Andy Hall's Blog
May 6, 2015
Up on Mount McKinley, John Russell’s Body Remains Unfound
During the summer of 1967 a young student at Brigham Young University named Joe Wilcox led a team of twelve mountaineers on an expedition to Alaska to climb 20,320-foot Mount McKinley, known as Denali. At least nine members of the team expedition made it to the summit. At least two did not. Whether or not the 12th man, John Russell, reached the summit remains a mystery, as does his final resting place.
Seven members of the Wilcox Expedition, including Russell, died during the climb, when an unexpected storm hit the mountain during their summit attempt. Forty-eight years later, the accident remains the worst ever to occur on North America’s tallest peak.
John Russell was living in Eugene, Oregon, and working as a logger in the spring of 1967 when he heard about the expedition to Denali. A stocky man with a shock of curly, reddish-blond hair and a matching beard, John Russell had been a climber since the age of fifteen and over his brief climbing career had bagged an impressive number of summits including Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams, Mount Rainier, Mount Baker, Mount Shuksan, Mount Hood, Mount Whitney, Pillars of Hercules, Mount Yoran, and The Tooth. He also boasted of carrying 100-pound loads above 10,000 feet.
With such a strong mountaineering resume and apparent physical prowess, he was quickly added to the expedition roster composed mostly of college students and recent graduates. Compared to them, Russell had led an unconventional life. The variety of his work, study, and travel experiences was remarkable for a man of just twenty-three years. Prior to logging Russell had been a sheet-metal journeyman, electronics assembler, calculator and adding-machine repairman, cabdriver, game keeper, and sandal maker. He had studied math, biology, chemistry, history, and philosophy but held no degrees. He had traveled in Europe and Central America.
"He was a fighter from conception," according to his mother, Jane Russell. "Precocious physically, extremely intelligent test-wise, but not too good in school."
Jane and John Russell Sr. had three children: two sons, both named John, and a daughter named Johnnie. After high school he moved to Seattle, where he went to work at Boeing, attending night school at the University of Washington. After Russell left Boeing he spent a year at Idaho State University in Pocatello, "at which time," according to his mother, "he was a complete beatnik." Jane and John Sr. were separated by 1967 and neither had heard from their son in more than four years when he called on June 1 to say he was going to climb Denali. "He was pleased, and we were pleased for him," Jane said.
But David Cooley, Russell’s best friend and early climbing partner might have tried to intervene if he had known of Russell’s Denali plans.
According to Cooley, Russell was plagued by altitude sickness and was "worthless over ten thousand feet. He could barely function, and it made him angry." Cooley said that though Russell knew he would get sick, he climbed to altitude time and time again trying to beat it. He never did.
When asked why a man who knew he suffered from altitude sickness would attempt to climb the highest mountain in North America, Cooley said, "He wanted to beat it, proving he could go to the top of McKinley; that was the way he’d want to prove it to himself."
Journal entries show that when the Wilcox Expedition surpassed 10,000 feet Russell again began to show signs of altitude sickness. Despite that, on July 17 he refused an invitation to descend and headed to the top of Denali as part of a six-man summit team. However, the next morning when the team radioed rangers at Mount McKinley National Park, they reported five were on the summit, named each man and then said, "all five of us got the summit at exactly the same time." John Russell’s name was never mentioned.
About an hour after that radio call, the storm hit while the five who had called from the summit were still on the exposed summit ridge. It is likely they were dead from exposure before the end of the day. When skies cleared a week later and rescuers reached the upper mountain, they found three bodies, one in high camp, two more higher up: none were Russell’s.
It is likely that sickness forced him to abandon his summit attempt and descend alone, planning to wait at the 17,900-foot high camp with Steve Taylor who had decided forego the summit and wait there alone.
The strongest evidence that Russell returned is the presence of his bamboo pole found 200 yards below the high camp. He had decorated it and carried it all the way from 15,000-foot camp to 17,900 despite suffering from altitude sickness. He planned to take it to the top and it was with him when he set out on July 17.
If Russell was on his way down when the storm hit, he may have holed up somewhere along the way. The storm eased briefly on the 19th, and Russell may have reached camp then, and after discovering Taylor’s corpse, continued on toward the camp at 15,000 feet, only to fall into a crevasse on the way.
Rescuer Bill Babcock reported that they found Russell’s bamboo pole next to a gaping crevasse. "We hollered, we looked into it, and it was one of those bottomless things," Babcock said. "I certainly wasn’t going to rappel into it. I have no idea what happened, but I would suspect someone is down at the bottom of that thing."
Only the discovery of a body will shed light on Russell’s fate, and how his bamboo pole came to be thrust in the snow below high camp. But after half a century Denali is unlikely to give up its secrets. Climate change continues to melt away many of Alaska’s glaciers, and the mountain’s Annual Snow Line -- the delineation between permanent and seasonal snow -- is much higher than it was four decades ago. But the upper mountain where the young men’s bodies rest is still one of the coldest places on the planet, and remains a place where the snow never melts.
Originally published on Biographile.com
http://www.biographile.com/up-on-moun...
Seven members of the Wilcox Expedition, including Russell, died during the climb, when an unexpected storm hit the mountain during their summit attempt. Forty-eight years later, the accident remains the worst ever to occur on North America’s tallest peak.
John Russell was living in Eugene, Oregon, and working as a logger in the spring of 1967 when he heard about the expedition to Denali. A stocky man with a shock of curly, reddish-blond hair and a matching beard, John Russell had been a climber since the age of fifteen and over his brief climbing career had bagged an impressive number of summits including Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams, Mount Rainier, Mount Baker, Mount Shuksan, Mount Hood, Mount Whitney, Pillars of Hercules, Mount Yoran, and The Tooth. He also boasted of carrying 100-pound loads above 10,000 feet.
With such a strong mountaineering resume and apparent physical prowess, he was quickly added to the expedition roster composed mostly of college students and recent graduates. Compared to them, Russell had led an unconventional life. The variety of his work, study, and travel experiences was remarkable for a man of just twenty-three years. Prior to logging Russell had been a sheet-metal journeyman, electronics assembler, calculator and adding-machine repairman, cabdriver, game keeper, and sandal maker. He had studied math, biology, chemistry, history, and philosophy but held no degrees. He had traveled in Europe and Central America.
"He was a fighter from conception," according to his mother, Jane Russell. "Precocious physically, extremely intelligent test-wise, but not too good in school."
Jane and John Russell Sr. had three children: two sons, both named John, and a daughter named Johnnie. After high school he moved to Seattle, where he went to work at Boeing, attending night school at the University of Washington. After Russell left Boeing he spent a year at Idaho State University in Pocatello, "at which time," according to his mother, "he was a complete beatnik." Jane and John Sr. were separated by 1967 and neither had heard from their son in more than four years when he called on June 1 to say he was going to climb Denali. "He was pleased, and we were pleased for him," Jane said.
But David Cooley, Russell’s best friend and early climbing partner might have tried to intervene if he had known of Russell’s Denali plans.
According to Cooley, Russell was plagued by altitude sickness and was "worthless over ten thousand feet. He could barely function, and it made him angry." Cooley said that though Russell knew he would get sick, he climbed to altitude time and time again trying to beat it. He never did.
When asked why a man who knew he suffered from altitude sickness would attempt to climb the highest mountain in North America, Cooley said, "He wanted to beat it, proving he could go to the top of McKinley; that was the way he’d want to prove it to himself."
Journal entries show that when the Wilcox Expedition surpassed 10,000 feet Russell again began to show signs of altitude sickness. Despite that, on July 17 he refused an invitation to descend and headed to the top of Denali as part of a six-man summit team. However, the next morning when the team radioed rangers at Mount McKinley National Park, they reported five were on the summit, named each man and then said, "all five of us got the summit at exactly the same time." John Russell’s name was never mentioned.
About an hour after that radio call, the storm hit while the five who had called from the summit were still on the exposed summit ridge. It is likely they were dead from exposure before the end of the day. When skies cleared a week later and rescuers reached the upper mountain, they found three bodies, one in high camp, two more higher up: none were Russell’s.
It is likely that sickness forced him to abandon his summit attempt and descend alone, planning to wait at the 17,900-foot high camp with Steve Taylor who had decided forego the summit and wait there alone.
The strongest evidence that Russell returned is the presence of his bamboo pole found 200 yards below the high camp. He had decorated it and carried it all the way from 15,000-foot camp to 17,900 despite suffering from altitude sickness. He planned to take it to the top and it was with him when he set out on July 17.
If Russell was on his way down when the storm hit, he may have holed up somewhere along the way. The storm eased briefly on the 19th, and Russell may have reached camp then, and after discovering Taylor’s corpse, continued on toward the camp at 15,000 feet, only to fall into a crevasse on the way.
Rescuer Bill Babcock reported that they found Russell’s bamboo pole next to a gaping crevasse. "We hollered, we looked into it, and it was one of those bottomless things," Babcock said. "I certainly wasn’t going to rappel into it. I have no idea what happened, but I would suspect someone is down at the bottom of that thing."
Only the discovery of a body will shed light on Russell’s fate, and how his bamboo pole came to be thrust in the snow below high camp. But after half a century Denali is unlikely to give up its secrets. Climate change continues to melt away many of Alaska’s glaciers, and the mountain’s Annual Snow Line -- the delineation between permanent and seasonal snow -- is much higher than it was four decades ago. But the upper mountain where the young men’s bodies rest is still one of the coldest places on the planet, and remains a place where the snow never melts.
Originally published on Biographile.com
http://www.biographile.com/up-on-moun...
Up on Mount McKinley, John Russell’s Body Remains Unfound
During the summer of 1967 a young student at Brigham Young University named Joe Wilcox led a team of twelve mountaineers on an expedition to Alaska to climb 20,320-foot Mount McKinley, known as Denali. At least nine members of the team expedition made it to the summit. At least two did not. Whether or not the 12th man, John Russell, reached the summit remains a mystery, as does his final resting place.
Seven members of the Wilcox Expedition, including Russell, died during the climb, when an unexpected storm hit the mountain during their summit attempt. Forty-eight years later, the accident remains the worst ever to occur on North America’s tallest peak.
John Russell was living in Eugene, Oregon, and working as a logger in the spring of 1967 when he heard about the expedition to Denali. A stocky man with a shock of curly, reddish-blond hair and a matching beard, John Russell had been a climber since the age of fifteen and over his brief climbing career had bagged an impressive number of summits including Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams, Mount Rainier, Mount Baker, Mount Shuksan, Mount Hood, Mount Whitney, Pillars of Hercules, Mount Yoran, and The Tooth. He also boasted of carrying 100-pound loads above 10,000 feet.
With such a strong mountaineering resume and apparent physical prowess, he was quickly added to the expedition roster composed mostly of college students and recent graduates. Compared to them, Russell had led an unconventional life. The variety of his work, study, and travel experiences was remarkable for a man of just twenty-three years. Prior to logging Russell had been a sheet-metal journeyman, electronics assembler, calculator and adding-machine repairman, cabdriver, game keeper, and sandal maker. He had studied math, biology, chemistry, history, and philosophy but held no degrees. He had traveled in Europe and Central America.
"He was a fighter from conception," according to his mother, Jane Russell. "Precocious physically, extremely intelligent test-wise, but not too good in school."
Jane and John Russell Sr. had three children: two sons, both named John, and a daughter named Johnnie. After high school he moved to Seattle, where he went to work at Boeing, attending night school at the University of Washington. After Russell left Boeing he spent a year at Idaho State University in Pocatello, "at which time," according to his mother, "he was a complete beatnik." Jane and John Sr. were separated by 1967 and neither had heard from their son in more than four years when he called on June 1 to say he was going to climb Denali. "He was pleased, and we were pleased for him," Jane said.
But David Cooley, Russell’s best friend and early climbing partner might have tried to intervene if he had known of Russell’s Denali plans.
According to Cooley, Russell was plagued by altitude sickness and was "worthless over ten thousand feet. He could barely function, and it made him angry." Cooley said that though Russell knew he would get sick, he climbed to altitude time and time again trying to beat it. He never did.
When asked why a man who knew he suffered from altitude sickness would attempt to climb the highest mountain in North America, Cooley said, "He wanted to beat it, proving he could go to the top of McKinley; that was the way he’d want to prove it to himself."
Journal entries show that when the Wilcox Expedition surpassed 10,000 feet Russell again began to show signs of altitude sickness. Despite that, on July 17 he refused an invitation to descend and headed to the top of Denali as part of a six-man summit team. However, the next morning when the team radioed rangers at Mount McKinley National Park, they reported five were on the summit, named each man and then said, "all five of us got the summit at exactly the same time." John Russell’s name was never mentioned.
About an hour after that radio call, the storm hit while the five who had called from the summit were still on the exposed summit ridge. It is likely they were dead from exposure before the end of the day. When skies cleared a week later and rescuers reached the upper mountain, they found three bodies, one in high camp, two more higher up: none were Russell’s.
It is likely that sickness forced him to abandon his summit attempt and descend alone, planning to wait at the 17,900-foot high camp with Steve Taylor who had decided forego the summit and wait there alone.
The strongest evidence that Russell returned is the presence of his bamboo pole found 200 yards below the high camp. He had decorated it and carried it all the way from 15,000-foot camp to 17,900 despite suffering from altitude sickness. He planned to take it to the top and it was with him when he set out on July 17.
If Russell was on his way down when the storm hit, he may have holed up somewhere along the way. The storm eased briefly on the 19th, and Russell may have reached camp then, and after discovering Taylor’s corpse, continued on toward the camp at 15,000 feet, only to fall into a crevasse on the way.
Rescuer Bill Babcock reported that they found Russell’s bamboo pole next to a gaping crevasse. "We hollered, we looked into it, and it was one of those bottomless things," Babcock said. "I certainly wasn’t going to rappel into it. I have no idea what happened, but I would suspect someone is down at the bottom of that thing."
Only the discovery of a body will shed light on Russell’s fate, and how his bamboo pole came to be thrust in the snow below high camp. But after half a century Denali is unlikely to give up its secrets. Climate change continues to melt away many of Alaska’s glaciers, and the mountain’s Annual Snow Line -- the delineation between permanent and seasonal snow -- is much higher than it was four decades ago. But the upper mountain where the young men’s bodies rest is still one of the coldest places on the planet, and remains a place where the snow never melts.
Originally published on Biographile.com
http://www.biographile.com/up-on-moun...
Seven members of the Wilcox Expedition, including Russell, died during the climb, when an unexpected storm hit the mountain during their summit attempt. Forty-eight years later, the accident remains the worst ever to occur on North America’s tallest peak.
John Russell was living in Eugene, Oregon, and working as a logger in the spring of 1967 when he heard about the expedition to Denali. A stocky man with a shock of curly, reddish-blond hair and a matching beard, John Russell had been a climber since the age of fifteen and over his brief climbing career had bagged an impressive number of summits including Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams, Mount Rainier, Mount Baker, Mount Shuksan, Mount Hood, Mount Whitney, Pillars of Hercules, Mount Yoran, and The Tooth. He also boasted of carrying 100-pound loads above 10,000 feet.
With such a strong mountaineering resume and apparent physical prowess, he was quickly added to the expedition roster composed mostly of college students and recent graduates. Compared to them, Russell had led an unconventional life. The variety of his work, study, and travel experiences was remarkable for a man of just twenty-three years. Prior to logging Russell had been a sheet-metal journeyman, electronics assembler, calculator and adding-machine repairman, cabdriver, game keeper, and sandal maker. He had studied math, biology, chemistry, history, and philosophy but held no degrees. He had traveled in Europe and Central America.
"He was a fighter from conception," according to his mother, Jane Russell. "Precocious physically, extremely intelligent test-wise, but not too good in school."
Jane and John Russell Sr. had three children: two sons, both named John, and a daughter named Johnnie. After high school he moved to Seattle, where he went to work at Boeing, attending night school at the University of Washington. After Russell left Boeing he spent a year at Idaho State University in Pocatello, "at which time," according to his mother, "he was a complete beatnik." Jane and John Sr. were separated by 1967 and neither had heard from their son in more than four years when he called on June 1 to say he was going to climb Denali. "He was pleased, and we were pleased for him," Jane said.
But David Cooley, Russell’s best friend and early climbing partner might have tried to intervene if he had known of Russell’s Denali plans.
According to Cooley, Russell was plagued by altitude sickness and was "worthless over ten thousand feet. He could barely function, and it made him angry." Cooley said that though Russell knew he would get sick, he climbed to altitude time and time again trying to beat it. He never did.
When asked why a man who knew he suffered from altitude sickness would attempt to climb the highest mountain in North America, Cooley said, "He wanted to beat it, proving he could go to the top of McKinley; that was the way he’d want to prove it to himself."
Journal entries show that when the Wilcox Expedition surpassed 10,000 feet Russell again began to show signs of altitude sickness. Despite that, on July 17 he refused an invitation to descend and headed to the top of Denali as part of a six-man summit team. However, the next morning when the team radioed rangers at Mount McKinley National Park, they reported five were on the summit, named each man and then said, "all five of us got the summit at exactly the same time." John Russell’s name was never mentioned.
About an hour after that radio call, the storm hit while the five who had called from the summit were still on the exposed summit ridge. It is likely they were dead from exposure before the end of the day. When skies cleared a week later and rescuers reached the upper mountain, they found three bodies, one in high camp, two more higher up: none were Russell’s.
It is likely that sickness forced him to abandon his summit attempt and descend alone, planning to wait at the 17,900-foot high camp with Steve Taylor who had decided forego the summit and wait there alone.
The strongest evidence that Russell returned is the presence of his bamboo pole found 200 yards below the high camp. He had decorated it and carried it all the way from 15,000-foot camp to 17,900 despite suffering from altitude sickness. He planned to take it to the top and it was with him when he set out on July 17.
If Russell was on his way down when the storm hit, he may have holed up somewhere along the way. The storm eased briefly on the 19th, and Russell may have reached camp then, and after discovering Taylor’s corpse, continued on toward the camp at 15,000 feet, only to fall into a crevasse on the way.
Rescuer Bill Babcock reported that they found Russell’s bamboo pole next to a gaping crevasse. "We hollered, we looked into it, and it was one of those bottomless things," Babcock said. "I certainly wasn’t going to rappel into it. I have no idea what happened, but I would suspect someone is down at the bottom of that thing."
Only the discovery of a body will shed light on Russell’s fate, and how his bamboo pole came to be thrust in the snow below high camp. But after half a century Denali is unlikely to give up its secrets. Climate change continues to melt away many of Alaska’s glaciers, and the mountain’s Annual Snow Line -- the delineation between permanent and seasonal snow -- is much higher than it was four decades ago. But the upper mountain where the young men’s bodies rest is still one of the coldest places on the planet, and remains a place where the snow never melts.
Originally published on Biographile.com
http://www.biographile.com/up-on-moun...
February 23, 2015
How Denali's Howl came together
I had no idea that I’d write “Denali’s Howl” when I was 5 years old, living in Mount McKinley National Park during that tragic summer when Denali’s deadliest climbing accident killed seven young men.
I had no idea I’d write the book when I was 45 years old.
But when I was 49, I was deeply dissatisfied with my job at Alaska magazine and looking to make a big change.
I’ve been a writer and editor since graduating from the University of Alaska in 1986 and had always thought about writing a book, but I could never settle on a subject. The Wilcox Expedition had always been of interest to me since my father was superintendent of the park at the time, and my own fuzzy memories popped up whenever I heard reference to the expedition. My dad had passed away by the time I was ready to tackle it, so I had lost not only a cherished person in my life, but also a critical source for the story. Still, I had been loosely researching for many years and even without my father, I knew I had enough material that had not been seen before.
Though the accident had been written about a number of times, a comprehensive account of the tragedy—including the rescue effort—had never been done. So, I quit my job and went to work on the book.
I spent nine months researching and writing the proposal; I travelled to Fairbanks, Denali National Park, Atlin, British Columbia, and Kona, Hawaii, for research before I had enough to write it. Once that was done, an agent agreed to take me on, and she quickly sold the idea to Dutton. When I signed the contract, I had a year to write, but I continued to research for another seven or eight months before I really began putting it together. By the time I began putting words down, I had close to 100 hours of interviews with survivors, rescuers and others involved with the incident – as well as modern-day experts. I filled two accordion-style briefcases with hundreds of documents related to the event, including letters, reports, journals, official exchanges, maps and photos. I had an equal number of similar documents in digital format stored on my hard drive. I read many books on climbing and did a fair amount of sleuthing, too. Some of the people I wanted to interview had left Alaska years ago, or never lived here at all, and I had to find them. It was challenging, but strangely addictive, so much so that when I had to stop researching and start writing, I missed it terribly.
One of the oddest things to happen during the research occurred when I was in the storage unit where my father’s belongings are stored. I was looking for some papers from his time in the Park Service but had no luck finding them in the crowded unit. While moving boxes I uncovered the large wooden desk that had occupied his den for as long as I can remember. I walked over to it, slid the middle drawer open and was surprised to find it still held the jumble of stuff I remember from when I was a kid, digging around in my dad’s desk: a pocket knife, postcards, stamps, coins, a magnifying glass, pictures of long-dead relatives, small human teeth—probably mine—and myriad other paraphernalia that had accumulated there over the decades that he had owned it. I ran my hand through the hodgepodge and randomly picked up a small, black box four or five inches square. I turned it over and saw a name scrawled on lid: Wilcox. Incredulous, I opened it and found a reel-to-reel tape labeled, Mountaineer Statements.
Afraid to play it, I had the tape digitized and when I finally listened to the audio, I heard the voices of the rescue climbers telling the park rangers what they had seen as they ascended the Harper Glacier and encountered the frozen bodies on the upper mountain. Those descriptions and the other details the tape contained were integral to the book. I don’t know how I could have detailed that part of the climb without them. What drew me to the desk and to that tiny box amid the scores of boxes, trunks and cases of stuff? I don’t know but it was eerie, and felt like more than just a chance discovery.
When I started writing in earnest, I tried to follow the outline I had provided in the proposal. I had planned to jump back and forth between 1967 and some of the present-day research I had conducted, but it just wasn’t working. Then I realized why I was having trouble: The core of the story is linear; it’s about climbing a mountain; it starts at the bottom and ends at the top. I had to write it that way, so that’s what I did, figuring I could move the chapters around later if it felt right.
Once it began to flow, all of that research paid off. I believe nonfiction is nonfiction. You don’t make things up, you don’t speculate, you don’t put words in people’s mouths or thoughts in their heads. You report what was said or what happened in as much detail as possible so the reader can visualize it, and decide on its accuracy and significance. I felt lucky that I had such rich material with which to work.
Still, there were plenty of times when I doubted my ability to get it done.
I had a daunting pile of research on my desk, and I knew I had hundreds of hours of writing time ahead of me. In the last two months, I started calculating the number of words I had to write and the number of days until my deadline, and then how many words I had to write each day. That really freaked me out, and it made it hard to get going some mornings.
Around that time, I read something that really helped. Roger Ebert had died while I was working on the book, and one day while I was procrastinating, I found one of his quotes that really resonated. He said, "The muse comes during the act of creation. Don't wait for her; start alone."
So I'd set the timer on my phone for 30 minutes every morning. I told myself that if the writing doesn’t flow, if the muse doesn’t appear before the alarm goes off, I'll go do something else, usually chopping wood. I guess the muse favored me because things were usually cooking before the timer sounded and I rarely stopped writing in those last few weeks. I delivered the first draft on deadline and spent the next seven months working with a brilliant editor at Dutton named Stephen Morrow, who helped me fine tune the narrative. It wasn’t until six months after I turned in the draft that Stephen told me the book wasn’t quite finished.
I had started the story with the memory of my father and I being chased along a river inside the park. We thought it was a bear at first but it turned out to be a climber wearing a pack, covered by a poncho. I never returned to that story, and the identity of the mysterious climber was never revealed in that first draft. He said, “You can’t leave us hanging regarding who it was who chased you along the river.”
Without spoiling the ending I can say there is some ambiguity in answering that question. So I just embraced that ambiguity. Memory was a big factor in this book, the memories of the rescuers, the rangers, the survivors, and my own. I just let it flow and wrote that entire epilogue in a matter of an hour or so. I let my wife read it and she said. “That’s it, you’re done.” I read it again and realized that she was right.
I had no idea I’d write the book when I was 45 years old.
But when I was 49, I was deeply dissatisfied with my job at Alaska magazine and looking to make a big change.
I’ve been a writer and editor since graduating from the University of Alaska in 1986 and had always thought about writing a book, but I could never settle on a subject. The Wilcox Expedition had always been of interest to me since my father was superintendent of the park at the time, and my own fuzzy memories popped up whenever I heard reference to the expedition. My dad had passed away by the time I was ready to tackle it, so I had lost not only a cherished person in my life, but also a critical source for the story. Still, I had been loosely researching for many years and even without my father, I knew I had enough material that had not been seen before.
Though the accident had been written about a number of times, a comprehensive account of the tragedy—including the rescue effort—had never been done. So, I quit my job and went to work on the book.
I spent nine months researching and writing the proposal; I travelled to Fairbanks, Denali National Park, Atlin, British Columbia, and Kona, Hawaii, for research before I had enough to write it. Once that was done, an agent agreed to take me on, and she quickly sold the idea to Dutton. When I signed the contract, I had a year to write, but I continued to research for another seven or eight months before I really began putting it together. By the time I began putting words down, I had close to 100 hours of interviews with survivors, rescuers and others involved with the incident – as well as modern-day experts. I filled two accordion-style briefcases with hundreds of documents related to the event, including letters, reports, journals, official exchanges, maps and photos. I had an equal number of similar documents in digital format stored on my hard drive. I read many books on climbing and did a fair amount of sleuthing, too. Some of the people I wanted to interview had left Alaska years ago, or never lived here at all, and I had to find them. It was challenging, but strangely addictive, so much so that when I had to stop researching and start writing, I missed it terribly.
One of the oddest things to happen during the research occurred when I was in the storage unit where my father’s belongings are stored. I was looking for some papers from his time in the Park Service but had no luck finding them in the crowded unit. While moving boxes I uncovered the large wooden desk that had occupied his den for as long as I can remember. I walked over to it, slid the middle drawer open and was surprised to find it still held the jumble of stuff I remember from when I was a kid, digging around in my dad’s desk: a pocket knife, postcards, stamps, coins, a magnifying glass, pictures of long-dead relatives, small human teeth—probably mine—and myriad other paraphernalia that had accumulated there over the decades that he had owned it. I ran my hand through the hodgepodge and randomly picked up a small, black box four or five inches square. I turned it over and saw a name scrawled on lid: Wilcox. Incredulous, I opened it and found a reel-to-reel tape labeled, Mountaineer Statements.
Afraid to play it, I had the tape digitized and when I finally listened to the audio, I heard the voices of the rescue climbers telling the park rangers what they had seen as they ascended the Harper Glacier and encountered the frozen bodies on the upper mountain. Those descriptions and the other details the tape contained were integral to the book. I don’t know how I could have detailed that part of the climb without them. What drew me to the desk and to that tiny box amid the scores of boxes, trunks and cases of stuff? I don’t know but it was eerie, and felt like more than just a chance discovery.
When I started writing in earnest, I tried to follow the outline I had provided in the proposal. I had planned to jump back and forth between 1967 and some of the present-day research I had conducted, but it just wasn’t working. Then I realized why I was having trouble: The core of the story is linear; it’s about climbing a mountain; it starts at the bottom and ends at the top. I had to write it that way, so that’s what I did, figuring I could move the chapters around later if it felt right.
Once it began to flow, all of that research paid off. I believe nonfiction is nonfiction. You don’t make things up, you don’t speculate, you don’t put words in people’s mouths or thoughts in their heads. You report what was said or what happened in as much detail as possible so the reader can visualize it, and decide on its accuracy and significance. I felt lucky that I had such rich material with which to work.
Still, there were plenty of times when I doubted my ability to get it done.
I had a daunting pile of research on my desk, and I knew I had hundreds of hours of writing time ahead of me. In the last two months, I started calculating the number of words I had to write and the number of days until my deadline, and then how many words I had to write each day. That really freaked me out, and it made it hard to get going some mornings.
Around that time, I read something that really helped. Roger Ebert had died while I was working on the book, and one day while I was procrastinating, I found one of his quotes that really resonated. He said, "The muse comes during the act of creation. Don't wait for her; start alone."
So I'd set the timer on my phone for 30 minutes every morning. I told myself that if the writing doesn’t flow, if the muse doesn’t appear before the alarm goes off, I'll go do something else, usually chopping wood. I guess the muse favored me because things were usually cooking before the timer sounded and I rarely stopped writing in those last few weeks. I delivered the first draft on deadline and spent the next seven months working with a brilliant editor at Dutton named Stephen Morrow, who helped me fine tune the narrative. It wasn’t until six months after I turned in the draft that Stephen told me the book wasn’t quite finished.
I had started the story with the memory of my father and I being chased along a river inside the park. We thought it was a bear at first but it turned out to be a climber wearing a pack, covered by a poncho. I never returned to that story, and the identity of the mysterious climber was never revealed in that first draft. He said, “You can’t leave us hanging regarding who it was who chased you along the river.”
Without spoiling the ending I can say there is some ambiguity in answering that question. So I just embraced that ambiguity. Memory was a big factor in this book, the memories of the rescuers, the rangers, the survivors, and my own. I just let it flow and wrote that entire epilogue in a matter of an hour or so. I let my wife read it and she said. “That’s it, you’re done.” I read it again and realized that she was right.
