Elton Thayer 1954-05-15
Survivor to recall deadly '54 Denali climb and rescue
By MIKE DUNHAM, mdunham@adn.com, Published: June 25th, 2011
For a week in the spring of 1954, George Argus lay helplessly in a tent at the 11,000-foot
level of Mount McKinley. He was too injured to move after an accident that killed
the leader of his climbing team, stuck in a sleeping bag as snow slowly piled up
around him, and stretching a meager stock of supplies left by two other survivors
who left him behind when they went to get help.
Argus had already been to the top of the 20,320-foot mountain and had been on his
way back down when trouble struck. He knew that no one else would try that route
up North America's tallest peak that season. If his companions perished on their
descent or snow buried his shelter or rescue did not arrive in time, he was a goner.
He was -- in the words of mountaineering writer Douglas MacDonald -- "the most isolated
human being in North America."
Now in his 80s and researcher emeritus at the Canadian Museum of Nature, Argus is
back in Alaska this week. On Monday, he will give a free talk about the climb and
its aftermath at the Anchorage Museum.
The story, a staple of Denali lore, has been recounted many times -- by MacDonald,
in Climbing magazine, among others. It marked the first successful ascent of McKinley
from the south, the first traverse of the mountain and the first time a helicopter
was used to extract an injured climber.
It's Argus' tale to tell. But here's the short version.
OVERLAND TO THE TOP
The idea of climbing McKinley from the south, then descending on the north side
came from Elton Thayer, a ranger at Mount McKinley National Park. Thayer recruited
three friends including Argus, Morton Wood -- the husband of pilot Ginny Wood and
cofounder of Camp Denali -- and Leslie Viereck, a soldier, like Argus, who was assigned
to the Army's Arctic Indoctrination School at Big Delta.
With snowshoes, wool clothes and handmade tents, they left the train stop at Curry,
traveling on foot, on April 17, 1954. The adventurers bushwhacked overland 40 miles
to reach what is now the starting point for many climbers, the Don Sheldon Amphitheater.
Ginny Wood flew over and dropped supplies.
Pioneering the ascent via the South Buttress, they found conditions more difficult
than they'd envisioned.
"We had seriously underestimated not only heights but also the steepness of the
route," Wood wrote in the American Alpine Journal shortly after the climb. The team
laboriously chipped steps into the long ice face until they crested the shoulder
with their goal in sight.
On May 15, they easily made the summit. Compared to what they'd been through, it
"seemed like a complete anti-climax," Wood recalled.
DEADLY SLIDE
The climbers began their descent in high spirits.
Wood had previously climbed on the northern route and, though only 10 parties were
said to have reached the top of the mountain since its first "conquest" in 1913,
the north side was better known than the south.
The walk to Denali Pass, around the 18,500-foot level, then down Harper Glacier
went smoothly. But Karsten's Ridge, the knife-edge feature starting at about 13,000
feet, presented a dangerous slope and iffy footing. They moved cautiously, roped
together, with one man at a time shifting his position while the others belayed
to hold him if he slipped.
It didn't work. Thayer began to slide.
His momentum pulled Viereck loose too. The other two climbers soon followed. For
the next few seconds they slid, rolled and cartwheeled an estimated 1,000 feet.
Just before flying over a cliff, Viereck was jammed in a crevasse. The force of
the jerk broke his ribs but the rope held.
Wood, unhurt, freed himself and spotted Viereck "dazed but on his feet, thank God,"
and Argus, sitting in the snow, one leg doubled underneath him.
Thayer was swinging from the rope over the edge of an ice outcropping, lifeless.
Wood surmised the stop broke his back and killed him instantly.
Gear was strewn and lost but Wood and Viereck located one tent and, as the sun went
behind the North Peak and temperatures dropped, managed to get Argus into shelter.
After their immediate survival was assured, they buried Thayer.
The tent sat in a precarious spot on a steep avalanche chute. Pelted by falling
ice, they waited five days. But Argus was still unable to stand or even bend his
knees. Wood and Viereck fashioned a makeshift ahkio -- or sled -- using the tent
and air mattresses. They lashed Argus in and inched him down another 1,000 feet
over a precipitous wall to reach the relative safety of the head of the Muldrow
Glacier at 11,000 feet.
"I had never before appreciated level surfaces quite as much as I did that night
when we could once again camp on flat ice," Wood wrote.
They now faced a somber choice. Going out for help would require two men working
with ropes to safely navigate the glacier. That meant the disabled man would be
on his own. But waiting together with no way to communicate their situation to possible
rescuers could well mean the death of all of them.
Wood and Viereck left most of their salvaged supplies with Argus -- enough food
for 10 days or, perhaps, two weeks -- and began the long trek to Wonder Lake.
RESCUE BY AIR
With little sleep or food, the two walked almost constantly for the next two days,
down Muldrow Glacier, over McGonagall Pass, along Cache Creek to the McKinley Bar.
Modern climbing guides give the distance as about 27 miles from where they'd left
Argus. There they found a cabin that Thayer had stocked with emergency supplies
before the climb. They rested briefly and pushed on.
They had been told that the dirt road from Kantishna to the railroad would be open
by May 1. But when they reached the road they saw no tracks in the old snow. They
would have to march another 85 miles, four more days on very sore feet.
Disheartened, they caught their breath at the cabin of an old-timer, Johnny Busia
(sometimes given as Buchet), the only person living in the area. "Our feet were
very sore," said Wood.
Then they heard a voice calling from across the river. Park officials with a Dodge
Power Wagon had dug through drifts to make the first trip of the season.
A rescue mission was quickly organized, headed by John McCall, a glaciologist and
one of the handful of people who had previously climbed McKinley. Soldiers -- most
of whom knew Pvt. Argus personally -- flew in from the base at Big Delta, the Army's
main cold-weather training facility.
A Sikorsky H-5 helicopter was also dispatched. It could only fly to 10,000 feet,
short of where Argus had been left, and a chopper rescue off the mountain had never
been tried before. Searchers would have to find the injured climber and get him
to where the helicopter could land safely.
Dropped off by the chopper in bad weather, McCall and Fred Milan, an expert in winter
survival with the U.S. Air Force Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory near Fairbanks, began
moving up the glacier on skis.
Navigating a maze of crevasses in falling snow was painfully slow. "Every foot of
travel had to be probed," McCall wrote in Saga magazine. "It was spooky business."
But the weather cleared the higher they climbed and, on May 30, they spotted a "little
black triangle."
As he approached the tent, McCall became nervous about what he'd find -- a madman?
A corpse?
Instead, "George had his bearded, matted face sticking out, looking up at us with
kind of a funny grin."
Alert and cogent, Argus offered to heat up some tea for the visitors.
"There's a bunch of MPs behind us," McCall told him. "They're after you because
you're AWOL."
Argus laughed. McCall knew he'd be fine.
METHODICAL SURVIVAL
It took two more days for the Army team to bring Argus down Muldrow Glacier to McGonagall
Pass, at about 6,000 feet. There he was transferred to the helicopter and taken
first to Ladd Air Force Base near Fairbanks, then to the military hospital in Anchorage.
He recovered and went on to a career in plant science (his specialty is willows),
a pursuit noted for the same analytical, methodical approach to problems that Argus
employed to stay alive.
Unable to leave the shelter, he had used a refashioned gas can as a bedpan. He occupied
his time by reading a book of Mark Twain stories and mapping every geographical
feature he could spot from the tent flap.
According to a Time magazine report, "He kept regular mealtimes, lifting himself
on one elbow to cook tiny portions of oatmeal and dried eggs." He set out his rations
in order and still had several days' worth left when McCall showed up.
His most difficult hours came when snow melted through the tent and soaked his boots.
Realizing that frostbite was sure to follow, he endured the agony of bending his
knees to remove the boots and replace them with mukluks. The maneuver took a whole
day.
Agrus can tell the rest himself on Monday.
As for the others: Viereck became a botanist and one of the strongest critics of
Project Chariot, the plan to make a harbor in Point Hope using nuclear bombs. He
died in Fairbanks in 2008.
Wood divorced Ginny in 1960 and moved to Seattle and taught high school. He still
lives there. He recalled Thayer as one for whom climbing "was a deep spiritual experience."
Thayer expressed that attitude when he invited his friends to join him on a trek
that could well end in failure. "If reaching the top is all I'm going for, then
(I think) I ought to stay home," he wrote.
Thayer Cirque at the head of Traleika Glacier bears his name. His body remains in
the snow where his friends buried him. His widow, Bernice, wished that no lives
be risked to recover it.
"He loved mountains," she said, "and that's where he'd want to stay."
Reach Mike Dunham at mdunham@adn.com or 257-4332.