Norman Vaughan smiles while standing in front of the mountain named after him, Mount Vaughan in Antarctica
Norman Vaughan was born in 1905 in Salem, Massachusetts and retained his Boston accent for his 100 years on earth. His family was well-off, making its money in the manufacturing world. But Vaughan was blessed with an adventurous spirit that refused to let him be tied to a desk.
In particular, in his quest for adventures, Vaughan became quite attached and impressed by the working sled dog. On the fast track to a good education, Vaughan dropped out of Harvard University to become a dog handler for Admiral Richard Byrd’s 1928 expedition to the South Pole.
Vaughan spent the years from 1928 to 1930 with Byrd on the ice. To recognize his contributions, Byrd named a 10,302-foot Antarctic peak “Mount Vaughan” in Norman’s honor.
Over the decades, Vaughan participated in the exhibition dog-mushing category at the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York; ran a dog-team search and rescue unit during World War II and was, for most of the rest of his life afterwards, called Colonel Vaughan by many; participated in three presidential inaugural parades while mushing dog teams; and in his seventies, and raced in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
Vern Tejas met Norman Vaughan not long after the young climber moved to Alaska and they remained close. When Vaughan adopted the slogan “Dream Big and Dare to Fail,” he contemplated at long last returning to Antarctica to climb the peak Byrd named for him. He was approaching his eighty-ninth birthday.
Many thought Vaughan foolhardy, many were inspired by him, and Tejas promised his assistance to make the indomitable senior citizen’s dream come true.
In the end, against strong odds, Vaughan did stand on the top of his own mountain. It was a feat that garnered nationwide attention and made him a hero across Alaska, where he was beloved and came to be known as “Alaska’s Grandpa.”
While touching many with his gumption and commitment, Vaughan unveiled a fresh quest. He wished to return to the summit of his mountain for his 100th birthday. A teetotaler, Vaughan schemed to gain the sponsorship of a French champagne company. He envisioned popping the cork on the summit above 10,000 feet and proclaiming, “I’ve waited 100 years for this!”
Alas, Vaughan celebrated his 100th birthday, December 19, 2005, with a party in an Anchorage hospital and passed away only four days later.
Norman was one of the first people that I met in Alaska and certainly one of the most impressive people I ever met in my life. Norman was the kind of guy who had a story for every occasion, and I loved listening to his stories. The man had stories. He wasn’t making them up. They were all based in reality, and it was a very large reality. I was won over by his charisma and his experience.
He had done everything. He had been in the war, worked in top-secret conditions destroying the Norden bombsights in Greenland so the Nazis couldn’t get them. He tried to rescue fallen soldiers in the Battle of the Bulge. He taught the Pope how to dog mush. He rode a snowmobile from Anchorage to Boston. You can’t make up stuff like this.
At the age of sixty or so, he was booted out of the house by his wife, or something like that, and came to Alaska with just pocket change. He became the grandfather figure for most Alaskans.
He took me under his wing at an early age and took me into his confidence. One day he would say, “Do you want to ski from Kotzebue to Nome?” That is a ski trip of more than 300 miles.
“Sure. Love to.” I’d reply.
Or, “Let’s go dog mushing.”
And I’d say, “Yeah, I would love to.”
I bumped into him in various places or just went to listen to his little talks. The first time I remember him mentioning Mount Vaughan was when he came to one of my book signings, my story of the first solo winter ascent of Denali. He said, “Hey, Vern, ever thinking of going back to Antarctica? I’m going.” And I said, “I’m volunteering my services.”
Many people thought he was rash to announce he was going to climb that mountain at his age. I was rash enough to say, “I’ll be your guide.” Boom, it was done. Later, I lost a little bit of appreciation for it when we had delays for weeks and weeks, and I was on my own nickel and almost went broke from it.
It was not easy to get permission to take this kind of trip to Antarctica. It was a long, long process. We needed the help of the late U.S. Senator Ted Stevens to make it happen. God rest his soul. We put together a team. Besides me and Norman, there was Carolyn Muegge-Vaughan, Norman’s wife; Ken Zafren, an Anchorage doctor; Brian Horner, a survivalist specialist and former medic in the military; and Dolly Lefever. Dolly was an Anchorage nurse-midwife whom I had guided with occasionally. Dolly had recently climbed Everest, and in 1995 became the first American woman to climb the Seven Summits.
Ironically, Dolly’s last summit was Kosciuszko in Australia, the easiest one, and she and the friend she was with got caught in a surprise thunderstorm and basically became hypothermic. Even the smaller mountains can cause big trouble for you.
Carolyn was the spark-plug. She got Norman there. There was also a veterinarian from Wisconsin named Jerry Vanek, a dog handler named Larry Grout, and a pilot out of Canada named Bruce Alkhorn. George Menard from Trapper Creek, Alaska was the radio operator.
We set out to do the climb for Norman’s eighty-eighth birthday in December of 1993, but the whole thing began to fall apart early on.
We were in Chile waiting for word we could go, and that took much of October and November. We finally got the OK on Thanksgiving Day. While waiting for approval, we began by staying in a hotel, then kept downgrading because of the cost to a motel, a lodge, and then a hostel. Finally I was camping out with the dogs.
The holdup was that the National Science Foundation did not want tourism there. And an eighty-eight-year-old guy does not sound like a good bet. That sounded like a rescue to them. It sounded like a heart attack. That sounded like somebody dying, a horrible scenario, so they kept saying no way.
Norman had a lot of old influential Army buddies, and he called in a lot of favors, but they couldn’t budge the Science Foundation either. We mustered a public outcry in Alaska. Finally, when we talked to Senator Ted Stevens, he said, “I wish you had told me this months ago. I could have helped in some way. Let me see what I can do now.”
The next day, we received a Telex, a telegram, and a telephone call granting us permission. Boom, boom, boom. We knew Senator Stevens had done something. I found out later he flexed a lot of muscle. At the time, he was the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. That might have had something to do with it.
Much later, after the climb succeeded, we went to Washington, D.C. and visited Ted Stevens’ office. Norman said, “Ted, we were in big trouble. I know I should have asked you first, but what did you do? It was immediate.” Senator Stevens said, “Oh, it was easy. I just told them one of my constituents was having a hard time. He’s well-loved by my whole state, and, oh by the way, when was the last time we audited you?” And that’s how the problem got fixed. Permission, permission, permission with a little bit of political finesse. On Thanksgiving, we were so happy we had tears in our eyes.
We were just getting ready for the eight-hour trip to Antarctica the next morning at about 4 a.m., when we got a phone call. We had three flights, and the first one carried the dogs and the radio equipment. I decided to let Norman sleep in for a couple of hours, and then I knocked on his door. I said, “Sir.” He said, “What’s up?” I told him our plane had crashed. He did not go wild or anything. He got into survival mode. First, he asked who was hurt, and then if any of the dogs were hurt.
The dogs were on the first flight because they had been sitting around in sixty-degree weather for too long, and we wanted them to get back to where it was cold and more comfortable. At that time, all flights went into Patriot Hills. There was poor visibility. There was definitely bad weather, and the Adventure Network International people on the ground warned Bruce, our pilot. But he thought they were just trying to scare him off because it was his first flight there as a competitor. But no, it really was bad weather. They called it right and he didn’t believe them. He had window fogging problems. He couldn’t see real well because of a ground blizzard.
More than likely, the altimeter was off because it was Antarctica. I call it the Polar Premium. There is lower pressure at the poles than there is at the equator, so the altimeter doesn’t function properly. The co-pilot told me they thought they had one hundred feet of clearance, but they did not.
Bruce was six miles out, and he had just pulled the nose up for final approach and a few miles from the runway, the wheels hit the snow at 120 miles per hour and the plane slid on its belly. The propellers were wing-mounted and they hit the snow. They were spinning at like five billion revolutions a second, and when they hit the snow on the right side, they went cart-wheeling out across Antarctica. The props on the left side tumbled into the DC-6.
Jerry, the vet, was sleeping in line with the props with his head against the left fuselage. Later, I went to examine the wreck. You could see where there were multiple whacks, three or four, bop, bop, bop, bop, and the first whack was right about where Jerry’s head was. The second one was a bit further down where his arm was. The third was where his leg was. The fourth whack from the propeller cut through the plane and ripped his seat loose. He pitched forward and that kept him from getting killed by the propeller, but he was thrown into the fuel drums and was a mess.
He was strapped into his seat, asleep, when 2,000 pounds of force hit. Jerry was hit so hard, the suture joint in his head opened and shattered his temple bones. A whole section of his forehead swelled out about four inches. But that saved his life, because it relieved pressure. An ANI medic, who coincidentally was from Girdwood, Alaska, right outside Anchorage, was there and treated Jerry with morphine and brain-shrinking drugs to keep Jerry from being crushed by his own brain swelling.
In Punta Arenas, we arranged for a rescue flight and sent in Zafren, the doctor, and Brian, the medic. They picked up Jerry. Bruce came back with the plane. Larry, the dog handler, cracked some ribs, but by acting quickly was able to hop out the back of the plane and get the dogs removed before it caught on fire with the help of George, the radio operator. The dogs were not really hurt in the crash.
The fuel tanks were in the center of the plane, and the fuel was much more volatile than the kind of gas you put in your car. Larry feared the fuel was going to create a fireball. Some of the dog cages were crushed, and some dogs were loose and fighting. He began taking them out one by one and trying to tie them down. The problem was that in Antarctica there is only snow and ice, nothing to tie them to like a tree. So he tied some of them to pieces of the wreckage.
ANI knew the plane was supposed to land, but then it disappeared. They sent out snowmobiles for a rescue. What they realized was that if a fire broke out, everything down wind behind the plane would burn, including the staked-out dogs. They cut the traces and while you might think the dogs would just scatter, they did not. They got into a big brawl. They went crazy in the midst of the fuel, the blood, the flames, and the chunks of airplane.
They went berserk and the handler was in the middle of it all, smacking them in the head, trying anything to keep them from fighting. He tried to find places to tie them again, with their cut traces, and they were chewing on each other and anyone who got too close. Finally, Larry and the ANI helpers got most of them corralled and transported Jerry temporarily to a hut at Patriot Hills. There were about thirty dogs, and they were still wild. That’s a handful for a few guys, some of whom had just barely escaped the crash with their lives.
About four of the dogs were seriously injured in the big dog fight and wandered off. We suspect they went off to lick their wounds and disappeared. They were probably covered by drifting snow. People searched for several days, but they were never found. We think they probably died like that. Food was even left out for them, but they never came back.
It was just horrible, but our main concern was Jerry, who was in a coma from his head injury. He also had a broken arm. His leg was broken in twenty-two pieces. I saw the X-ray. His lower leg looked like a jigsaw puzzle.
When you suffer that much damage, things compartmentalize. So much blood coagulates that the swelling is massive, and you can’t get the circulation going. Doctors had to cut his leg open just to relieve the pressure. He was in a coma for two weeks. We visited him every day in the hospital, and when he finally opened his eyes, just about the first thing he said was a joke! We all said, “Jerry’s back.”
It was a relief to know his sense of humor was intact, because that is a subtle thing and, with a head injury, you just can’t tell what is going to happen. He looked like a human being again. As soon as he was conscious, he was medevacked out, and we got the dogs out. Most of the dogs had been loaned to Norman for the trip, and he was very broken up for a long time about the four that were lost. I know human life is more valuable, but it messed him up.
We had put together a great team of great people, most handpicked by me, a mostly Alaskan team, and the whole trip ended in a complete fiasco. You couldn’t write failure in bigger letters.
But guess what? It wasn’t over. We didn’t give up. After Jerry was sent home and the dogs were taken care of—there were sixteen others—Norman made a little speech. He said everything had been terrible and devastating, but he still had his dream. “So what do you guys want to do about it? I still want to do this.” I said I was still in. Dolly said she would come back to Antarctica. The other guys had families and businesses and pretty much had to go. Norman said, “Let’s take a break for Christmas and come back in January. We’ll try again.”
We had reduced personnel, but some of us were still there. None of us, not me, Dolly, or Norman, had any money. Norman had sponsors, and he even raised money from school children who donated. It was an uphill battle to get all the funding in place, but it finally happened, and we returned to the ice. We were on the ice at Patriot Hills and got socked in by a storm, one storm, for seventeen days. We had budgeted twenty-two days for the whole trip.
Our plan when we returned in January of 1994 was to go without dogs. We were going to ride snowmobiles with nobody backing us up. In a way, the delay represented the storm of good fortune because we all could have died if we carried out that snowmobile plan. In retrospect, I praise the Lord for sending the storm.
Rob Hall, the famous guide who died on Mount Everest a few years later, was working there for ANI, and he broke the news to us we couldn’t go. It was too late in January. They were going to break down the camp soon, and we did not have enough time to complete the trip. He said, “I need to tell you, it’s not in the cards. You have a very small window, and it is still raging outside.”
The southern winter was coming. Just to provide some context, Robert Falcon Scott and his group died in February. Rob said it, but we all knew it. We just weren’t voicing our concerns out loud. We had just kept our fingers crossed hoping the storm would stop and we could start. When Rob delivered the official news, we kind of all cracked simultaneously. We all cried.
There was another guy waiting who had been trying to make a trip to the South Pole. Instead he was trapped with us. His name was Charles Givens. He wrote a book called “Wealth Without Risk.” It was about flipping houses and he made a lot of money doing it. He said, “You guys have a great story and it is a great dream. I’m the kind of guy who believes in that kind of stuff. I think you guys could have done it if things had been different. You shouldn’t give up on it.” Then he wrote out a check for $100,000, saying, “Would this help you get started for next year?” Norman was not a guy inclined to give up anyway. I passed the check to Norman, and it put a smile on our faces.
There had actually been a National Geographic camera crew around us, waiting for fruition on this crazy trip. They went back to their offices in D.C. and said, “No story, but a hell of a lot of drama.” The editors went, “This is priceless. You can’t script this.”
We never saw the pilot again. He kept the money and went off and died with it. In my mind, he was the skunk of the world. He should have gotten insurance money, but instead he kept our money. I kept telling Norman, “He’s got our money!” I figured he owed us $500,000 back. I was learning about life the hard way. How I looked at it was he screwed this old man out of half a million dollars. Norman kept telling me to settle down.
The story of our colossal failure starting getting told and people started saying, “He almost died. He didn’t make it.” But people liked the appeal of what we were doing and that we weren’t quitting. Funding started coming out of the woodwork. Norman went on tour around the country talking to businesses and pledging to make motivational speeches to their employees.
He said, “I’ll do motivational speeches for you guys. I’ll do a half-dozen.” And he did do talks for several years afterwards. And the funding came through. I don’t know where it all came from, but a well opened up. It was such a dramatic story, and Norman is unique because of his age. Everybody dug deeper and corporate America got on the bandwagon. Big companies in Alaska came through.
Norman Vaughan smiles while standing in front of the mountain named after him, Mount Vaughan in Antarctica
So we were able to go back and try again. No dogs, though. That year, in January, sled-dog use was permanently banned in Antarctica for fear they would transmit diseases to the seal population. We left at the very beginning of December, and Norman and I wanted him to be on the summit for his eighty-ninth birthday on December 19. The crew was not exactly the same, and some people told their wives they would be home for Christmas. National Geographic told the camera people to keep it short. They had already spent like a million bucks, and they were running out of money.
Some of the donors, who were covering the cost of the plane, wanted to come. They were hooking on to Norman’s dream. I was thinking, “This is his trip.” Norman likes to placate people and keep everything going smoothly. Those guys definitely wanted to be home for Christmas. The idea of hanging out at base camp in a frozen wasteland was not their idea of a holiday celebration.
I was thinking, “Damn, it’s only a couple of days more till his birthday. Norman was accommodating. He seemed to want to please them more than himself. There was good weather, and ultimately we went up to the summit before his birthday.
Mount Vaughan is in the Queen Maud Mountains. There is a long ridge to the top. Base camp was at 6,000 or 7,000 feet. We planned to put in two camps on the ridge, and then a high camp at 9,000 feet. We planned to go to the top at 10,302 feet, from there.
I climbed with Norman. I wanted to make sure he was steady on his feet. He wore a heart monitor so we could keep track of his health and make sure he did not get his heart rate up too high. That was doctor’s advice before we left. I was making good steps, and I was tied to Norman on a short rope. We had someone behind him as a stabilizing factor in case he fell over. We could catch him. We just kept working our way up, step by step. Norman was slow, but he was rhythmic. It was steady. Norman’s mood was terrific. His cheeks were rosy, and his smile widened
He was sweating, but the higher we got, you could see relief. For him it was, “Here I am. A sixty-year dream becoming reality.” And I thought five years waiting to climb Denali was a long time until a payoff.
Norman carried a stuffed dog with him to the top as a tribute to the sled dogs that had meant so much to him in his life. Admiral Byrd had named this mountain for him six decades earlier. The cameras were panning him and the scenery all around. Carolyn was right there with him, and on the summit, Norman and Carolyn made me kneel down and kissed me right on top of my bald head. It was December 16, three days before Norman’s birthday.
Mount Vaughan has a nice, rounded top. There was a slight breeze, and it was minus-twenty. It is Antarctica. We’re all laughing and celebrating and making a big hullabaloo about getting there. Norman was hot and sweaty. You don’t notice it when you are moving around, but when you stop and you’re an old man and you don’t have a lot of fat reserves, you chill down quickly.
Before I knew it, Carolyn yelled, “Norman is going down.” I go, “Holy shit.” Remembering the lesson of Lynne Salerno, I had brought a tent, stove, and sleeping bag with me just in case. I knew Norman wasn’t going to sprint up the mountain.
All of a sudden, on the summit, Norman got hypothermic. I hurriedly put up the tent, slammed him in the sleeping bag, and got the stove going. Norman spent the night resting on the top of his mountain. Not everybody knows that part of the story. We came down the next day and were back at base camp for his eighty-ninth birthday.
The other guys who tagged along—granted they helped finance things—didn’t seem to be worried enough about Norman, and I was pissed off by that. There were supposed to be two planes flying out in tandem for safety, and they were all saying Norman should just descend the mountain and sleep on his plane on the way back.
Norman said, “I’m exhausted. I need to sleep.” They wanted to throw Norman on a plane, and I said, “Norman is not going anywhere.” They go, “What the hell are you talking about? We’re getting out of here.” I made a stand on Norman’s behalf that he needed to rest and, as far as I was concerned, he was going to get that rest. I damned well was not going to lose Norman Vaughan because they were in a hurry.
Norman was an old man, turning eighty-nine, and they wanted him to sleep sitting up in a plane after climbing the mountain? This is his trip. He is exhausted. My god. So I had pilots in my face, guides in my face and the National Geographic film crew shouting. This man is tired. All the others want to kill me. I am his safety officer and I go, “He is not going anywhere. He needs to be sleeping. And the longer you guys yell, the less sleep he’s gonna get and the longer we’re gonna be here.”
It’s not like we were delayed long, not even a full day. Norman just wanted eight hours of sleep. Finally, they backed down. The sponsors took off, but by his birthday, Norman was down at base camp. He was still on his mountain, and I wanted that for him. I thought they were a little bit selfish.
As it turned out, after they left us, their plane was ordered down. It was the safety plane, and we were supposed to go in tandem, so they had to land in the middle of Antarctica and wait for us. They had to camp out under the wings of their plane in the middle of nowhere in Antarctica. Everyone was upset with me, but it was all pretty clear to me. Who was calling the shots? The film crew? No. The sponsors? No. It was Norman. I wasn’t calling the shots. I was just his advocate, and it was up to me to make sure he was safe.
You know, he almost died of hypothermia the day before. It isn’t any surprise that he was exhausted and wanted to sleep. I thought the tail was trying to wag the dog. I said, “You guys want to fly? You can do whatever you want.” I also wanted to see a little respect. National Geographic was going to make a ton of money off the video of him. The guides were getting paid. The sponsors were theoretically there to support him. I was the only volunteer there besides Carolyn. I wasn’t getting anything out of it besides being able to help my hero. Norman got his sleep, and then we descended and flew back to Patriot Hills.
After the others left the continent, Norman, Carolyn, and I stayed at Patriot Hills with the Adventure Network International staff for Christmas. Norman loved it. Norman was in Antarctica because he loved the place. Those other guys didn’t even ask how Norman felt about rushing to leave. They just climbed over each other to get out fast.
When we were leaving, he said, “You’re coming to Washington, D.C. with me.” I said, “I’d love to.” I wanted to get back to Alaska, but I was happy to go wherever he wanted me to go.
Norman became Alaska’s hero with a big reception in Washington, D.C. National Geographic set up a press conference and all of the networks were there. The Bosnian War was going strong, and I think Norman’s achievement got glossed over a little bit, knocked off the front pages.
But Norman definitely had his moment in the sun. We ate with Ted Stevens in the Congressional dining hall. There were five-piece settings. One piece of silverware looked like a rake. I felt a bit awkward, but Norman dragged me around with him everywhere and I was happy to be in the background of his limelight.
Norman wanted me to help him get back to Mount Vaughan for his 100th birthday. I said sure, and we planned it. Norman’s scheme was to sign up a French champagne company for a sponsor. On the summit, he would take a drink and say, “I waited a hundred years for this.” Although Norman worked on that idea for years, it really wasn’t meant to be. I telephoned Norman in the hospital on his 100th birthday from Antarctica.
I asked, “How are you?” He said, “I’m not feeling so well, but hey, you know what? I drank some champagne.” I asked, “How was it?” He said, “It tastes awful.” After all that... “tastes awful.” I think if the champagne sponsor had come through for the climb and he did it, Norman would have sweetened up that comment a bit.
Norman died a few days later. A few years after that, I was back in Anchorage and I visited Carolyn. She was living in a nice four-plex. “How did you guys score this lovely place?” I asked.
She told me the insurance money came through from the first trip. The insurance company paid Norman. That was my understanding. I don’t know exactly how it all played out, but it does sound like justice was done.
How great a story is all of that for Norman? Dream Big and Dare to Fail was Norman’s motto. He worked hard, dreamed big, got spanked, got back on the horse, rode it, and got a four-plex out of the deal, too. Norman Vaughan is truly one of my heroes.