by Doug Wakefield
They were stuck. They couldn't go up and they couldn't go down. The wind blew fiercely at night, temperatures were well below zero. Joni Phelps and her twin sons, Mike and Marty, were at 16,000 feet a little over 4,000 feet short of the summit of Mount McKinley.
They were pinned down there for four days but the week Joni had spent in Anchorage collecting, preparing, and packaging the food they would carry was paying off. They had food for 25 days, they had only been on the mountain for 10 when the storm had halted their upward progress.
In February of 1993 at the international Ski for Light event, Joni had told us all that, in the spring, she was going to attempt climbing Mount McKinley with her twin sons. Joni's twins, the two oldest of her four children, had lived in Alaska for four years. Their father had joined them for several hunting trips but Joni had not gone yet and she wanted to go to Alaska. The mountain was drawing her still as it had for the last three years.
She said she first thought about climbing McKinley in December of 1990. For a Christmas present that year, she received a solid chocolate replica of the mountain and instead of eating it, she studied it, picking out the route of the West Buttress trail she planned to climb.
After the 1993 Ski for Light event, preparation for the climb began in earnest. Joni slept on the floor for three months to get accustomed to sleeping on hard surfaces. One does not carry box springs up a mountain. In her home town of Warren, Pennsylvania, the temperature dropped below zero several times last winter. When it did, Joni slept outdoors.
People hiking through the Allegheny National Forest this winter and spring often encountered a strange sight. A man and woman were hiking along but only the woman was carrying a backpack and sticking out of it were bags of sugar, flour, and other dense food products. It was just Joni with her husband conditioning herself to carrying a heavy pack.
On May 9th, Mother's Day, Joni left for Anchorage, Alaska to join Mike and Marty. The next week was spent gathering all the food supplies they would need. Going up a mountain is a little like going into space, you have to be almost totally self-contained. you even have to carry oxygen if you plan to sleep above 17,000 feet. Water is the only essential you don't have to carry. The food consisted of dehydrated meals, oatmeal, and a product from Shackley to help keep electrolytes in balance.
Joni said she remembered vividly Bob Norbie's stern lectures about altitude and dehydration when Ski for Light was in Colorado. She took his words seriously. On the climb, the team of three, in fact, did drink 6 quarts of water per person per day.
When the three left Talkeetna, a town 77 miles north of Anchorage, to fly by small plane to their base camp at 7,000 feet, they had amassed 500 pounds of supplies. Approximately 100 pounds would be left at base camp, Joni would carry 50 pounds, Mike and Marty would each carry 100 pounds. The remaining supplies were dragged up the mountain on a sled. This team had no Sherpas.
The base camp was just a stepping off point. After stowing some extra supplies, the three began climbing immediately and spent their first night at 7,300 feet. Four camps and several days later, they were at 16,000 feet and trapped. Up to this point, Joni said the climb hadn't been particularly risky or threatening just exhausting.
Her sons had never functioned as guides for their mother so the protocol for communications had to be worked out. The team always traveled roped together but still climbing without sight is a lot easier if someone can give you good directions where to step, especially when crossing bottomless crevasses. Joni's experiences at Ski for Light helped her communicate to her sons how they could most effectively give her quick directions and as she put it "not give me too much information that isn't essential".
Joni's boots started into one of those crevasses once. She was crossing a bridge made of snow which spanned a deep crevasse. Suddenly, she went through the bridge feet dangling while the bridge kept her from falling. The rest of the bridge held and she managed to extract herself, learning later from the son behind her that when he crossed the bridge he could look through her footprints but saw no bottom.
What do you do when the weather won't let you leave camp? To the consternation of Mike and Marty, Joni tried to keep house tidy up a bit. She was, according to her, told that she was off duty as a mother. As a matter of fact, on this climb the roles were reversed. Joni said the twins took charge and were very firm with her. She said, "they wouldn't let me have any fun, when we were climbing up an 800-foot wall on a rope, I really got a kick out of it and they got all over me, telling me that this was real dangerous, serious business." It was serious business. Eleven people died on Mount McKinley last year alone. Hundreds have died this century.
The storm abated and the next day the team went to 17,000 feet, the highest they could spend the night at without oxygen. Above 17,000, there is not enough oxygen to sustain life. According to Jim Whittacker, the first American to reach the top of Mount Everest, above 17,000 feet you start dying slowly, from then on it's a race between your body's slow decline and your speed to the top.
Joni, Mike, and Marty raced to the top from 17,000 in 11 hours. This was not a leisurely stroll up a sloping glacier. This was mountain climbing. For a quarter-mile just before the summit, the three crossed what can best be described as the ridge pole of North America. About wide enough for two feet, the ridge dropped off sharply on either side. A fall by any team member could have taken them all down. Joni said "you pay very close attention to every step and concentrate on balance".
At 10:00 p.m. May 30th, three members of the Phelps family stood on top of North America at 20,320 feet. Joni said the sun was still brilliant. The top of the mountain is small with an actual hump at the peak.
Descending the mountain was much easier. They didn't have to spend extra nights at various camps adjusting to the altitude. Coming down is when people get hurt and sometimes die. Joni had only one small inaident that pointed this out to her. When returning to the camp at 17,000 feet, she thought they were quite close and she took off her mittens. She said she really enjoyed the feel of the ski poles she was using for balance in her bare hands. That is until her hands started freezing. It was further to camp than she had realized and before reaching it she had frostbite on the tips of a couple of fingers. For the next two days, she did not relax her vigilance to safety and details and the three came down safely and satisfied.
For Joni, it had been a family event a time for her to share a very meaningful experience with her sons. When she came off the mountain, of course she did not have any anticipation of how important that closeness and the building of those memories was going to be.
In August, Mike and Marty were out hunting, strolling along next to a cliff that rose over their heads. Mike was in close to the wall, Marty walked about ten feet farther out. Suddenly, without warning, a block of ice and snow broke from the top of the cliff and almost completely buried Mike, the frame of his backpack was wrapped around him and he was doubled over a block of ice. He waited for his brother to come help. Marty was farther out and most likely unscathed. Mike waited in vain. This fall had not stayed close to the wall instead it crashed down farther out landing squarely on Marty. Mike dug himself out and could not find his brother. Quite badly bruised, Mike struck out for help, a hike that took him twelve hours, and the rangers told Joni, should have taken an average man two days. Marty has never been found.
Part of what saved Mike's life was the strict discipline and extremely high level of physical fitness that Joni and her sons demanded of themselves as they approached and conquered Mount McKinley.