Art Davidson - Minus 148º: The First Winter Ascent of Mount McKinley

PRAISE FOR MINUS 148

I COULDNT LAY IT DOWN until it was all finished (12:00 AM!).... A fascinating and beautifully written story.

BRADFORD WASHBURN

STILL IN THE SPELL OF that outstanding portrayal of a nearly disastrous expedition.... One of the best Ive ever read on this matter of survival.

DEE MOLENAAR

A MOUNTAINEERING CLASSIC....

ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS

THIS FINELY CRAFTED ADVENTURE TALE runs on adrenaline but also something else: brutal honesty.

WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Mountaineers Books is the nonprofit publishing arm of The Mountaineers, an organization founded in 1906 and dedicated to the exploration, preservation, and enjoyment of outdoor and wilderness areas.

1001 SW Klickitat Way, Suite 201, Seattle, WA 98134

1969, 1986, 1999, 2013 by Art Davidson

All rights reserved Revised edition, 2013

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Copy Editor: Linda Gunnarson, Sherri Schultz
Cover, Book Design, and Layout: Peggy Egerdahl
All photographs by George Wichman unless credited otherwise

Cover photograph: Mount McKinley summit storm clouds, Denali National Park (Photo Alissa Crandall/AlaskaStock.com)

Frontispiece: The team before setting out. First row: Art Davidson, George Wichman, Gregg Blomberg; Second row: Shiro Nishimae, Jacques Farine Batkin, Dave Johnston, John Edwards, Ray Pirate Genet (Photo by George Wichman)

A cataloging-in-publication record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

Printed on recycled paper

ISBN (paperback): 978-1-59485-755-3
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-59485-865-9

FOR MAIRIIS AND ALL OTHERS

who at some point in their lives

turn to the wildness in nature

WHY?

WE EACH PACKED OUR OWN lodestone up the mountain in the winter, and we each would offer different answers to the questions: Why do you climb? What did you get from the winter expedition?

We solved none of lifes problems, but I believe all of us returned with a new awareness of some of its realities. Each of us may have realized in his own way, if only for a moment, what Saint Exupry spoke of as... that new vision of the world won through hardship.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I AM GRATEFUL TO MY companions on our winter climb for all we shared on the mountain and for their encouraging me to tell this story. Dave Roberts and Mossy Kilcher were very helpful while I was writing this book and Ill forever value our friendship. I want to thank Susi Alexander for her help with the second edition of Minus 148. Finally, my heartfelt appreciation goes to Anna and our children, Arthur, Joe, and Cung.

Art Davidson

FOREWORD

BY DAVID ROBERTS

I WAS INVITED TO BE a member of the 1967 McKinley winter expedition. In Denver one evening the previous spring, Gregg Blomberg asked several climbers to come over to his apartment. We were, I recall, sworn to secrecy before Blomberg would reveal his plan. It didnt take me long to turn down the invitation. Blombergs near-fanatic intensity unnerved me a bit. And as someone who had got quite cold enough in the upper regions of McKinley in July (on an ascent three years before), I did not relish the thought of trying to sleep on Denali in February. But mainly I said no because I didnt think Blomberg and his gang had more than a slim chance of succeeding.

Blombergs dogged secrecy bespoke his own doubts. But at the same meeting I took note of Art Davidsons reaction. This Alaskan vagabond, whom I had first met the same week, seemed to be enwreathed in a blithe and naive enthusiasm. There was no question for him of participating. You would have thought from his response, however, that somebody had just offered him a two-week trip to the Riviera. Let Blomberg design the special sleeping bags; Davidson just wanted to get out on the Kahiltna Glacier and start walking.

Art had come down to Denver for the meeting, and while he was there he called me up and asked me out for a beer. The most casual occasions turn out to be pivot points of life. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that it was a beer with Art at the Stadium Inn near Denver University that kept me from quitting climbing at age twenty-two.

The summer before I had gone on my own third Alaskan expedition, on which four of us had succeeded in climbing a new route on Mount Huntington. On the descent Ed Bernd was killed when his rappel failed. It was the third fatal accident I had witnessed in only five years of climbing, and it hit me hard. Although I was writing a book about Huntington at the time of Arts visit, I felt so depressed and freaked out about the accident that I had serious doubts about climbing again. Art took care of that.

He was a remarkable sight, sitting there in the Stadium Inn. I picture him in shapeless khaki trousers and an old plaid lumberjack shirt with holes in the elbows. Scruffy would have been too polite a word. He looked like an Icelandic warrior out of the Sagas, with his flaming red beard, his bizarre white eyebrows. He spoke like a poet, and the verses he intoned, in his deep yet dulcet voice, were ones of exhortation and enlistment. The text was a series of paeans to the gleaming untrod glaciers, the soaring salmon-colored granite walls, the green fire of the tundra and the dancing curtains of the northern lights in Arts adopted paradise, Alaska. Over the third beer he hit me with the clincher, You want to go to the Spires?

I signed on the imaginary dotted line. As it turned out, I had wangled a job that summer teaching on Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage. No matter, said Art; we would do our expedition in September, even stay into October. My Huntington partner Don Jensen and I had been desperate to go to the Cathedral (Kichatna) Spires, and might have headed there immediately after Huntington; but for Eds death. Art was equally enraptured with the place.

That summer I rented a squalid little shack in Spenard, a suburb of unzoned, booming Anchorage. Art came by daily when he wasnt in the mountains. He drove a dusty old truck, on the back of which he had erected a wooden shelter that looked vaguely like a dog house. The name of the truck was Bucephalus, after Alexander the Greats horse. Bucephalus also served as Arts domicile. It is hard to summon up a memory of what Art did to make a living at the time. He was paid a pittance to do physiological tests for some scientists at the University of Alaska while he was off climbing. Money was not a central worry; his father, Art used to boast, had supported the family for several years by betting shrewdly on the horses.