The Snow Goes Ever On and On
A Denali Tale
When I got home from Denali, I could feel the grueling effort of this expedition in every part of my being. Her long, heavy, steep, treacherous traverses clung to my joints and muscles in aches and pains, and began haunting my sleep in my dreams. I’ve spent days processing the experience, trying to piece it all together like a puzzle in my memory, and it has proven surprisingly complex. Sometimes when you think something is going to be about one thing, like climbing a mountain is going to be about climbing a mountain, it suddenly turns into being about a lot more things. I have a very interesting pot of luck in this life, because some-freaking-how, and this hit me far too late, I climbed a few 14ers last summer and landed myself on a team of special operations mountaineering instructors to climb and ski the continent’s highest mountain. Though I do owe gratitude to my luck for bringing me home alive and healthy, we’ve had to have some serious heart-to-hearts about the things it gets me into.
The too long, don’t read version of the story is this: It was the toughest thing I ever set out to do, and whether too bold or respectably brave, I gave it everything I had and am deeply proud of that. I am grateful for the experience, the lessons, the stories, and the leaves of wisdom I have since uncovered and turned. Getting all my thoughts in order to write this story against the backdrop of processing so many different emotions post-expedition has proven tricky, like trying to catch a wet bar of soap. On one hand there is pride, which grabs the soap but it quickly slips, and on the other hand disappointment reaches out for the save, only to lose it once again, and so the soap goes round and round, always slipping between the two and leaving me with unclean thoughts.
It has taken me many days of patient reflection to realize I needed to put these two hands together to keep the soap from slipping away.
The much longer, read-if-you-wish version of the story is this…
I’d never been in a place where the sun doesn’t set until arriving in Anchorage. It was like walking into a fairytale, or traveling to a parallel planet with no night. I felt wide awake and the sun told me it should be so, even though the clock read well after 10pm.
I was mesmerized from the moment we got to Alaska.
I was in awe of the landscape and its grandiosity. I stared as often as the view would allow at the mountains that rose on the horizon outside the city. They were mighty and majestic, as mountains often are, but there was something beyond the immediate wonder that took a darker hue. These mountains were wilder than the ones I was used to. Deep gray clouds lurked in the skies above them, casting ominous shadows of alluring mystique. Wordlessly calling from their great heights, their song beckoned us forward but did not promise ease.
We spent the first couple of days gathering last minute gear, snacks, toiletries and other miscellaneous items while enjoying the scenery and food. Every moment hummed with the feeling of adventure; of being in a new place with new sights to see and new people to know. As a team, we hadn’t yet had much time together, so we were also getting to know each other and establishing our dynamic. Our team leader Jason and I had spent the last several months establishing a trusting, sibling-like relationship with one another, and I was confident under his watchful and protective eye. His grit and determination can make anyone insecure about their own endeavors in life, and his work hard-play hard nature is very dangerous if one is ever caught with him in a bar. Wade and I spent some days climbing together before we left for Alaska, and I quickly revered him for his knowledge and skills as a mountaineer, knowing he’d have a solution to any problem. When he wasn’t keeping to himself or getting serious about expedition details, his goofy, good-hearted nature gave light to many situations. Bobby and I didn’t get much time together until the trip itself, but I quickly appreciated having him around. A tough but gentle guy, always holding onto good sense, he provided a good balance between Jason’s bold fearlessness and Wade’s constant sarcasm.
Dragging nearly 600 pounds between the four of us, we soon made our way from Anchorage to Talkeetna, a quiet town of a thousand people next to the Susitna River. We had one full day in Talkeetna planned for our ranger brief, rigging our sleds, weighing our packs, and sorting everything out so it was mountain ready. Our flight to base camp on the Kahiltna Glacier 13,000 feet below Denali’s mighty peak was set for that Thursday, the first of June, but we knew the air taxi was already backed up with eager climbers waiting for a weather window to fly. We prayed to whatever gods would listen for good luck and clear skies.
But as luck would have it, it was one of the worst year’s on record for weather (and consequently summit attempts). The record for snowfall in June on the mountain was broken on June 12th. Every local and guide we chatted with told us it was the worst year they’d ever seen, or at least the worst they’d seen in a very long time, and the skies ensured this remained true. For the first time ever, the Talkeetna Air Taxi service had to ground a pilot at base camp for a night.
Every day weathered out was another day spent twiddling against the angst of a journey always just around the corner. We killed time by hanging out in town, chatting up other climbers, or watching ski videos in the hostel house where we stayed. There seemed to be lots of cats around and they were all very friendly, but we were appropriately more cautious with the mother moose and her two calves that hung in the neighborhood. We spent lots of time talking details and tightening up any possible loose ends that could have been left hanging, but we also spent lots of time just sitting and absorbing the experience in quiet appreciation.
People from all over can be found in a place like Talkeetna, especially during the climbing season. We would quietly observe passersby and guess whether or not they were here to climb or to indulge in more relaxing tourist-type activities, and it was often pretty easy to tell which group they belonged in. We partied with the folks at the Talkeetna Air Taxi in one of their hangars one night, and shared many beers and cheers with other climbers all hailed to this place by the same voice. There we were, from all over the country and world, waiting on the same rain and drinking under the same endlessly sunlit sky.
Sometimes, it’s the moments we can barely remember that we remember most of all.
The day finally came when the rain parted just enough for a flying window. It was Sunday, June 4th. We’d spent the previous night plundering a local bar of its alcohol with several locals and a few of the gals from the air taxi. Though the night was effortlessly fun, I slightly regretted it the next morning. Meanwhile, Jason and Wade stumbled home in the hour that Bobby and I were getting up for the day. Special operations guys will never surprise me with their ability to rally, but it will always leave me wondering in envious awe. Lacking in hydration and rest, I had a gut feeling today was the day. When my body did what female bodies naturally and regularly do (because why f*cking not, right?), I knew for sure we would be leaving for the mountain.
To my luck, I was right.
We had some hours yet to catch a nap and chug some water, but when the call came we were up and out quickly and with few words. We walked the short distance from our hostel to the airstrip, and I looked at the trees as though they were old friends, thinking it’d be a while until I saw them again. Because of the thinner atmosphere at that latitude, the tree line ends at no more than a few thousand vertical feet, compared to our whopping 12,000 here in Colorado. Thinner air for trees, thinner air for climbers.
We strapped on our ski boots, stored the things we wouldn’t be carrying in a large shipping container provided by the air taxi and waited restlessly by the plane. I thought about the things I knew I forgot to pack, the things I did not know I forgot to pack but would eventually find out about when I needed them, and the unknown number of days filled with an unknown number of challenges that existed between the soon to be start of this journey and the seemingly far off end.
When we boarded the plane, my nerves danced with excitement and trepidation.
The flight to the range was beautiful. We still couldn’t see it, but I knew Denali stood glorious and indifferent to our human ventures behind those clouds. Deep greens and browns interspersed with silvery snakes of water stretched to the base of the Alaska Range, standing in stark contrast to the whiteness of the mountains beyond. The readiness to get on the ground and get moving was palpable between the four of us. I was taken by the magnificence of the range, and when the earthy tones of civilization passed into the white of the snowy wild, I felt far from the safety and comforts of home.
The ride had been mostly cloudy, but by the time we made our way into the valley where our journey would begin, the clouds started to part. Pretty soon, the sun was shining and it was a gorgeously clear day. I initially mistook this as an omen for good luck. Our first mission at base camp was to store a cache in case we got holed up on our way out. We dug a hole two meters deep so the ravens couldn’t reach the few freeze-dried meals and handful of snacks we stuffed into a duffel bag (apparently they’ve learned how to unzip bags), right in line with a view of the mountain. It was mostly clear save for her elusive summit, which was characteristically veiled by lenticular clouds.
Sometime early evening, we stepped off toward Camp 1. Moving from base camp at about 7200 feet to camp one at 7500 feet is a long, heavy slog. The vertical gain is relatively little, but it’s over five miles carrying the heaviest load of the journey. All in all, I had stepped onto the mountain with about 130 pounds of gear, clothing, food, and other supplies, which is easily the most I’ve ever carried at once. The going was slow and heavy, and I struggled right out of the gate. The sun shone and the sights were dazzling, but, to my dismay, the memories of this day are tainted by pain and misery. I didn’t even remember it being so beautiful until I looked at my pictures later. Being a woman is tough on an easy day, and it was almost unbearable in this setting. I felt betrayed by my body, even though nature was just doing what nature does. I was simply unlucky enough to have been caught in the crosshairs while at the base of North America’s tallest mountain.
It didn’t make the initial part of my journey easy, and things only got harder the higher we pushed. After what felt like forever but was only a handful of hours at most, we arrived at camp one. I felt pretty terrible already, and as the clouds settled in for the night, the pain in my body did, too. I melted snow to drink, boiled water to eat, changed clothes to sleep, and reminded myself that staying squared away was the only remedy to the pain. This was already the toughest thing I had ever set out to do, and it would only get tougher if I didn’t take care of myself along the way.
The next day we set off for 11k camp, which sat above us by about four miles and four thousand vertical feet. We started in a cloud but the sun came out periodically. When it did, it got hot. I could never find the right balance, and it seemed I was always either sweating from the heat or shivering from the sweat that had turned cold. My socks were soaked through by the end of the day, and it was all I could do to move my feet in such a way that my damp, pruny skin wouldn’t tear. Most of my thoughts that day were, “left, right, left, right, Good Ang, deep breath, left, right…”, or “one, two, three, four, okay now big breath, one, two, three, four…”. It’s funny how simple thoughts become when a moment is distilled down to one basic thing like walking.
We weren’t quite halfway when it was determined that we needed to place a cache before we continued. I was very relieved, and by the end of the day’s work even more grateful, because I wasn’t sure if I’d have made it with the full load. Though I started the day with three and a half liters of water, I was already down to less than one by the time we placed the cache. At one point, Wade and I stopped and I tried to get my jet boil going so I could melt some snow and have more water. It was too windy, and I eventually gave up, settling for the half liter I had even though there was still a good couple hours of walking ahead. As my back ache and my hips screamed, I scolded myself for not doing more sled pulls in the months leading up to the expedition, but when I thought about everything else in those months, I forgave myself, too. I wasn’t going to get any stronger now, I was just going to get there when I got there.
Jason and Bobby had our sleeping and cook tents assembled and ready for use by the time Wade and I finally rolled into camp, and while I was grateful for the chance to immediately throw my stuff down, get hydrated and start on dinner, I felt a bit sheepish knowing this would be the pattern the entire trip. My pace was a lot slower than theirs, and I wondered how long Wade would stay sane being roped up to me. We had moved for roughly nine hours that day. Bobby told me good job at one point, and though I appreciated the encouragement, I couldn’t help but feel that it wasn’t entirely warranted. “Job”, maybe, would’ve been more appropriate. Nonetheless, I managed to get most of my stuff to camp at 11,000 feet, and although I was in even more pain and wondering how the hell I ended up on this mountain, I still had determination for higher.
The next day, the guys encouraged me to take a recovery day while they skied down to retrieve the prior day’s cache, which I gladly accepted. The morning was sunny, and I hydrated while other teams prepared to move either up or down. It was warm and bright, and I was happy to stretch out in the sunshine and dry out some of my clothing while there was a chance to. By the time the guys returned that afternoon, the clouds did too, and soon it was snowing.
The next day we planned to take a cache to 13,500/14,000 feet. We took our time that morning, preparing a big breakfast with some bacon we had kept in the snow, dehydrated eggs, potatoes and onions, and some cheese we had bought at the market in Talkeetna. It was the closest thing to a meal with real food we could get up there, and it was a nice break from the dehydrated meals and snack bars. Unfortunately, food hadn’t been sitting well with me. I either had no appetite or was nauseous from the thought of eating, and it took nearly a week for me to finish a whole meal. I don’t know if it was the altitude, my cycle, or the interplay between the two along with other variables, but my body seriously struggled to adapt to the mountain. I’d never felt bad climbing in the Rockies, but the Alaska Range was a landscape with different sorts of beasts. When I felt okay, 11k feet there felt more like 13k feet here.
After breakfast, we prepared our cache bags and stepped off in another cloud with our crampons on and our skis strapped to our packs. Motorcycle hill is the name of the first big push out of 11k camp. It’s a pretty steep hill, especially with weight, with plenty of crevasses to keep one on one’s toes. At one point, Jason called out a crevasse over the radio, ordering everyone to stick exactly to the footpath before asking me to radio up when I crossed over safely. Because a decent trail had already been set in, there were many people on the route and visibility was reasonable, we didn’t ascend with ropes. This made me a bit nervous, but I trusted my team enough to begin the ascent with little hesitation. I kept getting too close to Wade, who had to tell me to keep some distance between us. I didn’t want to tell him that it made me feel too far away. I did what I was told and snapped a couple of pictures while I waited.
We eventually worked our way above the cloud, and as we crested the top of the hill, the thrill of the adventure rushed over my senses. I could see many, many mountains in the surrounding range through a small break in the sky, and I felt very small in the middle of a gigantic landscape of pure wild. Blue ice shown under the midday sun. It was sleek and bright, and I could occasionally hear small echoes as my crampons sunk into the ground below me. I moved quickly and felt great, perhaps energized by the sun or the adrenaline of navigating the treacherous terrain.
By the time we had reached the polo fields, a long swath of gentle traverse through a minefield of crevasses, I couldn’t keep the distance between me and the guys. There seemed to be a direct correlation between my energy levels and the distance between us. The farther away they moved, the less energy I had to keep up, and soon I was completely outpaced. By the time I reached squirrel hill, another steep incline toward the infamous windy corner, I had fallen completely behind and was alone.
In reality, I held a reasonable pace (even if it wasn’t the pace of the three special operations mountaineering instructors I climbed with). I had gone the pace I needed to go, and that was okay. Nevertheless, the ascent stands out in my memory as particularly miserable, because I felt really alone in a place that I didn’t know and didn’t quite trust. Where I didn’t trust the terrain, I trusted myself, but I also knew that the pedestal of credibility on which I stood as I approached this beautifully monstrous mountain was a small one.
Yet, it was the only one I had.
With my team far ahead on their journey, I clung to an outcropping of rock at windy corner while putting on a hard-shelled jacket. I learned a tough lesson about pulling stuff out of your pack at the top of anything steep while skiing on Pikes Peak this spring, so I moved deliberately and clutched things tightly. It was cold, but I remember the moment more for the deafening sound of the wind. There were almost no other sounds except the roar of its push and pull against my body and head. Someone later mentioned speeds above seventy miles an hour, and I was very glad I held onto my jacket so tight.
I finally reached the camp, but was disappointed, even if unsurprised, to see the views covered by clouds. Overall, I was tired but excited and ready to descend. Despite the strong but brief headache I had coming into that altitude, it dissipated quickly on the way down. Skiing down is a hell of a lot faster than walking down, and it’s invigorating enough to instill some fresh energy, especially when feeling ready for the day to meet its final rest.
Skiing down from 14k camp is definitely a highlight of the journey, despite the bit of fear and fatigue. Not a lot of people who climb Denali do it on skis, and not a lot of people who climb Denali on skis ski down from 14k camp. I figured out why pretty quickly. I tried not to think about the number of crevasses I skied over and around while I minded my edges over long patches of blue ice. Falling anywhere on that line could be consequential for a number of reasons, and it was all I could do to keep my tips up. Luckily our packs were a lot lighter on the way down, which was a welcome relief. We got a little break in the clouds as we rounded windy corner and began our descent of squirrel hill, and that feeling of being so small in such a big place washed over me again.
We were just tiny little ants with skis.
At a point somewhere above motorcycle hill, I caught up with Bobby. He didn’t look like he was having very much fun, and he’s one of the most competent skiers I know. He looked at me and said, “Don’t worry, this isn’t my favorite type of skiing either.” If Bobby didn’t love it, I knew we were in some real shit. I didn’t either, but I was confident I’d make it down in spite of the steep ice and crevasses. I’d done enough in the previous months to get that far. Although the cumulative training days didn’t amount to what might’ve been ideal, I realized just how lucky I was to get the days that I did. Getting into the varied terrain of the Colorado backcountry with lots of unseen snags and crags had challenged me beyond anything before. A series of memories characterized by discomfort and insecurity came to my mind. Sure, some amount of trepidation was still there to remind me of the consequences of a fall, but I had come a long way from the Angela who forged those first ones. Were it not for those moments of fear and subsequent courage, I never would’ve made it down this mountain safely.
We were lucky to get a few lines in some soft powder on motorcycle hill, but the depressions in the snow which gave away crevasses were harder to see. At one point, Jason stood below and yelled something as I worked my way down. It was only just as I passed him that I heard him telling me to keep skiing straight, “don’t turn, don’t turn!”. I did as he said, noticing a big depression in the snow beneath my skis, and trusted that he had just helped me avoid falling into the mountain forever.
I only fell once, out of sheer clumsiness. I suppose it would’ve been too uncharacteristic if I hadn’t fallen at all. When I skied up and down Gray’s Peak in February with Bobby and their coworker Paul, I fell so many times on the way down I lost track of the count. I took some hard tumbles too; head over ski kind of tumbles — the kind that make you wonder if you’ve put too much in the pot before you suddenly remember that you don’t know how to gamble. I had come home feeling rough that day. I was down in the dumps, exhausted and beat to shit. I remember really doubting this expedition and my part in it, and wondered if I was in dangerously over my head. I’d done some backcountry skiing before this year, but not skiing up 14ers type of backcountry skiing. That was a big day even compared to the many other days I had this season, but instead of giving up, I went back for more. I went back to get better, stronger, and more competent, and I was lucky to have Jason and the guys to guide me in that development. I went back and took a lot more falls, but it all amounted to the competency that I was proud to display on Denali.
I was stoked to have made it to 14,000 feet and ski the line around windy corner, down squirrel and motorcycle hills, all without taking a serious crash or unfortunate misstep. The feeling of being alone on the mountain sat heavy with me though, and I couldn’t shake it. I asked the guys to join me for a team chat in the cook tent, but had to take several minutes to gather myself first. I knew I didn’t want to be on that mountain feeling like I was on it alone, and I also knew that these guys had years of repertoire with one another. They worked together all year round, climbing, skiing, and chasing objectives in the mountains. They could know each other’s thoughts through observation and make cohesive plans together without talking about them. More than once, I was left guessing as to what we were doing or how I should prepare. Perhaps they had more trust in my competency than they should have, or perhaps I didn’t have enough. Either way, I couldn’t shake the feeling, and feeling alone was the last thing I wanted to feel on that mountain.
The guys were open to the conversation, and Jason thanked me for bringing forth the issues. I felt good about bringing my feelings to light, and while it made me feel better to talk to them, I still felt a bit out of place in a world much, much bigger than me. It was shaking me down, and making me look hard at my shortcomings and disbeliefs, using my vulnerability to pull my emotions to the surface and make me confront them. I had no choice but to wade with the tides of my own mind through everything the mountain demanded, and find my own solid ground within its crashing waves. I was in terrified awe of this world, but it was the admiration I felt for the guys on my team and all the other climbers on the mountain that really made me tremble.
People are truly astounding. I appreciated this in a way I never have before. Mountains pinpoint exactly where we stand, and some people stand really high up in their ability to accept miserable situations and painful existence in order to find rare beauty, permitting the weather’s generosity. The grit, the determination, and the ease which some of the more experienced and better prepared mountaineers display is admirable to anyone. People have a profound capacity to suffer, and I truly wondered if some of the people I saw on that mountain were something more than human. Mountaineering is a challenge that tests a person to their core and roots. Every detail matters, every action has a consequence, and every forethought not taken is a coming moment of shame or fear at best or worst. It is a challenge like no other, and undertaking it willingly is a conscious test of one’s willingness to suffer. When we stretch our willingness, we stretch our capacity, because our willingness to suffer is our willingness to know more about ourselves. By discovering who we are and who we can be beyond the bounds of where we have so far been, we become more than we were before. When we push ourselves to those limits, we become even more capable, competent, and better equipped to handle life’s challenges, on or off the mountain.
That is a lesson any person, mountain climber or not, can use to life’s benefit.
The next day we woke to a storm, prepared to take a day of rest at camp. It dumped nearly two and a half feet overnight. The wind howled and I hoped my sled was tied down tight. I woke up with aching hips, a sore back and the usual thin layer of icy snowflakes on everything inside the tent, and I had no appetite. I did manage to pee in a collapsable bottle in the tent, which was a risk worth taking only once (I’ll let you figure out why). When I heard all the guys shoveling the accumulated snow, I reached around for my socks and base layers inside my sleeping bag, still wet from falling snow during the days and nights before to join the morning chore.
Life in a tent on a glacier is a lot of shoveling, melting, brushing off, shaking off, more shoveling and then more melting snow. Snow, snow, snow. There was so much of it coming down from the skies, like rain frozen only in time because it instantly melted on all our clothes. The snow kept everything wet for days on end. It took me four days after getting home to finish drying stuff out. I slept without socks to get my feet warm, because any pair I sacrificed to the bottle of hot water at the bottom of my bag would eventually dampen against the condensation. It was a vicious cycle of rotating between a damp or slightly less damp pair of socks.
The sun did come out that afternoon, and I stood under its rays gratefully. We chatted with another team whom we had met at our ranger brief days before. They were Sam, Michael and Jorge, a kind, unsuspecting but tough as nails trio of one Washingtonian and two fellow Coloradans. They reached 11k camp the day before our cache to 14k camp, and when we saw them, Sam immediately plodded my way for a hug. We empathized with each other’s struggles and thoughts of the journey so far, and she offered me some supplies I really needed. I was grateful for her generosity, and the feeling of connection to another woman on the mountain.
If you ever need a little bit of hope for humanity, go to a mountain. People will help when help is needed. Even if they cannot provide it, they will help you find someone who can, unless they are really in some dire situation of their own. I appreciate and respect the hell out of climbers and adventurers of all kinds; they help each other out of genuine care. It is a great lesson that all people of the world, adventurer or no, would be better for learning. Perhaps it is the personal understanding of suffering that makes one more empathetic, or perhaps it is being able to acknowledge that no thing is done alone, but it is a core tenet of any expedition that people hold onto when they forget about everything else.
Mountaineers are mountaineers insofar as their memories are short, after all.
While the sun shone on motorcycle hill, everyone roamed about their tents and looked up at the mountain. A big group was gearing up, and there was an unspoken anticipation as to whether they were moving up or down. When they began down, toward their cache they told us, there was an audible sigh of disappointment from the other climbers spread about the camp. Having a safe line to ascend was great, even better if someone did it for you, and everyone wanted to watch how they would do. We looked on at the hill while they strode below and away, watching the mountain like it was a show. The wind danced and sang, and the rocks and the ice made a glorious duo as the backdrop and stage. An avalanche boomed somewhere in the distance over the ridge, and I thought it strange to see a bright blue sky and hear thunder.
The sun was energizing, and I decided to take the opportunity of light and warmth to refit my bags for our push the next day. It was going to be heavy and tough, but manageable if I held a good pace and kept things the right level of warm. I was ready to move on from this camp, and knew it would take everything, plus a bit of luck, to do it successfully.
The next day began with its usual cloudy and stormy, and we hoped for the afternoon break that often came. I was wet and cold all day, so when it finally looked like we could move I was ready to go. As we packed up camp, my toes were numb and I hoped that moving around would warm them up. I was in a similar situation the day of our cache to 14, but the movement up the mountain warmed me up and I was unbothered the rest of the day. This day was a bit colder, a bit snowier, and a bit windier, and everything was a bit wetter. Where more experience might’ve guided me to break into my stash of fresh socks in spite of wanting to save them for higher on the mountain, I chose to stay in wet ones, hoping the situation would resolve itself as we moved.
Well, the long story short is, it didn’t.
By the time we came to the top of motorcycle hill, my feet were gone. We had been moving for less than a couple of hours, but the painful numbness in my toes was only getting worse. I knew I had to say something now or risk injury in more consequential circumstances. Roped up, Wade and I met Jason and Bobby at the top, and they hurriedly worked together to retrieve my overboots and refit my crampons. I reached for my large puffy jacket at the top of my pack, and the raging winds grabbed at it furiously. I didn’t want to go back down, but I also didn’t want to keep going. I knew I made a mistake that led to my limit and it was a bitter taste, but it sucked way more that it lead to theirs. It required a change of plans and quick redress of expectations, and everyone knew we weren’t getting to 14 that day. But when we returned to camp, a small team of rangers stopped to give us props for turning around.
“Some days just aren’t the day to move,” one said. Rescues on the mountain are often necessary because people’s arrogance drives them to push too far, beyond the place where they can help themselves. By doing this, one puts more than just oneself in danger. Honoring our limits is the wisdom the mountains ask us to seek, and the wisdom those rangers were grateful we displayed. Though I knew it was right, the moment sat heavy on my mind and heart.
By the next day, when I woke up to a deep cold that we hadn’t yet felt and to toes instantly numb from the humid, piercing chill, doubt raided my mind. I ran around camp to warm up like I had the evening before, but my toes were chilled to the bone. I returned to my sleeping bag where Bobby brought me a bottle of boiling water for heat. I was terribly nauseous, and he gave me a small red pill. I laid with the water bottle between my feet and my body curled, and deeply felt that I may have reached my end.
I tried not to think about anything for a while. The guys sat and chatted amongst themselves in the cook area away from the tents. I hydrated. I closed my eyes. I listened to the sounds on the mountain. Eventually, I was able to eat some snacks, and even my toes began to feel better. I was rallying, and I wanted to try again. It was hard to wade through the lowland of my mind, but I perked up enough to assess packing my things for movement up the mountain. I had made it up there once and I could do it again. Plus, I wanted to see the views the clouds had previously deprived me of. I started shoving my sleeping bag into its compression sack.
Before I got too far, Jason asked me to join the guys for a team chat in the open pit of our cooking space. Jason asked how I was feeling and how much higher I thought I could go, and I expressed honestly that I thought I could get to 14, that I wanted to try, but wasn’t sure how things would be from there. He noted what I already knew, that it would be harder the higher we went to keep already affected toes warmer for longer. We went back and forth, each noting the struggle my body had had since being on the mountain, the lack of appetite, and the headache at 14, which seemed to be setting in at that moment. The summit was the goal, after all, and as the conversation carried it seemed like it wasn’t going to be part of my story this time. It didn’t take long for me to realize the best thing for everyone, myself included, was to head down the mountain and let the team push on.
I respected these guys like older brothers whose aspirations were worthy of the best chance, and I wanted them to be successful. They demonstrated great teamwork getting me back to camp the day before, and I wanted to be a good teammate by honoring my limits and the situation. I wanted more for myself, and I had given so much energy to getting to where I was that turning back felt unfair to the months of training and preparation that went into the whole journey. But when the call came, I knew in my gut it was the right decision. No mountain is losing limb or life over, and while my love for the mountains is as high as their greatest peaks, it is not as deep as my love for a healthy, capable life. Challenging ourselves is necessary to our growth, but going beyond the point of no return has consequences that may stop it entirely. I reached my journey’s end and I knew it, but I also knew I had given it my damned best shot, and got so much farther, in the months before and the days then, than I could’ve once dreamed.
That was enough to give me peace.
Bobby and Wade packed up to move during the weather break. Their plan was to move to 14k camp and start acclimatizing to higher altitudes, while Jason skied me down the mountain before making the long and heavy trek (again) to rejoin them. Bobby and Wade were successful in their journey, reaching camp later that evening, but Jason and I had been pinned down by a storm at 11k camp. While I was not antsy to get going in the middle of a white out, I had made peace with my journey’s end and was looking forward to the conclusion, and I knew Jason was ready to get down and back up as quickly as possible.
We rolled the dice during a brief period of calm the following day. I had never skied in fresh powder with a forty five pound pack on my back and a sixty pound sled in tow, so there was a bit of a learning curve. After a couple inconsequential falls, I managed to stay upright and behind Jason as we descended into thicker and thicker clouds and snow. It was almost ten miles down to base camp, and although we were downhill skiing good chunks of this traverse, there were lots of painfully annoying flatlands, too. Portions of the terrain that had once been a welcome relief were now an arduous trial.
The falling snow became so thick that if Jason got more than twenty five meters in front of me, I lost sight of him completely. We had radios, but he had the GPS, so keeping him in sight became crucial. I could see nothing except his dark shadow in front of a bright orange sled against a void of white. The winds whipped and left my goggles consistently iced over, and I thought it impossible that every day we moved was the hardest day on the mountain.
There was no sense of direction, and I got the uneasy feeling of how people trapped in storms end up so lost. Sometimes we were going down, then suddenly we were moving slightly up again. Flat terrain would suddenly shift, and the only way to know it was by feeling it in the skis. I couldn’t make out the ground from the sky, and at times it felt like we were traveling in circles.
At about halfway to our destination, we stopped our movement and decided to make camp to wait out the weather. We were coming up on heavily crevassed terrain with some longer, steeper sections, and doing it in such low visibility was a recipe for unwanted consequences. We dug ourselves in while the wind and snow howled around us. By the time we got settled, much of our clothing was soaked through and with no sun, it would be nearly impossible to dry things out. The snow continued, and late that night we had to get out and shovel almost three feet out of our tent hole to keep it from coming up the sides. We took the time to dig out a cooking cave so we could manage the stoves in the storm, and I marveled at how useful snow can be against itself.
Life is full of irony.
The next morning, we woke to snow piled all the way to the vents on our tent. We got out and began the morning shovel, and I wondered what could have happened had we slept for another hour. It was a long day of shoveling and waiting. We estimated over seven feet had fallen since we’d been there. To kill time and save power, I read the one hard copy book I brought with me, The Hobbit. That little paperback has been with me on all of my adventures, from the vibrant cities of Korea to the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan, keeping me company once again in the mountains of Alaska. Not only is it the story of a fantastical adventure, it’s the story of surprising ourselves with our own courage in the face of fear of the unknown. I had no idea what kind of adventure Denali would be, summit or no summit, but I knew that I would need all the courage I had to see it through. It was this way from the beginning: it took courage to say yes to this crazy endeavor with fairly limited experience, it took courage to ward off my doubts and insecurities in the months leading up to it, and it took courage to give it my best shot from the circumstances I was in when given this opportunity.
As I lay in our tent, listening to the snow falling in buckets on the nylon and thinking about how we were almost buried alive in the night, I was proud of myself. I only had a tag at 14k camp and a ski down to show for it, but it was a hell of a lot more than I once would’ve known myself capable of.
At some point that afternoon, we heard footsteps outside. I wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the ear so I held my breath, then someone called down to us. It was people! There was a break, and they were going for it! Jason and I began the tedious process of dressing, filling our water bottles, packing, and breaking down the tent, but getting down and off the mountain was invigorating my stiff limbs. If it went, it would be my last ski on the mountain.
The break didn’t last for too long, and we were in and out of clouds pretty much the whole way. It took every ounce of energy and willpower to stay upright on my skis. We passed a team making their way up, and a woman cheered me on. “Woohoo!” she yelled. “Powder!!”
I returned as enthusiastic of a whoo! as I could manage in a single breath, a little too preoccupied to give more. When we passed camp one and returned to the low-lying valley at the base of the West Buttress route, the clouds clung to the tops of the mountains but were open enough below to see the vastness of the surrounding terrain. It was like skiing through a void with periodic glimpses of mountainous rock. Marveling at the sights threatened to distract the focus on my skis.
The sun came out in the last bit of our descent, just before heartbreak hill, a small incline aptly named because it’s the last thing you do before arriving back at base camp. There was a lot of double pole planting to get through the flatter parts of the valley, and I was smoked from my battle with gravity. My shoulder hurt a lot on the hill, and I thought it’d be okay if I never pulled another sled through snow in my life. It had only been just over a week, and it seemed like my body was falling apart at the seams from fatigue. My mind was racing with gratitude though, both at making it down without incident and being given the chance to have this experience at all.
It took a couple of days to get a flight out of base camp. It was pretty backed up, and many climbers had spent multiple days, even a week, waiting for the weather to clear enough for a plane to come onto the glacier. It was a quiet time to reflect on the journey, and I was honestly glad to be going home when I was. My toes had been numb for days, and I had been a little naive as to the nature of life in the snow for so many days in a row. I’ve struggled with my hands and feet in the cold for years and knew this would be an ultimate test, but determination doesn’t always overcome physical limitations. There were many things I took away from the trip, little details that make one better prepared for future endeavors so long as they heed them. I thought about all the things I would’ve done differently, or how things may have been under better circumstances. I tried not to think about how things could be different in a way that demeaned my efforts on the trip, just in a way that would make future trips better.
Experience really is the greatest teacher. When we are willing to learn, we grow.
There is a lot of sitting and thinking that goes on during these things. In between the many demanding chores required for basic survival, there are ample moments of quiet stillness where nothing needs to be done right away. One can simply be there, look at the mountains and let the mind wander. As we sat around base camp, I listened to the many different voices and languages from all over the world. French, Russian, Spanish, Japanese, and Nepalese all hit my ears at various times, interspersed with English and the occasional British or Scottish accent. Avalanches slid off the peaks with thunderous booms, giving the mountains a sense of being alive. I saw them as living giants watching down on us puny, seemingly insignificant creatures below.
Yet who would it be to stand among the giants and give sight to their great heights, sound to their roars, and feel to their crisp winds if not for us? We tiny creatures, as fragile and humble as we are, are capable of so, so much, including giving life to the very world around us through our willing experience of it.
That is anything but insignificant.
When we finally got word that the birds in Talkeetna were spinning, I hoped it wasn’t a tease. I prepped myself and my gear, and Jason got things ready for his long movement back to Bobby and Wade. When the first plane came buzzing in over the mountains, there were cheers in the camp. I was able to get on the second pass, but not without falling, one last time for good measure, just before the snowy runway. A group of Japanese climbers laughed at me, and I laughed with them while happy thoughts of dry ground under my feet percolated my imagination.
As the pilot started his engine, I looked out the window for Jason. I don’t know if it was good luck or bad luck that I met this guy, but over the course of these last several months and through to the end of this expedition, he became like an older brother I never asked for but am really glad to have. We all need people in our lives who push us and our limits, and Jason was really good at pushing me to mine. If it weren’t for him, I never would have laid eyes and boots on this great mountain. It it weren’t for him, I never would have managed to get as far as I did, nor ski my way safely down. He guided my learning, ensured my confidence, and helped me tackle my fears. Though I was ultimately defeated by the mountain, he helped me win a battle in life by making me so much more than I was before.
We took off and I watched the mountains roll away from us, knowing Jason would reach 14k camp late in the night. He arrived around two in the morning after having travelled for eleven hours straight, through pockets of whiteouts and negative temperatures. His fortitude is astounding. He arrived with mild frostbite on a couple fingers, but I imagined his spirits high and eager nonetheless.
I kept track of the guys in the next few days, periodically checking their Garmin locations and messaging for updates. Bobby and Wade gave the summit a shot the day after I flew out, but poor weather and low visibility forced their return just above 18,000 feet. Jason climbed to 17,000 feet the day after that, and skied back to 14k camp via Rescue Gully, a serious and intimidating line that is approached most often only by professional skiers.
I arrived home late Friday, and eagerly waited that weekend to see how the weather would hold and what the guys would do. Unfortunately, poor weather (and I have a hunch about someone’s fingers) led the team to make the tough decision to return down the mountain. I know foregoing another summit bid had to be tough on the guys, on everything they had put into preparing for this journey, but I was ultimately glad to see them down safe without serious injury. I hoped the rewards gleaned from their journey, then and since, have outweighed whatever disappointment they felt in not reaching the summit. The summit isn’t always the aspect of an expedition that makes the journey worthwhile. In fact, focusing one’s vision on the summit while neglecting other factors is a surefire way to failure or disaster. I don’t regret not making it, because my intent was to do my best and push myself, which I did. I can’t speak for the guys, but I hope their journeys were fulfilling in their own necessary ways, and that they have found peace in the adventure as a whole for what it was.
For me, this journey became about a lot more than the top. This journey became about listening to myself, my intuitions, and letting the experience teach me in ways I needed to be taught. I can’t say I’m eager to travel along any glaciers again any time soon or live in the snow for weeks on end, but the sum of this experience has recalibrated the internal compass that navigates me on my life’s path, and for that I am deeply grateful.
This whole venture happened because I got involved with a non-profit organization that seeks to combat PTSD and suicide in military members and veterans called Green Beret Racing. I came aboard to help out with some social media stuff, and do what I could with what little time I had to offer as I finished my college degree. I had no idea what I would ultimately strive to give to the organization, nor did I know what it would end up giving to me. I wanted to be part of their community because I care deeply about their mission. It feels unfair to try and put into words what mental health means to me, because I’m not sure I could ever speak to its truest depths. My oldest brother died by suicide when I was young, I’ve had multiple friends die by the same, and I’ve seen depression take over people’s lives in ways that trap them in endless darkness. It is the plague of our modern era, really. I’ve seen the darkness myself, and much of my life has been spent warding it off in my own mind.
When I left the Army, I carried a lot of shadows with me. Sometimes, we don’t realize how deeply something has impacted us, nor the ways in which it has, until enough time passes that the natural currents of life bring old sediments to the surface. I am proud of my military service, but it sent me down a path filled with things many people will never understand. In the time since, when I thought life might be kind and easy, at least for a while, a torrent of personal and familial events have changed everything I once thought I knew. And when I lost one of my best friends, a most cherished sister and beloved person in so many people’s lives at the end of this past year, I fell off the ledge into a strange abyss where I no longer cared for much of anything. For months, I have felt really helpless and hopeless, and most days are marked by an indeterminate sadness. We all feel lost sometimes, and sometimes it takes a great challenge such as this to shed light on who we are, what we want and what we don’t. I may have turned around halfway, but this mountain gave me more in ten days than I have found in months, most notably the desire to keep going and to keep growing. It might sound simple, but sometimes this is the most powerful motivation a person can have.
I’ve thought many times about how things in my life might be different if Jason had never asked me to join this expedition, or if I had never accepted. It was daunting from the beginning, but it gave me something to hold onto. It was an opportunity too rare to pass up, even though I came so close to quitting before getting started. I have wondered in the days since if I crossed the line of arrogance, and if the journey would have been far more successful without my presence, even if it wouldn’t have this story to show for it. I have wondered if I really did get in too far over my head, and what kind of prices could’ve been paid in place of our brief moments of luck.
But wondering can only bring us so far. Reality is where we are. And in this reality, I, and all my teammates, are alive and healthy, and we have an experience of a lifetime to show for it. I have connected more deeply with myself in a way that has only strengthened my self-trust, and I know that my limits will continue to expand so long as I am willing to push them. I want to be challenged, to seek wild lands around the world, to test myself against whatever life has in store. I will fall and I will fail, many more times I am sure, but I am grateful to know how much stronger I can be when I get back up. We are only as good as our experiences have taught and shaped us to be, and by seeking out experiences such as this, we give ourselves endless opportunities to make our good better and our better best. I might not be the target demographic for GBR’s mission, but my lucky involvement with them has achieved it in at least one person.
Life is a magnificent mountain full of both beautiful and terrible things. Its heights can be daunting, its ridges tremendous, its winds swift and fierce. But if we let our fears of what the mountain holds keep us from learning how to navigate the terrain, we will never know the glory of seeing life from the top.
