Denali - Messner Col/Orient Express Trip Report
CHUTESKI
From: sno...@aol.com (Sno Dawg)
Date: 22 Jun 1995 22:19:17 -0400
Message-ID: <3sd8b5$l...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
(Summary - A personal account of the 1995 Chutes & Ladders Expedition to
Mt. McKinley, Alaska. Ski descents of the Messner Coulior from 20,320'
and the Orient Express from 19,200'. One day ascent of the upper West rib
from 14,300'. Spanish rescue effort and body recovery. About 8 pages -
4,300 words.)
I had almost no interest in going to Denali until I saw a photograph of
the Messner Coulior during a slide show. Being a chute skiing hound,
seeing this was close to a religious experience. After the show, without
even knowing what or where it was, both Mark and I said "Wow! Did you see
that chute! We've gotta go!" It starts at close to 20,000' above sea
level and runs straight down the center of the Mt. McKinley massif for a
vertical mile of 40-50 degrees. It has a pronounced hour glass shape to
it and the bottom section doglegs slightly. In my mind it was the great
grandfather of all chutes - the chute that all chutes aspire to be and the
chute that all chutes have come from. Unfortunately (or fortunately),
there aren't any lifts on Mt. McKinley yet, so getting there was going to
be involved.
The first part of the trip, once I was finally able to put away my Visa
card which just about had the numbers rubbed off it from gear purchasing,
was the long approach up the Kahiltna glacier. I had talked to a lot of
people about this to get a feel for what this 11 mile, 7,000' climb was
going to be like. The one thing that no one remembered to tell us was
that it was a lot of work. Actually, it was a $#@^!'ing lot of work! It
ended up taking us about 5 days to complete the trip up to the 14,300'
advanced base camp. This was caused in part by our unwillingness to
suffer any creature discomforts as we packed along cans of Spam, gallons
of 12 year old single malt Scotch, pillows, two full size tents, a mini
boom box complete with spare DD batteries, fresh pasta, gallons of fuel,
two stoves, a full assortment of ski gear, climbing gear, books, Crazy
Creek chairs and lots and lots of warm clothes. We packed all the light
fluffy stuff into big backpacks and put all the dense stuff into hateful
little creatures officially called "sleds", but more commonly known as The
F***ing Sled. They are basically cheesy little bright pink kids sleds
that you load up and drag behind you. They tip over often. They plow
into your ankles. They get caught on things, then break loose and try to
pull you into crevasses. Quaint features like "Ski Hill" became "Ski
Hell". Motorcycle Hill became "MurderCycle Hell" as we ferried loads up
it for the third time. Windy Corner, a 3,000' section that could be done
in a few hours with no loads became a 3 day undertaking as we carried
close to 250 lbs of decadence up it. By the last day I was really
beginning to wonder what the attraction of alpine climbing was. But, when
we finally reached the 14,300' camp, the staging area for trips to the
summit, we were able to spread out and start trying to eat our way through
some of our immense baggage rather then carrying it.
Denali is not a secret place. At times there were close to 150 people
camped at 14.3, the majority of which were planning on climbing the West
Buttress. My partner Mark Holbrook and I didn't really care which route
we climbed, as long as we got to ski down something worthy. We came
across Doug Byerly, a friend from Salt Lake City that had similar desires
to ski the Messner, and not only that, but he had a plan on how to do it.
"We should climb the West Rib and ski it from the summit. It's never been
skied all the way from the summit."
Mark and I agreed that sounded like a good plan. Having spent one day at
14.3, we set out the next day with two other friends from Colorado up the
West Rib. We started by following the tracks of the two park rangers who
were looking for a trio of Spaniards that had started up the West Rib four
days earlier and hadn't been heard from since. We all reached the 17,000'
balcony site together and tore into some ancient tent remnants with our
ice axes thinking we might find bodies frozen in the snow. Much to my
relief, we didn't. The tents were from some previous epic and there were
no bodies. The two rangers, Daryl and Colin, decided to head down and
since Mark was starting to feel the effects of a quick gain in altitude,
he joined them. We continued on as the sun got further away and the
temperature began to drop. I was floating in my own little hypoxic sea of
misery as we crossed the 18,000' landmark, and was beginning to wonder if
I should go higher as we crawled up to the 19,000' mark. I was third or
forth in line at this time and suddenly heard something different then the
usually heavy breathing and quite moans of lactose poisoning. Deaun had
been in the lead at the time and as we crested the formation that forms
the end of the actual rib on the West Rib route, he had stumbled across
the lost Spanish climbers.
"Are you OK?" he was shouting through the howling wind and -20 degree
temperatures. "Any frostbite? Are the others OK?" He was speaking to a
standing climber who was shivering in front of a flimsy looking tent, half
collapsed by the wind so that it revealed the outline of two other figures
huddled inside of it trying to support the last surviving tent pole. He
replied that he was OK, but the other two inside had some frostbite on
their hands and feet and their tent was about to fully collapsed from the
wind. They had pitched their tent on one of the only flat spots
available, which unfortunately was in one of the most wind exposed areas
on the mountain. While the others continued to talk with them, I moved
around and tried to find another site for their tent, but to no avail.
The area around them was strewn with tattered gear, pee stains that had
been stretched 20' by the wind, heavily sculpted sastrugi snow and lots of
car sized rocks that offered a little protection from the wind, but no
place to pitch a tent. When I made it back to the tent, a plan of action
had been decided. Doug and I would ski down the Orient Express and report
them to the 14.3 ranger station, while Terry and Deaun would traverse by
foot over to the 17.2 camp and try to get a hold of a radio there. The
Spanish said they didn't need food, warm clothing or fuel and it was
apparent that they were too strung out from frostbite, exhaustion and
altitude to move any further. Doug and I started getting our skis on (I
frostbit my thumb in the process) while the other two began their traverse
across the Messner Col to the 17.2 camp.
Although my mind was occupied with getting down and reporting the Spanish
trio, all that changed with our first turns at the top of the Orient
Express. Aptly named for the many Oriental climbers that have fallen to
their death while trying to descend this direct line, the snow conditions
didn't do anything to dispel the book and magazine images of crushed
bodies after the 4,000'+ fall. Each turn was an adventure. No two turns
were the same. Powder pockets, layers of crust, hard neve, blue ice,
deeply runneled sastrugi, firm hard pack. It had it all. Add to that the
effects of the altitude which only allowed about 10 turns before turning
your legs to oatmeal and leaving you feeling like you were slowly being
strangled as you collapsed on your poles grips and tried to suck in as
much air as possible. You'd take a long rest, think you were recovered,
make a few turns and assume the position again. It reminded me of the
dazed confusion a fish must feel as it's clubbed to death on a pier -
except it kept going for a long, long time. Luckily, the final 1,200' was
perfect powder and we were able to link turns in long shots all the way
down to the rangers hut at 14.3 where we gave them the report about 45
minutes after meeting the Spaniards. They started the proceeding for a
helicopter rescue, but due to the late hour (it was about 10:00pm) and the
fact that they didn't seem to be in dire need of an immediate rescue, the
evacuation was scheduled for the next day.
We decided that we'd take a rest day, then the day after make another
attempt at the summit and skiing the Messner. As we were lounging around
in the morning, Mark noticed that there was a person skiing the Messner.
We watched for awhile as the solo figure worked his way down the chute and
was then met with a hail of cheers from his friends as he skied into the
14.3 camp. After a few hours, I decided to go congratulate him on his
descent, with the ulterior motive of pumping him for some details. His
name was Paulo and he lived near Balogna in Italy. I asked him how it
was:
"Good. A little hard in spots"
"Where did you start?"
"At the top"
"The top of the mountain, or the top of the Messner?"
"The top of the mountain."
"You skied right off the summit?"
"Yes."
"Oh. Uhmm, did you know that that's the first time the Messner's been
skied from the summit?"
The wild backslapping, grins, handshaking and excited yabbering that
followed this question convinced me that they did indeed know what they
had done - captured the first descent of the great chute on earth from
it's highest logical point. I congratulated him again and shirked back to
my camp to break the news.
"He skied it from the top."
"The very top?"
"Yep, the summit."
"Does he know that that's a first?"
"Definitely."
"Damn" said Doug
"Damn" said Mark
"Yeah, damn." I said. "But he did it by overnighting with friends at 17.2
and then summitting and skiing it the next day while his friends took the
camp down. We could climb the West Rib to the summit and ski the Messner
in a day without support....?"
"Hmmm." said Doug. "That would count. It would be a legitimate
progression in style."
So with that in mind, we decided to do it the next day. Being first at
something wasn't necessarily the main goal, but it does help to have some
sort of rationale to help explain to yourself why you are doing this and
to keep you motivated. So, we got all of our gear ready and made plans
for an early start the next day. Unfortunately, right before we started
fixing our early dinner, Chuck Brainerd, a friend from work, came by and
said "You're wanted in the ranger station ASAP. Doug also."
I went over to the station and met Colin who was looking up towards the
Orient Express. He handed me some super-spiffy autofocusing binoculars
and said "Do you see that dark spot just below the bergschrund on the
Orient? I think it's the body of one of the Spaniards." I looked up and
could see the faint traces of our tracks from yesterday. Right next to
them was a black looking spot that I didn't remember from the day before.
"Sometimes people survive a fall down the Orient. We're going to go up
there and see what's up." said Colin. We agreed to bring the sled litter
and some other emergency supplies up behind them as soon as we could get
mobilized. The victim had stopped about 1,800' uphill from where we were,
so we geared up and followed Colin and Daryl's tracks uphill, stopping a
couple of hundred feet below them to see if they needed the sled or not.
Colin made his way through some knee deep snow over to the body. He took
off his pack and it looked like he was giving some sort of aid to the
victim. We refrained from calling up to see if he was still alive and
waited anxiously down below. After awhile, Colin stood up and started
walking downhill towards us - away from the victim. Nothing happened
until he was about 30 feet away from the person, then the rope came tight
and the body surged downhill like an unruly sled, tumbling and plowing
snow as it slid. The arms and legs flopped in a grotesque manner that
suggested that every bone in the body was broken and the only thing
holding it all together was the blood stained clothing. We could see that
it was now a body recovery and began to dig out a platform to stabilize
the litter for loading. From a distance it was easy to be objective about
the lifeless body as it rolled and surged downhill - it just looked like a
pile of clothing in roughly a human form. But as they drew nearer, the
sight of the exposed hands, now gray and waxen with the skin hanging in
loose folds, gave the body a flesh and blood context that quietly sobered
the scene. It was a very solemn trip back down to the 14.3 camp.
In the meantime, an Army Chinook helicopter had air lifted Alex Lowe, Marc
Twight and Scott Backes (all fully acclimatized) up to the 19,500' summit
plateau where they had rigged some fixed lines down to the remaining two
Spaniards. With some coaxing, pulling, carrying and general heroics, they
were able to get the Spaniards up the remaining 300'-500' vertical feet
and into the waiting helicopters. They were immediately flown to an
emergency clinic and both have survived. They said there partner fell
while they were trying to find a place to relocate their tent a few hours
before they were rescued. (As we were doing our final check out at the
Talkeetna rangers station, the park radios were alive with a Taiwanese
rescue that was taking place. Alex Lowe and Conrad Anker were once again
on the summit plateau trying to get people stabilized and down to 17,200'.
One died before they reached him and two survived.)
We took the next day off, not feeling up to the mental or physical
challenge of trying to climb and ski. The day after that, we attempted to
climb again, but were held at bay by one of the infamous lenticular clouds
that surround Denali's summit like a skull cap. We climbed up into the
edge of it and thinking that it might dissipate, began to wait. The wind
and cold inside these clouds is incredibly intense. Hangtime is measured
in minutes. There is no visibility. The wind finds any little weakness
in your clothing and pushes cold air through. A sense of vertigo sweeps
over you where you aren't sure if you're moving or standing still. We
waited close to an hour before giving up and heading back down. Doug was
tiring of the weather and had other commitments so he decided to leave.
Mark and I decided that the only way we were going to make it up this
mountain was to wake up every morning at 5:00 ready to go if the weather
was good. Luckily, this worked out on the second day we did it, and by
7:00, with a nice brisk -10 temperature, we were off on the West Rib for
the third time. This time the weather held and we were able to cruise our
way through to 19,000' in about 7 hours. We had committed to climbing up
the upper chute of the Wickwire route, but at the last minute realized
that maybe there was a good reason that people didn't do this (there
isn't) and traversed across the head of the Orient Express to where we
were about 200' above the abandoned Spanish camp. Feeling it was bad
karma, I tried to stay high and avoid it, but unfortunately ran into a 30'
patch of blue ice - the only ice on the entire route. I frantically tried
to stab my self arrest ski poles into the solid ice and only succeeded in
getting them up to the first tooth. Each crampon step had to be carefully
placed, which required looking down between your feet at the destroyed
Spanish tent and the beginning of the 4,000' slide for life. Without
looking, I could feel Mark close by and imagined him accidently knocking
me off. Panicking softly I said "Give me some room here Mark", but I
needn't have worried as he was a good 15' feet away having a similar mind
riot. We both made it across the ice patch and treated ourselves to some
shameless yarding on the fixed rescue ropes that were still in place.
From here, it was a long walk and about 800' more climbing to finally make
it to the summit.
The summit was slightly disappointing. The true highest point is just a
section of cornice that probably changes by a few inches every day. We
had the summit to ourselves while we were there, but insanely high winds
and cold kept it to strictly business as we snapped a few photos, switched
over to ski mode, packed our gear and started skiing. Mark made a few
turns down the summit hill, then trying to carry enough speed to propel
him across the football field, cut loose and did a high speed straight
shot down the bottom part. I followed suit and we happily blazed by a
group of people working their way up towards the summit. We continued
around the West Buttress route until we came to the point that I thought
was the top of the Messner Coulior. One of the distinct advantages of
climbing up what you are going to ski down is that you know where you are
going and what conditions are going to be like. We didn't. Turning into
a large open area, we made a few test turns on hard snow. Mark started
making turns downhill while I traversed out into the center of the bowl,
still not convinced we were in the right place - it just seemed too vast
for a chute. About halfway into it, it hit me. The 14.3 camp popped into
view 5,000' feet below us, with a long continuous band of snow leading
from my skis to it. We were in the Messner alright. It was huge. The
headwall was roughly 150 yards wide, with enough room for twenty tracks in
it without crowding. We were standing at the top of one of the greatest
runs of all time. I made a few turns and immediately suffered leg and
lung meltdown. I was hammered. The top section was mainly firm smooth
neve that gave off a cryogenic blast of cold crystals everytime your edges
cut into it. This continued for about 1,000' vertical of 48 degrees, then
turned to a semi supportable powder crust that occupied most of the main
section. This was a little more secure feeling, but the unpredictability
of it took some extra effort that made it seem to go on for ever. Tens
turns and melt on top of your poles. Recover, ten more, meltdown. Repeat
until exhausted. We continued down the chute taking turns making 10-20
turns then resting. Finally we got to the famous bottleneck section of
it, about halfway down. According to "High Alaska" - Jonathan Waterman's
bible of Alaska climbing & skiing - the original name of the chute was the
"Hourglass Couloir" due to it's shape. In 1972 Sylvain Saudan attempted
to climb the West Buttress with a support team and then ski the Couloir.
He claimed to have skied it from the summit, but witnesses claim he only
made it to the 19,500 level. None the less, the name was changed to the
Saudan Coulior. Four years later, Reinhold Messner and Oswald Oelz tandem
soloed it in 8 and 10 hours respectively - Reinhold taking nothing but an
ice axe and movie camera with him. The name was changed again - this time
to the Messner Couloir, which has stuck. From 14.3, the bottleneck looks
like the crux of the ski as it appears to be the narrowest, steepest,
iciest section. In reality, it is still a good 150' wide, about 42
degrees and very skiable. Mark and I alternated through it and came down
into the crevassed lower section. From camp it looked like we would have
to carefully thread our way through these cracks, bergschrunds and ice
domes, but as we skied down, the way became very obvious and only required
a few excursions outside of the fall-line. We were rewarded by going from
blue ice to boot top deep powder which lasted all the way down into the
14.3 camp.
Eleven hours after we left the 14.3 camp, we skied back into it.
Fortunately we had been able to show some self restraint during the early
part of our trip and we had a nice supply of Glenlivet naturally chilled
to -10 degrees waiting for us. Soon afterwards, we decided for some
reason that we were too tired to eat dinner and ended up going to sleep.
We had a couple of other projects on the hit list, but we were beginning
to feel the effects of permafrost starting to develop in our bodies, so we
decided to head out a few days early. Pulling out of the 14.3 camp at
7:00am during a mild storm, little did we know that the next 4 hours would
be the most trying moments of our trip. The wind and snow steady
increased as we approached the infamous "Windy Corner" (aka Windy Coroner)
until it was a howling horozontal blizzard. We went from skis to boots,
boots to crampons, and then finally had to start belaying sections of
downclimbing. The wind had turned this mellow 20 degree slope into a
grazed ice death trap that we had to negotiate with big packs and full
sleds. The sleds would hang up, then suddenly break loose with a lurch
and try to pull you after them while the wind did it's best to blast us
off the hill. A section that had taken us 15 minutes to ski a week before
now became a grim two hour undertaking that left both of us speechless by
the time we reached the 11,000' camp. Safe, but thoroughly whipped. And
the adventure wasn't even over yet.
We put our skis back on and pulled out of 11,000' in the midst of a total
white out, carefully trying to trace the wands and avoid crevasses we
crept along. We made it about a mile before the wind scoured all signs of
the trail away and the wands disappeared in the consuming white. Vision
was limited to less then 100', so rather then risk walking blindly into a
crevasse, we stopped, dug a hole, erected the tent and did the time
honored British tradition of drinking tea (well coffee anyway) in the tent
while the storm rages on outside. This went on for about 4 more hours
until it finally cleared enough to see where we were - 30' from the trail
and about 200' from a major campsite. We decided to make a break for it
and after repacking we were able to ski down to the 7,000' landing strip
in about 2 hours. Our total descent time was 14 1/2 hours. A normal slow
time on skis is 4.
The landing strip was occupied by people who had been waiting a day or
more for the weather to clear so the brush pilots could fly in and pick
them up. We spent the night there and the next morning we awoke to
scattered overhead clouds and a radio announcement that Doug Geeting (one
of the veteran aviators of the area) was going to try to make it through.
He must have radioed that it was all clear to the other pilots, because
within about 5 minutes of him breaking over the ridgetop and coming in for
a landing, the other planes came buzzing through the rocky gap known as
"One Shot" one right after another like the Calvary coming in for the
rescue. It was a awesome sight and brought lots of cheers from the crowd
waiting to get out. We were picked up and flown out right away. On the
flight back to Talkeetna, Paul, our pilot, saw a bear and decided to go
in for a closer look. He put the plane into a tight spiral until the bear
was staring us right in the eyes, then pulled back and headed for home,
leaving us all slightly crosseyed.
It was a great trip.
Andrew
Gear
I'm a self admitted shameless gear pig. I can't help it. The following
is a list of some of the gear we used:
Ski gear -
Silveretta 404 Bindings
Scarpa "Denali" AT boots
Black Diamond "Badlands" AT cap ski - 190cm
Black Diamond Flicklock poles w/self arrest grips
Ascention Synthetic skins
Camping Gear -
North Face Mountain 24 tents (2 of them)
North Face Solar Flare sleeping bags (-20)
Clothing -
Patagonia Activist Fleece Bibs
Patagonia 1pc ski suit
Black Diamond Trigger Finger Gloves
Food -
Smoked Salmon
Glenlivet Scotch
Oban Scotch
Vanilla GU
Misc -
Talkeetna Air Taxi
MSR XGK Int'l Stove
Avocet Vertech Watch
Grivel AirTech ice tool
Trip Stats -
15 days on the mountain
44,600' feet climbed
Salt Lake City to Kahiltna Glacier airfare (RT) $880
Alex Lowe Speed attempt - Kahiltna Base (7,000) to 19,500' in 11 hours
(shut down by weather)