yes he replied but my search is
for the one who cannot be found
-Rumi
today is your day! your mountain is waiting. so... get on your way.
- Dr. Seuss
Five of us (Mark, Masaru, Terry, Kent and myself) along with two guides (Oliva – lead guide and Cory) embarked on an expedition to reach the top of North America (Quiz: What is the second highest peak in N. America?). Denali – The High One, the Athapascan Indian name (or Mt McKinley) stands at 20,323ft. Its unpredictable and demoralising wind storms, heavily crevassed glaciers, thin Arctic air and sub -30C temperatures combine to give an unrelenting power, immense beauty, exceeding that encountered in the Himalayas. We climbed via the popular West Buttress route (pioneered by Brad Washburn), circumventing crevasse falls, 100 mile per hour winds, hyperthermia, frostbite and lassitude. Having been told that I was in initial stage of HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema) at High Camp (17,200’) I decided to abort and head down. I do feel terribly defeated by the mountain, but rewarded by experiencing the mountain's elements and enormity. Lessons were learn't, the fragility of life understood, loved ones became closer, and a burning desire to appreciate everything life has to offer will always remain with me. I know many people call the West Buttress a walk-up. I would encourage them to give the route a try. The climbing is only slightly technical in nature but the huge amount of gear that is required makes the route a serious undertaking. A fair description of the route is a two to three week expedition with four days of moderate mountaineering. Because McKinley rises abruptly from its low level tundra setting, the gain in height from Base Camp to summit (13,000 ft.) is a full 1,000 ft. greater than the Everest equivalent (29,000 –17,000). This in itself is an acclimatization challenge. But whilst on Everest the sherpas carry all your stuff, here, we are the porters. Add to that challenge the lurking dangers of crevasses, avalanches and rockfalls, not to mention flash freezing and human error, and you have in Denali what amounts to the second most difficult of the seven continental summits. Indeed, Denali is often used as a testing ground for would-be Everest summiteers.
(A little note on Noami Uemura – one of the less known giants in mountaineering history. He climbed the 7 summits solo in his 20s, he attempted Denali alone in the midst of winter in temperatures of -148F (nuts!), and his legend now the title of Davidson’s book Minus 148. He died on descent and his body was never found. A Japanese flag was later found on the summit)
once drunk, we'll sleep on the bare mountain with the sky as a blanket and the earth as a pillow.
— Li Po.
Talkeetna is a cute little town at the edge of Denali National Park. It serves as a first civilization base for climbers and hence has pubs, a few staying places and a small airport which serves as start point for flight operators servicing the Kahiltna Glacier. The standard meeting place was the West Rib Bar with the walls covered with memoriblia from mountaineers over the world and local brews such as Ice Axe.
We were carrying three weeks worth of food and fuel in addition to all the snivel gear we owned and could afford. To digress briefly on equipment, we each carried basically the following on our persons and in our rucksacks: snow shoes, rope, ice axe, crampons, harness, prussics, -20 sleeping bag, Mountain Hardware 8000m down parka and pants, full Gore-Tex suits, two pairs of mitts, double plastic climbing boots, 40 below overboots, pile jacket, gloves, glove liners, polypro. underwear light and heavy, socks, baklava, face mask, goggles, sunglasses, cameras (a handy Canon 710 IS gifted to me by Reena), sleeping pads, first aid kits, numerous other sundry items, two stoves, mountain hardware tents, shovels, ice axes, ice screws, pickets, a deadman snow anchor, ropes, belay devices, mechanical ascenders, and various other iron mongery. It, along with the duffels full of one-day, eight- man packs of food and 8 gallons of fuel, made quite a pile, and made us feel like some arctic version of Incas dragging unreasonable loads to even less reasonable heights. In addition, I had a little flag made by kids made from over 30 patches and fabrics. I was carrying everyone who had contributed to the flag with me. I tried to carry four books (Ghalib poems, two sets of mountaineering anthology book and one on math olympiad puzzles) to which Olivia vetoed and it remained at the hangar or in the caches. The group food has plenty of variety of pasta, cheese quesadilla, noodles and my personal food items ranged from plenty of nuts (almonds mostly), dark chocolates, jerky and bars. We carefully fish weighed each piece of food and gear and we boarded planes late to Kalhitna with my personal equip and food being 80lbs and group food and equip 40lbs (total of 120lbs). We had only one day of single carry, but over the subsequent camps, we moved an equiv of 120lbs per person minus the food & fuel consumed (8oz of fuel/per person/per day) plus the human waste up the mountain in double carries. We can temporarily store food and other items a spot which is spefically wanded with the permit and is sufficiiently deep to prevent ravens at lower mountains to dig through it. Anyone who abandons cache can be cited by the rangers and permits revoked. The idea is to cache, moving camps and then back carry the cache to move the equipment and food up the mountain.
The flight out of Talkeetna was out of this world. Our pilot did a little fly by of the Kahiltna. One flies over the longest glacier in the Alaskan range the 45 mile long Kahiltna Glacier, to see where climbers begin their ascent of McKinley. As you approach the climber base camp, the plane flies between McKinley's two sister peaks: Mt. Hunter at 14,500-feet and Mt. Foraker at 17,400-feet. The West Buttress comes into view. At a mile I could in mind the see the remains of the last glacier age, I could see glaciers recede, I could see migration from Asia Minor over the covering Berring Strait using advanced techniques of stiching to help create warm clothes which would help them survive, I could see that Denali at the time was only several hundred feet protusion from the glacier. A the height of the last Ice Age, about 20,000 years ago, glacial ice more than a mile thick covered much of northern North America, northern Europe and Russia, and Siberia. The vast amount of water frozen in these glaciers lowered sea levels by as much as 300 feet. One difference important to the initial peopling of the Americas was the existence of an exposed land mass, roughly 1,000 miles wide, that connected Siberia with Alaska where the Bering Strait now exists. Asiatic hunters able to cope with cold environments reached central Siberia by 29,000 years ago. Many archeologists believe that the descendants of those people migrated across the Bering Strait landmass—known as Beringia—to reach North America. Archeologists refer to these first American migrants as Paleoindians. During the last ice age, the exposed ocean floor between Sibera and North America made a perfect migration path to the New World. The first Americans walked to the New World across a land bridge that joined Asia and North America between 70,000 and 11,000 years ago.
to climb a mountain one must start at the base
— Chinese saying.
The views were incredible as we flew over the arctic tundra, up into the mountains and finally after 45 minutes, landed after several bounces on the Kahiltna Glacier. Amazing! The flight was mysterious perhaps due in part to the nature of the clouds concealing and revealing the rugged walls of the long Kahiltna valley and ripped, tortured glacier not far below. We arrived smoothly on the ski planes skids to the Kahiltna Glacier that evening the 24th of May. We were hurried out of the plane with our loads of gear, skis, and many sharp pointed accouterments. We buried extra food near the strip, rigged and loaded up the plastic kiddy sleds and were off that early morning for five miles to the next camp at 7,800” camp at the base of “ski hill.” We made a relatively quick but grueling ascent of the Kahiltna Glacier to the 14,200’ Base Camp in 4 days. We single carried an average of 120 lbs each day. The route is most commonly double carried and takes more than a week for the approach.
Before the buzz of the plane has died out we get down to business. We set camp, Oliva and Cory start cooking, the rest dig holes for caches and we gulp down a cup of hot liquid. I plan to consume atleast two hot cups (soup, tea, chocolate) per day. Quickly we dispose of an entire cheesecake, six bagels, half a ham and several cans of fruit. Then we start dinner. For the first day we will feast on the heaviest and most calorie laden food possible. After that the cuisine will deteriorate rapidly, dinners consisting mostly of Minute Rice or Ramen noodles. In fact we soon discover that due to some packing error several of our dinners do consist entirely of Ramen noodles. These are given the status of emergency rations. There was no stopping us after morning unloading, we rigged the sledges and shouldered our rucksacks and headed towards camp 1 down Heartbreak Hill and then up along the glacier with all the gear we would need for 21 days. This was the only day when we didn't do two load carrys and we moved about 120lbs of gear each - a heavy start! It was very hot work and we reached camp 1 (7,800ft) after about 6 hours. We then had 1 hours hard labour of digging and building snow walls and erecting tents established camp 1.
We woke up early. I removed the bandanna tied around my eyes (in June, the sun never sets on the Alaska Range) and donned my glacier glasses. Moving early in the morning is essential for crossing snow bridges that melt in the midday sun.
manzar ik bulandi par aur ham bana sakte
arsh se idhar hota kash ki makaan apna
- Ghalib
Meanwhile, back at (7,800’) there was a distinct lack of both conspicuous consumption. Having dragged ourselves (not to mention 80lb packs and 40lb sledges) up to Camp 1, the team were evolving an expedition routine which consisted of putting up tents, digging out a mess/cooking area and sorting out personal kit. This ‘climb high, sleep low’ approach was called ‘acclimatization’. Particularly key was devising a reliable method for strapping on the "CMC", our nuclear-spill-safe "potty in the hills". A fairly recent Park Service initiative, the CMC has helped greatly to keep the many busy camps on the mountain. You know that simply melting water takes some energy, but actually boiling it takes 3-4 times as much. This translates to using a large amount of heavy gas each time you BOIL water. Also makes another argument to bring along a tall windscreen as this channels the hot gases up along side the pot, which enhances the use of scarce energy. Small covered pans with wide bottoms filled with moderate amounts of water boil the most efficiently. So if you want to save gas, and you do, the best practice is to boil only the water that you need for the immediate task at hand then boil again. Melting snow is a different deal however. A large pot that allows one to gather a large amount of snow all at once, also allowing the water at the bottom to "wet" the snow on top which in turn hastens the melting process of the full pan. The final trick is to NOT heat your melt water too much, expect for those bottles that may be exposed to the full weather. Tepid is your goal, not boiling. We built walls around our toilet (a bucket with a plastic seat, lined with a plastic bag) and we even built an arched doorway. But basically did nothing after two-hour excursion. At 11:25pm I woke up and looked down on the gully, the sun was still out, it was snowing lightly, the flakes were shining and glittery and it was really warm. I took a photo but it didn’t come out right. The next day we took our cache up 11,000’ and came back down and built walls. RMI has a nice kitchen tent with multicolor top. We would create a central kitchen top, a place to sit around a little quary around to take out snow. Add a cooking area by cutting a platform alcove on one side of the entry wall
there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.
— Sir Rannulph Fiennes.
Wearily, we trudged through the soft yielding snow. I was slavishly following the rope that bound me to my fellow mountaineers like an umbilical cord, mesmerised by its hypnotic snake-like passage ever onwards and upwards. Please do not leave slack or taut– Cory would yell ahead of me, implying I should maintain the right speed – neither slow or fast to arrest properly incase of an incident. This was only Day 3.5 of the climb. That night, maybe I was hallucinating but I could feel the tent walls come right on my face. When we woke later that night or early morning, it was clear why Mark and myself were squeezing Kent’s sleeping space, we werent being fresh. The tent had caved in – almost burying us. We dug ourselves out of the overnight 2.5 feet of snow. This story turned out to be not unusual. It snows a lot on Denali. It pretty much snows every day on Denali. As you leave camp 2 there is a hill called Motorcycle hill, which is at about fifty degrees. It’s not too bad as you are quite fresh, just out of camp. But this particular day, the weather was pretty bad. On Motorcycle Hill it was pretty much whiteout conditions. Above that was the same, with the added bonus of a strong wind! As we headed upwards, we had an exposed drop on our left-hand side. 3,000ft to the Peters glacier, but we could not see the drop, which I thought was a good thing. Thankfully a little earlier people had already headed up Motorcycle Hill breaking a nice trail for us. Steep snow climbing up Motorcycle Hill rewards you with spectacular views. You are above a covered gully and can see the other nearby mountains. We carried a decent sized load of food and fuel up to a cache at 13500’. Windy corner takes your breath away – literally, the wind blows so hard in your face that you have to turn around to breathe. After caching our load we made it back to 11K camp in about 90 minutes under clear sunny skies (finally). This is a particularly pretty portion of the lower route.
there are moments in difficult situations.
there, the questions are gone.
and I think these are the important moments.
if the question is gone, I have not to answer.
myself living - I am the answer.
- Reinhold Messner
Our second time up Motorcycle Hill seemed now like a breeze; nice day to push to 14000’ camp, certainly. Passed by our 13500’ cache and over drooping, delicate snow bridges over huge beautiful but ominous crevasses. Arriving at 14000’ camp, we found a good site next to a huge AAI camp/cache and fixed it up nicely. Again, off-and-on snowy/sunny/iffy weather just like previous days. We walked out to the Edge of The World which looks down 7,000 feet to the North Fork of the Kahiltna Glacier. We took turns going to the edge on our ropes and just got lowered over the edge The next day was an easy day; took about 20 minutes to walk down to 13500 cache, then maybe 70 minutes back up to 14000’ camp with the goods. Rest of day took it easy, but prepared to make carry to high camp. We had a storm the next morning. The storm was a real terror to those higher on the mountain, but for us in the relative shelter of the basin, we just had a tremendous amount of snow. So much snow that it piled up to our waists and just getting to the pre-dug pee-hole was a journey that required full gear. In an hour of amazing turnaround, the winds reached 130mph (according to Olivia) with gusts so heavy just remaining on your feet was difficult. We got down on our fours and scrambled and closed the hatches on our tents. We didn’t even want to venture out to retrieve a pack of cards to pass time. It turned so cold some days that our breath condensed in the insides of the tents causing intricate icicles dropping from the top of the tent.
hum wahan hain, jahan se humko bhi
kucch hamaari khabar nahin aati
- Ghalib
Denali had her own agenda. Away went the clear blue skies and still conditions. Spectacular lenticular clouds hovered over Denali and her near neighbours Mt Foraker and Mt Hunter. Sinister clouds appeared overhead, associated with even more sinister vapour trails that arched menacingly over our tents like ever-changing wraiths, spooks and ghosts. From this camp, the primary route was up the Headwall, which loomed directly behind the camp, to a notch in the West Buttress at 16,200 feet. The West Rib route also passed nearby on another ridge; there was a well-used trail that ascended to that route, because many climbers liked to stop off here for a break before continuing to the top. In between these routes was the infamous Orient Express, which is a steep couloir that can be used for a direct descent from high camp to Camp Three. The trouble is that it is very steep, and ends in a large crevasse. Thus far, fifteen people, mostly Koreans have died while attempting its descent – hence the name. One giant sandcastle (ok – snowcastle) later, we were ready to get our tails up to the high camp – Camp Four – at 17,000 ft. Meanwhile, back at Camp 3, after socked in at 14 000 ft., just as we were beginning to harbour serious doubts about getting any higher, the weather cleared and gave us a window sufficient to climb to cache at 16,200’ and the final High Camp at 17,000 ft. However, any ascent day requires an earlier wake-up, in order to beat everyone else to the fixed lines on the Headwall. These two lines are located ½ mile north of Camp Three, beginning at a filled-in bergschrund (a big crevasse) and stopping 900 feet later at the crest of the West Buttress, at 16,200 feet. Since there is only one line for climbers going up and one for those going down, it is not uncommon to have an extended wait at the bergschrund (sometimes three hours!) before clipping onto the rope. Accordingly, we were up at 8 AM in minus five degree conditions, and heading out of camp at 9:30 AM, just in front of an advancing line of sunlight. The trudge up to the base of the Headwall is an extremely boring haul. On the other hand, a quick glance over one’s shoulder revealed an incredible view down the Alaska Range, including hundreds of smaller peaks that were just appearing as we gained enough altitude to see over the tops of the nearby peaks that had previously blocked the view. Reaching this involved some tricky technical work jumaring 700 ft. up a fixed rope on a 40º headwall, then belaying into carabiners attached to secure removable aluminium pickets. There are some portions of blue ice and you need to really bite your crampons in the ice to get a good hold. Eventually we made it along a knife edge ridge to the small encampment at 17,000 ft., pleased to be looking down on Camp Three for a change. But as soon as we arrived there, - the weather closed in on us again. Other teams who had been stuck up at High Camp, just waiting for that elusive summit weather window to appear, were forced to descend due to a shortage of food or fuel cache. At 17200ft it was bitter cold (-25F) and gusts of wind which would just throw us off our feet. That night, my lungs kept gurgling with fluid and was violently getting up trying to suck air. Olivia and Cory examined me and they thought it was early stages of pulmonary edema (lungs were filling with water) and that I should descend immediately to the ranger medical tent at 14400ft and confirm. Fortunately for me, there was a team (MountainTrips) heading down at midnight from High Camp (after spending 6 days and waiting for weather window opportunity to summit they had run out of their cache and had no option but to call off the climb). Their team was headed by Dave. I bid farewell to my teammates, and hoped I would join them in a few days after seeing the medical tent. Dave rearranged his ropes and put me on his rope. We descended to 14400ft and woke up the doc. The doc said it was initial signs of pulmonary edema (and also a bad case of lung burn) and that I should stay put at 14400ft and if didnt improve within a few days, I should descend. I had no tents and though Olivia and gang were supposed to return the next day, Dave and his team were heading down. So I asked him what if I waited at High Camp with the rest of my group? He said -- "fuck knows, you could die, we just airlifted a guy in a similar condition as yours a couple of days ago". At that point, maybe it was Viestur's comment -- "summiting is optional, coming home is mandatory" -- or that of my mom's warning before this trip-- "remember you stilll havent finished raising your kids", I realized the risk wasnt worth it and decided to call off the climb and descend. We radioed Olivia and informed her.
..to all strangers who gave me everything
without ever asking whats in it for them
Dave a person who I had hardly met since a few hours took personal responsibility to getting me to lower altitudes safely.They were planning to stay at 11,000' for the night, but they decided to continue down for my safety. I picked up my personal caches (snow shoes) along the way and trudging through the night we got back to base camp. My state of consciousness sinks lower and lower as we all dispose of the Oreo cookies and case of beer Dave had cached in at basecamp. We are happy to get our suits of armor off, which we wore a good portion of the day as it was pretty chilly. We had a spectacular descent, beautiful views of Hunter, Foreaker and Huntington. On Dave's rope I had the fortune of knowing an amazing person and his story by the name of Sibu Silana -- a South African. In 2002, he was told that there had been no black person to summit Everest, so he summited Everest twice (2003, 2004), one from the South side and then from the North side. He then finished all the other 5 peaks. Denali was supposed to be his last but he couldnt summit and return back from High Camp because they ran out of their cache. What a fortunate coincidence to bump into him. http://www.sibusiso vilane.co. za/index. html. At 9am we were at Kalhitna glacier. It was snowing and cold and no flights were landing or taking off and then in a sign that things could also go right, the weather cleared in matter of minutes, I radioed my bush pilot (Hudson Air) to come pick me up. I bid another tearful farewell to my new friends from MountainTrips over the last 9hrs. Got back to Talkeetna, looked for a medical clinic but it was closed, brushed my teeth and changed into street tshirt and jeans at a local bar (Talkeetna is also known as a little cute drinking town with a climbing problem), bought a deodarant from a local shop, had coffee, arranged my transport to Anchorage and within 15hrs of Olivia cutting me loose at High Camp I was at the Anchorage airport. I was returning home with vengeance.
Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence.
- Hermann Buhl.
What goes up must….
So what went wrong? I am not sure and I will probably analyze this over the next few months. I was as strong if not more in both cardio and strength as my teammates. My equipment was the latest and greatest. One of the problem was that I wasnt thinking like a mountaineer. I had no clue what those extra straps on harness were for, I had 5 pairs of gloves, but didnt know when to use each or where in my pack it was located. While the rest were clearly thinking about sock management (very important), drying them in their crotches or inside thighs, I never kept track of which of were used or werent. While the rest would layer up or down depending on conditions, I would just lazily stick with what I had. While I had read Freedom of Hills and knew the mechanical efficiency of the c and z pulleys, I wouldnt know how to improvise. While Olivia first asked us -- how much do you folks pee per night? Is your pee bottle big enough? I had no bloody idea. The rest of my teammates had obviously sized their pee bottles within 3 sigma compliance, I had unfortunately never even once given a thought of conducting a controlled statistical experiment to determine my nightly pee volume. Subsequently, while my half a quart of pee bottle (cleared marked “It even tastes like gatorade”) filled up, and when the discomfort got too much, I had to get out my bag, wear jackets, harness, shoes, rope myself and go out the pee hole, to empty the bottle -- destroying the whole purpose, costing me couple of hours of sleep per night. At higher camps when every breath counts, when tieing shoelaces is tiring, being efficient helps. I will go back someday once I figure what really went wrong and what I could do to prevent it, the mountain will always be there. It has however been a hard spring at McKinley till date, only 16% summit rate (total summit/total attempts finished) the last I checked at the NPS ranger station. It was a great trip and the team, the friends I made and the strangers I met. I will miss them.
Mountaineering seems like a pointless irrational exercise to most – a silly task to climb on some piece of the world only to get down later. Its difficult to explain if it is just to stand on higher ground, or to test yourself, or to understand consequences of life, or the bonds when life is simplified, or to understand gravity, or the brutal honesty the mountain displays, or just because… The mountains are cathedrals, a place for introspection, a place where human intervention doesn't swamp out natural processes, a place where you and all your stuff is just a dot, a place where skill and preparation matter more than your station in life or where you live, a place where you can be alone. Really alone. So why then? One answer is “So I can remember what's important."
At High Camp (17,200’), I took some photos and posed with my flag. Later that night, when I left towards Geneva flats (14,000’) with Dave, my eyes were brimming leaving my team – knowing that the trip could end soon -- and like the proverbial mountaineer, I looked around to see if I had found what I come seeking – or whether what I sought was what I journeyed from a thousand miles away.
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