Before telling the story, I want to publicly thank a very special lady, Nicole of Southern California, whose passionate send-off before the expedition really did help to keep me warm though some cold Alaska nights high on the mountain.
-----------------------

As many of you know, I was recruited to join a 23-day expedition to climb Denali (still called Mt. McKinley by many), a mountain in Alaska which at 20,320 ft is the highest mountain in North America.  The expedition leader who recruited me is a climbing friend who is also a US NASA astronaut, and has flown four space shuttle missions.  He is an excellent planner with an almost-anal attentiveness to details, but knows his shortcomings in the area of interpersonal relations.  He recruited me because in my 20+ years of leading climbs, my greatest strength has been in gauging accurately where the individual team members are at emotionally, and handling them as individuals.  The summit success rate for climbs I have led is also extraordinarily high, and my astronaut friend had tried to summit this mountain twice before unsucessfully.   He also knew my record for safety - although I have lost four climbing buddies who died on climbs, none of them would have died if I had been leading the climbs they died on - my safety record for climbs I have led is very good, with only one minor injury and no deaths.  

On the Denali expedition from which I just returned, I came closer to losing my life than on any climb I have ever been on.  I suddenly developed high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE), which progresses rapidly from the state I was in, to death in 6-12 hours if the subject does not descend immediately.  It took all of my judgement as a climbing leader to act decisively to descend and save my own life.  I have often said that people who do not have excellent judgement have no business climbing serious mountains.  This was a good real-life illustration of that.

We were at the fourth of the six camps needed to climb Denali, and were making a carry of food and fuel to a higher elevation, where we would cache the food and fuel by burying it under four feet of snow before descending again to Camp Four.  I suddenly found that I was not able to breathe deeply without going into a coughing fit.  I thought that it might just be a bronchial infection, and could perhaps be treatable with Cipro, one of the broad spectrum antibiotics in our medical kit.  I told the astronaut expedition leader that I needed to descend because I couldn't keep up, and he asked me to try to push harder and continue to the end of the carry (we were about half-way to the our intended cache site), and then descend.  I told him I needed to descend immediately, and did so without any further complaints from him.  As it turned out, if I had done as he requested, I would probably had died on the mountain, since the carry took an additional six hours and I may not have been able to descend the next morning as I did if I had finished the carry with the team.

By the next morning, I had made the decision to descend, and had come to grips with the disappointment of having to give up the summit.  But as my friend Ed Viesturs (a good climber) says "Reaching the summit is optional, coming down is mandatory".  It was easier to reach to the decision at age 52 than it would have been when I was younger.  Also, it helped that I have already climbed mountains higher than Denali.

In Camp Four, there was a climber who everyone called "the Czech guy" (Peter was his name).  He had separated from his two other team members who had continued up to a higher camp when he became ill.  His illness was something of a mystery, but some in camp thought it could be something as serious as an intestinal  obstruction.  He had more-or-less fallen into the "care" of the head guide of one of the guided expeditions, from a guiding outfit called Alpine Ascents International, but this guide was very eager to off-load him onto someone else so that he could continue up with this paying clients.  But he wasn't getting any takers, not even a compassionate American woman expedition leader who had tried to help take care of the Czech guy earlier, and who was planning to descend with her team.  Basically, no one would help the Czech guy.  There was also a Scottish climber named Paul who had Acute Mountain Sickness (not too serious), and  who was needing to descend.  I took a look at the Czech guy and saw he had no equipment at all for crevasse rescue.  The Scottish guy had some gear but not enough, and it was all shiny and new-looking (i.e. never used), which is always a bad sign.  I asked the Scottish guy how he felt about his crevasse rescue skills, and he replied (in a great Scottish accent - love that accent) "Well, I think I could muddle through".  At that point, I decided to bring both of them down through the crevasses fields, since I am an expert in crevasse rescue methods, and knew I had the pulleys, anchors, ascenders, and prussiks to set up a Z-pulley and get the out of a slot if they fell in.  On the descent, we would be passing directly over many 200 foot deep Alaska-size crevasses, moving over snow snow bridges which could collapse at any time.  So I got them down safely and out of danger.  Turned out they were both a lot less sick than I was, but except for the very noticeable shortness of breath I didn't feel as bad as you might think considering the HAPE.

Got back to the small town of Talkeetna on a ski-equipped bush plane and began my medical adventure.  Long story short (this one is too long already!), it involved a diagnosis of possible HAPE at the Talkeetna clinic, a 90-minute ambulance ride the nearest town (Palmer) with a hospital, a chest x-ray confirming high altitude pulmonary edema (my lungs were still 20% filled with fluid), IVs of the steroid "dex" (dexamethazone) and the diuretic Lasix, oxygen via tubes up the nose, and a 15-hour hospital stay.

When I finally made it back to the US National Park Service ranger station in Talkeetna to "check  out", the rangers informed me that they have this award for heroism called the Denali Pro award, given to people who "Protect fellow climbers, using good judgement to limit or eliminate injury or death".  They had interviewed several people to get the independent corroboration needed, and made the decision to award.  I felt a little embarassed by it all, since I felt I had just done what anyone would do, or at least should be willing to do.  But I accepted it, partly becuase I have a son who is still young enough to think that it's cool to have a hero father, and I think that can be a good thing for a boy.  So I'm slowly getting used to the award thing.

My team members all later sucessfully summited, and I've let them know how proud I am of them.  Especially nice for my astronaut friend to finally get the summit on his third try.

A final postscript to the story:  When I made it to Anchorage and knew I would be flying home to California the next morning, I called an agency, feeling that I had earned a reward.  The young woman who came to my room was a semi-ROB: grudging BJ, no FS ("forgot to bring a condom"), and the "up to an hour" bit.

It's good to be back in TERland, where the ladies are terrific.

Be well,
Jack














-- Modified on 6/11/2004 12:50:03 PM