LOCALadk Magazine

Winter 2020 LOCALadk Magazine 25 LOCALadk base of the West Buttress at 14,400 feet. They ferried two loads up. "Feel great! The view of Hunter this evening was fantastic. This basin is incredibly beautiful. It is a little chilly though," Bleakley wrote. It was eight degrees below zero when they went to bed. They all had been gasping and sniping at each other on the first carr y, rested four hours, and were laughing, more ac- climatized, after the second carr y. There they stashed their snowshoes and some extra gear. Failing wrote: "From now on all carries are a one-way deal. Thank God. I'm beginning to feel like a mule." The big headwall climb was even harder. It began up about 1,000 feet of switchbacks and crossing a crevasse field, where the last man on Failing's rope collapsed. They split up his load and kept climbing with crampons and ice axes to reach a fixed line. There each attached with jumars to keep tethered and climb the rest of the way up the 50 -degree incline. Washburn's expedition, 24 years earlier, had to cut steps in the ice. "The whole trip up the fixed line was an ordeal I never thought I could do," Failing wrote later that day. "For two hours we strained our bent ankles to get a grip on the hard ice. Never done anything so strenuous or difficult in my whole life. Thought of quitting several times but for some reason pressed on." The next day brought a 1,000 -foot climb over ice and bro- ken rock along the ridge to a basin below Denali Pass. Bleak- ley's knee ached from the headwall ascent. Failing was hav- ing headaches and stomachaches. The exposed ridge varied from about one- to ten-feet wide with 4,000 - or 5,000 -foot drops on either side. The crampons didn't grab ver y well on the rock outcroppings. But the weather held. On June 1 at the 17,200 -foot camp VII, almost two weeks into the climb, they were told it was summit day. They climbed to Denali Pass, when a storm started brewing, with high winds and blowing snow, and were told they needed to return to their last camp. " We were the last rope team to go down," Failing wrote. "Then something ver y interesting happened during our high-exposure traverse down. The guy in front of me (Rick) fell. I just fell to the ice and dug in my axe and so did Jim be- hind me. We stopped him and ourselves from the 1,000 ft of nothing below." The lead climber on the rope hadn't known what was hap- pening until it was over. The weather was clear enough the next morning, but with high winds coming over Denali Pass, Genet asked for volun- teers who wanted to go for the summit and asked whether anyone was feeling ver y susceptible to cold or frostbite. Failing, three other clients and two guides left on two ropes together in late morning. It was unexpectedly warm. They re- peated the traverse to the pass at 18,200 feet and continued up despite some of them feeling sick. Traversing the ver y exposed West Buttress

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