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

by Andy Hall

  That evening the Babcocks lay in their snow cave and discussed the seven lost men. They felt both relief and guilt and an inexplicable sense of animosity toward the dead men. As they discussed their feelings, the others weighed in. Bill Babcock wrote this account in his journal:

  We had no feeling toward him as we did not know him. I looked at him the first day. He was unreal, frozen, discolored and horribly cracked and swollen. I disliked him particularly on the summit day and had led a route 75 feet W. of where he sat watching us. I felt no compassion until I was at 12,100 and 8,100 where I was greatly disturbed by his plight and the other six, 2 of whom we saw at a distance. At that altitude it is all that one can do to meet his own needs. This poor fellow and his six companions made demands upon me and I resented it. It made me angry with my team, the park, Sheldon, anyone. Jeff discusses this with me and has similar feelings. Gayle says he wished we had dug a hole and buried “him.” Chet said he wanted nothing to do with any of them once he saw that they were dead. John, who is the most compassionate one of our group did the most and he and Chet descended a very steep slope checking the bodies of the two visible climbers below the Archdeacon’s Tower.

  After leaving the MCA camp on July 24, Grace Hoeman and the five survivors had moved quickly to escape the icy environs of Denali. Snyder’s narrative, written in longhand at Dr. Hoeman’s Anchorage home a few days later, chronicles their return to civilization.

  24 July

  The Colorado Party of three continued their descent. They moved non-stop to McGonagall Pass, where they repacked all gear for lowland travel. Dr. Jansen [Hoeman] suffering from migraine headache, decided to descend with Wilcox and Schiff.

  25 July

  Snyder, Schlichter and Lewis set up camp at the upper fork of Cache Creek to sleep for the first time in 30 hours. Wilcox, Schiff and Dr. Jansen passed them during the night, and continued on toward the Clearwater River. Upon reaching the Clearwater, Wilcox crossed at great risk, and went on alone toward Wonder Lake. The river could be forded only with great difficulty at best, and not at all by a man in Lewis’ condition, therefore Dr. Jansen instructed Wilcox to get a helicopter in for Lewis. Lewis’ frostbite was in need of immediate attention, and he could ill afford to wait for the river to recede.

  26 July

  After swimming the Clearwater, Wilcox continued on to the McKinley River where he had to swim three channels. He reached Wonder Lake and called for a helicopter. No military craft were made available, so a commercial helicopter was brought in. Lewis was taken to Wonder Lake, along with the rest of the party of five, which was at the Clearwater.

  27 July

  Lewis was flown to Farewell by helicopter, thence to Anchorage by the CAP, where he entered the Providence Hospital for treatment of his Frostbite.

  Written at the end of Snyder’s narrative is a note, printed in neat letters and signed by Dr. Hoeman’s husband, mountaineer Vin Hoeman. “Grace says not true, they could have made it but Snyder & Schlichter refused. VH.” It is a striking counterpoint. But what to make of it?

  Snyder says the note is puzzling because neither he nor Schlichter were with Dr. Hoeman when she sent Joe to call for the helicopter. The five survivors and Dr. Hoeman had not remained together on the way out. When Snyder, Schlichter, and Lewis put up a tent and camped, Hoeman, Schiff, and Wilcox kept walking. When those three got to the banks of Clearwater Creek, Wilcox went on alone.

  “We weren’t there; they were several hours ahead of us,” Snyder said. “The decision had been made before we got there. It was her order, but we didn’t know anything about it until we got there. We thought Paul and I could cross it. Jerry was upset that a helicopter had been called . . . I think the doctors Jansen and Schiff wanted a ride.”

  Whether or not the helicopter was necessary is unclear, but if it hadn’t come, the survivors would have had a long wait. The river had risen since Wilcox crossed its three rain-swollen channels.

  “We had wanted to hike out that day; however, we would have gotten nowhere beyond the McKinley River,” Howard said. “Once up in the helicopter, we got out over the river and it was a mile wide, with no divided channels.”

  On the other hand, Wilcox’s physical drive and courage is plain.

  Late on the twenty-seventh, before leaving the park, Snyder met with my father and Chief Ranger Art Hayes at park headquarters. Snyder went over the route and the campsites used by the expedition and discussed whether or not there might be any survivors. Dad voiced the possibility that the climbers had descended the West Buttress and were holed up, waiting for the storm to pass.

  Like Ranger Merry, neither he nor Hayes had set foot on Denali and were not familiar with the upper mountain. Snyder told them that mistaking the West Buttress for the Harper Glacier was unlikely since the terrain was very different and stated that if they were alive, they would already have shown themselves.

  Snyder believed my father was out of touch with the severity of the situation at the time, but I, perhaps self-interestedly, believe he was trying to remain optimistic in the face of tragedy. He and Hayes had already notified the Air Force and the ARG and had activated the rescue plan, sending the MCA Expedition in search of survivors. In a 1999 interview he discussed the Wilcox tragedy and described his reaction when he learned that the two bodies had been found beneath the Archdeacon’s Tower. “My question was, are they alive,” he said. “I can hear myself saying it, but I knew damn well they weren’t alive. I just wished they’d be alive.”

  CHAPTER 11

  WHOSE SON?

  Dennis Luchterhand’s nineteen-year-old sister, Erika, learned of the crisis on Denali over the radio while driving in afternoon traffic near her home in Brooklyn, New York, on Saturday, July 29. She immediately called her father and he wasted no time, first calling my father and then turning to his neighbors for assistance.

  “Further information came through efforts made possible by one of our neighbors, who happens to have the military rank of brigadier general, and who offered to call the post commander of Elmendorf Air Force,” wrote Luchterhand’s father, Elmer.

  Only one body had been reported at this point, but after talking to my father, Luchterhand’s dad made a flight reservation and headed for the airport.

  Later that morning, the Rescue Coordination Center called Gary Hansen to tell him that Elmer Luchterhand, an assistant professor of sociology at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, was on his way to Anchorage “and that he had contacted Senator Edward Kennedy asking for a humanitarian Air Force flight and had been denied it.”

  At 9:50 P.M., Captain Gordon of the RCC called Hansen to let him know of the two bodies that were found near Archdeacon’s Tower, tentatively identified as Walt Taylor and Dennis Luchterhand. An hour later, he suggested the possible use of a civilian “turbo helicopter” for further operations. The journal Hansen kept during the operation notes, “Capt. Gordon has talked to Maj Stevens, and RCC would prefer to stay out of the body removal business.”

  On the morning of July 30, Elmer Luchterhand was at the Rescue Coordination Center at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, where he was briefed on the airdrop that had been made the day before and, he wrote, “the generally slight prospects that any of the seven men might still be alive, and the inability of the Air Force to do anything further under their rules.”

  Later that day Hank Janes’s father, Paul, arrived in Anchorage, and ARG member Vin Hoeman picked him up and drove both grieving fathers to the Alaska Railroad station in downtown Anchorage, where they boarded a train for Mount McKinley National Park. Steve Taylor’s parents, Perry and Beth, also were on the train. Elmer’s wife and daughter, along with his sister and brother-in-law, joined them at the park hotel a few days later.

  The press had chartered a plane and flew to the park’s small dirt airstrip as well. McKinley Park, as the community around the park entrance was known at the time, was small, and I’m not sure
how he did it, but my father managed to keep the reporters separated from both Joe Wilcox and the families.

  Perry Taylor and Elmer Luchterhand continued to push for the search and rescue efforts to continue even though it was becoming more and more apparent that all seven men had perished. Taylor called Hansen and told him to call the RCC and ask if Elmer “could be of any assistance in evacuating bodies.” Later Perry asked my father and Chief Ranger Hayes if the MCA party would return to the upper mountain to continue searching, prompting my father’s radio request that set off Bill Babcock.

  After Babcock made it clear that the MCA team wouldn’t be returning to the upper mountain again, Elmer Luchterhand, overcome with grief and a feeling of helpless desperation, demanded that my father find someone else to go. My father tried to reason with him, but he would have none of it.

  “Send the Air Force!”

  “I don’t have that authority.”

  “Then send the Army.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “I don’t care who you send. Send somebody—I want my son!”

  Then my father asked a question that Elmer Luchterhand could not answer.

  “Whose son should I send?”

  The MCA party boarded the train after meeting with the parents and headed home. They debriefed with their colleagues in the Alaska Rescue Group and went back to their jobs and were never recognized for their selfless efforts on behalf of the lost Wilcox Expedition climbers.

  The families remained in the park for a few more days, hosted by the Park Service and looked after by Park Hotel Manager Wally Cole. Before they left, one of the hotel vans brought them to Eielson Visitor Center, where they held a memorial service for their lost sons.

  The weather was clear that day, and the mountain dominated the horizon.

  On August 4, Gary Hansen called my father and asked if the park would support an expedition to make one last search for clues to the lost climbers’ fates before winter set in. Against the wishes of the regional director, my father approved $1,000 to assist in the cost of sending a team of climbers back to Denali.

  Dubbed the Humanitarian Climb, the expedition’s stated purpose was “to find and bury seven members of the Wilcox Party who perished on Mount McKinley in the storm of July 18–23 and learn the causes of their tragedy. Secondarily, to salvage what we could of their gear and airdropped material to cache on rock where it would benefit other parties or rescues in the future.”

  Vin Hoeman led the climb, which included his wife, Grace; Edward Boulton; Charles Crenshaw; Richard Springgate of the Seattle Mountain Rescue Council; and Ray Genet of the Alaska Rescue Group, who had been a member of the group that made the historic Winter Ascent back in February. On August 19, Don Sheldon delivered the six climbers to 9,800 feet on the Kahiltna Glacier. After making a few side climbs and collecting and repacking a number of food and gear caches, Vin Hoeman and Genet headed for Denali Pass on August 26, recovering some of the materials from the big airdrop and placing them where the material might remain accessible for future emergencies. Then they moved to the north side of the mountain and headed down the Harper Glacier.

  They located the top six inches of John Russell’s ten-foot flag decorated with ribbons cut from the remains of the cook tent and Snyder’s “entire supply of adhesive tape.” With so much new snow, probing and digging farther was pointless. They cut several of the ribbons to bring back as evidence of their find and continued down a little farther on the Harper Glacier, scanning the slopes all around, but found nothing.

  The snow at 18,200 feet made for poor digging, but they managed to scour out individual snow caves—and one double—in temperatures of minus 25 degrees. Grace Hoeman had left the mountain earlier with Don Sheldon, and Boulton was ill, so Vin Hoeman, Genet, Springgate, and Crenshaw set out for the summit at 8:30 A.M. Vin Hoeman’s journal reads:

  Ray and I on the first rope scout the steep slope of Archdeacon’s Tower on the way, finding 3 Wilcox Party wands at the top of the steep slope NW of the Tower where no party would go if they could see to do better. We theorize that the shelf atop this slope may have been their 17–18 July bivouac site and/or a regrouping area on their descent.

  From there they went on to the summit, giving Genet the distinction of making the earliest and latest successful climb in a single year. He had been on the summit on February 28 and repeated the feat on August 26.

  They continued their search during the descent: “We belayed down the steep northern slope of Archdeacon’s Tower but could find no trace of the two bodies that were seen there, though we must have passed within a few feet of them under the new snow,” wrote Hoeman.

  When the men returned to camp, they found Boulton suffering the effects of altitude sickness and made a hasty retreat down the West Buttress. Along the way, they salvaged the sleeping bags and fuel that had overshot the pass by cutting shelves on the wall of a serac and stacking the supplies there in hopes it would be available in case of future emergencies.

  In conclusion, Hoeman wrote, “Little was added to what is known of the fate of those who died in July, the deep new snow prevented accomplishment of the most important part of our mission. Some material was cached where it may be of possible use in the future.”

  Both my father and Vin Hoeman wrote to the family members to let them know that the expedition had found no further clues to the fate of their sons. Perry and Beth Taylor, Steve’s parents, wrote back to thank the Hoemans for their efforts and to share information.

  Dear Vin and Grace,

  Thank you for you [sic] nice letter and expecially [sic] for the effort you both made to satisfy many of the questions involved in the tragedy. We are both quite aware that it was a considerable part that you involved yourselves in and will always feel indebted to you.

  This past weekend, Mrs. Taylor and I visited with the parents of Walter Taylor and Hank Janes. They are both wonderful families. At the same time while in Indiana, we located Anshel Schiff and spent several hours with him. He gave us one bit of information that we have had a question about. He says that in his conversation with our Steve that Steve never intended to go to the top with the others and that he was in reasonably good health and made a rational decision to just wait at camp and descend with the others when they returned. In addition, Anshel in his correspondence with Joe Wilcox thinks that Joe has now come to believe that Steve was not the boy in camp. However, our speculation is leading to little satisfaction and I agree with your statement, that there is no valid answer to exactly what happened.

  Sincerely,

  Beth and Perry Taylor

  Parents of Stephen Arnold Taylor

  S. P. McLaughlin wrote to my father in September to thank him for sending personal items his son Mark had left at the park and revealed that he still carried a spark of hope that the climbers might still be found.

  I know that considerable effort has gone into this search and climb and yet both my wife and I, along with some of the climbers here that knew the fellows, have entertained the theory that maybe they came off the mountain between storms. Just a thought, but has any looking been done around the base of the mountain? True the majority of those involved hold the opinion that the party met with disaster near the summit. It is just a thought though, but sort of a “nagging” thought.

  S. P. McLaughlin.

  A few weeks later, Paul Janes wrote to my father with sad news. Helen Bellows, mother of the sensitive lover of wild places and inner-city schoolteacher Hank Janes, had died. She had been grief-stricken since learning of her son’s death and had suffered a massive heart attack. She was forty-nine years old.

  Unanswered questions, grief, and doubt lingered among family members, particularly Elmer Luchterhand. He continued to press for answers through the winter and into the summer of 1968. On June 17, he wrote to Vin Hoeman asking why the families hadn’t been notified as soon as radio contact with the summit t
eam was lost, saying the parents would have offered “naïve but unlimited determination” to the search effort had they known earlier.

  Hoeman’s response, written on June 20, offers insight into the challenges facing rescuers in the early days of radio use in mountaineering.

  Radio communication is a great thing, but it has definite limitations in mountaineering. Many things go wrong with radios and the use of them on Mount McKinley and we cannot start full-scale rescue operations when parties fail to make scheduled contact. In 1963, when Harvard climbers were reported “missing” on McKinley’s Wickersham Wall we went to the expense of searching for them till we found them OK. There was bitter reproach later for the extra expense we caused them.

  Three other expeditions were on McKinley at the time of last year’s July tragedy but there was radio contact only with the Wilcox Party. The Gerhardt party on West Buttress had no radio, the radios of the Everett party on the South Face and the Mountaineering Club of Alaska Party on Karstens Ridge were not working. Our best hope was the latter MCA party because it included 3 ARG members and was ascending the line of descent of the 5 Wilcox party survivors. However, in a storm such as the one that had McKinley in its grip 18–25 July movement up or down is virtually impossible and it was not until the latter date that those survivors staggered down to the MCA Party . . . The remaining 5 MCA Party members started up to render what aid they could to those above. At this time it was assumed they’d have dug in but would be short of supplies. The MCA took the Wilcox Party radio with them, but soon it was only functioning well enough to click yes or no to questions from below.