“That's the way I want it,” Frank replied. “Except for one thing. I won't cook. I hate to cook. I’ve never cooked in my life, and now that I’m past fifty I’d like to maintain my record.”
Back in the U.S. Ershler took charge of final preparations, adding to the team three more Rainier guides: Andy Politz, Ed Viesturs, and David Stelling. In addition Frank and Dick extended invitations on a pay-your-own-way basis to other climbers they knew who might like to come, and four accepted: Chuck Goldmark (who had been on that first Aconcagua climb in 1982), Jeff Haley (a lawyer friend of Gold-mark's), Robie Vaughn, and Bill Neale (the last two being friends of Dick's children). There was nothing for Frank and Dick to do beyond catching up with their business lives. That was a handful, though, especially for Dick, who was now working to find a way to finance his next building at Snowbird despite the fact he was still, as usual, struggling to meet his bimonthly payroll and quarterly loan payments.
At least now Dick didn't have to spend any of his time packing. Other than taking out his socks, long johns, and windsuit for laundering, he left his backpack and bags packed after Everest, ready for the turnaround to McKinley. Still, Snowbird and other business kept him hopping, and the day he left home, he had been without sleep for two straight nights.
At the Anchorage airport Ershler had made arrangements for a van to drive them the hundred miles north to Talkeetna, the springboard for bush flights into McKinley. In front of the van was another vehicle that looked more at home on Alaska's potholed highways: a 1978 Chevy one-ton truck—with a built-in kennel sufficient to haul thirty-six dogs and a sled—and a large sign on the side that read SUSAN BUTCHER'S IDITAROD TEAM. Susan introduced herself and her friend Dave Munson, who was going on the climb to help with the dogs, and also to bring the dogs down once they reached the end of the glacier (so Susan would be free to continue the climb). She was about five-six, with dark hair parted in the middle and done in two long braids. She had bright eyes, rosy cheeks, and looked to be in good shape. As soon as the luggage rolled down the conveyor, she grabbed two of the bags and Dick noticed the well-delineated muscles on her forearms.
“Let's load the gear in my truck,” she said. “No room in that thing you've got.”
“I’ll ride with you and Dave,” Dick said to Susan.
“Me too,” Frank chimed in.
Out of Anchorage they followed the Susitna River north on the Fairbanks highway.
“I’m twenty-nine years old, born and raised in Cambridge, Mass.,” Susan said, answering Frank and Dick's questions. “My family had a summer place in Maine, but my sister and I had to go back to Cambridge every year for school. It was totally against my blood. Maine was for me. I tried Nova Scotia when I was sixteen, then Colorado for a couple of years, studying to be a vet technician. I had two Siberian huskies, and on my seventeenth birthday, I got a sled. With a few more dogs I started racing, but at first I didn't like it so much, I guess because it was a sport, a weekend thing. I didn't want any part-time mushing: I wanted it to be total. I wanted to be someplace where they needed dogs for transportation, so I came to Alaska.
“When I got here I had to learn mushing all over. I still didn't like racing—I was mushing for the adventure of it—but I was also going broke, so I entered the Iditarod because there was fifty-grand prize money. That was in seventy-eight, and I was surprised how much I actually got into the racing. For the next three or four years I worked summers in the fish camps to support my dogs and me, until I could make it from the kennels alone. And somewhere in there I took the dogs to the top of McKinley. Took forty-four days to get them up.”
“Susan, I can't believe it,” Dick said. “You're a carbon copy of this young lady Frank and I knew, who more than anyone taught me how to climb. Did you ever hear of Marty Hoey? She was the only female guide on McKinley.”
Susan hadn't. Dick told her the story of Marty's death, as well as their recently completed South Col expedition.
“So you were with this Phil Ershler both times on Everest, and now McKinley?”
“That's right,” Dick said. “And I got to admit, he's a little uptight on this one. He didn't have much time to get it ready, and to be candid, he was a little upset about you coming. Well, not you, but your dogs. He's a guide on McKinley every summer, and he thinks if the dogs raise hell and crap all over the glacier it'll give him a bad name.”
“That's understandable. But you watch, everything will work out.”
Dick was certain everything would work out; he was pleased to have someone on the team of such obvious confidence and ability. But he was a little apprehensive wondering if Susan, as the only woman on the team, might feel out of place. That had never been a problem with Marty, but then it was one of Marty's strengths to fit naturally in an all-male group. Dick hoped Susan would be the same, but he made a mental note to at least be careful with his mountaineering language until they knew each other better.
Talkeetna, the only town of size along the upper Susitna, has only a couple hundred permanent residents, but in climbing season, especially after a spell of bad weather, the number of mountaineers waiting to fly to the base of their climbs can nearly match the local population.
“Weather looks stable, though,” their pilot Doug Geeting told them. “Should be okay to get out of here tomorrow.”
In the morning they decided Frank, Dick, and Steve Marts would go in the first flight. The rest of the team would follow, with Susan and her dogs coming last. They handed their gear to Geeting, who loaded the ski-equipped, single-engine Cessna. It was obvious this thirty-one-year-old pilot was a man who enjoyed his work. Gregarious and showing telltale signs of Alaska's unofficial state sport—beer drinking—he loaded the plane with boyish enthusiasm, as though it were his first flight to the mountain.
Frank and Dick sat in the back, on top of all the gear, and when they were airborne Frank leaned forward and yelled above the engines, “How long have you been flying in Alaska?”
“Nine years. I’m originally from L.A. myself. Used to fly a Cessna towing those advertising banners up and down the beaches.”
“Do you climb?”
“Nope. But I love working with climbers. All kinds of characters up here, from all over. You wouldn't believe how many nationalities.”
Excited to have an interested audience, Geeting turned around, leaving his left hand on the wheel so he could talk directly to Frank and Dick. Apparently he had made this flight so many times he could literally do it blind.
“Russians, Chinese, Japanese, Italians,” Geeting continued, speaking loudly above the plane's engine. “Mexicans, Czechoslovakians, Poles, Koreans—sometimes we have eight or nine nationalities at a time on the glacier, all speaking different languages.”
Geeting was still turned backward, and Frank and Dick listened attentively, glancing from Geeting to the compass to the altimeter.
“But you know, climbing is a common link to everybody who's up there. Even if you don't know somebody, you still know them. Know what I mean? It's a real friendly atmosphere, a real healthy one.”
Geeting nodded his head and broke into a reminiscing smile. He still faced backward.
“I’ll tell you, when you see that many people from different places getting along, it makes you feel pretty good inside.”
Dick glanced at the compass.
“Then you see these people come off the mountain, and they're back in Talkeetna at the Fairview bar, drinking beer and singing songs together, people from all over the world, and it makes you wonder.”
Geeting shook his head, which was still facing the wrong way.
“You wonder why, if things can work so good here in Talkeetna, why in the hell is it that the rest of the world can be so screwed up.”
Geeting shook his head again to acknowledge the irony of it all, then turned around and continued toward McKinley without having to make even the slightest correction to his heading. Below them the wide Susitna, broken into dozens of small channels, braided over
gray gravel bars. The sky above was peppered with fair weather cumulus that each floated at exactly the same altitude so it felt as though they were covered with a white and blue quilt. In the distance, at the edge of the green forest, they could see the white peaks of the Alaska range, and highest and most massive of all, McKinley, or as most Alaskans and climbers call it, Denali—Indian for the Great One.
Approaching the range they picked up the long Kahiltna Glacier where it spilled for several miles onto the forested flood plain. They it into the white heart of the mountains. To their left was the great snow massif of Mount Foraker. They banked right, following a subsidiary glacier, and could see through the cockpit window the dozen tents and the black-flagged wands marking the landing zone.
“The Kahiltna International,” Geeting said as he throttled back and made his line up. In a few minutes they were down, and as soon as they unloaded, Geeting was off for the next shuttle.
There was another group camped a few yards away busy sorting their food and equipment before starting up the glacier. While they waited for Geeting, Dick walked over.
“Howdy. My name's Dick Bass.”
“We're a Sierra Club group,” the leader said. He introduced his wife, and she added, “This is the first time on McKinley for most of us, and we're pretty excited.”
Dick told them about the Seven Summits project, then the Everest climb, then in a few minutes he was encouraging everyone to “come ski the Bird.” Frank was sitting nearby on their piled gear, shaking his head.
“We got three square miles of skiable terrain now, but someday we'll have twenty-four,” Frank overheard Dick saying. “Thirty-one hundred vertical now, and we'll have forty-two hundred when it's done. That'll be bigger than anything in the U.S. Plus we got the greatest snow, not like that Eastern boilerplate or Sierra cement. Ours is light, dry, and fluffy.”
On those last words Dick's face got that faraway look it did when he read a Kipling poem. He continued to chat with the Sierra Club folks until down the glacier he heard the drone of Geeting's Cessna. Soon the plane set down, off-loading Ershler and the others, then was off again to get Susan and the dogs. When it landed again, Susan jumped off, pulled her dogs out and leashed them to a long cable staked in the snow. With that done she next set a metal dog dish in front of each one, and gave them water.
Dick noted how she moved between her pile of gear and the dogs quickly, with firm steps, planting her feet with authority. She had her long braids tied together at the end with a ribbon, and wore navy blue long johns with the shirt sleeves pushed up exposing those strong forearms. Without showing any strain, she picked up a sixty-pound sack of dog food and loaded it in her sled.
Ershler came over to help. “What's this one's name?” he asked, scratching one of the dogs.
“That's Co-Pilot. She's shy. At first I was going to leave her, but her replacement got sick. A shy one is better than a sick one.”
“What do they eat?”
“Seal meat.”
“No kidding. Where do you get it?”
“Pribilof Islands. Go out each year on a hunt with the Eskimos.”
Susan grabbed a duffel, while Ershler reached to pick up a pack. Susan said, “Now are you and I going to be enemies on this trip?”
“What do you mean?”
“Heard you might be worried about my dogs.”
“Well, no. I mean, yeah, I was a little worried. In fact, I still am.”
“I don't blame you. You've probably never been around dogs. Don't worry about them, though. That's my job, and I promise they won't get in your way or cause any embarrassment.”
Susan stacked the case, then said, “And another thing. I don't know too much about climbing, so I was hoping you could show me a few things.”
“My pleasure,” Ershler said. “Actually I’m a little concerned about getting this sled and you safely through the crevasse fields. When you climbed this mountain before, it was earlier in the season so the crevasses weren't as open as they are now. If you're walking next to this sled you won't be able to tie in with us, and if you happen to step on a hidden crevasse, you might go in. So we have to figure some way to secure you.”
With help from Chuck Goldmark, they worked a system whereby Susan could safely tie into the sled in case she went in a crevasse, yet release herself should the sled go in one. Susan finished loading her sled. Ershler was at the same time relieved and impressed; relieved that Susan promised the dogs would behave, impressed that by all appearances she was hard-working, strong, and competent. He liked her straightforward style.
Two hours after arriving they were ready to get underway. The Sierra Club group, who had been there nearly two days doing the same thing, were impressed.
“It's not that you're doing anything wrong,” Ershler told them. “But this is my sixth year in a row here, and if I don't know how to do this quickly by now, I’d better get another job.”
“We're almost ready ourselves,” they said. “We'll be right behind you.
Ershler led his team out of camp. Most were towing additional gear on plastic sleds, and everyone had heavy packs weighing sixty pounds and more. Even Susan was carrying a heavy pack despite the extra work she had mushing the dogs. Everyone except Susan wore skis, to support them in the soft afternoon snow, with bindings that adapted to their climbing boots and skins on the bottoms that allowed them to climb slopes with ease. Susan, because she had to move quickly from one side of the sled to the other and occasionally hop over the reins to tend a dog, was wearing only boots on her feet, and under the weight of her pack she sank with each step. Still, she managed to keep the same fast pace as her dogs.
With no wind, and direct sun reflecting off the snow into everyone's faces, they had to take care to coat themselves with sunscreen lotion. On a glacier the reflective sun can be so intense that as you walk huffing and puffing you can suffer sunburn on your tongue and on the roof of your mouth. The climbers were stripped to their long johns, and Dick, with a bandana draped from under his billed cap to protect his neck, looked like a bedouin nomad crossing a glacial desert.
Dick was having trouble with the sled he was pulling. Until they got to the main glacier the gradient was slightly downhill and the sled, connected to his waist with a piece of line, was constantly gliding forward over the back of his skis and clipping him. He was losing patience, and Frank wasn't helping by laughing and constantly yelling to Marts, “Steve, did you get a shot of Dick falling.”
The sled tripped him again and this time Dick went facedown in the slushy surface.
“That son-of-a-bitch … “ He continued cussing until he saw Susan mush by, then he self-consciously shut up.
“Susan, I apologize for that language.”
But Susan wasn't paying attention to Dick; she had her hands full with the dogs: “You four-legged sons-a-bitches, if you don't get off your asses and start pulling I’m gonna …”
And that was the last Dick worried about Susan fitting in as one of the guys.
An hour past the landing zone the, tributary glacier on which they had been traveling joined the larger Kahiltna Glacier, and turning the corner they started the slow trudge up the gentle gradient. Each person had a sling of nylon webbing over his shoulder holding a few aluminum snap link carabiners, and either a pair of jumar ascenders or loops of rope called prussiks; these would be used to climb back up the rope should anyone fall in a hidden crevasse. When traveling on a glacier there is usually no great risk crossing open crevasses—you walk alongside until the crevasse either narrows so you can jump it, or you find a snow bridge. It is the hidden crevasses—those that have widened while the snow lids covering them, fed by wind-blown snow, have remained intact, blending with the surrounding snow—that demand vigilance, as they are trap doors for the unwary.
They had gone about three hours up the glacier when Ershler raised his hand, calling a halt.
“What's up?” Frank asked.
“Smells like a crevasse.”
F
rank couldn't see anything, but Ershler, looking right, then left, sensed in the snow a depression running in a long transverse line. Moving cautiously, he approached the edge of the suspect zone, and bending forward probed with his ski pole. So far, so good. He moved forward on his skis another two feet, and probed again. Suddenly his ski pole broke through, leaving a dinner-plate size hole, black against white.
“Looks like a granddaddy. Keep the slack out of the rope.”
Working his ski pole, he opened the hole until he could judge the width of the crevasse. It was a wide one, six feet or more. He moved along the side of the crevasse until he found what seemed like a solid snow bridge.
“It might hold with skis,” Ershler said, referring to the advantage of spreading your weight over the larger surface of the skis. “Keep the slack out.”
He slid his ski forward, delicately transferred his weight, then moved the other ski. Another step and he was across.
“Okay, now you guys follow in my exact tracks.”
Frank and Dick crossed, then the others. Everyone waited until Susan and the dogsled were safe on the other side. Ten minutes later they looked back and could see the Sierra Club group a half mile behind, approaching the crevasse. Then they climbed a small rise, leveled out on the other side, and lost visual contact.
In a few more hours Ershler called another halt, saying they would camp for the night. They divided jobs setting up tents, digging a cook pit with a windbreak, and digging a latrine. With these tasks done they started the stoves and when the first tea was ready they called an end to a good first day. Everyone but Susan, that is. While the others relaxed she attended to her dogs, melting snow for drinking water, cooking seal meat, shoveling excrement down crevasses. She inspected their paws to make sure none were cracked. Only when she finished with the dogs did she eat her own meal. She did not begrudge the others their leisure, though; on the contrary, she did her chores with an ardor that suggested the others were the ones who should be envious. And if Ershler had at the beginning of the trip been skeptical about taking the dogs up the glacier, seeing Susan clean up after them dissolved any hesitation.
Seven Summits Page 24
