Ranger Confidential

by Andrea Lankford

  A few days later Cale Shaffer called me from Alaska. Would I join him this June for a month of living and working on Denali at the base camp on Kahiltna Glacier? In February Cale and I had climbed an eighteen-thousand-foot peak in Mexico. I handled the elevation with no ill effects and reached the summit right behind Cale. He knew I wasn’t ready to chain myself to the Park Service full-time, but a three-week tour on the highest mountain in North America might recharge my dedication to the good fight. I told Cale I would think about it and call him back.

  I loved to travel, and I figured my relationship could survive a month of living apart. Indeed, my boyfriend said the opportunity on Denali sounded like an interesting assignment. But unconsciously Kent was doing another one of his Clint Eastwood impressions. A squint in his eye and a clench of his jaw told me something was going unsaid.

  A few days later Kent invited me for a walk out to Inspiration Point. It was a lovely April day. A thousand feet below us, the redbuds were blooming. Desiring a better view, I leaned as far as I dared over the cliff. Kent grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me toward him and away from the edge. “If I had a house here on the rim,” he said, “with a view like this you could never leave.” Then he asked me to marry him.

  * * *

  Cale was waiting for me to call him with my decision about Alaska, but I kept putting it off. Not sure what I wanted to do, I decided to go hiking on it. Besides, before I left the Grand Canyon for good, there was one more sight I had to see.

  Off to visit the Gateway to the Underworld, I fell twice on the way down. On the second tumble, my knee was the only thing stopping me from toppling into a ravine. Cursing, I pulled myself together. A canyon wren mocked me with its descending trill. I ignored the trickle of blood running through the dust on my shin and continued my descent.

  At the Colorado River I set up camp while a raven supervised, squawking and glaring at me from his perch in the gray branches of a dead mesquite. Gazing up at the rim, the canyon walls appeared more intimidating than beautiful, and the word “awesome” seemed pretty close to the word “awful.”

  That night, a downcanyon wind sent my tarp flapping. I got up to cinch the lines in the dark and stubbed my toe. The throbbing pain kept me up most of the night. The next day I reached my second camp before noon. Near the confluence of two rivers, I dumped the weight of my backpack on a slab of sandstone at lunchtime and went for a quick swim. The turquoise waters were warm and welcoming. A better woman would have stayed and relaxed, made a backcountry spa day out of it. But I am nothing if not goal oriented. I do not dally. It was time for my trek upstream, to the cursed Sipapu.

  The closer I got, the harder the terrain worked to impede my progress. The bleached and twisted remains of flood-tossed junipers clogged the riverbed. A tamarisk stabbed at my eye before raking the sunglasses off my head. I strained to pull out my leg when it was sucked thigh deep into the quicksand that wanted my hiking boot as a souvenir. Wading upstream looked much easier than fighting the mud and the brush, so I put on a pair of sandals and made my way up the river.

  Less than a quarter mile from the Sipapu, a dense cloud shrouded the canyon with a violet shadow, bringing with it a trepidation that implored me, “Turn around. Now.” But I had come so far, endured so much. The Gateway to the Underworld was within field goal range. Surely my forebodings only proved the power of suggestion. Standing knee deep in the chalky blue river, I stopped to gaze upstream, inhaled deeply, and contemplated my next move.

  I turned around. A 180-degree change in direction, and the canyon seemed to approve. I waded downstream and emerged from the dread into a brilliant day. On the way back to my camp, I was granted several epiphanies. Let the Sipapu keep its secrets. Stop all this striving to prove yourself, to see everything. Stay here at the Grand Canyon and marry the ranger who loves you.

  Alaska could wait. Cale needed to find younger, more idealistic partners for his June tour on Denali.

  30

  ON THE MOUNTAIN

  In the summer of 2000 a small group of mountaineers paced and fidgeted at the Talkeetna airbase. Waiting for their flight to Denali, they packed and repacked their gear. What a relief it was when the weather finally cleared and the engine of the Cessna began to whine.

  They happily folded their parka-laden bodies into the cozy cabin of the cramped little plane. Leaving the mosquitoes and the trees behind, the pilot gained altitude quickly, aiming for one of the “weather windows” that would offer him passage through the gauntlet at One Shot Pass.

  At One Shot the teeth of the Alaska Range came within 150 feet of the Cessna’s wings. The airplane graveyard below went unnoticed by the climbers as Mount Foraker filled the windshield. Impact with the granite appeared to be inevitable, but then the pilot tilted back, bringing Denali into view. The mountain was magnificent, intimidating, enormous. The pilot dipped the nose toward a ribbon of ice that went into forever. A bumpy landing on the longest glacier in the Alaska Range ended the gut-sloshing bounces and bladder-emptying thrills.

  The climbers’ first steps on Kahiltna Glacier were so sweet, some of them got down on their knees and kissed the snow. Even the mountaineers with Himalayan résumés were overwhelmed. Forty-five minutes ago they had been claustrophobic in green and balmy Talkeetna. Now they were insignificant specks lost in a frigid world of white. They stood dumbstruck before the granite fortress guarding Denali’s summit. The mountain announced its intentions by sending avalanches thundering down its slopes, and the noise boomed across the glacier like drums of war.

  * * *

  Coming toward them across the glacier was a very short ranger, perhaps the shortest guy on North America’s tallest mountain. But his “Welcome to Kahiltna Base Camp” was so warm and his smile so genuine, his height was soon going unnoticed. He was not your typical surly mountaineer. Nor was he one of those climbing rangers who come to Denali to climb more than ranger. This ranger was extremely happy just to be here, living on a glacier in a city of tents and teaching climbers how to poop and where to pee.

  To ranger Cale Shaffer most new mountaineers looked lost. Every time an air taxi unloaded a fresh load of climbers onto the glacier, it was as though he was the kindergarten teacher on the first day of school. The climbers had to be potty trained.

  “A bear may shit in the woods,” an older Denali ranger might say, “but a mountaineer should poop in a plastic bag. Then he should throw the poop bag in a very deep crevasse—or he’ll get a ticket. And if he really respects the mountain, he’ll pack that poop bag into his backpack with the rest of his garbage, carry it all down the mountain, load it into the plane, and throw it in a trash bin as soon as he returns to Talkeetna. Who wants to climb a mountain flowered with turds? Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints. Kahiltna Glacier may seem so wild and isolated that you might as well be on Mars, but you’re not on Mars. You’re in a national park. While in base camp, all climbers will haul out their own trash and use the public urinal like good citizens. We melt snow for water. Remember? Do you want yellow ice in your cook pot? I didn’t think so. So follow the bamboo stakes in the snow—the ones with the little red flags on them. At the end of the line you’ll find a ‘pee hole.’ Aim for that. When all the urine begins to melt, creating a yellow crevasse so deep someone might fall into it, let me know. I’ll close it down and mark a route to a new spot.”

  This was the gist of “sanitation education.” Except Cale Shaffer did it better and nicer, with less editorializing and more earnestness, fewer sarcastic remarks and more gentle advice. “You know guys, we should respect the mountain,” Cale said, and the mountaineers wished all park rangers were like this little dude who smiled a lot.

  * * *

  Cale was twenty-five. It was his first tour on Denali, and Kahiltna base camp at 7,200 feet was his rite of passage. Maybe, if he didn’t screw up, the summer ranger would prove him
self worthy of loftier assignments. For now he was married to the air taxis. He checked to see that every climber had purchased a $150 climbing permit. He warned all mountaineers of the potential hazards and pretended not to notice when the more arrogant ones rolled their eyes. (Who is this kid to tell me how to climb the mountain?) When the climbers returned to camp, he would weigh their garbage to ensure that nobody had left any trash behind on the mountain. He would charge radio batteries and dig latrines, occasionally looking up the mountain toward the higher camp.

  All the really exciting stuff happened at the 14,200-foot camp. That was where the permanent full-time-with-benefits rangers worked. Less than 50 percent of the climbers attempting Denali reached the summit, and so half the people at the 14,200-foot camp would end up failing. A knock on the ranger’s tent might be anything from five people coughing up blood to news of a guy falling into a crevasse to a report of “my buddy is in our tent and he won’t wake up.” At fourteen thousand feet, death from HAPE (high altitude pulmonary edema) becomes a real possibility.

  The higher camp was where the action was. Up there a ranger might have a chance to bag the summit. Up there a ranger might earn himself a shiny medal.

  * * *

  While life at the 14,200-feet camp was more dangerous, Kahiltna Base Camp was far from a luxury resort. Food and water were in short supply on the glacier. Every day Cale or a volunteer took a turn as “the kitchen bitch.” The kitchen bitch cut chunks out of snow, dropped the chunks into two huge pots set on a propane stove, and then poured the melted snow into canteens. To collect enough drinking water, the kitchen bitch spent most of the day chained to the communal cooking tent, where radio batteries were charged and meals were prepared. On Kahiltna there were no hot showers, no running water, no fresh fruits or vegetables, no television, and very little contact with the outside world.

  For twenty days Cale lived in a tent set up inside a hole dug out of the snow. For twenty days, due to the hidden crevasses, he couldn’t walk a city block outside camp without roping up to his two assistants. Yet despite these hardships, Cale felt fortunate to be here. They don’t give Denali mountaineering ranger jobs to anybody. In February when District Ranger Darryl Miller called to say, “I’d like you to come work for me as a mountaineering ranger,” Cale had felt lucky.

  * * *

  Approximately 10 percent of Denali mountaineers are women, most of them climbing with boyfriends or husbands. One of the few females on the mountain was “Base Camp Annie.” A trekker not a climber, Annie Duquette had no desire to summit Denali. Nine years ago she had flown to Kahiltna for the first time with her boyfriend. He had climbed Denali, touched his toe on the summit, and left. Annie made friends with the air taxi pilots, got offered a job at base camp, and stayed. On her first day she walked out to use the base camp latrine, a twenty-foot-deep hole in the snow with a box on top. The latrine was built on a snow ledge facing Mount Hunter and Mount Foraker and in full sight of the planes landing on the runway. Too self-conscious to sit on an open-air toilet, Annie decided she’d hold it until dark. Around midnight she remembered: During an Alaska summer, it never gets dark. Eventually Annie got over her shyness and waved at the people walking by while she sat on the pot.

  The Kahiltna Base Camp manager was a ticket agent, customer service rep, dispatcher, weather reporter, and air traffic controller all rolled into one. Base Camp Annie coordinated seven hundred flights a year, most of them occurring within a ten-week period. It could be stressful work. On sunny days planes could buzz in every fifteen minutes. On the days camp was socked in by clouds, there might be no flights at all.

  After days, even weeks, spent on the mountain, most climbers were anxious to leave. Annie saw it in their red, wind-burnt, frostbitten faces. They would push themselves in a mad dash from the 14,200-foot camp down to the 7,200-foot camp only to find out there was a long line of climbers ahead of them, all waiting for their turn to board a plane. The base camp manager had to deal with these impatient customers. “Some days it gets so bad,” Base Camp Annie said, “you want to throw yourself into a crevasse.”

  The air taxis and the NPS are often at cross-purposes. The former wants to make a profit, while the latter wants to protect a “wilderness experience.” When the NPS asks the air taxis to haul climber feces back to Talkeetna, the pilots bellyache. But on the glacier, the NPS ranger and the base camp manager are partners and friends. Cale strapped on snowshoes and helped Annie pack down the landing strip whenever a fresh layer of snow covered it. Annie grabbed a shovel and helped Cale dig a new latrine when the first one overflowed.

  * * *

  In May Cale’s first tour on Kahiltna included several rare sightings. A songbird made its way to the glacier, limp and cold but amazingly alive. He and Annie put the warbler in a box and sent it out on the next flight to Talkeetna. Even more unusual was the bear several climbers encountered on their way to the 14K camp. Grizzlies have been known to trek across the Alaska Range, but some likened seeing a grizzly near the 14K camp to a Bigfoot sighting.

  The scary part was that a bear might discover the food caches that climbers buried in the snow and then left behind because they were too fatigued to dig them up. There were hundreds if not thousands of food caches along the route to Denali’s summit. If a grizzly ever found this trail of easy meals leading to base camp, the rangers could have a dangerous situation on their hands. Cale and another ranger called their supervisor down in Talkeetna and suggested that he send a gun up on the next flight, just in case. “You’ve got to be kidding,” was the district ranger’s response. “I’m not having any guns up on the mountain.”

  * * *

  Sunny days on the glacier warmed spirits as much as bodies, making base camp a fun place to be. One day a climber stepped off an air taxi with a guitar in his hand. Cale befriended him. The two hung out in the ranger tent, practicing chords and attempting to put a friend’s poem to music. One sultry afternoon a pilot dropped off three cold pizzas, a case of beer, and a copy of the Anchorage Daily News. Annie, Cale, and two volunteers—a mountaineering couple from Seattle named Jim and Lisa Osse—sat outside in camp chairs, eating cold pizza, drinking warm beer, and reading the paper. It was so hot, they might as well be in Florida, one of them said. “Next tour,” Cale announced, “I’m going to bring up some palm trees, sand, and a wading pool . . . with little rubber duckies to float in the water! We are going to have our own little Miami Beach. Right here on Kahiltna Glacier.”

  “Sure,” Annie said. “Good idea.” You can’t find tropical stuff in Alaska, the base camp manager thought but didn’t say. NPS volunteer Jim Osse put it this way. “You don’t want to stand in front of the moving train that is Cale’s enthusiasm and try to stop it.”

  Before and after Cale’s three-week tours at base camp, there was “training, training, training,” including practicing short-haul rescue while attached to a long line swinging under a Lama helicopter. Cale also squeezed in some off-duty adventures. He went mountain biking with a girl he met. One weekend he and another ranger skied several miles to a frozen waterfall, climbed it, and then skied down the other side of the ridge.

  * * *

  Cale’s second tour on Denali was set for June 19. Outfitting for such an assignment required days of preparation and long equipment checklists: “Coffee grinder. Plane extrication kit. Paperwork box. Sleds. Oxygen bottles and regulators. Five shovels. Antibacterial soap. Body bags. Antacids.” Cale also had to train and outfit his two volunteer assistants. Menus needed to be planned and groceries purchased and packed. The hours leading up to the flight were spent rushing to complete errands—double-checking the food and gear inventory, paying bills, mailing letters, and calling home.

  At the Grand Canyon, Brittney Ruland had stepped out when Cale phoned. He left a message on her machine. “I’m getting ready to fly. I’ve sent you a birthday present in the mail, but don’t open it until your birthday. I’
ll call you when I get back down.” Brittney missed the call by five minutes.

  “Tomorrow I fly up to the land of ice and snow,” Cale wrote in a mass e-mail to his friends. He “thoroughly” enjoyed his job and everyone he worked with. Once all his loose ends were tied up, the ranger and his two assistants would be on the mountain. Cale had chosen Adam Kolff from Seattle and Brian Reagan from Anchorage as his two volunteers. Like him, Adam and Brian were young, energetic men eager to do some good. All three of them were living lives guided by their “passion for mountains and nature conservation.”

  The May patrol had been great fun. What would the June tour have in store for him? Perhaps they would save a life or two. Perhaps he would get an opportunity to summit Denali. Cale couldn’t wait for Annie to arrive at camp later in the week. She was in for a big surprise. In the cargo hold of the Cessna, packed among the food and gear, were a blue wading pool, paper palm trees, and rubber duckies.

  On June 19 the moody weather at base camp was making landing on the glacier problematic. The forecast called for “obscuration and turbulence” over the area, but another pilot reported that Ruth Glacier was “open” at the moment. At 5:10 p.m. pilot Don Bowers decided to go for it. Bowers was a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate with a master’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering. He steered his Hudson Air Service Cessna 185 for One Shot Pass, but the visibility over Kahiltna Glacier was soup, and “nuclear” winds were prowling the slopes. Bowers radioed another pilot attempting to leave base camp. There was no safe way to fly in or out of Kahiltna, the other pilot told Bowers. Low clouds obscured the Icefall, Big Bend, and Pica Glacier. One Shot Pass was closed.

  A pilot motto is “Leave your backdoor open and a stairway down,” which means you don’t let the clouds box you in to the point that you can’t find an escape route back to God’s green earth. When Bowers saw a beam of light hitting Lacuna Glacier, he headed for that “stairway” down to safety. It was the long way back to Talkeetna, but 90 percent of the time you can “jump over” to Yetna Glacier and follow it home. The other pilot returned to base camp to land on Kahiltna Glacier and wait out the storm. At 5:57 p.m. Cale contacted the ranger station via his park radio, informing them that he and his volunteers would not make it to base camp tonight. They were returning to Talkeetna.