Denali's Howl: The Deadliest Climbing Disaster on America's Wildest Peak (10 page)

When Jerry Clark peeked out of his tent on Monday, July 17, he was greeted by much better weather—much like it had been two days earlier on Saturday morning when the first group summited. Clark made two calls to Eielson to get weather advice, but no reports were available. It left the decision in the climbers’ hands, and from their vantage point high on the mountain, conditions were looking good.

“
I think we’ll just wait and see what the weather does,” Clark told Wilcox.

As the morning progressed, the wind died and the skies continued to clear. Wilcox and the Colorado group prepared to leave for Camp VI at 15,000 feet, where they would await the second summit team. Fewer people at the high camp meant more food and fuel for those who remained. Moreover,
Jerry Lewis’s condition continued to worsen, so getting him to a lower altitude was a priority.

And he wasn’t the only one who was suffering. While Dennis Luchterhand had recovered after falling ill during the ascent to high camp, neither Steve Taylor nor Anshel Schiff felt any better despite having remained at Camp VI for an additional day. Altitude sickness wracked John Russell’s body more severely—
whenever he’d try to eat, he’d throw up.

Howard Snyder tried to convince John Russell to head down. “
I knew John was sick; I knew he was suffering from altitude sickness,” Snyder said. “I went over to the tent he was in and, knowing his prickly character, I didn’t say, ‘John, you’re sick and I think, really, you should go down with us.’ That wouldn’t have worked. I went over to his tent and said, ‘John, any of you guys want to go down with us?’ Well, that veiled attempt was too obvious for him, and it made him angry. He said, ‘No, no one wants to go down.’ Moments later, Anshel Schiff exploded out of that tent as though he had to escape. I mean, he didn’t just throw open the door and crawl. He exploded out of the tent and said, ‘I’m going down with you,’ which saved his life.”

Wilcox didn’t find out Schiff had digestive problems until much later, and his perspective was less dramatic. “
Anshel had a realistic view of his own abilities when he got to high camp. He had come along to do the science stuff; he was in good physical shape but didn’t need or want to go to the top.”

What of Steve Taylor, the young man who felt sick as soon as he got to the foot of the mountain? He had been the first one to sign up with Wilcox and had appeared to some to be the weakest man on the team, even back in Puyallup. The altitude began to affect Taylor when he topped 12,000 feet on Karstens Ridge, and he’d showed no signs of bouncing back. This is from one of Snyder’s letters written just after the climb:

Lewis asked specifically if [Steve] Taylor wanted to come down with us, and he replied that he would stay with the party at camp VII. Schiff said that he is almost certain that S. Taylor knew he was not going on to the summit. If this is so, Taylor was either playing a bluff to the last minute to avoid having “backed out”; or he had decided to rest a day at 17,900', going neither up nor down.

One other man on the expedition who may have been feeling the effects of altitude: Joe Wilcox. Both Howard Snyder and Paul Schlichter claim he appeared to be suffering. “
He was so damn sick before we came down that he didn’t pack his own pack,” Snyder said. “His guys packed it for him.”

“
I was tired after staying up shoveling; other than that, I felt fine,” says Wilcox. He planned to wait at the high camp and told Jerry Clark, “
I’ll stay here while you guys try the peak.”

“That really won’t be necessary,” Clark replied. “We have the majority of the strongest climbers with us, and besides it would further conserve our fuel for you to descend to Camp Six.”

Wilcox decided to go down. “
I felt that I should stay with the high group; however, this would mean sending only four people down [two of them very weak]. I didn’t feel that I could ask any of the other climbers to give up their summit aspirations, so I accompanied the weak group myself.”

Jerry Lewis, Howard Snyder, Paul Schlichter, Anshel Schiff, and Joe Wilcox were ready to leave camp at 1:00
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., but the second ascent team was still walking around the camp, packing, excavating gear buried by snow during the windstorm, and searching for two one-liter bottles of
fuel that had been left outside and lost. Wilcox found Clark, reminded him that food had been cached at 16,500 feet between Camp VI and Camp VII, and said, “
Don’t take any chances, Jerry; it’s not worth it.”

“Don’t worry,” Jerry replied. “If we can’t climb today, we’ll probably go down tomorrow.”

They shared a mittened handshake and parted. Joe Wilcox tied into the 270-foot rope Howard Snyder had strung together, and they headed down. Along with their personal gear they carried the Colorado team’s four-man McKinley tent, a two-man yellow Mountaineer tent, and
the expedition’s only complete shovel.

“
We could see the camp as we moved down,” Paul Schlichter told me. “It seemed like a couple of hours after we left, they were still milling around getting ready to go to the top, taking forever.”

It was 3:00
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., about the same time that Wilcox and the four others arrived at Camp VI, that the summit team finally left Camp VII with Walt Taylor breaking trail up the Harper Glacier toward Denali Pass.

It was late to be leaving on a climb that in ideal conditions would require six hours to get to the top, and at least two to return. But on Denali in mid-July there is no shortage of daylight, with the sun setting at midnight and rising before 4:00
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Joe Wilcox believes that when the summit party finally left, each man packed a sleeping bag, down pants, insulated overboots, a face mask, and two to three days’ worth of emergency food. Distributed among the seven men were one handle-less shovel, a stove, two ropes, a five-watt handheld radio with an extra set of batteries,
and 150 wands for trail marking.

Howard Snyder, however, says
the only food they carried was lunch.

“It is possible that some had carried sleeping bags as a precaution,” he adds, “as Dennis Luchterhand had said he intended to do.”

Two tents remained at 17,900 feet: Mark McLaughlin’s homemade, two-man Cascade—which could hold three in a pinch—and the surviving four-man Logan. Inside the Logan, Steve Taylor stretched out his long frame, swallowed back the nausea, and listened to his companions as they moved up the glacier, their voices fading until all was silent and he was alone.

Around 8:30
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., Jerry Clark’s voice crackled through the radio at Eielson Visitor Center. Ranger Gordon Haber answered the call and then started the tape recorder.

Clark’s voice is clear and unhurried and free of the heavy breathing notable during Wilcox’s call two days prior.

Clark:
ETA is approximately forty-five minutes to one hour, Gordy.

Haber: Forty-five minutes to an hour?

Clark: [Garbled affirmative response]

Haber: OK, I’ll tell you what. When you get to within about a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet of the top, why don’t you give me a call. I imagine that’d be somewhere between a half an hour and forty-five minutes or so and, uh, maybe if you’ve got enough battery power, we can monitor you up the last few feet and I can record like I did for the first four guys that went up.

Clark: Way cool. We’ll see what happens, Gordy. [Chuckles] We’ll try to give you a call. KHD6990 Unit One clear.

Haber said he’d be downstairs but would leave the volume high so he could hear their call and then he signed off: “If I don’t answer the first time, don’t get too shocked. I’ll be right up.”

Due to the geography of the peak, Camp VI at 15,000 feet is not in line of sight with Denali Pass. While Haber could speak with both groups, they could not communicate with each other.

Moments after Clark signs off, Joe Wilcox breaks in but his voice is faint.

Haber: I thought I heard you say, I may be wrong on this, but did you want to know what was going on up there? Is that what you asked?

Wilcox: Roger, roger.

Haber: Yeah, they figure their ETA right now is about forty-five minutes to an hour from the top. They wanted to know, originally from you, whether or not there was a large cornice on the summit. Of course you answered affirmative to that, but that’s about all I know right now. They just told me they’d be up there about forty-five minutes to an hour from now. I can check on more if you’d like to know.

Wilcox: Is everyone there in the party. Are there seven in the party?

Haber: I understood there were only six in the party, but I’ll check on that again. Unit One, are you reading me?

[After repeated calls he gives up.]

Haber: I guess they shut the transmitter off, John [apparently Haber momentarily forgot Joe’s name]. They had told me originally, Jerry told me that, uh, they had fifteen-knot winds and he estimated the temperatures of zero to ten degrees. But the last I talked to them at four forty, he said there were six climbers, six of them in that group.

Wilcox: OK, thanks a lot.

Haber: OK, they’re going to call back again in about a half an hour, forty-five minutes or so, when they get close to the top. Maybe we’ll get a hold of you then. Are you going to be listening in or turn it off now?

Wilcox: We’ll probably listen in. It depends on what’s going on.

Haber: Whereabouts are you right now, Joe?

Wilcox: We’re at the 15,000-foot camp on the Harper.

Haber: OK then. When you first came on I couldn’t read you but you’re coming in real clear now. Maybe we should let well enough alone. Do you have anything further?

Wilcox: Uh, no, I uh, you said some climbers didn’t go to the summit. I was just wondering who it was.

Haber: You were wondering who was up there? Is that what you said?

Wilcox: Yes, I was wondering who was up there. Who did not go to the summit? There were seven at high camp.

Haber: Yeah, the way I understood it, there was one of the seven that got a little sick I guess and couldn’t quite make it so I guess he went back down with some of the others that were going back down to the 15,000-foot camp. That’s the way I understood it. Right now I assume there are six.

Wilcox: There is no one here, uh, Anshel Schiff did not attempt the summit. But there should be one other climber at the 17,900 camp who did not attempt the summit today. I was just wondering who it was.

Haber: Oh, I see. OK. No, they didn’t mention to me who it was. Next time I talk to them I could ask them.

Wilcox: OK. We’ll listen in, in about a half an hour.

Haber: OK then, Joe. We’ll see what we can do then.

Fifteen-knot winds at 5 degrees Fahrenheit would have produced a wind chill factor of about 15 below zero. Hardly extraordinary conditions, and certainly nothing to be concerned about. An hour passed before Clark called again, around 9:30
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. and Haber starts the recorder before answering.

Haber: This is KHD 6990 Eielson. Go ahead, Unit One.

Clark: Gordy, we’ve got real problems up here. Do you have any arrangements to contact Unit Two?

Haber: I tried to call them just a little while ago and I couldn’t get an answer. Why don’t you let me try again; stand by.

[Haber calls Unit 2 but gets no response.]

Haber: Uh, I don’t get an answer [from] Unit One, Jerry. Uh, I originally had told them we would, you’d probably be calling about a quarter to nine and so they said they’d be listening in. I imagine they had their radio on and shut it off. But they might, they might turn it on periodically, uh, although I don’t know when. I don’t imagine they’ll leave it on the whole time because of the batteries. What’s the problem?

Clark: Well, this route is not well wanded at all. We’ve lost the wands. We’re just floundering around. We don’t know whether we’re on the summit ridge or not. We don’t know whether the summit ridge is supposed to be wanded or not, and uh, we just thought we’d check it out. We think we’re pretty close to the summit, but uh, we can’t tell. We’re just floundering around on the flat here. Visibility is about three hundred feet.

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