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Ascent of Denali

<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> <h3>EXPLORATIONS OF THE DENALI REGION AND PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS AT ITS ASCENT</h3> The first mention in literature of the greatest mountain group in North America is in the narrative of that most notable navigator, George Vancouver. While surveying the Knik Arm of Cook’s Inlet, in 1794, he speaks of his view of a connected mountain range “bounded by distant stupendous snow mountains covered with snow and apparently detached from each other.” Vancouver’s name has grown steadily greater during the last fifty years as modern surveys have shown the wonderful detailed accuracy of his work, and the seamen of the Alaskan coast speak of him as the prince of all navigators. Not until 1878 is there another direct mention of these mountains, although the Russian name for Denali, “Bulshaia Gora,” proves that it had long been observed and known. <div class="sidenote">Harper, Densmore, Dickey</div> In that year two of the early Alaskan traders, [Pg 158]Alfred Mayo and Arthur Harper, made an adventurous journey some three hundred miles up the Tanana River, the first ascent of that river by white men, and upon their return reported finding gold in the bars and mentioned an enormous ice mountain visible in the south, which they said was one of the most remarkable things they had seen on their trip. In 1889 Frank Densmore, a prospector, with several companions, crossed from the Tanana to the Kuskokwim by way of the Coschaket and Lake Minchúmina, and had the magnificent view of the Denali group which Lake Minchúmina affords, which the present writer was privileged to have in 1911. Densmore’s description was so enthusiastic that the mountain was known for years among the Yukon prospectors as “Densmore’s mountain.” Though unquestionably many men traversed the region after the discovery of gold in Cook’s Inlet in 1894, no other public recorded mention of the great mountain was made until W. A. Dickey, a Princeton graduate, journeyed extensively in the Sushitna and Chulitna valleys in 1896 and reached the foot of the glacier which drains one of the flanks of Denali, called later by Doctor Cook the Ruth Glacier. Dickey described the mountain [Pg 159] in a letter to the New York Sun in January, 1907, and guessed its height with remarkable accuracy at twenty thousand feet. Probably unaware that the mountain had any native name, Dickey gave it the name of the Republican candidate for President of the United States at that time—McKinley. Says Mr. Dickey: “We named our great peak Mount McKinley, after William McKinley, of Ohio, the news of whose nomination for the presidency was the first we received on our way out of that wonderful wilderness.” In 1898 George Eldridge and Robert Muldrow, of the United States Geological Survey, traversed the region, and Muldrow estimated the height of the mountain by triangulation at twenty thousand three hundred feet. <div class="sidenote">Herron, Brooks, Wickersham</div> In 1899 Lieutenant Herron crossed the range from Cook’s Inlet and reached the Kuskokwim. It was he who named the lesser mountain of the Denali group, always known by the natives as Denali’s Wife, “Mount Foraker,” after the senator from Ohio. In 1902 Alfred Brooks and D. L. Raeburn made a remarkable reconnoissance survey from the Pacific Ocean, passing through the range and along the whole western and northwestern faces of the group. They were the first white men to [Pg 160]set foot upon the slopes of Denali. Shortly afterward, in response to the interest this journey aroused among Alpine clubs, Mr. Brooks published a pamphlet setting forth what he considered the most feasible plan for attempting the ascent of the mountain. The next year saw two actual attempts at ascent. After holding the first term of court at Fairbanks, the new town on the Tanana River that had sprung suddenly into importance as the metropolis of Alaska upon the discovery of the Tanana gold fields, Judge Wickersham (now delegate to Congress) set out with four men and two mules in May, 1903, and by steamboat ascended to the head of navigation of the Kantishna. Heading straight across an unknown country for the base of the mountain, Judge Wickersham’s party unfortunately attacked the mountain by the Peters Glacier and demonstrated the impossibility of that approach, being stopped by the enormous ice-incrusted cliffs of the North Peak. Judge Wickersham used to say that only by a balloon or a flying-machine could the summit be reached; and, indeed, by no other means can the summit ever be reached from the north face. After a week spent in climbing, provisions began to run short and the party returned, descending [Pg 161] the rushing, turbid waters of that quite unnavigable and very dangerous stream, the McKinley Fork of the Kantishna, on a raft, with little of anything left to eat, and that little damaged by water. Judge Wickersham was always keen for another attempt and often discussed the matter with the writer, but his judicial and political activities thenceforward occupied his time and attention to the exclusion of such enterprises. His attempt was the first ever made to climb the mountain. <h4>Doctor Cook’s Attempts</h4> About the time that Judge Wickersham was leaving the north face of the mountain an expedition under Doctor Frederick A. Cook set out from Tyonek, on Cook’s Inlet, on the other side of the range. Doctor Cook was accompanied by Robert Dunn, Ralph Shainwald (the “Hiram” of Dunn’s narrative), and Fred Printz, who had been chief packer for Brooks and Raeburn, and fourteen pack-horses bore their supplies. The route followed was that of Brooks and Raeburn, and they had the advantage of topographical maps and forty miles of trail cut in the timber and a guide familiar with the country. Going up [Pg 162]the Beluga and down the Skwentna Rivers, they crossed the range by the Simpson Pass to the south fork of the Kuskokwim, and then skirted the base of the mountains until a southwesterly ridge was reached which it is not very easy to locate, but which, as Doctor Brooks judges, must have been near the headwaters of the Tatlathna, a tributary of the Kuskokwim. Here an attempt was made to ascend the mountain, but at eight thousand feet a chasm cut them off from further advance. Pursuing their northeast course, they reached the Peters Glacier (which Doctor Cook calls the Hanna Glacier) and stumbled across one of Judge Wickersham’s camps of a couple of months before. Here another attempt to ascend was made, only to find progress stopped by the same stupendous cliffs that had turned back the Wickersham party. “Over the glacier which comes from the gap between the eastern and western peaks” (the North and South Peaks as we speak of them), says Doctor Cook, “there was a promising route.” That is, indeed, part of the only route, but it can be reached only by the Muldrow Glacier. “The walls of the main mountain rise out of the Hanna (Peters) Glacier,” Cook adds. The “main mountain” has many walls; the walls by which the summit alone may be reached rise out of the Muldrow Glacier, [Pg 163]a circumstance that was not to be discovered for some years yet. The lateness of the season now compelled immediate return. Passing still along the face of the range in the same direction, the party crossed the terminal moraine of the Muldrow Glacier without recognizing that it affords the only highway to the heart of the great mountain and recrossed the range by an ice-covered pass to the waters of the Chulitna River, down which they rafted after abandoning their horses. Doctor Cook calls this pass “Harper Pass,” and the name should stand, for Cook was probably the first man ever to use it. <div class="sidenote">Robert Dunn</div> The chief result of this expedition, besides the exploration of about one hundred miles of unknown country, was the publication by Robert Dunn of an extraordinary narrative in several consecutive numbers of Outing, afterward republished in book form, with some modifications, as “The Shameless Diary of an Explorer,” a vivid but unpleasant production, for which every squabble and jealousy of the party furnishes literary material. The book has a curious, undeniable power, despite its brutal frankness and its striving after “the poor renown of being smart,” and it may live. One is thankful, however, that it is unique in the literature of travel. <div class="sidenote">Cook's Second Attempt</div> [Pg 164]Three years later Doctor Cook organized an expedition for a second attempt upon the mountain. In May, 1906, accompanied by Professor Herschel Parker, Mr. Belmore Browne, a topographer named Porter, who made some valuable maps, and packers, the party landed at the head of Cook’s Inlet and penetrated by motor-boat and by pack-train into the Sushitna country, south of the range. Failing to cross the range at the head of the Yentna, they spent some time in explorations along the Kahilitna River, and, finding no avenue of approach to the heights of the mountain, the party returned to Cook’s Inlet and broke up. With only one companion, a packer named Edward Barrille, Cook returned in the launch up the Chulitna River to the Tokositna late in August. “We had already changed our mind as to the impossibility of climbing the mountain,” he writes. Ascending a glacier which the Tokositna River drains, named by Cook the Ruth Glacier, they reached the amphitheatre at the glacier head. From this point, “up and up to the heaven-scraped granite of the top,” Doctor Cook grows grandiloquent and vague, for at this point his true narrative ends. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="./images/denali34_sm.jpg" alt="Approaching the range." height-obs="240" width-obs="400" /></div> Approaching the range. The claims that Doctor Cook made upon his [Pg 165]return are well known, but it is quite impossible to follow his course from the description given in his book, “To the Top of the Continent.” This much may be said: from the summit of the mountain, on a clear day, it seemed evident that no ascent was possible from the south side of the range at all. That was the judgment of all four members of our party. Doctor Cook talks about “the heaven-scraped granite of the top” and “the dazzling whiteness of the frosted granite blocks,” and prints a photograph of the top showing granite slabs. There is no rock of any kind on the South (the higher) Peak above nineteen thousand feet. The last one thousand five hundred feet of the mountain is all permanent snow and ice; nor is the conformation of the summit in the least like the photograph printed as the “top of Mt. McKinley.” In his account of the view from the summit he speaks of “the ice-blink caused by the extensive glacial sheets north of the Saint Elias group,” which would surely be out of the range of any possible vision, but does not mention at all the master sight that bursts upon the eye when the summit is actually gained—the great mass of “Denali’s Wife,” or Mount Foraker, filling all the middle distance. We were all agreed that no one who had ever stood on the top of [Pg 166]Denali in clear weather could fail to mention the sudden splendid sight of this great mountain. But it is not worth while to pursue the subject further. The present writer feels confident that any man who climbs to the top of Denali, and then reads Doctor Cook’s account of his ascent, will not need Edward Barrille’s affidavit to convince him that Cook’s narrative is untrue. Indignation is, however, swallowed up in pity when one thinks upon the really excellent pioneering and exploring work done by this man, and realizes that the immediate success of the imposition about the ascent of Denali doubtless led to the more audacious imposition about the discovery of the North Pole—and that to his discredit and downfall. <h4>The Pioneer Ascent</h4> Although Cook’s claim to have reached the summit of Denali met with general acceptance outside, or at least was not openly scouted, it was otherwise in Alaska. The men, in particular, who lived and worked in the placer-mining regions about the base of the mountain, and were, perhaps, more familiar with the orography of the range than any surveyor or professed topographer, [Pg 167]were openly incredulous. Upon the appearance of Doctor Cook’s book, “To the Top of the Continent,” in 1908, the writer well remembers the eagerness with which his copy (the only one in Fairbanks) was perused by man after man from the Kantishna diggings, and the acute way in which they detected the place where vague “fine writing” began to be substituted for definite description. Some of these men, convinced that the ascent had never been made, conceived the purpose of proving it in the only way in which it could be proved—by making the ascent themselves. They were confident that an enterprise which had now baffled several parties of “scientists,” equipped with all sorts of special apparatus, could be accomplished by Alaskan “sourdoughs” with no special equipment at all. There seems also to have entered into the undertaking a naïve notion that in some way or other large money reward would follow a successful ascent. The enterprise took form under Thomas Lloyd, who managed to secure the financial backing of McPhee and Petersen, saloon-keepers of Fairbanks, and Griffin, a wholesale liquor dealer of Chena. These three men are said to have put up five hundred dollars apiece, and the sum [Pg 168] thus raised sufficed for the needs of the party. In February 1910, therefore, Thomas Lloyd, Charles McGonogill, William Taylor, Peter Anderson, and Bob Horne, all experienced prospectors and miners, and E. C. Davidson, a surveyor, now the surveyor-general of Alaska, set out from Fairbanks, and by 1st March had established a base camp at the mouth of Cache Creek, within the foot-hills of the range. Here Davidson and Horne left the party after a disagreement with Lloyd. The loss of Davidson was a fatal blow to anything beyond a “sporting” ascent, for he was the only man in the party with any scientific bent, or who knew so much as the manipulation of a photographic camera. <div class="sidenote">The Sourdough Climb</div> The Lloyd expedition was the first to discover the only approach by which the mountain may be climbed. Mr. Alfred Brooks, Mr. Robert Muldrow, and Doctor Cook had passed the snout of the Muldrow Glacier without realizing that it turned and twisted and led up until it gave access to the ridge by which alone the upper glacier or Grand Basin can be reached and the summits gained. From observations while hunting mountain-sheep upon the foot-hills for years past, Lloyd had already satisfied himself of this prime fact; had found the key to the complicated [Pg 169]orography of the great mass. Lloyd had previously crossed the range with horses in this neighborhood by an easy pass that led “from willows to willows” in eighteen miles. Pete Anderson had come into the Kantishna country this way and had crossed and recrossed the range by this pass no less than eleven times. McGonogill, following quartz leads upon the high mountains of Moose Creek, had traced from his aerie the course of the Muldrow Glacier, and had satisfied himself that within the walls of that glacier the route would be found. And, indeed, when he had us up there and pointed out the long stretch of the parallel walls it was plain to us also that they held the road to the heights. From the point where he had perched his tiny hut, a stone’s throw from his tunnel, how splendidly the mountain rose and the range stretched out! These men thus started with the great advantage of a knowledge of the mountain, and their plan for climbing it was the first that contained the possibility of success. From the base camp Anderson and McGonogill scouted among the foot-hills of the range for some time before they discovered the pass that gives easy access to the Muldrow Glacier. On 25th March the party had traversed the glacier and [Pg 170]reached its head with dogs and supplies. A camp was made on the ridge, while further prospecting was carried on toward the upper glacier. This was the farthest point that Lloyd reached. On 10th April, Taylor, Anderson, and McGonogill set out about two in the morning with great climbing-irons strapped to their moccasins and hooked pike-poles in their hands. Disdaining the rope and cutting no steps, it was “every man for himself,” with reliance solely upon the crampons. They went up the ridge to the Grand Basin, crossed the ice to the North Peak, and proceeded to climb it, carrying the fourteen-foot flagstaff with them. Within perhaps five hundred feet of the summit, McGonogill, outstripped by Taylor and Anderson, and fearful of the return over the slippery ice-incrusted rocks if he went farther, turned back, but Taylor and Anderson reached the top (about twenty thousand feet above the sea) and firmly planted the flagstaff, which is there yet. This is the true narrative of a most extraordinary feat, unique—the writer has no hesitation in claiming—in all the annals of mountaineering. He has been at the pains of talking with every member of the actual climbing party with a view to sifting the matter thoroughly. For, largely by the fault of these men [Pg 171]themselves, through a mistaken though not unchivalrous sense of loyalty to the organizer of the expedition, much incredulity was aroused in Alaska touching their exploit. It was most unfortunate that any mystery was made about the details, most unfortunate that in the newspaper accounts false claims were set up. Surely the merest common sense should have dictated that in the account of an ascent undertaken with the prime purpose of proving that Doctor Cook had not made the ascent, and had falsified his narrative, everything should be frank and aboveboard; but it was not so. A narrative, gathered from Lloyd himself and agreed to by the others, was reduced to writing by Mr. W. E. Thompson, an able journalist of Fairbanks, and was sold to a newspaper syndicate. The account the writer has examined was “featured” in the New York Sunday Times of the 5th June, 1910. In that account Lloyd is made to claim unequivocally that he himself reached both summits of the mountain. “There were two summits and we climbed them both”; and again, “When I reached the coast summit” are reported in quotation marks as from his lips. As a matter of fact, Lloyd himself reached neither summit, nor was [Pg 172]much above the glacier floor; and the south or coast summit, the higher of the two, was not attempted by the party at all. There is no question that the party could have climbed the South Peak, though by reason of its greater distance it is safe to say that it could not have been reached, as the North Peak was, in one march from the ridge camp. It must have involved a camp in the Grand Basin with all the delay and the labor of relaying the stuff up there. But the men who accomplished the astonishing feat of climbing the North Peak, in one almost superhuman march from the saddle of the Northeast Ridge, could most certainly have climbed the South Peak too. <div class="sidenote">The North Peak</div> They did not attempt it for two reasons, first, because they wanted to plant their fourteen-foot flagstaff where it could be seen through a telescope from Fairbanks, one hundred and fifty miles away, as they fondly supposed, and, second, because not until they had reached the summit of the North Peak did they realize that the South Peak is higher. They told the writer that upon their return to the floor of the upper glacier they were greatly disappointed to find that their flagstaff was not visible to them. It is, indeed, only just visible with the naked eye from certain points on the upper glacier and quite invisible at any [Pg 173] lower or more distant point. Walter Harper has particularly keen sight, and he was well up in the Grand Basin, at nearly seventeen thousand feet altitude, sitting and scanning the sky-line of the North Peak, seeking for the pole, when he caught sight of it and pointed it out. The writer was never sure that he saw it with the naked eye, though Karstens and Tatum did so as soon as Walter pointed it out, but through the field-glasses it was plain and prominent and unmistakable. When we came down to the Kantishna diggings and announced to the men who planted it that we had seen the flagstaff, there was a feeling expressed that the climbing party of the previous summer must have seen it also and had suppressed mention of it; but there is no ground whatever for such a damaging assumption. It would never be seen with the naked eye save by those who were intently searching for it. Professor Parker and Mr. Belmore Browne entertained the pretty general incredulity about the “Pioneer” ascent, perhaps too readily, certainly too confidently; but the men themselves must bear the chief blame for that. The writer and his party, knowing these men much better, had never doubt that some of them had accomplished what was claimed, and these details have been gone into for no other [Pg 174] reason than that honor may at last be given where honor is due. <div class="sidenote">Pete Anderson and Billy Taylor</div> To Lloyd belongs the honor of conceiving and organizing the attempt but not of accomplishing it. To him probably also belongs the original discovery of the route that made the ascent possible. To McGonogill belongs the credit of discovering the pass, probably the only pass, by which the glacier may be reached without following it from its snout up, a long and difficult journey; and to him also the credit of climbing some nineteen thousand five hundred feet, or to within five hundred feet of the North Peak. But to Pete Anderson and Billy Taylor, two of the strongest men, physically, in all the North, and to none other, belongs the honor of the first ascent of the North Peak and the planting of what must assuredly be the highest flagstaff in the world. The North Peak has never since been climbed or attempted. <hr style='width: 45%;' /> In the summer of the same year, 1910, Professor Parker and Mr. Belmore Browne, members of the second Cook party, convinced by this time that Cook’s claim was wholly unfounded, attempted the mountain again, and another party, organized by Mr. C. E. Rust, of Portland, Oregon, also [Pg 175] endeavored the ascent. But both these expeditions confined themselves to the hopeless southern side of the range, from which, in all probability, the mountain never can be climbed. <h4>The Parker-Browne Expedition</h4> To a man living in the interior of Alaska, aware of the outfitting and transportation facilities which the large commerce of Fairbanks affords, aware of the navigable waterways that penetrate close to the foot-hills of the Alaskan range, aware also of the amenities of the interior slope with its dry, mild climate, its abundance of game and rich pasturage compared with the trackless, lifeless snows of the coast slopes, there seems a strange fatuity in the persistent efforts to approach the mountain from the southern side of the range. It is morally certain that if the only expedition that remains to be dealt with—that organized by Professor Parker and Mr. Belmore Browne in 1912, which came within an ace of success—had approached the mountain from the interior instead of from the coast, it would have forestalled us and accomplished the first complete ascent. The difficulties of the coast approach have been described graphically enough by Robert Dunn in [Pg 176]the summer and by Belmore Browne himself in the winter. There are no trails; the snow lies deep and loose and falls continually, or else the whole country is bog and swamp. There is no game. <div class="sidenote">Parker and Browne</div> The Parker-Browne expedition left Seward, on Resurrection Bay, late in January, 1912, and after nearly three months’ travel, relaying their stuff forward, they crossed the range under extreme difficulties, being seventeen days above any vegetation, and reached the northern face of the mountain on 25th March. The expedition either missed the pass near the foot of the Muldrow Glacier, well known to the Kantishna miners, by which it is possible to cross from willows to willows in eighteen miles, or else avoided it in the vain hope of finding another. They then went to the Kantishna diggings and procured supplies and topographical information from the miners, and were thus able to follow the course of the Lloyd party of 1910, reaching the Muldrow Glacier by the gap in the glacier wall discovered by McGonogill and named McPhee Pass by him. Mr. Belmore Browne has written a lucid and stirring account of the ascent which his party made. We were fortunate enough to secure a copy of the magazine in which it appeared just before leaving Fairbanks, and he had been good [Pg 177]enough to write a letter in response to our inquiries and to enclose a sketch map. Our course was almost precisely the same as that of the Parker-Browne party up to seventeen thousand feet, and the course of that party was precisely the same as that of the Lloyd party up to fifteen thousand feet. There is only one way up the mountain, and Lloyd and his companions discovered it. The earthquake had enormously increased the labor of the ascent; it had not altered the route. A reconnoissance of the Muldrow Glacier to its head and a long spell of bad weather delayed the party so much that it was the 4th June before the actual ascent was begun—a very late date indeed; more than a month later than our date and nearly three months later than the “Pioneer” date. It is rarely that the mountain is clear after the 1st June; almost all the summer through its summit is wrapped in cloud. From the junction of the Tanana and Yukon Rivers it is often visible for weeks at a time during the winter, but is rarely seen at all after the ice goes out. A close watch kept by friends at Tanana (the town at the confluence of the rivers) discovered the summit on the day we reached it and the following day (the 7th and 8th June) but not for three weeks before and not at all afterward; from which it does not [Pg 178]follow, however, that the summit was not visible momentarily, or at certain hours of the day, but only that it was not visible for long enough to be observed. The rapidity with which that summit shrouds and clears itself is sometimes marvellous. As is well known, the Parker-Browne party pushed up the Northeast Ridge and the upper glacier and made a first attack upon the summit itself, from a camp at seventeen thousand feet, on the 29th June. When within three or four hundred feet of the top they were overwhelmed and driven down, half frozen, by a blizzard that suddenly arose. On the 1st July another attempt was made, but the clouds ascended and completely enveloped the party in a cold, wind-driven mist so that retreat to camp was again imperative. Only those who have experienced bad weather at great heights can understand how impossible it is to proceed in the face of it. The strongest, the hardiest, the most resolute must yield. The party could linger no longer; food supplies were exhausted. They broke camp and went down the mountain. The falling short of complete success of this very gallant mountaineering attempt seems to have been due, first to the mistake of approaching [Pg 179]the mountain by the most difficult route, so that it was more than five months after starting that the actual climbing began; or, if the survey made justified, and indeed decided, the route, then the summit was sacrificed to the survey. But the immediate cause of the failure was the mistake of relying upon canned pemmican for the main food supply. This provision, hauled with infinite labor from the coast, and carried on the backs of the party to the high levels of the mountain, proved uneatable and useless at the very time when it was depended upon for subsistence. There is no finer big-game country in the world than that around the interior slopes of the Alaskan range; there is no finer meat in the world than caribou and mountain-sheep. It is carrying coals to Newcastle to bring canned meat into this country—nature’s own larder stocked with her choicest supplies. But if, attempting the mountain when they did, the Parker-Browne party had remained two or three days longer in the Grand Basin, which they would assuredly have done had their food been eatable, their bodies would be lying up there yet or would be crushed beneath the débris of the earthquake on the ridge. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> [Pg 180] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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