Seven Summits (36 page)

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.”

Frank 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.

There was no wind, all clouds had cleared from the sky, and the sun, behind the surrounding peaks but still a few hours from its short pass below the horizon, cast a soft Arctic pink on the snowfields above them. Sitting on their foam pads lining their sunken outdoor dining booth, they finished their meal, drank tea, and swapped stories.

“Susan, tell us what the Iditarod is like.”

Susan, cradling her tea in both hands, breathed the steam and said, “That's a tall request, but I’ll try.”

“They have the race in March,” she began. “That's exciting because it's the first month when you feel warmth from the sun, and each day is noticeably longer. Still, maybe sixty percent of the time you're in the dark—I don't remember one race when there was a full moon. But there's enough light, especially when the stars are out. You race along hour after hour, and all you see are the shadows, and you hear the sled's runners swooshing through the snow, and the owls in the trees and in the distance a wolf. Then there's this long section where you break into big, sweeping valleys, and then open tundra. In the Arctic dawn you can see the trail disappearing like a ribbon into the distance, and it's just you and the dogs and no hint of anyone else in the universe. You race through the short day and into the long night, and it gets colder. Then you're on the Bering Sea, mushing over the sea ice, and you can see the village ahead, the lights just twinkling; even though it's fifty miles away, somehow the light bends over the clear, straight horizon. Then the aurora starts to dance overhead, and you can feel its energy. It comes down in curtains of red and green mostly, and you stop the sled and stand out on the sea ice by yourself with nothing in any direction. Then everything gets quiet. The dogs go still, the sled is still, the sky is still, and you can hear it, in the sky, the aurora, making this barely perceptible noise. You have to listen carefully, so carefully, but it's there, this whooosh, whooosh, whooosh …”

Dick opened his eyes, and seeing the bright yellow and tan panels of the tent, guessed that the morning sun had peeked above the surrounding ice ridges. Outside he could hear the purring of the stoves and the chatter of the early risers. Glancing to his side he saw Frank still in his sleeping bag, reading a book.

“Frank, you ever stop to figure how many days out of this year we'll be living in tents?”

“Good question. Let's see, about three weeks on Aconcagua, then about ten on Everest. Then two or maybe three weeks here, say one on Kilimanjaro, then Elbrus will be huts, so it doesn't count. Maybe two more on Vinson, and Kosciusko again is a day hike. That's nineteen weeks, or, let me figure it, a hundred thirty-three days.”

“That's a lot of camping out for a couple of businessmen in their fifties.”

Dick sat up on one elbow and surveyed the stuff sacks lined neatly along his sleeping bag, looking for the one that held his vitamins. Then he picked up the one with his powdered-energy-drink packets and mixed one with his bottle of water. After taking his vitamins, he then looked for the sack with his bottle of Absorbine, Jr., to rub on a sore leg muscle. Next it was the sack that had the sunscreen and lip protection for his face.

“Dick, I bet you've got a sack for each part of the body.”

“Now don't go ridiculing me again, Wells. I don't hear you complaining when you need to borrow something, which seems to be at least twice a day.”

“As a matter of fact, I was going to ask if you had any ointment for a cracked lip.”

Dick muttered and handed Frank a small tube. When Dick had finished all his ablutions he slipped out of his bag to dress. It was already warm enough so he wouldn't need any more than long johns, which he was already wearing. Putting his boots on, and his overboot gaiters, he crawled out, pulling with him his sleeping bag, which he hung to air over his skis planted upright in front of the tent. He put his goggles on, and looking down the glacier he could see in the sky over the distant flatlands a thin haze, but it seemed innocuous; overhead there was nothing but cerulean sky.

The glacier here was wide, perhaps a half mile or more, with McKinley on one side and Foraker on the other, and everywhere there was thick ice, lying over the mountains like frosting that had dried and cracked into hundreds of crevasses. Here and there, exposed in naked patches on the sides of the peaks, were rocks too steep for the ice to adhere to, and along the tops of these cliffs the thick ice, always creeping downward, sometimes would break off in big blocks that would pulverize when they hit below and with great thunder kick huge billowing white clouds in the air.

Dick joined the others in the cookpit sipping their morning brews. Susan was with them, and Dick, knowing that since she was drinking her tea she must already have completed her chores attending to the dogs, guessed she had been up at least an hour. A few minutes later Frank arrived and sat next to Dick.

“What's for breakfast?” Dick asked the others.

“We haven't made anything yet.”

“Well, if you need some help, let me know.”

Frank elbowed Dick and whispered, “We cook one meal, and we'll be cooking from here on.”

“I’m just trying to help.”

“Listen, we'll carry anything they ask us to, we'll pitch the tents, dig the cook pit, even dig the latrine. Anything but cook.”

“Okay,” Dick whispered. “I don't really want to cook, anyway.”

After breakfast they broke camp. There was a lot of gear to carry: food for two weeks, ten gallons of stove fuel, cooking pots, three tents, everyone's personal gear. With only backpacks it would have been impossible to haul it all without shuttling, but with some of the gear on Susan's dogsled, and more on the smaller sleds the others took turns pulling, they were able to progress up the gradual slope of the glacier in one slow-moving stage. They had lost track of the Sierra Club group, and they hadn't seen any others until later that morning when a group heading downhill, sitting on top of their gear piled on their sleds, rocketed by waving and hollering as they passed. An hour later three climbers, each towing their extra gear in makeshift sleds made of big plastic bags tied to a line, crossed their path.

“We all got to the top,” they said.

“Congratulations. Are there many other parties ahead?”

“Yeah. There have been several days of good weather, so all the groups that were holed up waiting to go to the top are now on their way down. There's more on their way up, too. An all-woman team just ahead of you, staying at the next camp, and a guided group further up. There are also a couple of park rangers coming down.”

“Sounds like that circus on Aconcagua,” Dick said. McKinley was in some ways a mirror reflection of the South American peak. In fact McKinley was probably more popular than Aconcagua. To date nearly 4,000 people have reached its summit, and at least three times that many have tried and failed.

It took another seven hours to reach the day's campsite at the 11,200-foot level, where the west buttress of McKinley rises from the head of the Kahiltna Glacier. This was a standard campsite, and they saw that the all-female group had pitched their tents nearby. Later that evening the two climbing rangers passed through camp on their way down.

“Did you guys leave the airstrip the same time as that Sierra Club group?” one of the Rangers asked.

“They started just behind us, but we lost track of them.”

“So you haven't heard. We got a report on our radio yesterday. Sounds like they were on the lower part of the main Kahiltna Glacier where they ran into a big hidden crevasse.”

“We know the one. We took our time getting over it.”

“They didn't do as well. Apparently the leader's wife was crossing when the snow lid broke, and she went in. She was pulling a sled, and somehow it pressured her waist. It took them quite awhile to get her out. By then she was dead.”

“We were just talking to her yesterday,” Dick said incredulously. “That's hard to believe.”

They pressed the rangers for more information, but the pair didn't know anything beyond the brief radio report.

The rangers left, and Frank and Dick were quiet, both thinking about that big crevasse, both feeling that nervous flush that sweeps you when you learn of a death that could easily have been yours—that unease when you're forced to acknowledge your own vulnerability.

“Thank God we've got Ershler,” Frank said after the rangers had left.

“Thank God we've got the best there is on all these climbs,” Dick agreed.