LOCALadk Magazine

26 Winter 2020 LOCALadk Magazine LOCALadk "The summit seemed unreachable. The air thinned," Failing wrote. "I started to hear voices calling out." They reached the summit about 4 p.m. Failing was joyful at having done it but anxious to go down into thicker air and get relief from his headaches. They met Bleakley's ascend- ing rope above the pass and continued down to the camp at 17,200 feet. They rose the next day at noon after it had stormed all night. The other group hadn't shown up. Instead of waiting, they left at 2 p.m. and for 12 hours carried 50 - to 60 -pound packs down the mountain and the glacier all the way to base camp. They ran into a Japanese group and Failing bummed the first cigarette he'd had since they started. "I had blisters on both feet, my legs were cramping up and I thought my back was broken forever," he wrote at the end of the day. "I don't think any of us knew what we were getting into." For Bleakley it was worse. His group reached the summit at 8:30 p.m. that same June 2 in the midst of a raging snow- storm. "Frozen fingers tr ying to take photos. Could only see about 50 yards. Ever yone really fucked up coming down. I led the rope down through a crevasse field in a whiteout . . . . Three of the people on the rope were no more than zombies, hypothermic and altitude sick as hell." They camped at 19,300 feet, above Denali Pass, in tents screwed into the ice. Seven members of the expedition still hadn't reached the summit. The storm kept them all pinned down the next two days. Temperatures dropped to 20 to 30 degrees below zero at night. Bleakley slept in his parka and down pants in his subzero sleeping bag. He didn't remove his boots. "There wasn't room for us to even move in the tent. We just sat there," Bleakley recalled. "And there's so little oxygen up there it's not like you could do any deep thought. So we just sat there and you know, tried to figure out what we were doing." They had little food. Genet was there. The whiteout eased on June 5 and they climbed down to the lower camp at 17,200 feet, traveling on one cup of co- coa since their food had run out above. Bleakley had frost- bite on most of his fingers and toes, though they responded somewhat to initial treatment in the tent. "It is ver y hard to tie crampons or even carr y an ice axe with numb fingers. I dropped my axe at least 3 times today because I couldn't tell if I had ahold of it or not." " When the weather finally dropped, we were like the walk- ing wounded coming out of the tent," he recalled. "Ever y now and then I'd fall on my face because I just couldn't feel my feet . . . . My hands were just a mess. They were like claws at that point. They hadn't really started to blister yet because I didn't have enough fluids in me. Three of my toes turned black. I thought I was going to lose them." They carried their 60 -pound packs down to 11,000 feet the next day and to base camp the day after that. Weather had kept the other rope team from flying out for four days. Instead, Failing's group had the pilot drop them two cases of beer when a break in the weather enabled the Germans to get out. He shared beer and exchanged gifts with a Japanese climber. His group flew out June 6, with Genet, who had just arrived at base camp with four others and paid Hale $50 for his spot on the plane. "Sure was good to get back to green grass and civilization after three weeks of freeze-dried foods & oatmeal," Fail- ing wrote. "I settled down to some good solid food at the roadhouse. Had 3rds of ever ything. Then a shower and clean clothes & I felt like a new man. Celebrated in the Fair view till 5 in the morning and spent the night in Genet's cabin." Bleakley, with his injured hands and feet, reached base camp a day later in another snowstorm and was anxious to get out. He considered walking via the Ruth Gap, which would take five to seven days, instead of waiting. On June 9, he flew back to Talkeetna. He didn't lose his six frostbitten fingers and eight toes, though he never regained feeling in four toes. He would stay in Alaska for 38 years. The first four after Denali, he and his wife built a remote cabin and lived off the land. A pho- tograph shows him, dressed in fur and resembling a young Cossack, standing outside the cabin with pelts nailed on the wall. His wife left after four years and returned to Arizona. Bleakley went on to earn a Ph.D. in histor y, continued moun- taineering and went to work for the National Park Ser vice as a historian at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preser ve and later doing cultural and environmental compliance and wilderness review on its 13.2 million acres. Failing worked for Genet for two weeks, helping build porches and cabins at his remote backcountr y outpost at Pirate Lake. He recalls feeling supercharged from low-level thick oxygen, following the climb, and running down a rabbit and also outrunning a black bear that startled him when he was bur ying garbage. He went home and gave Denali slide shows, using that money to help fund unguided mountain- eering trips the next few years up the Matterhorn and Mount Blanc in Europe and 22,841-foot Aconcagua in Argentina, the highest summit in the Americas. In 1975 nobody died on Denali. According to the park ser- vice, 362 climbers attempted the summit and 131 made it. The deadliest year was 1992 with 11 killed among 1,070 who tried It was a difficult day when Failing told his father, who'd al- ready had business cards made, that he wouldn't be spending the rest of his working life in the family plumbing business. Instead, he promised to use ever ything he'd been taught and apply it to starting his own business as an outdoor guide — Middle Earth Expeditions. "I wasn't going to be a plumber the next 40 years," he said. "Adventure travel and mountaineering was where it was at."

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