by Andy Hall
There was actually nothing to cause a great deal of alarm until the MCA party reached the 17,900 camp 28 July and found a body in the remains of a tent there, at least nothing definite on which to base long distance phone calls, as the summit party would naturally have holed up for the duration of the storm, and anxiety was only really warranted when they failed to reappear as the storm slackened.
Elmer Luchterhand’s belief that he might have been able to save his son and the others if he had known sooner is understandable, but it is incorrect. The rescue could have been conducted many different ways, but the result would not have changed. Once this superstorm caught the young men on the upper mountain, neither aircraft nor rescue climbers could be deployed to search for or assist them.
Snyder, Schlichter, and Wilcox were within 2 miles and 3,000 vertical feet and highly motivated to reach the upper camp when they set out to go back up from 15,000 feet, but they were halted after moving just a few hundred yards in four hours. Don Sheldon made flights around the lower part of the mountain during the storm but clouds and high winds repelled his attempts to get above 15,000 feet until July 27. The Air Force refused requests to launch an overflight while the storm raged. When it broke on July 27 and perfect conditions reigned, their large C-130 aircraft made ten runs through Denali Pass, but moved too quickly for observers to effectively search. Had a C-130 been able to get close enough to the mountain during the high winds and low visibility of the storm, they would have been even less effective and done little more than risk the lives of the flight crew.
Certainly mistakes were made both by rescuers and climbers, but as is often the case in a catastrophe, no one action can be singled out as the cause. In this case, however, one element had an overriding effect on every human player in this story: the storm.
Had there not been a storm of such endurance and overwhelming power, the Wilcox Expedition would not have ended in tragedy. Had the storm been less intense, the climbers might have made it to shelter. Had it been shorter in duration, they might have outlasted it, or rescuers might have reached them before they succumbed. But such analysis is just as pointless as trying to place blame for the tragedy on action or lack of action by any one person, whether rescuer, ranger, pilot, or climber. In the end, seven young men died probably before anyone else even suspected they were in trouble.
The records and recollections of the survivors and the people who took part in the rescue effort have shed light on their actions. Reconstructing how the last hours and minutes of the lost climbers’ lives played out on the mountain is more difficult. The observations of those who knew the climbers, who were on the mountain during the storm, who saw the bodies, and who climbed in search of answers offer a perspective of unique authority. In a letter to Vin Hoeman written later in the fall of 1967, Joe Wilcox outlined what he thought might have happened on their last night.
On the 17th and 18th their radio contacts reported using cold batteries. Using cold batteries was considered almost an unforgivable sin on the expedition and was definite evidence of their fatigue. They apparently underestimated the energy drain from spending a night in the open. They stated their reason for bivouacking was not being able to go up or down in the whiteout. They had been wanding and I do not really believe that they couldn’t go down. In any event they should have come down at the first weather break. It’s easy for us to say that from a sea level observation point—it is quite another thing for them to come to this conclusion when they find themselves so close to the summit of a mountain, which they had spent the last month climbing.
Bill Babcock penned a likely scenario of what happened while resting in his snow cave high on Karstens Ridge when thoughts of the dead men he and his team had seen were still fresh in his mind.
The six climbers made the push sometime early in the morning, completely exhausted, probably cold and miserable. The storm hit with violence only a climber of McKinley can appreciate; you cannot see! Your face and hands begin to freeze and you start to think of camp, even though it may be totally out of the question, camp it is. The two climbers found on the slopes of Archdeacons Tower were not even roped! The slope is 45 to 50 degrees! . . . the climbers panicked several thousand feet above camp each trying his own way to get down.
These scenarios do make sense. However, a very persuasive explanation of the sequence of events comes from none other than Brad Washburn. He knew the mountain more intimately than anyone else at the time, and he shared his thoughts on what might have happened in a letter to Perry Taylor.
It would appear to me that these fellows got into difficulties crossing the long flat area between the summit and the Archdeacon’s Tower. As they approached the Tower they had to be walking directly into the gathering storm. When they reached the end of the flat, they had to go uphill a couple of hundred yards (perhaps 100 vertical feet) on the way down. At this point it appears as if someone may have said, “I simply can go no farther” and the group may have retreated to the right, (N) into the semblance of shelter offered by the Archdeacon’s Tower—mighty little shelter, but at least a bit better than being out in the full storm. As the storm gathered intensity, they may have decided to dig in somewhere on the east side of the Tower (they are supposed not to have had a tent or stove). This would have been an extremely dangerous move without any fuel and, therefore, with no means of making warmth or hot liquids. Two members of this group were either dispatched or volunteered to try to get from this spot back to camp. Whether they did this on the first day or later will probably never be known. The location of their bodies on the NW side of the lower part of the Tower would certainly indicate to me that they were endeavoring to take a short cut to their high camp by cutting around the flank of the Tower rather than by descending directly from the regular climbing route. These two men appear to have simply been overcome by the storm right in the trail. It was, evidently, an “every man for himself” crisis, as these men were unroped and two or three hundred yards apart. If they had succeeded in getting much farther, they would have gone right over a 60 or 70-foot ice cliff which would have been utterly invisible in the storm and lay directly between them and their camp.
The fact that this high camp tent was completely destroyed by the storm is no surprise either, as it requires continual work by climbers in a tent at that altitude, both inside and out, to keep a tent standing in a McKinley blizzard—and these efforts will succeed only if the tent is extremely strong and pitched and protected in precisely the right way . . . it would have been virtually impossible for a single sick man in a tent at that altitude to keep it standing . . .
Vin Hoeman’s letter to the grieving Elmer Luchterhand describes what their son’s final moments may have been like.
. . . you have to dig a snow cave, which is not easy in wind hardened snow by a party already exhausted as the party on McKinley undoubtedly was. I think they made a fatal decision not to do so, to try to make it down through worsening conditions and those conditions got so bad the afternoon of their summit day that they were literally frozen in their tracks, unable to help themselves. I would not have you think this is painful, for it is not, the blowing snow is what stops you, you can’t see to even take a step. Unless you have a good drift and a shovel you can’t even dig a hole for it drifts in as fast as you can dig. You huddle down in a fetal position and the circulation system shunts off less essential extremities until the spark goes out, I don’t believe one can even think clearly what’s happening, you just sort of go to sleep.
The most puzzling enigma is the whereabouts of John Russell during all of this. He was not with Walt Taylor, Clark, Janes, Luchterhand, and McLaughlin when they reached the summit on July 18 and he had not stayed at the 17,900-foot camp with Steve Taylor. Joe Wilcox believes the body found in the collapsed tent was Russell, based partly on the description given by the MCA party of its frozen and matted hair. He said Steve Taylor wore his hair short, as required by Brigham Young University, where he had been attending
school. Russell’s hair was thick and curly and more likely to be described as “matted.”
Joe Wilcox also says Steve Taylor had small hands. The MCA climbers described a small body with big hands. However, after giving that description, Ireton pointed out that the exposed hand had frozen and thawed more than once and may have been swollen. No one looked closely at the dead man’s face, which was snow-covered. And after the initial discovery, they avoided it altogether.
The strongest evidence that Russell returned to high camp is the presence of his bamboo flag 200 yards below the high camp. He had decorated it and carried it all the way from 15,000 feet at Camp VI to 17,900 feet at Camp VII while suffering from altitude sickness. He still planned to plant it on the summit and it was in camp when Wilcox, Schiff, and the Colorado climbers began their descent.
Steve Taylor remained at high camp when the second summit team left and probably died early in the storm when the wind was most intense, trying to hold his tent upright in the “blowhole,” as Bill Babcock described the location of the high camp in his journal.
The tent’s failure was probably a sudden and catastrophic event for its occupant, whomever it was. A breach in the fabric that allows a violent influx of wind can burst a tent like an overinflated balloon. Mountain guide Blaine Smith described the scenario: “As soon as there is any kind of infarction in the tent, the wind can get in and it’s almost like being in an explosion,” he said. “It happens so fast and then, boom, suddenly you’re in the middle of this huge fucking storm, and you’re in your underwear and all of your shit has just gone everywhere. You’re scrambling to get your boots on, things are freezing, you’re racing as fast as you can to get prepared before you lose the ability to use your hands. It is desperate.”
Steve Taylor had more than enough food and fuel to support one man, and the MCA party’s description of food lying around camp could indicate such an explosive event, which would have tossed food and gear into the snow around the tent. With no walls to hide behind and no cave to retreat into, the man in the tent would have little choice but to cling to the meager protection offered by the flapping nylon or to try to make a run for the camp at 15,000 feet. If two men were in the tent when it failed, one may have stayed while the other went for help.
If Russell was returning from his summit attempt when the storm hit, he may have holed up somewhere along the way. If the wind eased briefly on July 19, he may have reached Camp VII and found Taylor’s frozen body. From there he might have taken the sleeping bag from the corpse and continued down toward Camp VI at 15,000 feet, only to fall into a crevasse on the way.
Snyder put forth a similar scenario, suggesting Russell may have returned to camp and endured the early part of the storm in the tent with Taylor. If one of the men died where he sat, supporting the tent pole, the other may have taken the sleeping bag and ventured down the Harper toward the 15,000-foot camp, carrying the bamboo pole as a signal to call for help. Whether he fell into a crevasse, was carried away by the winds sweeping down the Harper Glacier, or had lain down and was buried by blowing snow is a puzzle that is not likely to be solved.
The bodies found up high were frozen and showed no signs of decomposition, while the body in the tent was black and green, and stinking of decay. Wayne Merry speculated that the more pristine condition of the bodies higher up means they had lived through much of the storm, holed up in a cave, and died in a desperate bid to reach the 17,900-foot camp after several days of waiting for help. He may be right. However, the very different conditions of the dead bodies don’t necessarily mean one was dead any longer than another, according to Dave McMahan, who retired in 2013 as Alaska’s state archaeologist. During his three-decade career, he worked on numerous crime-scene investigations, applying forensic archaeology techniques to help determine the time of death and other factors when studying human remains found in Alaska’s cold climate. When I described the bodies and their conditions as reported by the MCA climbers, he immediately asked if the decomposed body was subject to varying temperatures due to sun and shade. If so, he said, decomposition would be accelerated dramatically compared to the others.
To answer his question I turned to longtime guide Brian Okonek, whose mountaineering expertise is regularly tapped by the Park Service to assist in rescues and in accident investigations. Okonek said the slopes below Archdeacon’s Tower and high camp on the Harper Glacier get about fourteen hours of direct sunlight in late July.
“The big difference between the bodies would be whether they were on the surface of the snow, buried in snow, or in a tent,” Okonek said. “In midsummer the interior of a tent warms up considerably when sun is shining on it. Even at high camp it can get outright hot inside a tent, even when it is cold and windy outside.”
He speculated that the upper bodies’ lack of decomposition could mean they died early and remained frozen with no tent to capture the heat and thaw them out.
“I have had the unfortunate duty of burying three people over the years high on Denali,” he said. “Two people were at 19,300 feet and the third was at 18,000 feet. The two at 19,300 feet had been on the surface for about a month and looked like white marble. The person at 18,000 feet had been on the mountain for a year and also looked like white marble; all we could see of any of these people were their faces.”
When I discussed Okonek’s thoughts and observations with archaeologist McMahan, he agreed that heat in the collapsed tent could have accelerated the decomposition of that body.
All this, regardless of the expertise of those I consulted, is speculation. Only the discovery of a body could reveal the identity of the corpse in the tent at 17,900 feet and possibly shed light on how Russell’s flag and a sleeping bag came to be thrust in the snow below high camp.
After half a century the mountain is unlikely to give up its secrets. Climate change continues to melt away many of Alaska’s glaciers, and Denali’s annual snowline—the delineation between permanent and seasonal snow—is much higher than it was four decades ago. But the upper mountain where the young men’s bodies rest is still one of the coldest places on the planet and, as my father described it to me so many years ago, remains a place where the snow never melts.
CHAPTER 12
WHAT CHANGED
The Humanitarian Climb had yielded no additional clues to the fate of the lost climbers. The only trace of the Wilcox Expedition that remained was the top six inches of Russell’s bamboo summit flag protruding from the heavy snow that blanketed the upper Harper Glacier. Vin Hoeman retrieved some of the strips of tent cloth that Russell had used to decorate the top of the pole and brought them to the park, where they were filed away in a small envelope.
In September 1967 the National Park Service convened a “critique” meeting in Anchorage to examine the tragedy in an effort to determine what may have caused the tremendous loss of life and evaluate the rescue efforts in hopes of avoiding similar incidents in the future.
Art Hayes, Wayne Merry, and my father represented the Park Service; Brad Washburn and his wife, Barbara, came from Boston; and several members of Alaska’s climbing community attended. Most were members of the Mountaineering Club of Alaska and the Alaska Rescue Group, including Vin Hoeman, Frank Nosek, and Gary Hansen, as well as the veterans of the Winter Ascent, the Babcock party, and Don Sheldon, who had done most of the flying during the Wilcox rescue efforts. Notably absent from the meeting were Joe Wilcox and the survivors of his expedition.
The meeting began with questions about the Wilcox party. Hansen said the combined group’s lack of leadership and experience contributed to the accident. John Ireton, who had inspected the two bodies near Archdeacon’s Tower, defended Jerry Clark’s Antarctic experience. None had expedition experience, clarified Hansen. “What is expedition experience?” replied Merry. Hoeman said the amalgamation of the Wilcox and Colorado parties compromised the personal connection necessary for a successful expedition. Art Davidson, who had led the
Winter Ascent earlier that year, said the party’s large size made the team weaker. Brad Washburn agreed. Bill Babcock countered that group strength is not measurable. “Was it Steve Taylor who was found in the tent?” asked Alaska Rescue Group member Paul Crews.
It was an unfettered discussion among a group of men and women who comprised what was probably the greatest concentration of Denali climbing experience and rescue knowledge ever gathered in one place. Early in the meeting discussion dwelled on what might have gone wrong within the Wilcox Expedition, but it went on to cover myriad topics, including the use of handheld radios; requiring climbers to wear dog tags for body identification; construction of a rescue shelter at Denali Pass; climbing fees; insurance for climbers to cover potential rescue costs; and the development of a climbing brochure to inform climbers of Denali’s extreme weather.
There also were criticisms of the rescue efforts. Bill Babcock finally had a chance to let the Air Force, the Park Service, and Don Sheldon know what he thought of their airdrop capabilities, politely describing them as “not always as described.” Sheldon described his own communication challenges and his method for making airdrops on the upper mountain and in other conditions encountered on Denali.
Wayne Merry, perhaps more than anyone else, remained convinced that a rescue could have been pulled off. It didn’t matter that everyone else involved maintained that the weather was too bad; Merry simply disagreed.
