Marcus
I didn’t remember sleeping so close to Garret when we turned in. More importantly, why were Jessie’s feet in my face? Groggily I awoke in a confused state. The three of us were smushed together in the center of the tent like balls of cookie dough. I tried to sit up to assess the situation but couldn’t because the tent had shrunk. The back of my head and the side of my face were being oppressed by the encroachment of Jessie’s VE-25 tent; we were being buried alive.
The Storm was of epic proportions. The roaring gusts of wind came at us with no predictable cadence. A viscous pulsing-anomaly, this storm had no sympathy for us or the tent we rode in on. 100 mile per hour gusts taunted us again and again and again. What was I doing here? My reckoning had begun.
The deafening resonance of the driving sugar snow poured over the tent like a sand blaster. Every minute or so another hundred miler would rudely dislodge a large chunk of snow or ice bombarding the tent with a loud thump. We had positioned ours heads on the downwind side of the tent to avoid being bludgeoned by these frozen cannonballs. THUD. Another softball size chunk was hurled into the fabric punching itself against the rain-fly of the tent quickly bouncing off. I was new to this sport and wondered if the tent could take the abuse. The windblown-hard pack had crept over our tent walls like a rolling pin. The steady stacking and piling of snow was winning; a tent pole bent further and cracked. I pushed against Garret. “ G! Get up”.
Garret
“ Would you like some coffee?” she asked us.
Garret, already poised for the interaction with the waitress spoke up with a barely audible quietness. I would learn later that this is done purposefully to induce more active listening.
“Yes please ma’am and could I trouble you to leave the whole pot please?…Oh and can I get an extra glass and a pitcher of ice? Oh and ma’am”, his voice quieting even further “You have lovely blue eyes! Could I give you a dollar for three of your cigarettes?”
I sat in the vinyl booth across from Garret watching in astonishment as he meticulously negotiated his indulgences. Who was this guy? We had just been introduced through a mutual friend.
“ He’s a little eccentric,” Dave had warned me. “But I think you’ll like him”.
Eccentric yes, but also brilliantly smart; smart as anyone. A gorilla of a man, Garret was six foot two, weighing 215 pounds; a solid athlete.
Garret poured a tall glass of the coffee followed by a handful of ice to cool it down. He drank it down quickly in one pull. His wild blue eyes lit up as he began to explain his latest adventure. He prepped another coffee.
The quadrangle map he brought was folded twice, tucked carefully inside his white button up shirt. I would learn that white button up shirts were all that he would wear. His look turned serious as he intensely explained his plan constantly pointing to the map and referring to a certain “Marcus” entity. I thought his beefy pointer finger might punch through the map itself. “Who was this Marcus?” I thought to myself.
His passion for the mountains was unavoidable. I would learn that it was coupled with a certain brazen confidence in his physical abilities and knowledge of his craft. There was much I would learn from Garret.
He met his wife Marnie at the original Lollapalooza rock concert in 1991. Who knew that romance was in the air as Garret out-moshed twenty young punks to the bitter end earning himself the guitar neck of a discarded Nine Inch Nails six string. Sweet. The guitar was cast whole into the crowd in a typical Trent Resner fit creating a mosh-pit frenzy. Perfect. Garret, right in the action, latched on with all his effort along with hordes of other NIN maniacs. The guitar began to break up. Garret and a gaggle of other hooligans squared off with the guitar neck-and-strings in a writhing ball of fury. After a long sweaty battle it became apparent that no one was giving in. His sweat-soaked white button up had collected some droplets of blood. It was then that Garret unleashed his most powerful weapon: his mouth. One by one he was able to convince each of his adversaries to be satisfied with just one of the strings. Finally the last NIN groupie relented, releasing his grip on the neck of the guitar. The prized broken guitar neck resides, to this day, on their mantle as a warm fuzzy memento to their humble beginnings. Marnie is a sweetheart; today they have four strapping boys with unbridled energy.
Over the course of the next few years it was Garret that would shepherd my mountaineering infancy among our home rocks: The jagged hills of the Chugach.
The Flight
“O.K. I’m in”.
The gravity of what I had agreed to do months before hadn’t sunk into my bones entirely until the plane began to accelerate down the runway; there was no turning back. A slight un-settling in my stomach marbled itself with the excitement and audacious nature of our adventure.
“Buckle up boys, here we go!” Our pilot Sully was an old salt.
After take-off we spiraled several times high above Girdwood before we had gained enough elevation to make it over the pass. My stomach was in my throat as we barely cleared the pass. Why do bush pilots do this? It must be for dramatic effect. This wouldn’t be the last time I’d dance with the devil over some damn pass. Was that a chuckle I just heard from Sully?
From my cramped window seat, I watched the plane’s dangling ski release a small chunk of snow. The valley dropped off below us dramatically and I relaxed a bit. Although we were traveling close to ninety miles per hour, the peaks and glaciers moved below us slowly as we pushed further into the wilderness of the Chugach Mountains.
The drone of the plane’s engine invited slumber but was no match for the splendor of the visual display passing below. I began to realize that our little insignificant plane flying over the Chugach paled in comparison to the scale and grandeur of the giant and snowcapped crags below. My mind drifted. Was I really ready for this? I wasn't sure. Was it my own arrogance that pushed me into this? Maybe. Already a hard sell to my family, the reality of this adventure was hitting home the further we pushed away from the tidy comforts of civilization. I then realized that what scared me more than the dangers involved in our adventure was the prospect of never venturing out, of living a normal, boring life. The idea of remaining safely within the comforts of suburbia and never tasting the thrills that nature has to offer was a thought I abhorred. It was probably this idea alone I decided, that got me on the plane. I looked over at Jessie. His head was cocked to the left resting on the window; he was asleep.
It wasn’t long before we banked hard right and touched down quite effortlessly at 7,450 ft. of the Matanuska Glacier.
“See you later boys!” Sully grinned as he shut the cockpit door.
We turned away briefly to avoid the prop-wash then watched as Sully powered up in his own tracks and soon took to the sky. He became smaller and quieter until finally he was gone from us.
After I cleaned my glacier glasses, I took a few moments to check out our surroundings. Garret fumbled through his pack for the map. There was no hurry. Suddenly a booming clap rang out over the valley. “Whoa!” I pointed, “ Over there!” An avalanched had broken off high in a nearby couloir for us to watch.
Violently it built speed coercing a handful of rocks to join the fracas. The lower it got, the more snow plumage would fly into the air creating a small cloud of snow. Its low rumble thundered through the valley until finally it ran its course coming to a rest near the bottom of the chute. My heart raced a bit; I made sure not to show it.
Then my attention joined that of Garret’s. His beefy finger was pinned to the map again but he was squared off to something bigger: The mountain.
There she was in plain view. Marcus, confidently perched above all her subordinates, was silently beckoning us onto her ridges.
I’d scrambled up some local Chugach high points in my youth but it wasn’t until my twenties that I would discover this great glacial range that was literally in my back yard. The unsettled and unforgiving habit of the Western Chugach Range proved itself over and again to be a place not only of supreme challenge, but also of solitude and inner-peace. I swelled with pride to be fortunate enough, at this moment, to be ascending onto the flanks of mother Chugach.
Finally out came the harnesses, the rope, and all the gear we would need to travel safely in this forsaken land.
The Mountain
Mount Marcus Baker, the tallest mountain in the Chugach range resides at 13, 176 feet of elevation. Named after the cartographer and geologist Marcus Baker himself, the mountain is tucked at the headwaters of the 27-mile long Matanuska Glacier.
Although much shorter than Mt. McKinley, Marcus is considered by many to be a similarly difficult climbing feat due to its long approach and quickly changing weather patterns. In many ways climbing Mt. McKinley is safer. On Denali, the legions of other roped teams provide safety in numbers as well as a nice packed trail to follow. In addition, McKinley is staffed with a talented team of climbing rangers. On Marcus Baker the only trail is the one you make. The only ranger is you. Marcus is a true test in terms of Alaska mountaineering self-efficacy.
One man in particular will forever be tied to the early climbing history of both these majestic mountains: Bradford Washburn. In addition to pioneering the popular West Buttress route on McKinley in 1951, he is also credited with the first ascent of Mount Marcus Baker in 1938. In his journal, he wrote this about Marcus: “Marcus Baker was a horrible trip” and also, “Never in my life did I expect to see a more terrible neck of the woods for weather” and also, “It snowed every day on that trip” It took him two months. Apparently he ran into some foul weather. Interesting.
Unlike Washburn, we didn’t have two months to chase after Marcus Baker. We were afforded just ten days for our floundering efforts. After the climb itself we had a thirty-mile ski out ahead of us; we had to get back to our jobs.
Having done nothing of this scale before, I realized that I was taking a big step. Never completely satisfied with easier trips, I was thrilled to be testing myself. An Alaskan boy through and through, I was exploring my home-turf.
The Climb
Our first gliding steps towards Marcus were on our skis. It wasn’t long before we crossed a patchwork of crevasses that lead us off-glacier and onto our first upward climb. We stopped to secure our ski-skins to the bottoms of our skis using tight wraps of electrical tape.
The weight on my back was hard to get used to. The deep snow added extra resistance as we inched upward. Several hours of switch-backing upward finally revealed a perfect tent sized plateau. The site, protected by a bulging buttress, was hanging high above us. We talked about the risk of a random rock falling down on us. We agreed that it was an unlikely event and this spot would be a good enough for our first camp at 9,100 feet.
The morning of day two saw us to the ridge proper. The windblown hard-pack of the ridge made for nice hiking. We had ditched our skis at camp one relying now on the hard rubber soles of our leather telemark boots for good purchase. By days’ end we had reached a high point on the ridge and decided to declare camp two at 10,300 feet. Although exposure to the weather was a possible problem here, we were able to dig down low enough to mitigate any big problems. Opposite our position on the windward side of the ridge, a giant overhanging cornice jutted out over the lee-side overlooking the rest of the central Chugach Range like a giant frozen gargoyle.
From our vantage point at camp two we had a good look at our route. Tomorrow we would drop down a bit to traverse the mountain across a big steep snowfield. I didn’t sleep very well that night for a couple of reasons. The throbbing headache I’d developed wasn’t exactly a sleep-aid; the altitude was no doubt the cause and was stealing my appetite as well. The other reason for the lost sleep was the looks of that slope. I’d learned the magic number of 38 degrees, which is the slope-angle most associated with human avalanche fatalities. I wasn’t sure what angle the slope was but it looked suspicious to me. I would dig a test pit tomorrow, I told myself as I finally drifted off to sleep.
By nine A.M. we had just started onto the dubious slope in question.
“Hold up guys, can we take a break?” The rope train stopped. I utilized some classic Garret terminology, “ This slope looks pretty avalanchaliferous. I’m going to check it out.”
I took off my pack and freed up my shovel. I was hoping to get a fair representation of what was ahead of us by digging down and checking out the snowpack. I dug into the hill six feet or so, exposing layer upon layer of snow. Jessie and Garret sat on their packs and took in some warm rays of the sunrise. Garret slathered on another layer of sun block being careful to coat every square inch of possible sun exposure. A few residual globs of the white grease found their way onto Garret’s hair. Meanwhile, I ran my glove horizontally along the contour lines of the snowpack searching for any weak layers that might collapse under our trompings. The layers seemed to be well bonded to each other. I felt better about our upcoming traverse. As we trekked safely over the slope I looked down and recognized that the slope was a skiers dream-run. Silently I pined for my skis.
Up and over a steep, snowy rise took us onto a gentler slope that was littered with blocks of snow that had tumbled and slid from higher up.
Camp three at 11, 600 feet was made here and was a picture postcard of perfection. In fact, a photo shot from the inside of the tent looking out at this camp is still posted on a wall in the Talkeetna Roadhouse. The owner, a friend of Jessie’s had put it up there for all to see.
I could tell the air was thinner here. Three camps in as many days had positioned us at almost 12,000 feet of Elevation. In the morning we would push for the summit.
After an hour of picking our way over the burgshrund we stepped foot onto the summit ridge. It was wind battered down to rock. I looked up and could see the route to the top winding up along the ridge we were standing on. The wind was blowing now. I tried to dismiss it earlier as just a breeze but by the time we took off our packs, it was whipping right along; this was no gentle breeze. I cinched up the Velcro under my chin on my Elmer Fudd hat. Together we looked over the other side of the mountain and noticed a prominent barrage of cloud formations moving our way. I’d read about expeditions on McKinley that had turned back when they were within 100 yards of the summit. That scenario was always hard for me to understand. We were not 100 yards from the summit. We were much further. Decision time.
The Glacier
After our heavy-hearted decision, we descended off the mountain back down to the glacier again. Slopes that took us hours to ascend saw us down in minutes. Before we knew it we were back on the glacier, ski-tips pointed for the truck. The weather continued to deteriorate the further we progressed.
“Falling!” Jessie shouted.
I leaned back. The rope went taught. I looked ahead of me and noticed that Jessie was down. From my position he looked like he was sitting on the snow, but I couldn’t see any of his lower body. He was in a crevasse.
Considerable time and care had been taken before hand to make sure we were rigged properly for glacial travel. My job as middle-man on a roped team of three was to keep slack out of the line and be prepared to arrest the fall of the leader. The rule was this: When your rope-mate has fallen, arrest his fall and provide solid pulling action until they call you off otherwise. I leaned hard away from the rope. Jessie used this tension to extricate himself from his predicament. Jessie dusted himself off and we continued down-glacier. I skied light on my feet around Jessie’s man-hole but I allowed myself a fleeting glance as I passed-by and could not see the bottom
The visibility dwindled steadily as the storm rolled in. The low cloud cover coupled with the driving snowstorm was white on white. The fading figure ahead of me was snaking around the crevasses. I followed the ski tracks in front of me even though they were often leading over these deep cracks with little or no snow bridge to support me. The dual-bridging action of my skis suspended my weight over-top of these cracks. Crevasses two feet or more required a more dynamic move to overcome resembling a leap. I was on-point. The wind was picking up. The building storm was making communication on our roped team difficult. I followed the rope. Why were the crevasses getting closer together? I didn’t know. I couldn’t see. I suppressed an urge to panic.
Just then I noticed that I was getting closer the Jessie. He was belaying me in closer. I shuffled quickly over the last crack between us. I, in turn belayed Garret over for a mountaineers version of a conference-at-the-mound. We discussed options as Jessie unfolded his eight-foot avalanche probe. He probed the area and quickly found two other covered crevasses nearby as evidenced by his easy sinking probe. Not good. I belayed Jessie over one of these cracks as he continued his search for a shelf of stable snow to pitch our tent. “This will work,” Jessie assured us. In the realm of good camping spots, this particular spot would rank pretty close to the bottom of anyone's list, but what could we do? To turn around was to drive back into the brunt of the storm. Our tracks were already covered behind us. The decision was made.
We hastily shoveled down as far as we could and leveled out our spot. I had the tent in my pack, Garret had the rain-fly and poles; we readied ourselves to set up the tent in the rowdy wind. This proved to be a trying effort demanding unwavering focus. One slip of the slick nylon fabric out of my ice-crusted- mitts would ruin the mood for sure. In my mind I could visualize my screw-up; the yellow tent-blob shooting down-glacier morphing and twisting mile after mile like some horrific glacial tumbleweed. I over-tightened my grip and committed myself to my clutches. The sting of the granulated snow blasting my face caused me to turn my head. Jessie and Garret methodically fed the poles through the mesh sleeves one at a time. The other poles in-waiting were bent in half and stuck deep into the snowpack forming big arches. They weren’t going anywhere. The calm and cool confidence of my partners was contagious. Just then another powerful gust assaulted us again. I lowered my center of gravity and held on.
One at a time we crawled into the tent. We gathered ourselves. Our heavy breath from all the hustle lay down a heavy fog. “Woooh!” I offered, “Anyone got a kite?”
Two snot-cycles were frozen from my mustache to my goatee forming my own personal stalactites making it impossible for anyone to take me too seriously. My companions smiled, and we all knew that for now, we were safe. We settled in for the night. I slowly warmed and dismantled my face-ice.
Occasionally the wind would subside and our world would quiet down. In my naivety I would think that maybe we were through the worst of it but then we could hear what clearly resembled a freight train rumbling far in the distance. Sure enough another violent assault would pound us again.
We carefully managed to boil up water in the tent’s tiny vestibule. Slowly feeding chunks of snow into the pot, we melted enough to rehydrate and refuel. A large frozen chunk of butter sat on top of my couscous waiting for some boiling water. With my appetite back, I gobbled the mess quickly barely noting the Mediterranean curry flavoring. With food and liquids in our bellies, we hunkered down, and slept for now, despite the wrath that was upon us.
*********
My awakening was a rude one. “I think we are being buried!”
Garret and Jessie both woke and lifted their heads. Suppressing any inklings of claustrophobia, I remained calm. I could feel the cold from the encroaching snow on my head. I gave a half-hearted push upward. No give, just hard packed snow pushed back at me.
Jessie knew what to do. He methodically began suiting up in full gear. Garret and I made ourselves small so Jessie had room to maneuver. He unzipped the door and squeezed himself outside into the storm to shovel us out. A Flurry of snow blew in the tent just as Jessie zipped us back up. Just then a violent blast lasting what seemed an eternity engulfed our outpost. We hunkered low in the tent. Then briefly the wind died and we could hear the sounds of digging in snow. Jessie was the man.
A free spirit by nature, Jessie was tall and had long flowing locks of dirty blond hair. Sporting a dark goatee, he strongly resembled a rider of Rohan, of the Tolkien tales both in likeness and valor. He was a mythical creature gracefully and calmly walking us through what seemed like business as usual for him. Casually spending some of his time as a volunteer high altitude ranger on Mount McKinley, I got the feeling that our little storm was nothing new to him. Jessie was a certified R.N (nurse), and occasionally he would pick up hospital jobs to make ends meet but most of his days were spent in Girdwood working at the local Bakeshop, where he would inadvertently cast his tall-dark-and-handsome charms on the local sweeties. The ladies of Girdwood must have a thing for the Roherin. He lived in his North face VE-25 tent located somewhere in the coastal woods surrounding Girdwood. Not so surprisingly, he had been convinced to join our trio through the talented tongue of Garret.
Garret and I worked to splint the tent pole, from the inside with a tent stake and some electrical tape.
I worried about Jessie when he was outside the tent in the biting wind-chill. It wasn’t the cold I was concerned with though; it was the fact that our camp was completely surrounded by a labyrinth of deep and unforgiving crevasses. The unpredictable hurricane gusts of wind could not have been helping Jessie much either.
Jessie's probe job the night before exposed a crevasse about ten feet of in front of the tent and two more only six feet from each side. The deep fissures in the Matanuska glacier had linked around us in closer proximity the further we had traveled on that day. What was going on? It would be several more days until we would discover exactly why. At this point I was happy to be out of the storm.
The morning was a broken record of pulsing gusts of wind.
“Coffee?”
“Wow, that sounds good. Thanks G.” We had survived the night and now we would have coffee.
I found my empty nalgene bottle and handed it to Garret. He carefully poured the coffee into my bottle and handed the steaming vessel back to me. I thanked Jessie for his selfless act of shoveling. The wind howled at us again.
Tent bound. Eventually after all our conversations had run their course, we ripped Herman Hesse’s "Steppenwolf" into thirds. The main character Harry Haller's irresolvable inner struggle between civility and crude animal impulses added a new level to our tented discussions. "Poor Steppie," Garret concluded. Certainly not written with any kind of humor in mind, Hesse did a fine job sparking laughter from us in all our ensuing discussions. Suddenly everything Steppenwolf worked into our own situations.
“Either of you poor Steppies want a Hershey’s kiss?”
“ I’ll trade you five for a Reece’s cup.”
“Done.”
Back home in Talkeetna, the gallon freezer bag of Hershey’s kisses seemed like a good idea at the time, but the foil wrappers were becoming ubiquitous. Actually I was beginning to question most of my food choices including my still-frozen pound of moose breakfast sausage that I had already hauled up to 11,000 ft and back again. With no good way to thaw and no cooking oil, it was hard to pique any interest in taking it on. I popped another kiss into my mouth.
By mid afternoon I was restless. Twenty hours in the tent was taking its toll. I reached for my boots. “What’s up?” Jessie asked. I had decided to suit up.
“I’m going to dig a cave.” Out I went. Any Alaskan kid worth his salt can carve out a good snow cave. I’d cut-my-teeth in the snow-berms of our neighborhood. They were called “forts” back then and we loved it. Since then I’d spent many a cozy night burrowed into the snow-pack on different mountain adventures. If this storm persisted for much longer, a cave would be much better due to it’s insulating properties and protection from the wind. Plus, the physical exercise would be good after sitting and lying for so long.
I squeezed through the tent door out into our tiny front yard. With my goggles secured tightly to my face, I was able to face into the wind. I probed a good spot behind our tent big enough to give it a go. I dug a trench about ten feet deep and ten feet long with a jagged staircase leading down. From there I could begin tunneling in and then up.
“Hey buddy!”
Garret appeared above me with shovel in hand to help out. The muted sun was somewhere above him creating a wicked snowy aura. I could see the wind whipping snow over him as he leaned down to talk. In a couple of hours it would be dark again but we would be finished with a good snow cave protected from the storm.
In the morning the weather had broken. All three of us stood in the front yard of our camp with jaws-a-gape. For the first time in three days we could see our surroundings. The white veil was lifted as we discovered the nasty drop that was eighty feet in front of our tent. The glacier was flowing over a steep pitch. The giant blocks of ice were twisting, leaning and preparing themselves for the inevitability of their fall. A more panicked team might have become flustered in the storm choosing to continue forward. This would have been a bad idea. At least we had the good sense to stop in our tracks and calmly assess our situation.
In my own nerdy mind I imagined that abrupt edge of the glacier led to the Great Pit of Carkoon like in Return of the Jedi where everything funnels into the tentacled, toothy mouth of Sarlacc, slowly digesting its victims over a thousand years. It might as well have been; falling over that cliff in reality would probably wedge your butt so far down a frosty crack that your deceased body wouldn't decay in that time frame with or without the digestive action of the alien beast.
Good thing we were safe at the top because the double A’s in my light-saber were running low.
Luckily the double A’s in my desire to get the hell out-of-there were fully charged. We packed up, roped up and prepared to ski back up glacier to seek a better route. In the clear visibility and light winds it was easy to see our mistake. We skirted up and around the Pit of Carkoon discovering a much gentler slope of the glacier to cruise down.
I wouldn’t have guessed that an hour later I would be cruising effortlessly down a long crevasse-less section of glacier. Our three-man rope-train glided a full mile without a single stride. I raised my ski poles above my head in a V. my head and chest high, the sun was reflecting off my glacier glasses. I barely noticed the rope gently tugging from one direction or the other. In some warped closet of my brain I felt that the rest of the ski out might be just like this! Deep down though, I knew that our free-ride would soon end, but for now we reveling in perhaps one of the finest rewards a mountaineer could hope for.
It wasn’t long after the free ride that the glacier sucked me in. Instinctively I thrust my arms out to stop my fall. My skis dangled below me in space. The crevasse wasn’t much wider than me but unbeknownst to us at the time, we had been traveling parallel, directly over-top. I looked down at my dangling skis and could not see the bottom (this would be a common theme to my crevasse viewings, I found). I felt a strong pull coming from behind me pulling up on my harness. I ditched my poles and began fighting my way out. I was able to utilize the force Garret was providing to inch myself up and out. The big trick though, was getting my cumbersome skis to cooperate. My heavy pack was making the job harder too. I finally rolled out of the hole completing my glacier initiation.
Our ski out would take us another three days of hard physical work. I began to realize that the pack on my back was pretty damn heavy. We stopped so I could adjust some weight. We had been trading off sled towing duties. It was my turn. The plastic toboggan was a kid’s plastic Power Ranger sled that was heavily be-speckled with colorful little cartoon warriors. They appeared to be ready for action. They wouldn’t mind if I threw in some extra fuel and a frozen pound of moose meat would they? I was convinced our little friends were up for the task. I was just glad to be traveling with so many rangers just like on McKinley! I attached the sled to the rope behind me with a prussic knot and signaled my readiness for travel. Off we went.
Jessie’s route finding would take us over and around several hundred crevasses. The crux section of the glacier was on the second day out where we scrambled continuously over a playground of snow-covered ice-jumbles. At one point we each had to crawl up between two mammoth ice formations and leap over a daunting crevasse six feet below. I looked down and saw a shelf of snow twenty feet down, beyond that, nothing. With ice axe at the ready Jessie pulled the rope as I jumped accentuating my limited jumping ability. I swung the axe aggressively in conjunction with my landing resulting in a grabbing purchase of the hard crusty snow. Garret was next.
The Exit
Up, over, and around a multitude of glacier challenges there was little to surprise us at this point. On the last day we painstakingly worked our way over to the edge of the glacier. A final steep scramble of snowy scree was all that remained of our time on the Matanuska Glacier. A sense of relief washed over me as I stood on solid ground. There would be no more hidden booby-traps to avoid. We packed away the rope and set out down a frozen creek, the last obstacle on our way to the truck.
I silently hoped we weren’t in for another adventure when we returned to the truck. It was cleverly wedged as far in the bushes as Garret could get it when we dropped it off two weeks prior. The 1977 Ford F-100 was a dulled pea green color and had earned a suitable nickname: The Green Booger. I secretly prayed that it would start.
Jug a jug a jug a jug a jugnug jugnug BOOM!! dugga dugga dugga dugga dugga…. The tired iron labored to life once again. One would think that someone as smart and talented as Garret would have procured a finer vehicle for himself. I knew better; he prided himself on getting by with the absolute bare minimum. This was affirmed as I watched Garret carefully tuck his splintered bamboo ski poles in the truck bed of the Green boog. Hardly the cutting edge of ski-pole technology, the bamboo poles were representative of Garret's whole kit. Luckily we were there to share in the virtues of his minimalist truck as well. I stuffed my bibs into my pack; my knuckles grazed my still-frozen moose sausage as I pulled my arm back out of my pack for the last time.
We piled into the cab of the truck. I leaned away hard on Jessie so Garret could shift The Green Booger into gear utilizing the three-on-the-tree gearshift. We pulled out onto the highway barely outpacing our exhaust.
As our overwhelming body odor reached equilibrium in our nostrils, I sat in quiet reflection. It wasn’t that I was a particularly introspective guy, I had no choice, the truck was too loud for any manner of discourse.
By the high standards of the mountaineering elite we had probably missed the mark on this trip. I felt differently. Although we hadn’t reached the top of Marcus Baker, we had come close, choosing instead to come back alive. Oh well. Peak-baggers be damned. I had realized long ago that I was never going to be one of those extreme climbers pioneering new ice-routes detailed in Rock and Ice magazine. I would be satisfied with a taste from time to time reminding me of the wild places left and my humble ability to negotiate it all.
Although it had been extremely tough, and we were really tired and miserable most of the time, I knew from experience that these were the times that I would relish the most. Six months from now the hardship wouldn’t be remembered nearly as much as the valor of Jessie’s dig-out rescue, or the near-fall escape from the crevasse, or the pristine beauty of camp 3. I had developed a talent for forgetting discomfort and this one would be remembered fondly.
At one point in the tent, Jessie had mentioned that our team of three would stand a good chance climbing Mount McKinley. This thought had been hovering in my mind ever since. Before then, I’d never even thought about that possibility. Standing on North America’s highest point? Really? The more I thought about it I realized that actually I didn’t care too much that McKinley was the high point in North America or even the highest point in U.S. McKinley was the highest point in Alaska and that was appealing to me. My thoughts whirled in the truck cab until I made up my mind.
The blinker mechanism was shot in the Green Booger so G pulled down on the blinker once, twice, again, and again until we pulled over at a nearby lodge. Like Pig Pen of Shultz’s Charlie Brown, we sauntered in the place engulfed in our own clouds of climber’s B.O. Garret would begin meticulously negotiating his indulgences with the wait-staff and Jessie and I would relax and have a beer.
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