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

by Andy Hall

  Haber: Ah, I didn’t understand all of that, Jerry. I got, I think I got the gist of it. You think you’re up near the summit but you can’t be sure if you’re at the summit or not, you’re just sort of floundering around; you’re not sure where you are. Is that correct?

  Clark: We’re not even sure we’re on the summit ridge yet. We don’t know whether the summit ridge is supposed to be wanded, and we’ve lost the wands. The wands are set too far apart, can’t find out where they left the ridge.

  Haber: OK, we’re still a little fuzzy there, but I think I understood you to say that you don’t know where the summit ridge is and you have lost the wands because they are too far apart. Is that correct?

  Clark: Roger. We’re at the summit ridge. We have followed the wands to what we think may be the summit ridge. I’ll say that over again. We have followed the wands to what we think may be the summit ridge. And if we find one more wand, one more wand, it’d probably be enough, uh, to tell us which way to go on the ridge. That would be enough for, to tell us which way to go on the ridge.

  Haber: Uh, Jerry, uh, I don’t know if your batteries are warm enough or not or what, but I couldn’t get too much of that. I understood you to say you followed the wands up to the summit ridge and then you lost them. Is this correct? Let’s try this again.

  Clark: [Garbled] We have cold batteries. We have cold batteries.

  Haber: You have cold batteries. Is that what you said?

  Clark: The rest are at camp.

  Haber: OK. Is there any chance that you can let them warm up a little bit and then we can try again?

  Clark: Roger.

  Haber: OK. Let me stand by here for a few minutes then because I can’t really understand what you’re saying. Eielson standing by. . . .

  Around 11:00 P.M., Jerry Clark hailed Eielson. Haber responded but nothing followed. Just over twelve hours later, at 11:30 A.M. on July 18, Clark’s calm voice again hails Eielson. After Haber’s response, Clark’s voice breaks in, midsentence.

  Clark: . . . blowing, seven degrees.

  Haber: What happened last night? You called about quarter to eleven, I guess. I heard you and I answered but you didn’t, you didn’t acknowledge. I thought maybe you had radio trouble.

  Clark: We probably didn’t copy you. We had some weak batteries; in fact, they’re still weak right now. We ended up bivouacking, as a matter of fact. It got so fogged in that we couldn’t go up and we couldn’t go down.

  Haber: Well, you’re coming in loud and clear right here now. How long do you plan on staying on the top?

  Clark: Well, five or ten more minutes, Gordy. It’s kind of cold up here. Hank wants to read something for you, stand by.

  [Mark McLaughlin, not Hank Janes comes on.]

  McLaughlin: Hey, Gordy, you still sending postcards from the summit?

  Haber: Yeah, go ahead.

  McLaughlin: I’d like to send one to my parents. Do you have a pencil and paper there?

  Haber: Go right ahead.

  McLaughlin: Mr. and Mrs. S. P. McLaughlin.

  Haber: Mr. and Mrs. S. P. McLaughlin . . .

  McLaughlin: Dear Mom and Dad, Radio from the summit. A-OK. See you in a week or two. Love, Mark.

  Haber: OK, got that. How about giving us a little description of what you can see up there? Tell us how the view is right now.

  McLaughlin: The view consists of four other guys at the moment. That’s all. It’s completely whited out. We’re sitting just below the summit; you can see the wands on the summit, that’s all. Over.

  Haber: Boy, you didn’t luck out like the last four, I guess. They got a real good view when they were up there. Do you mind naming off the people that are up there right now?

  McLaughlin: Ah, sitting on the summit: Jerry Clark, Hank Janes, Dennis Luchterhand, ah, Mark McLaughlin—oh, and Walt Taylor. Wouldn’t want to forget him—he led all the way up.

  Haber: OK. Say, when I talked to Joe last night, Wilcox, um, he was wondering what happened to the seventh man. He thought seven were going to try for the peak and I told him there were only six. He’d like to know what happened to the seventh man. He doesn’t know where he is. Do you?

  McLaughlin: Ah, seventh man is Steve Taylor, and he didn’t feel good at all so he stayed in camp at seventeen-nine. He’s probably wondering where we are at the moment.

  Haber: I imagine he is. What was his name again? Can you repeat it once more real slowly?

  McLaughlin: Steve Taylor.

  Haber: OK, when I get back in contact with Unit Two, I’ll tell him that. He was wondering. Anything else you want to say?

  [A voice can be heard speaking in the background and then McLaughlin speaks again.]

  McLaughlin: Jerry says to say all five of us got the summit at exactly the same time.

  Haber: All of you got up there at the same time. Is that what you said?

  McLaughlin: Roger, roger.

  [After clarifying the address for his postcard, Mark continues.]

  McLaughlin: Well, I guess that’s about all the talking we can do, especially since you’re not copying us.

  [His words grow garbled and then halt.]

  Haber: OK. Thanks for the call. Yeah, I can’t read you very well at all anymore. You’re fading out. Well, not fading out but very indistinct. I think your batteries are going down too. We better clear for now. Just before you do cut out: What time do you want us to stand by here for the next call? Do you have any schedule that you want to maintain?

  McLaughlin: Just eight o’clock, I guess.

  Haber: OK, eight P.M. We’ll have someone here then. Be lookin’ forward to talking with you. Congratulations again. If nothing further then this is KHD6990 Eielson Base clear.

  McLaughlin: Thanks very much. KHD6990 Unit One clear.

  The 8:00 call would never be made. These were the last words heard from any of the seven young men at or above the high camp.

  After a long climb and what must have been a bitter and sleepless bivouac, the young mountaineers had made the summit and quickly turned for home, or the next best thing: the tents of high camp, where Steve Taylor waited alone. Five thousand feet below him, near the bitter end of the Harper Glacier, Joe Wilcox, Anshel Schiff, and the Colorado team waited in their tents.

  One man, however, remained unaccounted for. Overlooked by ranger Haber and unmentioned by the summit team is the “unregimentable” flag-carrying John Russell. True to form, the group’s maverick had again ducked out of sight.

  Six men had headed for the summit at 3:00 P.M. the day before. At 4:40 P.M. that day Haber’s radio log notes six men climbing to the summit. But at 11:30 the following morning, sitting just below the summit, Mark McLaughlin named only four companions: Jerry Clark, Hank Janes, Denny Luchterhand, and Walt Taylor. When Haber asked who remained at 17,900 feet, McLaughlin explained that Steve Taylor had felt too sick and never left the high camp. So what happened to Russell?

  “I could imagine him turning back on his own,” Joe Wilcox says. “He had exhausted himself on Karstens Ridge, and he wasn’t as strong on the upper mountain. At some point he might have left the summit group. The disposition of the group would have been against it, but he would not have wanted anyone else to forfeit their summit attempt.”

  Given Russell’s personality, there could have been a disagreement. Or, he might have stayed behind at the bivouac site while the others climbed to the summit, which they thought was close at hand. He could have fallen into a crevasse; the first summit team had crossed one that was narrow but apparently bottomless two days prior near 20,000 feet. In any case, and for whatever reasons, John Russell and Steve Taylor, in some ways the most perfect opposites in the Wilcox Expedition, both chose to break off from the group. The seams of the expedition had come apart and would never be put back together.

  CHAPTER 9

  SPLIT APART

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p; Depending on where you were on Denali on the day of that last radio call from Mark McLaughlin, conditions were cold, warm, clear, cloudy, calm, and blowing from the northwest or blowing from the southwest. Each of these conditions was reported on the same day, some at the same time, and each is accurate to the location and elevation or vantage point where it was recorded. Rarely does the mountain host the same weather across its vast height and girth.

  Joe Wilcox’s journal entry for that day, Tuesday, July 18, simply notes, “Radio contact with Eielson reveals six made summit at 11:30 A.M. Strong winds from S.W. all day.”

  Five thousand feet lower, on the Muldrow Glacier, the Mountaineering Club of Alaska team pushed up from the top of the great icefall to the foot of Karstens Ridge. Expedition leader Bill Babcock’s journal describes whiteout conditions throughout the day, interrupted by periodic clear skies and hot weather.

  On the west side of the mountain, at 17,200 feet on the West Buttress route, the Western States Expedition, comprised of several highly experienced mountaineers, waited for a break in the weather to make a dash for the summit. Expedition member Louis Reichardt’s journal entry of the day reports bad weather had hit the night before:

  As feared, the weather turned foul last night. Snow has steadily been falling on us throughout the day, and we have been constantly buffeted with gusty winds with estimated velocities of up to 60 m.p.h. The combination has kept us in a consistent whiteout, dangerous even to go over to the ice caves without wands.

  At Wonder Lake, 35 miles north of the mountain, the rangers’ logbook notes: “Mountain clear from 6:30 until 9 A.M. Clouds blowing in directly from Northwest.”

  Such disparate same-day conditions are not unusual for Denali. The weather on the north side of the Alaska Range often differs from that on the south side. The mountain itself is so big and its features so distinct, a single system rarely prevails. But the variation goes much further than that; the twin summits, exposed ridges, gaps between peaks, and deep glacial valleys can give rise to unique microenvironments, each harboring very different conditions simultaneously.

  The fog that had shrouded the summit ridge through the night dissipated early on July 18, but by midmorning Snyder noticed from his vantage point at 15,000 feet that a saucerlike lenticular cloud had formed over the summit.

  McLaughlin finished the postcard to his parents, ended the radio call with Ranger Haber, and, along with Walt Taylor, Luchterhand, Janes, and Clark, headed down the summit ridge.

  A phenomenon called orographic lift had formed a cloud cap over the summit as warm, moist air moved into the cold, stable air near the mountain. This was the result of the low-pressure system’s approach. Around noon, about a half an hour after the Unit 2 summit team began its descent, the two systems began to interact violently. At the same time Wilcox reported that a strong, snow-laden wind rolled down Browne Tower ridge and clapped into the broad sides of the tents at Unit 1’s 15,000-foot camp. On the south face, another expedition, the A-67 Expedition led by Boyd Everett Jr., also logged a sharp wind increase. “Light snow and fog all day—wind increases at noon and becomes quite violent . . .”

  On the exposed summit ridge, inside the otherworldly cloud cap and blind to the atmospheric forces building around them, the summit team caught the brunt of it. Though they carried one sleeping bag for every two men, they had no place to seek shelter—both tents remained at high camp—and they had limited ability to make one, since they carried no intact shovels. Whether or not they had food and stoves is a matter of contention, but with no way to escape the wind, it was impossible to light a stove and to melt water, let alone cook.

  At high camp on the north side, where Steve Taylor waited, the wind may have been less intense, but not by much. He had shelter, a stove, and enough food to sustain himself for several days. Fuel, however, would have been limited if the two one-liter bottles had not been located before the summit team left. It is possible Steve Taylor and John Russell reunited at high camp, but there is no clear evidence either way.

  High wind and blowing snow kept Wilcox, Schiff, Snyder, Schlichter, and Lewis at the 15,000-foot camp, confined to their tents, waiting for the 8:00 P.M. radio check, when they expected to hear that their friends were back at high camp. When the summit team did not call in at the appointed time, no one was particularly worried. The radio checks had been inconsistent, and given the exhausting climb and exposed bivouac, who could blame them if they collapsed into their tents after returning from the summit without bothering to call?

  Late that night Schiff interrupted the rambling discussion he and Wilcox had been holding inside the bucking and snapping nylon tent.

  “Listen,” he said. “I hear voices.” Wilcox poked his head out of the tent and into the driving snow but, real or imagined, the faint sound was gone.

  Constant wind and heavy snow continued through the night and into the next day. In his journal, Joe Wilcox tried to stay measured:

  Wed. July 19. Strong winds all [last] night until noon—Northern storm moves in and dumps a foot of snow during afternoon and night. No contact with High Camp at 8:00 P.M. Becoming a little concerned.

  When breaks in the snowstorm allowed glimpses up the Harper Glacier, Wilcox looked toward Camp VII in vain hoping to see a line of seven forms moving down through the swirling snow. Instead he saw a pale landscape devoid of detail save the spindrift dancing on the wind.

  At 17,200 feet on the West Buttress, the Western States Expedition realized something unusual was occurring. Louis Reichardt’s journal entry on Tuesday night says:

  The wind picked up and began blowing steadily from the north. The clouds were whistling by our tent and Lloyd’s prognosis was favorable. “South winds bring moisture from the ocean. North winds blow it away!” We retired, planning a summit attempt this morning. However, when we awoke, the weather remained the same. The wind continued to be fast and from the north. The clouds continued to blow by. We were soon in a blizzard and there has been no sign of a break since. Lloyd’s prognosis has been grim. “When the north wind does not clear out the clouds, you are really in for it!”

  On the Muldrow, the MCA team relayed supplies to the base of Karstens Ridge and, in spite of the whiteout, moved up the ridge to establish a campsite at 11,550 feet.

  The Wonder Lake Ranger Station’s log’s July 19 entry notes, “Denali visible briefly to 17,000'.”

  In a narrative report written immediately after leaving the mountain, Wilcox stated, “The failure to establish radio contact at 8:00 P.M. with the upper group led me to believe that their radio was damaged or lost (seldom had we missed scheduled radio contacts for two consecutive days.)” Though it was 8:00 P.M., Wilcox argued for heading to the high camp immediately, but Howard Snyder dissuaded him. The sun wouldn’t set until midnight and would be up again by 4:00 A.M., but heavy overcast and fog cast a gray pall over the Harper Glacier, and the wind had dislodged many of the wands, making the trail hard to follow. He suggested they wait for better weather, and Wilcox reluctantly agreed.

  “We knew they got to the top,” Schlichter recalled. “We thought, Well, they’re at the high camp and they’re hunkered down. We kept thinking, We’ll hear them, we’ll see them in a few hours, at the end of the day, the next morning.”

  At 5:30 the following morning, Thursday, July 20, two days since they saw their teammates, Snyder, Schlichter, and Wilcox prepared to return to high camp in search of them. Each man carried basic supplies, including a sleeping bag, along with three gallons of fuel and a stove to resupply the high camp. Schiff and Lewis were weak but not dangerously ill, and stayed behind. As Wilcox prepared to leave, Schiff asked, “How long should we wait for you?”

  “Two days,” Wilcox answered.

  The response must have caused Schiff some concern. They had food and fuel and an intact tent but the altitude continued to affect them. They’d been above 12,000 feet for six days already and Lewis’s condition continu
ed to worsen. Neither of them had any experience at high altitude, and if they had to descend alone, they faced a treacherous descent down Karstens Ridge and passage through the crevasse-filled Muldrow Glacier icefalls.

  Joe Wilcox led the rope team, breaking trail through foot-deep powder and a 40-mile-per-hour headwind. The storm had dislodged or buried many of the wands, and they had none to replace them. “With our trail obliterated as soon as we broke it,” he wrote in his memoir, “we were in danger of cutting off our retreat.”

  Progress was painfully slow, according to Snyder. “We stood still for minutes at a time, straining to see the wands ahead. When the wands came into view during momentary lulls, first one, then two, then three, we memorized their positions and plodded onward.”

  After four hours they had covered only three-quarters of a mile and the wind was increasing. A radio call to Eielson yielded no weather forecast, so Wilcox made the decision to turn back. He and Snyder exchanged heated words when Wilcox decided to leave the fuel there on the trail rather than pack it down and then back up again when they returned in better weather. “I thought he shouldn’t have left it but didn’t say it,” Snyder recalled. “He announced the decision wordlessly by putting down the gas can on the trail.”

  The weather cleared not long after the three men returned to camp, but the wind did not relent. Thin, wispy clouds raked the peak but still no climbers came into view.

  My father, the park superintendent, is conspicuously absent from the dialogue during the early days of the incident. Early in July he had left the park at the request of National Park Service director George Hartzog to guide US Congresswoman Julia Butler Hansen on a tour of parklands in Alaska. She was chair of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funded the Department of the Interior, and Hartzog wanted to make sure she was well taken care of.