Solo Winter Route CASSIN Mount McKinley.

Artur Testov, who along with two other Russians made the earliest season ascent of Denali (and only January ascent) in January 1998

Other than the backpack we found at the base, tracks way high on the route, and speculation, nothing was ever determined.

I thought it was an avalanche.

I have already written a great deal about Denali. The mountain is clearly finished with me. Veteran Everest climbers have reportedly formed an Everest Anonymous group, whereby they vow never to return to the mountain again, or else face the penalty of paying the group $1000. I have a simpler solution. I refer to the words that I wrote while stranded with frostbite inside a Denali snow cave on March 9, 1982. It was thirty degrees below zero outside. My partners and I had just climbed the Cassin Ridge. My thoughts are preserved as a scrawl on the inside of a granola box, and the ink has run in places, but it's still legible:

"I don't think I've ever suffered so much in my life and I decided a week before the climb (on the glacier approach) that I would do everything I could to get up but afterward I would do something a little different with my life...Now I'm a little worried because I know about the flood of feelings; fine joyous moments and bliss and glow of after exertion and ego; those sensations that seem to envelop me after a big mt.; I'm afraid that I'll lose my resolve and just put all my energy into another big trip and become stupidly obsessed again- missing all those things other people have like a steady girlfriend, a place to live. (Also I'm concerned that I'll get killed if I keep doing trips like this one because there is no margin for error here at all). I miss greenness and real food and telemarking and just being comfortable....."

Just one quick read is all I need to keep me out of the shadow.
-Jonathan Waterman

It's called passion. High Alaska, the book, is a bible for many, me included.

I'll investigate this Mike Young alter ego thing and report back here. It has always intrigued me why their winter climb of Denali (since I was a teenager lapping up the Mountain Magazine articles 30 years ago) was so baldly and unemotionally described. I always took it at face value like we climbers normally do, but maybe there is more that we don't know or can't ever know. Might not be a bad thing.

What we do have though is a whole lot of respect. For bold ascents in hard conditions, and clear writing. I have enjoyed all of Jon Watermans books because they are keepers.

The story starts out innocently enough. Jon splinters his leg ice climbing in New Hampshire, but bounces back and becomes an ice animal. He and his friends revel in winter. They climb ice gullies nude. They practically tear Mount Washington to pieces with their axes and crampons.

With Jon Waterman, the caretaker at Tuckerman Ravine, I made mid-January nude ascents of Yale and Pinnacle Gullies, evoking memories of the Vulgarians.
Perhaps due to my painful knuckles, my climbing speed increased during the winter. Jon and I thwacked our way up Pinnacle in five minutes, and we succeeded in climbing all the gullies twice in five hours. Later I discovered I had broken two fingers.

Mike Young was the caretaker of the HMC Cabin in Huntington Ravine on Mt. Washington from October 1976 - April 1, 1977. He wrote:
With Jon Waterman, the caretaker at Tuckerman Ravine, I made mid-January nude ascents of Yale and Pinnacle Gullies, evoking memories of the Vulgarians.
Perhaps due to my painful knuckles, my climbing speed increased during the winter. Jon and I thwacked our way up Pinnacle in five minutes, and we succeeded in climbing all the gullies twice in five hours. Later I discovered I had broken two fingers.
As for why Jon used the pseudonym for Mike, I don't know.

Lonnie Dupre making progress on the upper Kahiltna glacier, he is planning on making it to the 10,200ft camp today.

The fuzz in the left side of the photo is blowing snow. Fairly strong north wind outflow event going on today (which is what brings the cold air in).