Author:
Don Liska. Trip report dated December, 2007.
Participants:
Fred Beckey, John Rupley, Andy Harvard, Walt Vennum, Don Liska,
Keith Rousch, Doug McCarty, George Oschenski, and Bruce Tickell
I'd
like to point out that I have always been unhappy about this trip. I
have put it out of my mind for decades as a miserable failure full
of colossal screw-up's which broke for me a 16-year long string of
numerous successful climbs, including nine expeditions up to that
time, with many first ascents and new routes. For me, this
exceptionally fruitful period lasted from the late 50's through the
mid 70's. Though many years of active climbing continued for
me beyond 1975, with mixed results, at my present stage in life my
past failures are as valuable to me as my past successes.
Therefore, I appreciate the opportunity offered by the LAM History
Project and with the help of my old logbook to try to reconstruct in
detail the mess that this extended trip somehow got itself into and
which doomed its noble, adventurous and extreme objective. The
result is amazing even to me as the first cogent rendition of this
failed attempt that even I have ever attempted to put together.
Mount Saint Elias is
one of the largest mountains visible from the sea on the
North American continent. It rises to a height of 18,008 feet in a
distance of
less than 20 miles from sea level at Icy Bay.
Photo by David Sinson via
NOAA.
Of
possible interest for anyone who reads this tiresome account may be
the lessons it reveals as related to things that could go wrong
during the "golden age" of mountaineering, that fast disappearing
world when independent mountaineering expeditions preceded the
advent of today's guided eco-adventure group tours.
The
1975 Mount Saint Elias Expedition had the strongest and largest
climbing team I have ever accompanied on my dozen expeditions.
The leader was the eminent Fred Beckey who, along with John Rupley,
Andy Harvard and Walt Vennum formed the powerhouse players in that
specific game. Andy Harvard had just come off Dhauligiri and
had co-authored the book "Mountain of Storms." He was riding high
with graceful confidence and Himalayan capability. Others were
Keith Rousch, Doug McCarty and George Oschenski, all from Montana.
Keith supplied a new 4WD 3/4 ton pickup truck and loads of donated
Jansport Equipment, while Doug and George were contumacious rebels
replete with Montana's "screw the government" attitude towards law,
order and drugs. There was also Bruce Tickell out of Juneau, a
cordial tough Alaskan, and myself, nine of us in all. We were
generally well seasoned on world-wide and Alaskan mountains,
accustomed to the rigors expected for a major attack on the biggest,
wildest and most remote coastal mountain in North America. I
myself already had three successful Alaskan expeditions behind me,
two to Southeast Alaska for first ascents, one of which was with
Fred Beckey himself, and the third to Mt. McKinley, in those days of
the early 60's a far less banal objective than today as guided
climbs have become de rigueur. So I naively assumed our
powerful team had an excellent chance to succeed with our new route
on "The Saint" which lay in the heart of its namesake Saint Elias
Range of Southeast Alaska. This mountain has no easy route to
the summit. No summit in North America over 16,000' is harder
to reach. We intended to attempt a new route up the formidable
Northwest Ridge which involved over 11,000' of climbing and a route
length of several miles.
Beckey, however, had a problem. As an outstanding writer of
mountaineering history and guidebooks and America's greatest
explorer/climber of that day, he had a contract to finish a book and
he had all his notes with him. So his mind was somewhat
preoccupied and he spent too much time isolated from the group while
busily writing. We had all gathered in Yakutat, Alaska in
early June, 1975. Yakutat weather is generally so dismal that
we were forced to hang out in the chilly, decrepit FAA hangar where
we fried Salmon, boiled crabs outside in the rain, spent our days in
the airport coffee shop and our nights in the bar. We had a
lot of crazy energy and after a week had passed we began to wonder
what the hell was holding up the show. We depended on the
resident bush pilot Dick Nichols to fly us into the Saint but he
steadfastly demurred and Beckey cautioned us to "play it cool - let
Nichols call the shots - don't pursue and bug him." I myself
trusted Nichols who had provided the airdrops on my previous Beckey
expedition in which we conquered the unclimbed Mt. Seattle in 1966
and I assumed he had agreed to this admittedly much more risky
venture. Fred worked on his book and the rest of us hiked to
the beaches, ate fiddle-heads, began to smoke pot and slowly go stir
crazy. It gradually became clear that Nichols had no intention
of undertaking such a dangerous mission. The man-killer
weather of Southeast Alaska's St. Elias Range was too much for him.
He finally and with consummate cleverness conveyed that to us by
asking for a $40,000 security bond ($175,000 in today's dollars).
I think Beckey had already divined this while he wrote away and the
9-day delay slowly drove the rest of us into despondency.
Finally Beckey offered us Mt. Lucania in the interior as a
substitute climb for the Saint but we had become so focused on
Beckey's new route, the unclimbed Northwest Ridge that he had
defined in his invitation to join up that we unanimously said we
wanted another shot at the beast. Had we known what would
occur later we would have been wise to accept the safer alternative.
Anyway, we collectively decided to try to approach the Saint from
the inland side at Chitna where the weather is better. This
was an audacious move and an expensive one. It involved an almost
complete encirclement of the mountain from Yakutat to the southeast
to Chitna to the northwest. So, we all flew back to Juneau and
were again delayed there because our 700 pounds of gear had to await
another flight due to higher priority granted to shipments of frozen
King Crab out of Yakutat. Now we needed Keith's 3/4 ton pickup
which had been left in Juneau. This meant a standby
reservation on the Alaska ferry up to Haines. These delays
further rankled us and we spent a raucous afternoon drinking in
Juneau's Red Dog Saloon. In 1975 the Alaska pipeline was being
constructed and a lot of well-paid pipeline workers were in Juneau
on rest and relaxation leaves. Unfortunately one of the
Montana ruffians got into a fight with one of the oil workers and
was losing as we dragged him out of the place. We luckily were
allowed to squeeze the truck onto the ferry the next day. On
board up the Lynn Canal the Montanans gleefully terrified the
tourists aboard by putting on their sunglasses and staring at
unlucky passengers until they would leave in fright and discomfort.
We finally reached Haines from which we started the 600 mile
marathon drive along the Haines and Alaska Highways to the Tok
Cutoff and finally the Edgerton Highway to Chitna and McCarthy.
Weather improved as we moved inland but our expedition food was
inaccessible so we would stop at riverside campgrounds and raid the
garbage cans for half eaten scraps. By now we were full of a
devil-may-care gang mentality and besides, the wild Montanans had
illegally shipped their pot stash across the border into Canada and
then back into Alaska so we were also often a bit high. A
disconnected observer could probably see the seeds of disarray in
this powerful but somewhat uncontrollable group of incipient
ruffians. Our famous leader Beckey had unfortunately weakened
his authority early on in Yakutat and was finding it harder and
harder to manage this bunch. We passed Kluane Lake in the
night and reached Glenallen the following day. This was the
flying base for the eminent bush pilot Jack Wilson who had flown
reconnaissance for us on Mt. Seattle nine years before. Fred,
Andy and George stayed at Glenallen to negotiate flights into the
Saint with Wilson while the rest of us drove Keith's truck to
McCarthy, an old mining town in the heart of the Wrangell-St. Elias
National Park just south of the Wrangell Mountains and some 125 air
miles northwest of the Saint. McCarthy later would become
infamous when a citizen went crazy and shot a bunch of people.
It was a beautiful setting but in mid-June infested with mosquitoes.
We could only get relief by huddling in the middle of the runway as
far from the forest and tundra as possible. Two more days
passed before a message from Fred arrived for us to drive back to
Chitna to pick them up. They had negotiated with and chosen
Wilson for the job instead of several other cheaper but less
reliable alternatives because of his reputation and his
recommendation to use helicopters. Wilson's reason was that
the choppers were already involved with pipeline work so dead-head
costs would be reduced. And also that glacier landings were a
cinch with choppers. Finally we sprung into action. At
midnight Fred and Walt helicoptered off for the mountain and the
rest of us flew into a sand bar on the Tana River about 50 miles WNW
of the mountain. At 3:30 AM the chopper returned and Keith,
Bruce and I were lifted onto Mt. St. Elias, landing at 7000' about
4:30 AM. Fred and Walt were already climbing up to an advanced
base camp at 8100'. We joined them and did heavy carries to
advanced base. That first night on the glacier revealed the
fault in Keith's fiber fill sleeping bags that he had provided for
everyone. They were too light, exposing us all to many cold
nights. In early morning a ski plane appeared with our four
buddies aboard but it didn't land and eventually flew off not to be
heard from again. The "crack" in our trip had started to widen
though we didn't realize it at the time. We were alone in our
preparations for this gigantic objective but weakly supplied and
separated from half our party. In the next few days we packed
more gear up to advanced base and then Fred, Bruce and I went on up
the route to the 10,700' level. The snow was very soft and
exhausting. Nonetheless our little party continued its work
and subsequently moved an equipment cache to 11,400' just below the
Northwest Ridge. As the fine weather began to break Fred and I
went down to stamp a message in the snow reading "Airdrop here--land
gas-airdrop OK-Chopper OK. Days later, on June 26, we changed
the word "land" to "need" as our fuel began to run low. We
turned in that night under a heavy snowstorm. It was cold in the
inadequate bags. I was chilly despite wearing long johns,
turtle neck T-shirt, wool pants, wool shirt, booties, cap and mitts,
with head inside bag and lying on twin pads. When I later added a
fiber fill vest the bag became marginally comfortable.
It
was snowing out as we finished our third week on the trip. We
had prepared the lower part of the route and now needed the full
party or at least additional gear, especially fixed ropes, to
continue much farther. This climb which had been so hard in
getting started was again dejecting us, now because of this critical
party separation. We figured that the oil companies and the
pipeline had so much work and money for the available bush pilots,
choppers and fixed wing aircraft that our little party was
maddeningly low down on their priority list. We slowly
realized we were in the wrong place at the wrong time. We
should have chosen a mountain that we could have walked into from
some back road. Still, we were in some of the most stupendous
country in North America; nineteen miles to the east lay the ten
mile long summit of Mount Logan and the vast glory of the Bagley
Icefield spread at our feet. The Saint itself towered two
miles overhead --one of the wildest and least attempted major
mountains in the world, the west wall rivaling the Rupal Flank on
Nanga Parbat for vertical rise and awesome topography.
Avalanches and thundering icefalls reverberated from its flanks.
Our proposed route however seemed reasonable and relatively safe.
So we wanted badly to continue.
Beckey was at wits end attempting to figure what went wrong.
Why was half our party stranded on the Tana River sand bar while
good climbing weather was being wasted? We were now consuming
our high altitude rations and were running low on Blazo. Only
one gallon left which amounted to six more full days of hot food and
drinks. The next day was clear and new snow covered all our
tracks. Fred, Walt and I set off up the glacier to reach the
ridge while Keith and Bruce went down to the lower camp to wait
hopefully for a ski plane or chopper. We climbers had a
glorious day. We worked very hard on breaking trail with
snowshoes up 3300' to the cache beneath the ridge. There we
picked up some hardware, ropes, food and wands and climbed higher
finally reaching the ridge crest, which now displayed some of its
difficulties up towards Windy Peak and most (but not all!!) of the
remaining 6000' of the climb which lay ahead of us including the
gigantic northwest shoulder, a level stretch of a half mile leading
to the upper slopes of the Saint. As we headed for Windy Peak
our first major technical problem was encountered, a deep notch just
our side of Windy Peak. Fred went down and found a spot where
he thought a 40' rappel might clinch the descent. We then
backtracked finding what we thought was an even more attractive
route down. We could not check it out further as it was late
in the day and we had a long way back to camp. As we descended
we had the feeling we had the route over Windy Peak aced. As
it turned out we were sadly wrong. Snowshoeing back to camp was a
pleasure and we were elated as we imagined we had cracked the key to
our route. Keith and Bruce returned near midnight with no news of
the missing party. And so we sat out more days of reasonably
good weather. We felt it risky to push the route much further
as this would represent over 4000' vertical of climbing above this
camp. Without a higher camp such distances are risky in these
weather dominated coastal mountains. St. Elias lies only 18
miles from the Gulf of Alaska and its great glaciers bespeak of
abominable weather much of the time. Our low fuel supply
concerned us and we had the feeling that we were beginning to lose
impetus on the route despite our successes so far. As an aside
I finally conquered my cold sleeping bag by adding a sweater and
padded overpants. However, that small victory did little to
quell our general feeling of being held back, now due mostly to
shortage of fuel and gear, as we waited for our companions at our
8100' camp. Had we foreseen such a situation we could (and
should) have made ourselves into an independent climbing party by
bringing in two dome tents, four more gallons of fuel, two more
weeks of food, two spools of fixed rope and more anchors. It
was too late now, but a lesson for a big and strong party in the
future that could be threatened with separation. Though we had
radios we could not raise our companions 50 miles away on the sand
bar. Had we done so we would have requested them to instruct
Wilson to try to drop the above supplies to us so we could have
pushed the route vigorously on our own.
On
Tuesday June 23, after three weeks on the trip, all but Fred climbed
back to the ridge in foggy weather and made another effort to raise
our pals on the sand bar for them to again contact Wilson with our
request for additional supplies. Unfortunately, we couldn't
work on the route because of poor visibility. On the way back
down I had a shock. Crossing the lower crevasse, Walt stepped
through the fragile snow bridge which had been gradually
deteriorating in the early summer warmth. I was last to cross
and decided to cut it as far right as possible. I probed the
bridge and could see I was on center-span. Suddenly, to my
right the whole bridge began to collapse. At that point I
shouted "Oh shit!!" and after a short pause it gave way and sent me
almost 30 feet down into the huge crack to be caught dangling by the
rope which cut deeply into the lip. While hanging disheveled,
I had the presence of mind to snap a few pictures of blue icicles
and gaping blackness reaching downwards to an unfathomable depth.
I was amped to an extreme and was able to stem across and with the
aid of my buddies pulling me up with brute strength, I managed to
extricate myself without resorting to my Jumars. Unfortunately, I ultimately left my best pictures, including those
crevasse shots, behind as we were evacuated from the mountain
ignominiously several weeks later. This is one of my greatest
regrets today. Anyway, back at camp the weather set in again
and we had to delay any further action on our route. This was
a bad situation as one tends to reflect too much on one's personal
regrets. Without day-to-day progress, no matter how small, the
momentum of an expedition tends to wither. The British have
also known this. They insist on some small advance or
load-carry every day if at all possible. But for us, our
situation had us stalemated.
So
we sat and waited while reducing our food consumption to one meal a
day with some pilot bread. We melted snow on tarps to save fuel.
We began to seriously discuss a somewhat desperate attempt to
continue the route and hopefully bag the Saint on our own despite
our shortages. What a coup that would have been. But we
were now at a crux point, the bugaboo of today's guided expeditions
where the customers having been led by a ring in their noses toward
their objective with little if any independent thought and no
freedom of decision decide to go for the summit on their own such as
happened on Everest on a disastrous 1996 expedition. We were
now beginning to break our dependence on Wilson, which was a tough
mental rearrangement indeed. It became clear that 7-8 days
would be required to climb the Saint. We could stretch our
food to 6 days and severely ration our fuel. Beckey gave us
the go ahead to try while he would continue the wait in case the
backup party finally arrived. To prepare for the big push
required that we gather all our available resources so Bruce, Walt
and I went down to the lower camp and brought up the big Logan tent
and more cocoa. We packed all our personal gear and community
possessions and all the water we could find bottles for. At
10:30 PM we started back up the chute for our high camp under very
heavy loads. I broke trail to 9100', Bruce to 9800', Walt to
10,700 and me again to 11,400'. It got frightfully cold around
11,000' but we arrived and set up camp at a crevasse just at 4 AM.
Later that morning we rested in warmth as the sun rose higher and
pondered our next steps. We planned to move higher, further
into the trap, and establish a camp at 12,500', two miles away.
If a big storm comes -- look out!! If so we will attempt to dig snow
caves. Our big worry was that we would have to melt all our
water with our one small Primus. We'd have to give up hot
meals and our freeze dried meals were no good except to soak the
meat cold or eat with snow. Fortunately we had 20 pounds of
high altitude candy and two 8" pieces of Salami, five one pound
blocks of cheese, 125 packages of cocoa (to be eaten dry of course),
a couple dozen packages of powdered milk, ditto, some pilot bread,
freeze-dried meat tins and soup. But very little gas.
The 20 pounds of candy seemed our salvation at the time.
On
June 28, going on our fifth week into the trip, Walt, Bruce and I
set out for the summit of Windy Peak from which we would be better
able to see all of the great Northwest Shoulder leading to the
summit slopes. Everything went well up to the saddle just
before Windy Peak where we earlier had thought a straightforward
descent was possible. Now we saw to our dismay that the route
down to the ramp was in fact an icy knife edge on rotten, crumbly
rock for 700' or more. Following that was an interminable slog
up the ramp to the Northwest Shoulder beyond. We were
dumfounded because we had earlier so misjudged this portion of the
route. It was now clear that this extension would require
additional camps and much more time and equipment. As we
retreated with this glum assessment the sun was touching the horizon
and lo!! a chopper arrived down on the icefield and dropped off some
boxes at 7100'. It was so far below we couldn't see any signs
of movement of our missing gang. When we finally reached camp,
Fred and Keith were all geared up ready to go down. From their
vantage point they couldn't see where the chopper had landed but
assumed our lost party had also arrived. We related our
discoveries above and the difficulties they entailed. Fred, in
a clearly disgusted and frustrated mood made up his mind and
exclaimed "bag the route." Suddenly it looked like all our
efforts were cooked -- a result in part of the long delays, loss of
momentum and continuing uncertainties. So Fred and Keith took
off for the lower camps while Walt, Bruce and I stayed high.
The next day we waited, expecting to see the others coming up or at
least a message from below. Again -- delays in good weather --
and no word. Now we began to ponder our scheduled pickup date
of July 6, a week and a half off -- too short a time to climb this
giant mountain. Now what?? I began to feel trapped like Gleb
Nerzhin in First Circle.
As
it eventually resolved, two chopper flights did in fact come in, and
with them all the missing members of our group. When they were
met by Fred and Keith, our assessment of the Windy Peak route
resulted in the others turning away from it to an alternative they
termed the "Trench Route." We at high camp did not immediately
know this but after 13 days of delays and uncertainties the three of
us on Sunday, June 29 decided to also head on down in fine weather
expecting to pick up some supplies and head back up to push our
route anyway, having nothing better to do. We were uninformed
and felt abandoned in our diminishing small world. At the base
we were amazed and overjoyed to meet the others who had just
returned from a 30-hour reconnaissance of the alternative route, the
so-called "Trench Route," all enthused. We three high climbers
agreed to hang around and continue the Trench recon into that very
night. Even though all our overnight gear was still at high
camp, the very thought of climbing back up at that point was dismal,
especially now that climbing efforts seemed to be switching
directions. What was happening to us was that we were thankful
to shift responsibility to the other fresher climbers for leading
this new route due to our weariness of carrying the ball up high for
so long.
Still, it was dumb to leave our gear up high while the weather was
reasonable!! Naturally, in late afternoon the weather broke
for the worse. So now we canned the planned recon, leaving
that to the others, and with Fred and Keith in tow raced back up
trying to outrun the coming storm to retrieve our gear. We
didn't make it! At 10,000' we ran into thick snow, sleet and numbing
whiteout and were forced to retreat following our wands back to
base. Now we were without even the minimal donated sleeping
bags so we essentially had to "bivouac" in borrowed overpants,
sweaters and parkas for the next three nights while the heavy snow
continued. What a shivering ordeal that was! We were
squeezed into a Logan tent and two smallish Dome tents. The
squeezing got worse when Keith went into the Dome tent and lit his
lighter. He had left a big Optimus expedition stove running to
heat the tent for drying some wool garments in the miserable damp
and cold and had closed the entry sleeve upon leaving. The
stove went out from lack of air but its warmth continued to
percolate fuel and when Keith crawled inside, closed the entry
sleeve again and lit his lighter to restart the stove, the
gasoline-rich tent atmosphere exploded. Keith had not noticed
the fumes because of mucous-filled nostrils and the reek of wet
wool. He survived the explosion with a badly singed face,
beard and hair and also burns around his eyes and on his hands.
It would have been worse except for his heavy wet beard and the cold
dampness of his clothes and everything about him. He was in
shock but otherwise OK and we were all wiser for the experience.
However, this meant six of us now had to fit into the Logan tent
with three more in the remaining Dome tent.
Now
it rained for a day and a night before turning again to heavy wet
snow. Though snowing, the visibility was sufficient for three
of us to go up to retrieve the tents and gear at 8100'. The
heavy snow had smashed down the tents and of course everything was
also soaked. We dragged the wet gear down. Finally on
Wednesday, July 9 the weather cleared and we went up glacier to
study the Trench further from our side angle and retrieve our high
camp. We made slow progress in the deep slush and arrived
after four hours to find the tents again smashed down, all gear
inside frozen and wet, and the campsite a complete fill-in of packed
powder. The snow had driven the center pole of the Logan right
through its floor. Since the Windy Peak route had by now
effectively been abandoned, our frazzled mental state and the deep
snow made any thoughts of upward progress from this point doubly
repulsive. So we shoveled out and spent a miserable night up
there in our frozen, wet sleeping bags. We pictured the others
doing their recon of the Trench route and wished them success.
About 4 AM Fred and Doug arrived at camp having left the others in
disgust because of their slowness and resistance to drive ahead in
the Trench. The recon party told of a great avalanche that
crossed and filled the Trench and blew over their frame packs at
7300' and two miles away. On Thursday, July 10, now in even
greater confusion, we brought down our high camp only to find the
others still in camp, the recon incomplete. They had not
finished the job because of the avalanche scare. That was the
effective end of our efforts on the Saint; the Windy Peak route had
been abandoned and the Trench route was not a proven alternative.
The weather deteriorated and heavy snow commenced, too dismal to
push any more reconnaissance. We all had reached the point of
disarray that spelled loss of momentum in our efforts and were now
on the verge of encroaching glacier lethargy. We had been on
this trip for almost six weeks and had made little effective
progress other than probing the lower part of two prospective
routes. At best we reached barely half way up the Windy Peak
route with most of the unknowns and difficulties still ahead.
The Saint now thumbed its nose at us as we huddled, discouraged, at
its base in dismal weather. We nonetheless held a vote on the
prospect of proceeding and decided the heart had gone out of the
trip and we should bag the whole affair. By Sunday, July 13 we
had descended all the way to the Columbus Glacier, evacuating all
upper camps and supplies. We stamped out a runway for a possible
fixed wing landing. However, we suspected that Wilson would
use a chopper instead, at greater cost to us of course. We
also knew by now that the choppers were very busy with pipeline work
and suspected that further waiting still lay ahead for us. A
third factor that we had learned involved the difference between the
nature of fixed wing and helicopter bush pilots. Chopper
pilots generally feared mountains more than fixed wing pilots did.
They would be more conscious of the limitations of their craft, more
anxious to get quickly the hell out of there and less understanding
or adaptive to the needs of the rescued party.
By
Wednesday July 16 we were still waiting for Wilson for the 11th day.
Our once powerful team was now a somnambulating shell of its former
self. Wilson sent flyovers informing us to prepare for a
chopper pickup several days ahead. Of course, weather set in
and all was further delayed. We were now down to 1/3 rations
and again almost out of gas -- a little over two gallons for nine
climbers -- not much. Wilson had dropped a minimum of stuff on
a flyover but it was quickly consumed. My personal feelings at
the time are revealing. I felt the effect of a wasted summer,
much time and money spent and little accomplished -- all the result
of being out of touch and isolated for such an extended period.
But we all felt this, a self-pitying cry for escape from this
spectacular and awesomely beautiful prison.
All
of a sudden, at 3 AM on July 17, with no warning at all, the chopper
arrived. The pilot ordered us aboard with no delay. He
would take no gear, only bodies. We were forced to make
instantaneous decisions to salvage small items, get dressed, grab
cameras, etc., while the rotor was spinning. All our gear --
tents, packs, sleeping bags, high altitude boots, extra clothes,
technical equipment, snowshoes, stoves, food, etc., had to be
abandoned. In the confusion we all left crucial stuff behind,
in my case the bulk of my slides including the pictures I took while
dangling from the rope inside the crevasse. It was an awful
mess, but by this time we felt so dependent on this chopper to
escape this glacier, we blindly followed the pilot's orders,
clambering aboard and dropping our valuable gear on the snow without
much regret. It was a rout, paralleled by the other rout
around the world as our forces evacuated refugees from the rooftop
of the Saigon Embassy only three months earlier in April, 1975.
This rankled of a bit of panic and our manly pride felt some pangs
of shame. Soon it was all over and by 2 PM we gathered in
Gulkana, just north of Glenallen, suddenly back in civilization and
now faced with the necessity to negotiate the high payment for the
lousy service we had received from Jack Wilson.
In
the aftermath of this trip we tried to convey to Wilson what a waste
his delays had cost in terms of our expedition goals. We got
no satisfaction and little concern in this regard other than some
assurance that a potential flight to our base on the Columbus
Glacier might be arranged to retrieve the pile of gear abandoned in
our rout. We didn't take this "promise" too seriously as we
saw what little concern for our plight was expressed by Wilson's
men. In those mid-summer days of 1975 the pipeline was the big
issue and climbing expeditions were taken less than seriously.
Though the members of our strong team felt a general loss of pride
at our relatively weak showing on this magnificent mountain, the
greatest material loss was to Keith Rousch. As we soon
learned, summer storms had wiped out the long dirt "road" into
McCarthy. This meant that anything we had left behind there
was now lost, including Keith's 3/4 ton pickup. Again we
consoled Keith and even offered to make a return trip to Alaska in
the near future to help retrieve his truck. However, like the
offer of retrieving our gear from the glacier, we didn't really take
this gesture too seriously. We had all lost and what we felt
that summer of 1975 preyed on our minds but oddly hardened us to any
additional losses.
With
the exception of a river trip and a night time climb of the Golden
Gate Bridge with Walt Vennum, the 1975 Mt. St. Elias Expedition was
the last time I climbed or communicated with any of the other
expedition members. Though we had done 10 major or minor trips
together and stayed in touch by phone, the only other time I saw
Fred Beckey was in Moab several years ago as he hunched over a huge
rock climbing rack in the driveway of the Rock Shop preparing for
more forays into the wilderness of the canyonlands accompanied by a
muscular young companion. Fred's loss of control over our 1975
expedition plus the Alaska Pipeline priorities in that year had
doomed the best efforts of the strongest climbing team it had ever
been my honor to be a member of. I returned to the Saint one
last time in 1979 to make an attempt on the South Face but again the
mountain won, in this case by almost killing our small four man team
with avalanches. Again we were routed. That is another
and considerably less ignoble story. St. Elias is a very big
object for any but the most skilled, determined and lucky climbing
party.
Lessons to be
learned from this trip:
The
greatest single thread that runs through this story and resulted in
its demise is lack of communication. Most of my expeditions
carried little or no communications gear in earlier days. On our
1974 Fairweather trip for example, we only had a crash transmitter
which would signal the point where a symbolic icefall had killed us.
We had good radios supplied to us on Mt. Seattle mainly because we
were a KING TV-funded expedition and were expected to stay in touch
with our base for transmission of daily "climbing reports" to
Seattle. We reveled in excellent knowledge of exactly where
our climbing members were distributed and also with the airdrop
pilot. It can be seen in the story of St. Elias how this lack
of good radios resulted not only in a deadly lack of knowledge as to
what was going on during our party separation, but also stole the
momentum of the expedition to strive to succeed when we were again
united. The crucial decision to abandon the Windy Peak route
might have been a fatal mistake which communications would have at
least clarified. A reliable communications network with good
radios must be established during the planning stages of a big
climb. This is an area of considerable expense which is too
easy to downplay when money is tight, but is essential to holding
the party together if anything goes awry.
Another lesson was the mistake of depending on air lifts during the
period when the Alaska Pipeline was being built. Separation of
the party might have been anticipated. At least every climbing
party set down on the mountain should have been adequately equipped
to carry on the climb much as a high altitude party is supplied to
make its own bid for the summit.
The
use of Yakutat as a base for an attack on such a monster objective
is fundamentally flawed. It worked for us on the 1966 Mt.
Seattle climb because we were able to use a fishing boat to reach
the beach with our party intact and all our equipment landed.
Bush plane service out of Yakutat is especially risky and can't be
depended upon. Boyd Everett himself, whose death on Dhauligiri
in 1969 is described in Andy Harvard's "Mountain of Storms" and who
did an audacious new route on the Saint in 1965, proclaimed that
"Only the masochistic and impoverished will use Yakutat as an
expedition base."
Strong leadership is essential, especially when the climbing party
is large and strong. Expeditions can be spoiled by things such
as poor food choices (Norman Dyrenfurth's International Expedition
to Everest), or in our case Fred Beckey with his choice of Yakutat
and his writing frenzy. Fred was most qualified to lead this
trip, but the combination of his lack of attention to progress out
of Yakutat early on with the lack of a strong deputy leader combined
with our misreading of Dick Nichol's intentions started the demise
of our trip before most of us realized it.
Finally, crucial "creature comforts" such as adequate sleeping bags
and plenty of fuel are absolutely essential to a happy climbing
party. On a much larger scale, kerosene leaking through the
bung caps of his fuel tins helped doom Robert Scott's party
returning from the South Pole in 1912. There is no other more
compact and easy to transport commodity than a few extra gallons of
Blazo!! As we have become more dependent on freeze-dried
foods, fuel must be considered as an essential "part of the diet."
