The 2nd Ascent of Mt. Denison
by Richard Soaper, class 1977
“Hi, my name is Chris Dickey (class of 2003) and I’m leading an expedition to climb Mt. Denison next summer.”
“Do you wanna go?”
“No, no, no,” I replied in the second that lapsed as I mentally listed all the pleasant memories I had of my two earlier attempts to climb the mountain nearly 30 years ago. Didn’t Chris know that in 1977 the expedition spent sixteen days on the ice fields of Katmai, Alaska, battling weather so bad we never even saw Mt. Denison until the trip was over? Didn’t he know that a year later the weather was again so bad that we mistakenly climbed the wrong mountain, thinking all the time that we were climbing Mt. Denison? Fortunately the storms cleared the next morning and a soggy group of six Denison alumni, students and faculty members succeeded in making the first ascent of Mt. Denison. We all came home from that expedition wondering when Mr. Gore would invent Gore-Tex®.
Of course, Chris knew all that history. For the past two years he had been meticulously researching the climb. He told me that in the ensuing thirty years no climbers had succeeded in making a second ascent. The disturbing mental note I observed about Chris was he still wanted to go. He and a team of several other Denison alumni and students were planning a climb in June 2007. I told Chris as many details about the first two expeditions as I could recall, wished him good luck, and quickly hung up the phone.
Sometimes overlooked, academia has a rich history with adventure and exploration. Several of the world’s mountain ranges owe their position on a map to early American geology professors and college mountaineering clubs. And not surprisingly, exploration and adventure have much in common with traditional academic culture: a desire to connect with our world; to cast light upon the unknown; to discover the depth of our own capabilities.
Our own history with mountaineering and exploration began in 1923 with Kirtly Mather, a 1909 Denison alumni who was assigned to survey the volcanic region in the upper Aleutian Peninsula by the United States Geological Survey. Among one of the many results of that assignment was the official designation of Mt. Denison.
Mt. Denison is the tallest mountain on the Alaskan Aleutian Peninsula. The mountain is a completely snow and ice covered stratovolcano hidden in Katmai National Park and Wilderness Preserve. The wilderness area is known equally as a volcanology laboratory and, at its lower elevations, for the highest concentration of brown bears found anywhere in the world. The area is so remote that very little of it has even been seen except by bush pilots flying over it.
The precise date of the most recent volcanic activity on Mt. Denison is not known. It has never erupted in recorded history but Mt. Fourpeaked, 30 miles to the northeast, had also never erupted until very recently in September 2006. In 1953 an eruption was reported on Mt. Denison but flyovers later determined it to be a single large puff of steam that probably escaped from the crevasses of Hook Glacier flowing from Denison’s west face. Chris was hoping the expedition could honor Kirtley Mather by making a second ascent of Mt. Denison and ascents of nearby Mt. Stellar and the forbidding mountain aptly named Devil’s Desk. Perhaps the team could also succeed on a scientific front by stumbling across and recording the location of a small vent or fumarole field somewhere on Mt. Denison’s flanks.
Chris spent countless hours researching the best hiking approach from the Pacific coastline to the base of the mountain. He organized all the logistics to get a team on the ground with the proper equipment, knowledge and support in Alaska. He was the heart and soul and number one fundraiser for the expedition and it would have to go without saying if I allowed him a chance to edit this story. He does not have a wimp gene in his body and would be a good candidate for the Delta Force. His thighs are the size of beer kegs but his knuckles don’t quite drag the ground.
Joining Chris on the expedition was Taylor Nissi, class of 2008. He is a large, standout defensive player on Denison’s lacrosse team. His character is the type Ernest Hemingway often wrote about. A hundred years ago he would have answered the ads arctic explorers put in newspapers, “Seeking Men For Hard Work, Long Days, Chance for Glory, Return Doubtful.” We often tried to suppress his youthful enthusiasm by making him carry more than his fair share of the weight.
The third member was Dick McClenahan (class of 1976), a family practice physician from Washington State. He was the oldest climber and often showed his maturity by acting like Mike Wallace and insisting upon asking follow-up questions concerning our preliminary plans. Dick had to be very good-natured because his questions were most often answered by long periods of silence. For instance, he wanted to know what back-up provision we had against grizzly bears once the six-second burst of enhanced pepper-spray was exhausted? We looked to Dick for his levelheaded reasoning until that same reasoning infringed upon our go-for-it philosophy. Dick spent countless hours assembling our first aid equipment, determining our caloric needs, and buying and packaging all our meals. Like a true adventurer, he insisted on meticulously planning all the details precisely to avoid adventure.
Picking up the torch from faculty members who came before, Denison Political Science Professor Emmett Buell was an invaluable campus mobilizer, logistics coordinator and financier of the expedition. After much discussion, he selflessly agreed to serve as our base camp liaison stationed on Kodiak Island while we were gallivanting in the woods. It was agreed that he would relay the National Weather Service reports to us by satellite phone and post daily emails updating our progress to interested Denison alumni, friends, family and sponsors who befriended the expedition. However, as no good expedition would be without trying circumstances, our satellite phone rarely worked and Professor Buell spent more time researching forthcoming book projects than a tenured professor would prefer during his summer break.
As for myself, I evened out the group’s 50-something, 20-something age difference by joining Dick McClenahan in the upper echelon of age and experience. Graduating in 1977 from Denison, I participated on both previous Denison expeditions and have accumulated a climbing resume that includes projects in the continental US, Alaska, South America and the Himalaya. However, as years and competing priorities have accrued, it is with longer and longer hiatuses that I engage in remote mountain adventures. Cleverly, Chris continued to include me over the ensuing months in the team’s conference calls for “consulting purposes only.” My resistance finally eroded and I committed three months before the expedition was scheduled to leave. Needless to say, I now hold the all-time record for the most ascents of Mt. Denison: two.
It was early afternoon on a cold rainy June day, when our bush pilot flew us across the Shelikof Strait and landed on Bear Lake (note: the lake actually has no known name, however this was what we came to call it as a point of reference), a mile-wide inland pond just a stone’s throw from the Pacific Ocean. Chris had chosen this particular landing location after much consultation with previous expedition members and obsessive staring at topographic maps. In ’77 and ’78 our team landed and Hallo Bay, a prominent and popularized bay to the north of Bear Lake. From there, we proceeded directly to the foot of the Hallo Glacier via bushwhacking through dense willows, maneuvering icy swamps and enduring stinging devil’s claw. Renowned for the density of super-sized grizzly bears, our passage was also marked by several large furry curious on-lookers. Once we reached the foot of the Hallo Glacier we had to negotiate a glacial lake, a treacherous transition onto the ice and then a long march up highly crevassed terrain to the foot of the mountain.
Not crazy about retracing our approach, Chris looked for alternatives. Multiple routes came into consideration, but after much debate and study, he decided to land in Bear Lake, travel up a minor valley to the south of Hallo Bay, then transition onto the upper reaches of the Hallo Glacier by a series of meandering snowfields. The route looked reasonable, but was untested. Over the 50 years since the topographic maps were created, much could have changed to make the passage more difficult or even impossible. The new route was a calculated gamble.
Upon unloading the bush plane, we took a farewell group shot, said our goodbyes and watched our connection with the outside world fly off into the low-lying clouds. With no sound other than our own voices, the sense of remoteness eerily set in. It went without saying that rescue was a far distance away and dependent on several uncontrolled factors: terrain, weather, remaining healthy team members, supplies, availability of a response team, a functioning satellite phone, etc. We were very alone.
We started hiking single file along a well-worn game trail through ten-foot tall alder thickets, thankful to have a muddy path yet alert of the creatures that created the trail. Within a hundred yards the grizzly trail vanished into the brush. We forged ahead trying to maintain as straight a line as possible without stopping, backtracking or consulting each other; every ten feet provided an opportunity for the leader to do all three. We were glad for the chill rainy day because it kept the infamous Alaskan mosquitoes and black flies at bay.
At times we waded through the braided streams that feed Bear Lake. They offered a welcome diversion from the branches of the alder bushes, which whipped our bodies and grabbed our packs. We could stand the cold water that had been ice less than an hour ago for only so long. Rocks like bowling balls carried by the swift current ricocheted off our ankles and the freezing water temperature left our feet numb. Trying to pick the lesser of two evils we continued alternating between both types of terrain for three hours until we came to a large elevated sandbank and decided to camp for the night.
After dinner we went through the motions of securing our food from bears by placing our food in Kevlar-sewn bags a hundred yards away from camp in various hiding locations. Although Dick felt confident about this solution, Chris complained of the futility of simply putting food in a bag and hiding it. In the back of my mind I realized the primary comfort of this ritual was likely psychological as even the tallest bushes wouldn’t escape a determined Grizzly.
We slept that evening with minor success as mental pictures of grizzlies roaming the campsite and the 24-hour summer solstice twilight plagued us. However, to our great relief, in the morning the food was undisturbed, the weather looked promising and, having no excuse to turn around, we continued onward and upward.
The snow line began around 1500 ft. After following the river for a while longer we decided to veer sharply off and make a b-line for some moderate-looking snowfields. Guarding the snowline was challenging terrain with loose turf, thick alder bushes and bears; three of which we disturbed over the duration of a single hour. Fortunately, each time we spotted a bear it was several hundred feet above us. Dick thought it prudent to stop and read the directions on the cans of bear spray each of us carried. Unfortunately for his peace of mind, the directions stated to wait until the charging grizzly was twenty feet away before dispersing the spray. Not having the constitution of one of the 300 Spartans, Dick’s follow-up question of what we should do was only met by silly grins.
Eventually we attained the snow line and headed for the top of a ridge. This is easily said in one sentence. The reality of the effort took many hours of nonstop, head down, thigh burning plowing uphill through snow the consistency of quicksand. Eventually the warmth of the sun caused the snow to soften so dramatically that forward progress was near impossible. Luckily we were able to find a level grassy outcropping among the sea of snow. Taking full advantage of this unlikely oasis, we set up camp for our second evening.
The next morning dawned beautiful and we found ourselves beneath a rock wall that extended to the west as far as we could see. In some places it towered several hundred feet above us. It was our goal to travel along its southern flanks until we reached a linkage with the Hallo Glacier that would lead to the base of Mt. Denison.
We traversed beneath the cliffs for hours making our way west. Around midday, in the distance we saw a snow ramp that disappeared above us. We aimed for it. The success of the climb was dependent on being able to gain the top of the ridge and finding a safe descent route onto the glacier.
Like air escaping from a balloon, winds from the upper ice field funneled down the snow ramp. Our heavy packs acted like sails as the wind battered us around so that we stumbled up the slope like drunks down Bourbon Street on Saturday night. We slowly climbed, each in our own world, unable to be heard above the wind even if we talked. As we attained the crest of the ramp, a smooth white highway of snow rolled out before us: the massive Hallo Glacier. Between the gusts of wind I could only hear randomly grunted monosyllables from my climbing partners, but their faces read relief and happiness.
Our joy was short-lived. We now had our first decent view of Mt. Denison and it was daunting. The east face that the 1978 expedition had succeeded in climbing now was very steep and in other places a jumbled mass of car-sized ice blocks precariously perched at angles mocking the laws of physics. To avoid the ice blocks, the concave face would require technical ice-climbing equipment that we purposely left behind on Kodiak Island to save weight.
Nobody said anything about the difficult route finding that lay before us. We were just happy that Chris’ gamble of the untested Bear Lake approach with the Hallo Glacier paid off. Finding an alternative route up Mt. Denison was a problem for another day. We were still several miles away from its face and needed to get closer.
30 years had passed since I last walked among the upper reaches of Hallo Glacier, a massively crevassed sprawling glacier fed by the snows off Mt. Denison and Mt. Stellar. It was here that our team stopped and roped up for the first time. Tying oneself to your climbing partner is a safety precaution on a glacier where there are hidden crevasses. The weight of all the people tied to the rope and the friction the rope creates cuts into the lip of a crevasse and suspends a falling climber in place just a few feet below the surface of a crevasse. Then, as instructional books illustrate, your buddies ostensively pull you out. However, whenever you rope up you pay a big price in speed, efficiency and personal autonomy. Like working on a chain gang, everyone must move at the same speed and pace or get alternatively jerked and pulled. On uneven slopes one climber can be going uphill at one pace while another is going downhill. One person might want to put on sunscreen or get a drink from his pack at the precise moment another climber is balanced on a precarious foothold. Imagine all four people being on the same wavelength for an entire day. Tempers usually flare. But the goodwill and stalwart attitude of our team prevailed; never in our weakest moments did anyone complain.
Perhaps the four of us worked together so well as a team because we all have that crazy, defective gene that makes people think they are having fun even when they are cold, tired and uncomfortable. It’s the same psychology found in children who run through sprinklers trying not to get wet but laughing when they do ¬— just applied a bit more severely. Don’t get me wrong, I try to organize my life and work so it is comfortable and runs as smoothly as possible. But we all need adventure to renew the human spirit. We need to create challenges, a little part of your soul dies if you don’t. This is what brought us together on Mt. Denison.
By late afternoon, like old men in an unemployment line, we drudged toward a flat spot on Hallo Glacier safe from crevasses. We made our third camp and eagerly anticipated the morning to see if we could find a way up Mt. Denison.
We planned a 4 a.m. alpine start to allow plenty of time to route find, but Chris’s alarm watch failed to sound and after losing several hours we were paying the price. The sun had softened the snow and the leader, Chris, was “post-holing” through the snow. To comprehend this term, imagine walking around a room on barstools with a heavy pack. Now pretend some ogre under the floor randomly jerks one of the barstools out from under you every third or fourth step. Chris plunged to his thighs all day long breaking trail.
Hours passed and gradually Mt. Denison’s defenses began to reveal themselves. There was a ridge extending perpendicular to the mountain’s south shoulder about a thousand feet below the summit. We aimed for the ridge with plans to follow it to its intersection with Mt. Denison’s south shoulder. There appeared to be several exit cracks offering access on to the south shoulder. That was our plan. We were still too far away to be able to see if it would work. In mountaineering what, from afar, appears only as a small black line running across the snow can easily be a fifty foot cliff once you are standing beneath it. We didn’t see any better alternative route so we continued climbing carefully through the crevasse scared landscape toward the ridge.
By afternoon the shrill wind was cutting through my thin Gore-Tex jacket. I had not dressed warmly enough when leaving camp. After each prolonged gust of wind my body shivered and I recognized the first signs of hypothermia. I pulled my hood tighter around my face and continued in silence, wondering when I should turn around. At the same time as I was thinking of retreat, Chris and Dick began exchanging congratulatory grins as we found a route through the exit cracks and onto Mt. Denison’s south shoulder. I knew once we reached the top of the ridge I would be at the mercy of the full brunt of the wind.
Proving the existence of luck, God, or perhaps both, the wind mysteriously and mercifully ceased and the day became as calm as the eye of a hurricane. We reached the top of the ridge and Mt. Denison’s defenses were now below us. For the next several hours, we trudged up the steep but unremarkable south ridge of Mt. Denison. Nearing the summit, Chris tiptoed out across a fragile snow bridge offering passage across a crevasse blocking access to the summit. Following Chris with great caution, Dick crossed in succession. Third came Taylor, plunking away in the snow with his Clydesdale physique, and plunged a full leg through the bridge.
“My leg fell through!” Taylor shouted with an appropriate degree of impetus. Immediate we each anchored our axes and boots into the snow, to hold a potential collapse of the bridge. “What do I do?!” Taylor cried out again.
From the front, Chris shouted back, “Pull up your leg, distribute your weight evenly and crawl on all four.” Doing as he was told, Taylor pulled up, crawled out and shook it off.
Shortly after crossing the precarious snow bridge that tried to swallow Taylor, the summit surrendered itself. With hoots of jubilation and a renewed rush of adrenaline, we set foot on the snow-covered summit of Mt. Denison. The summit is slightly inclined and roughly the size of a study table in Barney Library. I had hoped to find the Denison flag, Phi Beta Kappa key, fraternity flag and other evidence the 1978 expedition had placed on the summit over 30 years ago, but all traces of anyone ever having been there were long gone in a place that receives over thirty feet of snow each winter.
Balmy and windless, we spent nearly an hour on the summit taking pictures, calling friends on the satellite phone, eating food and securing a large Denison University flag with an engraved aluminum stake in the snow for posterity. Leaving the summit, I wondered, “It took 30 years for someone to come back here. How much time will lapse before Mt. Denison sees its next visitor?”
Heading down the mountain in the late afternoon we rounded a corner in the setting sun and saw our match box sized tents far below us. Something was amiss. It appeared as if one tent had been upended and ransacked with gear hanging out of it. We had seen bear tracks a thousand feet above the snow line but none in the last two days. Surely a bear could not have survived the crevasses to get this high on the ice? An hour later we discovered the answer was more mundane.
The continuous winds and sun hammered snow had weakened the snow and ripped my tent stakes cleanly out. Only one remaining stake had kept Chris’ and my tent (with all our personal gear inside) from sailing down Hallo Glacier to disappear forever in some crevasse. During the next hour Chris and I rebuild the tent platform and placing evermore-secure anchors, so we would not tempt fate to repeat our rookie mistake.
With little said we decided to rest the next day and delay our attempt on nearby Mt. Stellar. Taylor later told me he was deeply upset that we postponed our attempt. However, like a good expedition team member, he did not voice his disappointment at the time. When you are tired and in a stressful environment fateful decisions can be made with few spoken words. Subtle cues from your partners are registered as votes. Any heated discussion often leads to resentment that later cause teams to fall apart over the silliest things. (example: “We should be eating more peanut butter...”, “No, we should save it...”).
The next day, we slept, read, played cards and greedily dined on extra meals to recover from the physical exertion of the last four days. Validating Taylor’s fears, mid-afternoon a pea-soup fog rolled in and besieged us—an act of weather highly reminiscent of the first two Mt. Denison expeditions. Throughout the night and early into the next morning the storm alternated between snow, sleet and rain. Any upward progress on an unclimbed peak like Mt. Stellar would be like walking around in a soggy, cold cotton ball, with less than fifty feet visibility. The next morning, Chris invoked a minor miracle getting the satellite phone to work (considering how consistently terrible satellite service was). The weather report was for more of the same for the next week to ten days. Speaking with the bush pilot, we had two options: get picked up tomorrow at Bear Lake or get picked up in five days.
The entire team was willing to wait out the storm in our high camp for a couple of days in return for a shot at climbing Mt. Stellar. However, previous weather reports had generally been quite accurate and although we had the needed supplies, nobody wanted to spend another week lying on their back in small two person tents, in cold damp weather with the odds to climb Mt. Stellar against us. It did not take long to decide: we wanted to get the hell off this rain-soaked glacier.
What ensued was a mad dash to break camp and get off the ice field. Packing up the tents and supplies in the 40-degree rain, we preceded the long slog back to our original drop off. The weather over the past several days had obliterated our tracks leading back down Hallo glacier. Peering through the disorienting fog, we could just make out the two black face mountains between which was the pass providing our escape off the ice field. As we hiked down the glacier, suddenly a third black face mountain appeared out of the mist. I could not tell which pass to head for. The wrong one would lead us off-route down the heavily crevassed icefall. It would be very difficult and time consuming to recover from a wrong turn. Taylor, Dick and Chris were sure of the right pass and after another hour of hiking, their route was affirmed as we reached the correct pass, stepped off the glacier and unroped.
All afternoon Chris broke trail through the water-laden snow across the long traverse leaving a trough for us to follow until we reached the alder bushes. We crashed down through them for the last time and waded the braided streams in driving rain. Hours later, wet, cold and exhausted, we reached Bear Lake. A distance that took three days of dedicated effort to ascend, we managed to descend in a single afternoon.
Once at Bear Lake, we gathered supplies we left in welded steel bear-proof containers and attempted to improve our situation. People were exhausted and soaked to the bone. After slogging several miles through cold permeating rain, nearly everything we carried was in damp cold condition as well. This was the first and only time during the expedition that Taylor voiced opposition to the team objective. Chris and Dick had began making what initially appeared to be a futile goal of building a shelter with a large tarp that was cached at the shoreline; Taylor wanted to retreat to the tents. However, after several iterations (and persuasion), they were successful in erecting a shelter large enough to cover everyone and their gear.
Regretting some brazen comments regarding my fire making skills from earlier in the trip, I was assigned building a fire out of nothing but soaked wood. Fortunately for everyone, after copious amounts of fire starter, I was successful in starting a humble fire that warmed our shivering bodies and our spirits.
The next morning, we awoke with the rain still falling and visibility under 500 feet. Without verbalizing it, we all had negative outlooks on our chances that a plane would be able to make the flight in such weather. In 1977, we had had similar weather awaiting our pilot on Hallo Bay and literally ran out of food during the multi-day wait. During that experience, we were forced to subsist on clams and salmon until the weather finally broke. Knowing the potential reality of this scenario, people literally jumped out of their sleeping bags with excitement when the engine of our bush plane was heard. In what was marginal flying weather for even an Alaskan bush pilot, our bush plane heroically appeared out of the mist. We soon loaded up, bid farewell to Mt. Denison and returned anxiously awaiting red meat, beer and a hot shower on Kodiak Island.
Approximately thirty years after Denison first attracted me to its campus, an anxious freshman ready to begin life’s next stage, the Denison community was again responsible for bringing together four strangers who, under extraordinary circumstances, became friends. We began with little in common other than a like alma mater and a yearning for adventure and challenge in the outdoors. Now, like graduating seniors, it is unlikely we will come together again under the same circumstances. Our team feels a stronger connection to the Denison community, many of whom mobilized to give us a chance to climb Mt. Denison. We are thankful for each and every one of you whose contributions supported our efforts and we offer this challenge to future Denison adventurers: More discoveries await future Mt. Denison expeditions. Nobody even knows what the west half of the mountain looks like. Maybe that fumarole field honoring Kirtley Mather can still be discovered.
