry Johnson. I got to know Harry through the Mountain Rescue Group. When Ray Genet died on Mount Everest in 1979, Harry bought Genet Expeditions, and I went to work guiding regularly for him. He was able to obtain the concession from the Park Service to guide on Denali. I wonder how different my life would have been if I had been able to get in on ownership. There was always a big fight over getting permits; it would have been a very good move for me to snag one. I would have made some money instead of being a guide in my sixties. But it has actually worked out to my advantage; I don’t need much money. Maybe that will change when I am in my eighties. Ultimately, I decided I would rather do what I love on a small salary than be well off doing something I didn’t like.
Guiding on Denali for Harry, I used my influence to upgrade the food. I said, “This is not the place to skimp. You get us good food, and you’ll see that it sells. You’re not doing yourself any good if the quality of food is low. Climbers won’t eat it, and they won’t make the summit, and they’ll tell other people. You’ll ruin your success rate by saving $10 here and there on food. It’s not worth it. You might have a mutiny.” I made sure there was plenty of good quality food. People knew if they climbed with Vern Tejas, they would eat well.
Early on, probably my fourth trip on Denali, I was asked to lead a group of Boy Scouts on a climb. They had a team leader who had to withdraw for work-related reasons and I was asked to fill in. Their team leader said, “I’ve got some Boy Scouts who really want to climb that mountain. Can you take them? We can’t pay you anything.” Well, I was a Boy Scout and had enjoyed it, so I said I would do my best. They were fifteen- through eighteen-year-old Explorer scouts with a couple of adult leaders. It was unusual to have a group that young on the mountain.
For some reason, the trip was scheduled for an April 9 departure. I don’t ever go in April because April is cold, cold, cold. You don’t get credit for a winter ascent, but it might as well be one because it can be minus-thirty or minus-forty. If the temperature is in that range and you have a storm, the climbing can turn deadly. Denali brings sufficient risk at any time, but you are inviting more trouble if you are there when the thermometer bottoms out. As a group, despite their youthfulness, the scouts and explorers fared surprisingly well on the mountain. Ultimately, the cold was just too much and we had to descend, but we returned with all of our fingers and toes.
The average person who is not familiar with climbing may not realize the mountain itself sets the terms of the climb. It contains more power than humans. Snow, ice, wind, cold, and objective conditions such as open crevasses all factor in to the progress a climber can make. They can terminate a climb because it is simply too much to overcome. A guide’s top priority is to keep people safe, not to make it to the top. Guides are being paid to shepherd others to the top and return them safely to sea level. Of course, every guide on a big mountain wants to reach the summit, but their desires are secondary to the clients’ needs. The clients count on the guide. As much as anyone else improves with time in their profession, I became a better guide the more I did it. I became wiser at recognizing clients’ needs. I also became a better guide with more experience for all mountains, not just on Denali.
Tejas’s first summit of Denali filled him with an enthusiasm for mountain climbing that has lasted all of his life
There is a law of the jungle that if someone gets into trouble on Denali, or on any big mountain, whether they are in your group or another, if you are able, you lend a hand. You drop what you are doing to help out. Sometimes that makes the difference between life and death for someone. The more I guided on Denali, the better known I became to the Park Rangers, mountain company owners, and guides for other companies.
Although the vast majority of groups are guided, there are some big teams that come to Alaska from other countries that travel together, climb together, and work together. They represent their nations. Denali became a popular place for Japanese mountaineers (perhaps because of adventurer Naomi Uemura’s connection to the mountain) and South Koreans came in large numbers. In the early 1980s, there was a bit of a communication gap with some of those climbers. They might have been seasoned mountaineers, but it is very easy to underestimate Denali. Denali does not have the altitude of Himalayan peaks, but the weather can be just as nasty as it gets on Mount Everest. Also, because there are not many very technical areas on Denali’s West Buttress, it sometimes has had a reputation as a “walk-up” mountain. Sometimes people do not give Denali the respect it deserves which can foster an attitude of carelessness, or a belief that it is not very hard to climb it. Some climbers do not think they need to acclimate as much, and they can be ill-prepared, at least psychologically. I always remember how I pushed it so hard coming on to the Kahiltna Glacier on my first trip. You could say I was also fooled, but did not suffer consequences beyond first-day fatigue and embarrassment—and I learned from my mistake.
In the summer of 1986, late in the season, I had just finished guiding a group to the summit and was still on the Kahiltna. My group was scheduled to fly back to Talkeetna the next morning, so we were just hanging out. Two Korean climbers appeared, running up Heartbreak Hill nearby and chattering excitedly in their language. I went, “What’s going on?” You could sense something was wrong. There was panic in their faces. They were flailing their hands and talking fast. We tried to figure out what they were saying.
“Slow down, guys.” I cleared off some snow from the surface, took out a wand and used it to write in the snow. “Denali?”
They go, “Denali, Denali.”
I asked which route and they said Cassin. I drew a picture of the mountain in the snow and made a map up to the Cassin Ridge. They pointed, indicating there were two people high up on the mountain, but not on the top.
The Cassin Ridge is a difficult route to the summit, first climbed in 1961 by a group led by Riccardo Cassin of the Italian Alpine Club, and, according to Brad Washburn, it was the first real mountaineering climb of the mountain. The Koreans were trying to tell us two more members of their expedition still were up there and needed help. The radio operator at base camp was in contact with the Park Service in Talkeetna, and it turned out the rangers had been trying to decode some kind of CB radio message for days, which had been fading in and out, and were aware a Korean group was overdue. The transmission had seemed like an SOS, and now these guys were from that late group.
Ultimately, after the rangers found a Korean interpreter, it was determined someone on the mountain was trying to talk and was broadcasting an SOS in such a heavy accent it did not sound like English. We had already put the story together through sign language and snow diagrams before the interpreter confirmed it. It became clear the leader of the expedition was suffering from cerebral edema, and one of the stronger members of the party stayed with him. Then the batteries on their radio died. The climber had been sick for a while, and the friend was pinned down with him. We knew we had an emergency rescue on our hands.
The Park Service said it was flying in a helicopter with some fit rescuers, and I was asked if I could join them. I had just had a very exhausting day with my group, but I was acclimated. My climbers were just waiting for a flight, so I could go. There was another fit guy who had been working 14,200, helping organize things at that camp, and he had been on the mountain for a while. He had just descended, so he was acclimated as high as 14,000. The rangers were looking for other volunteers. A well-known, powerful English climber named Joe Brown was in Talkeetna, and they thought he was going. An Austrian named Wolfgang Wipler, a very strong climber, volunteered, but was told he wasn’t needed because they had Joe Brown lined up. When the Park Service went to get Joe Brown, though, they found he was drunk and in no condition to climb. At 8 a.m., the Park Service went looking for Wipler again, and he had a colossal headache from staying up all night drinking and partying. They apologized and said he was needed now. He was pretty groggy. A helicopter swooped in to the Kahiltna and picked me up, which made four of us including the pilot.
The pilot zoomed up to 20,000 feet, and we looked down at the mountain, trying to pinpoint the Korean climbers. The pilot fought over the ridge, but it was so windy it was difficult and there was nowhere nearby to set down. We didn’t see anything. We spent thirty minutes hovering and never saw any sign of human movement. It turned out the people were in a tent that was buried in snow so it blended in. They did not know we were coming so they had made no effort to clear the top. They may have been so deeply asleep that they never heard us.
The helicopter descended to 19,500 feet, to what we now call the Football Field, a moniker I bestowed on the area in the early 1980s. It is a flat area that is often the last stop for climbers before they head to the summit ridge. The wind was still gusting. We couldn’t land there either. We tried to land at normal high camp at 17,200 feet, but it was also too windy. The pilot was not going to land and let people out; it was too sketchy for him. He finally landed at 14,200 feet. So we were almost 6,000 feet below the Koreans and on the other side of the mountain. Plus, we didn’t even know exactly where the sick guy was. It was a long climb to the Cassin Ridge. Almost right away we lost the ranger. He just peeled off, probably not acclimated, or acclimated enough considering how fast we were trying to go. The Australian guy who had been working at 14,200 feet made it to 17,200 feet and said that was it for today.
We believed this was an urgent situation. We didn’t really know how badly off this guy was, but the indications were that his life was at risk. At high camp, 17,200 feet, I picked up 600 feet of rope, and Wolfgang grabbed a bottle of oxygen and a supply sled in case we had to transport the Korean. By this time, it was getting late in the day, going on evening. We got to 18,200, Denali Pass, at about six p.m. Wolfgang and I bumped into another climbing group, led by Gary Bocarde, at Denali Pass. The climbers were camping in the midst of a traverse. We told them we were on a rescue mission, and Gary said he had heard it on his radio. Wolfgang said he was really trashed. He looked beat. He had been up all night and said he just had to take a nap, an hour’s worth of sleep, and dove into one of Gary’s tents. I was the only one still on the rescue.
I had a radio, and every once in a while I communicated with the Park Service. The rangers checked in. They asked how we were doing, where we were, and I said, ‘Uh, basically, right now, it’s me.”
“What do you mean?” I explained where the other three were, and the ranger said, “Let’s get this straight. The rescue team is one person?” They began trying to talk me out of it because, really, a one-man rescue is not very practical. But heck, I had just spent the entire day going up high, like a vertical mile, and I wasn’t going to stop.
I made like my batteries were dying, although they weren’t, and kept saying, “You are breaking up. I’m losing you,” so that they wouldn’t make me turn around.
I had a lot going through my mind, as well. In 1984, I had lost my lady friend, and I had taken her ashes to the top in 1985. She died from an aneurysm, not common in a thirty-five-year old woman. She was also one of the earliest kidney transplant patients and lived a good fifteen years longer than she would have without that kidney. She was taking immunosuppressants to keep from rejecting the transplant. She was very special to me, and I was pretty emotional, no doubt because of the circumstances and fatigue, too, but I was thinking about her. We had traveled the world together and eaten in some weird places. She caught typhoid fever and, because of the drugs she took, she could not get rid of it; her immune system couldn’t fight it. The doctors found the aneurysm and were scheduled to operate the next day. That night, it blew up and killed her. The rescue in 1986 was the first time I had been high on the mountain again alone. She had a great spirit and was a great person. I very much missed her when I was crossing the Football Field and approaching the spot where her ashes resided. I miss her still.
I was by myself, pushing hard. Lack of oxygen makes you less cerebral and more emotional. Sometimes it benefits the self to grieve. I was pretty sad, and the rangers were trying to talk to me. By then, they were telling me to come down. But I was pretty close to the summit where her ashes were. I had frozen tears collecting in my beard. The rangers said, “Vern, can you hear us? You need to come down.” You couldn’t blame them because it wasn’t very safe for me.
“I can’t hear you guys. You’re breaking up.” I just didn’t want to pull out at that point. Physically, I was hell-bent to see what was happening with the Koreans. So I just turned the radio off and continued to climb.
I reached Pig Hill, which is at the top of the Cassin Ridge, looked down and couldn’t see jackshit. All I had were two pickets, the rope, and the radio, which was no longer a helpful tool. I wondered how I could find these Korean guys, then it hit me. Everyone who knew me back then knew I was a hot-shot yodeler. Besides making music with a harmonica, fiddle, or guitar, I yodeled. I figured everybody knew that yodeling was a signal for an Alpine mountain guide, so I yodeled. I thought I heard a very weak response, so I yodeled again, and damned if I didn’t hear yelling back. They knew somebody was there.
I saw snow pop off the top of a tent and two heads pop out. They were waving 650 feet below me. Holy moley. They had made a camp on a little bench. Using the rope, which I anchored with the two pickets, I rappelled down to within fifty feet of them. The slope gentled out, and I was able to climb down the rest. All I had with me was a bottle of water, a sandwich, and some Decadron to help fight cerebral edema. I shared it with them.
The healthy guy who had stayed with his buddy was ecstatic to see me. His reaction was like, “Yes, it’s the cavalry!” The other guy was woozy. He was not in good shape. I gave him Decadron. I gave the other guy Decadron. I gave me some Decadron. We all drank water and split the sandwich. We were at an elevation that people should not be for too long, and they had been there for a long time.
Did I mention how wonderful Decadron is? It’s my go-to emergency drug on a climb. It began working on the guy with cerebral edema. It has been well-tested and used by the Army. I use it when people are in trouble mentally. I could see his cognition returning. It is not a drug you take for any length of time, but, in small amounts for a limited time in high altitude, it can be very helpful. Sometimes I justify giving it to a climber because I think it can be the difference between him having the strength to get down safely or not. Other times, I have given it to someone to transform him from comatose to ambulatory. It is a big deal if it helps saves someone’s life. When a guy is laid out and suffering and can’t make sense, and it helps get him to the point where he can tie his own shoes and start walking, that’s a big deal. I saw that kind of reaction in this guy. His eyes brightened up and understood me speaking English, with a combination of sign language.
I directed him to the rope, to climb the fifty feet over the snow and start climbing up. He went over to the rope, but what he didn’t understand was that he had to ascend the rope. These guys finally realized that I was all they had. There was no cavalry; it was just me. I couldn’t carry them on my back. This sick guy especially hoped two other guys were going to appear and carry him up the 600 feet.
It was time for me to stop being subtle. I said, “No, it’s not quite that good. You’re actually going to have to climb up.” While his friend collapsed the tent and packed up the gear, I started climbing next to him as he used his ascenders on the rope—one for each hand—to grip it. His friend was pretty OK. He was hungry and dehydrated, but he was ambulatory. We wanted to take the gear because I thought we might still need it later. We didn’t know what was going to happen, and it was possible we were going to have to make another survival camp.
On the rope, I kept cajoling this guy. I was breathing with him. “Slide your ascender up. Slide your other ascender up. Let’s go. Up the hill we go,” I was sing-songing. I was talking to him, although I’m sure most of what I was saying was incomprehensible to him. He was trying to figure out why there were not more rescuers involved. The Decadron revived him, but when at last we reached the top of the 600 feet and he saw the two pickets and nobody else there, he gave out. He looked at me and lay down. That was it, the extent of his energy. That was the last time I saw him up.
I was getting pretty demoralized myself. We were still very high on Denali, on a ridge just forty minutes from the summit. We had a whole big mountain to descend with a guy who was basically comatose again with just two of us to help him. That’s a bad combination. I did not know what we were going to do. I glanced around while I was thinking, trying to drum up an idea to save us, and twenty-five feet below the ridge, I saw a big, orange plastic sled heading our way. It was sticking out of Wolfgang’s pack. He really did only sleep for a short while! That sucker blew my mind. He appeared right when I needed him. I got the oxygen bottle from Wolfgang, put the weakened Korean climber in a sleeping bag and lashed him to the sled and turned on the O2.
We quickly formed a descent plan. I unfurled the 600 feet of rope again. I gave Wolfgang a picket, and he stayed next to the sled to steer and brake. The other Korean had his hands full carrying both his pack and his buddy’s. The guy hadn’t moved for a week, so he was still getting the blood flow going in his legs. I stayed behind, made an anchor out of the picket, belayed the rope, and attached it to the sled, banged in a picket, and belayed the rope again, little by little lowering the sled. Going down wasn’t difficult, just repetitious. I lowered the sled 600 feet at a time, removed the picket, and ran down to where Wolfgang was holding the sled with the other picket. Then we did it all over again.
We got back down to the Football Field. It was flat there, so we did not have gravity working for us. The Korean, Wolfgang, and I pulled the sled, with our patient on it, behind Archdeacon’s Tower, where there was a snow drift about forty feet high. It was not easy getting over it, but everything else was downhill. When we got to Denali Pass, Gary’s team was still there. We just pushed the sled into a tent and said, “Take care of this guy.” Then Wolfgang and I quickly dropped to 17,200. We had been out twenty-four hours straight, working hard, doing manly things to save this guy’s life, and were pretty darn exhausted. Radio contact was made with the Park Service, and the rangers said Gary’s team was going to lower the sick Korean on ropes to where we were, and then a pilot would try to fly in a helicopter to take him to a hospital in Anchorage the following day.
I pretty much passed out. I slept in an igloo that night, and Gary’s climbers got him lowered. The ranger and the Australian who had been working at 14,000 came up and we all dragged the sled across the flats to the pickup area at high camp. A helicopter swooped in and took the Korean off. His friend came over to me and gave me a $20 tip. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was symbolic.
He said, “It is from the bottom of my heart. Would you please accept it?” I did.
The Park Service wrote up that I saved two people myself, but it was really only one because the Korean friend could move on his own. Maybe one-and-a-half since he was trapped with the guy with cerebral edema.
Actually, right after I got to 14,000 feet, the Park Service flew in a big Chinook helicopter to dismantle the camp there for the season. The military guys asked if I wanted a ride, and I said, “Hell, yeah. Get me out of here.”
I could say that I saved that $20 bill forever, as a remembrance of a life-saving trip, but that would not be true. I spent it on lunch.