"Last and probably the most difficult and dramatic of all potential routes on Mount McKinley is the great central bulge on the fabulous 10,000-foot south face of the mountain. This route may be classified as unequivocally excellent climbing from start to finish." taunted Bradford Washburn in an article in the 1956-1957 edition of The Mountain World.

The gauntlet had been thrown and in June of 1961, Ricardo Cassin, Luigi Airoldi, Luigi Alippi, Giancarlo Canali, Romano Perego and Annibale Zucchi spent 26 days making the first ascent. Beginning the climb on July 5, Cassin's "animals" gained the ridge from the East Fork of the Kahiltna and slowly moved upward on the most difficult rock and ice pitches Denali has to offer and in the environment unique to Alaska - frequent storms, high winds, spindrift avalanches, sheets of rime-covered rock - and a special kind of cold. They reached the South Summit in a final 17-hour push from their high camp. They then descended the ridge. In the 60 years since, safer, faster and easier alternatives to some of Cassin's pitches - particularly the first 1,500 feet - have been found. There are more difficult "Designer Lines" and the route is now often blitzed in hours but it remains perhaps the mountain's most sought-after and most difficult. Statistics don't lie - only about 2% of those who talk the talk actually walk the walk - and those who complete it will testify that it is no less trivial than it was in 1961. By any route, finishing Denali is an accomplishment worthy of inclusion among the world's seven summits.

Two years prior to Cassin's remarkable achievement, four Americans had made the first ascent of the Denali's West Rib, a spur lying between the West Buttress and South Ridge - the soon-to-be object of Cassin's attention. The West Rib ascent continued a long tradition of accomplishments by Americans who had honed their skills here in the Tetons. In 1978 - some twenty years later - summer was winding down and a group of rangers was ending the day with cocktails. Mt McKinley and the West Rib ascent came up in the conversation. Someone mentioned the Cassin Ridge - probably as a casual aside, but an idea took root, and by season's end, there was no backing down - we were making plans. There were six of us. We had worked together as climbing rangers in the best of times and the worst of times. As the Park Service would say, we had the "KSAs" for the job. A couple of us knew a little about Alaskan climbing. What the hell ...

We had an idea of what it would take to pull this off, but there weren't many accounts of the ascent. I wrote a couple of letters to the Club Alpino Italiano but heard nothing in return. Cassin was unapproachable and information from interim ascents was hard to find. We would figure it out ourselves. The project became immense and the six of us were scattered by season's end - each with a responsibility. We were on a shoestring budget and in the 70's, the concept of sponsorship to support such adventures didn't extend much further than equipment discounts and pro deals. We begged, borrowed and stole equipment. The Park Service was one of our unwitting benefactors. Wives baked bread and cookies, hundreds of pounds of fruit and veggies were dehydrated in my garage. We spent hours in the aisles of Costco, then more hours organizing the booty into bags, one for each of the three tents and the 28 days that we had planned on the mountain - 3 squares a day for now 7 people came to 588 meals in total. Experience with Teton winter climbing - plenty cold - left us convinced that only the wholly self-deceived would cuddle with a canister of isobutane, carry the empties to the summit of North America's highest peak, then dutifully recycle them in Talkeetna. We went with white gas.

When everything was collected the pile was huge. Jim Sharp, the owner of Talkeetna Air Taxi, and the pilot who would be ferrying us and our gear to the mountain looked it over with a non-committal wince. We waited for days for the fickle weather to clear enough for the whole pile and 7 people to all get to the same place at the same time. We arranged and rearranged, sorted and resorted, and took a couple of scary flights with Jim for company photo ops. Talkeetna was getting pretty well-known to everyone. After four days - camped out in the parking lot, Jim emerged from the office with his tweed jacket and gaitors. "Mountain's out - load up gentlemen!"

The seats of the Cessna 185 were removed and our gear was unceremoniously tossed in – whatever would fit. Guys climbed into the back on the heap and were then covered with more. I sat in front on a 5-gallon can of white gas with a pack on my lap. Jim climbed in and bucked-up. “Safety first - and don't touch anything.” He exclaimed with a wry smile. He red-lined the throttle and the plane groaned into motion. Here, aircraft load limits were more a guideline than a regulation, and bush pilots did unholy things with their aircraft.

Once airborne, we gained a few thousand feet and Jim eased back on the throttle. The mountain came into view through the clouds. “Big sucker isn’t she?” We said nothing, our mouths dry with the sudden dose of reality. We cleared “One Shot Pass” and were over the main Kahiltna which for the next twenty miles was a wasteland of moraines, ponds and crevasses – a death-trap for an aircraft. Perched on the fuel can, I listened intently to the sounds of the engine. It purred like a kitten ...

Now the glacier below was covered with snow and the terrain began to close in. There were big mountains everywhere. Jim pumped the actuator to lower the skis. I thought he would circle and line up an approach, but he just dropped the plane straight in, flipped on the lights, made a hard right turn onto the east fork of the Kahiltna, and landed with full power. He pulled full rudder and made a wide circle, rejoining his landing track. It all made sense.

We unloaded just as unceremoniously – heaving everything into piles on either side of the aircraft. He reattached the doors. “Welcome to KIA! Watch your stuff!” he warned as he climbed in and roared away. We looked at one another. We were knee-deep in fresh snow, so we punched a boot track and dragged our gear a hundred feet or so from the newly-created runway, finishing just as the next aircraft came into view. It was hard work - already. This was a multi-act performance and it was starting to cloud up and get dark when the last plane dumped its load and departed. Someone said, “We should set up camp …” It was April 30th. We were the early birds and alone on the Kahiltna. Another party had arrived two days before but they were already on their way to Mt. Foraker. For the moment, we had Denali to ourselves.

You are fools to arrive first because you will have to make a trail. We had allowed ourselves a month to climb the peak, get off, get back to the lower 48, and show up for work. Our plan would be to ski our gear to the junction of the northeast fork of the Kahiltna and leave a cache. We would break a ski track up the N.E. Fork to the ice fall then slog to the base of the ridge on foot. This was quickest, but would require an intermediate camp in the northeast fork, a certifiably dangerous area of the mountain. The terrain is heavily crevassed and subject to avalanches from either side. It was a calculated risk. From high in the northeast fork on the day we were completing our approach, we watched as a large serac collapsed from the west buttress and swept across the glacier - inundating our previous night’s camp. The nickname - “Valley of Death” - is no less-deserved today.

We would fix ropes up the first section - the Japanese Couloir - and from there climb the route alpine style in three teams, rotating the lead on each section. It was early season and cold. The ice was hard and blue and our packs were pushing 80 pounds. We finished the 900 feet of ice just as the sun was setting and settled in to our bivvy on the Cassin Ledge, exhausted and with the realization that we were overloaded. Unlike the straightforward ascent of the couloir, the climbing above would be more difficult. The few obvious luxuries were the first to go, followed by some food – mostly dehydrated, and last and most concerning – fuel. We would have to melt snow for every drop of water. We could get by on less food but not less water. We settled on each carrying two liters of white gas.

The packs seemed at least theoretically lighter as we climbed through the first section above the ledge. It was awkward 5.8 mixed climbing that led to a knife-edge snow ridge. After a thousand feet of airy traversing, we reached the hanging glacier at 14,000 feet. We would spend a day or two here in the relative luxury of a piece of flattish ground, consume some supplies and freshen up for the first rock band - another thousand feet above. Smiles accompanied a growing sense of resolve that we could do this. Just as well for it would be a pain in the ass to go back.

We encountered our first real storm of the climb at this camp. We were on the ridge crest and though well dug-in and walled off on three sides, our tents were exposed on the fourth. We spent several hours with our backs to the tent wall and arms outspread as the wind howled. Our tent - a North Face Oval Intention – was a tested veteran of expeditions and as close to bullet-proof as tents get. This one however had also seen hundreds of days in the sunshine and the fly was brittle from UV. During a lull, I stepped out to check on things. As I zipped the fly closed, it ripped away from the zipper, leaving an 18-inch tear. I removed the fly and brought it inside just as the winds picked-up again. With our backs to the tent once more, we repaired the rip with nylon thread and athletic tape – bonded using a bottle full of boiling water. Both the tent and our hanging stove system held together and would come to be treated with obsessive – and excessive - reverence for the rest of the climb.

The storm had brought in much colder air as we made our way to our next camp in the bergschrund at the base of the first rock band at 15,000 ft. We packed up the next morning, ready for the day’s excitement. After several hours, the lead team had made little progress - and with the sunless day - the cold was seeping into us. We resurrected camp and crawled into our bags. This would mark the beginning of cold injuries and altitude issues that would plague many of us for the rest of the climb, and one of us would develop serious complications.

Morning presented the same dismal weather and it took most of the day to finish the first rock band. At its top, we traversed a few hundred feet up to the base of the second rock band at 16,000 ft. and dug a place for the tents. The mixed ground of the first rock band hadn’t been trivial, but everyone got a timely boost in confidence with it now below. We sat outside the tents after dinner and chatted with truckers on the Parks Highway, miles to the east – their headlights twinkling in the immense shadow cast by the mountain in the eternal sunset of the Alaskan spring.

We were overtaken by Mike Covington who was guiding a couple of clients up the ridge. They passed us, and in the process, one - who should have been nowhere near the mountain -spiked our tent and later, knocked loose a rock that arrived like a grenade - making a fist-sized hole in the oval, six inches from Doyle’s head. Even with the best of guides, money couldn’t confer common sense and it seemed the ultimate paradox to come half way to the middle of nowhere and still be exposed to lethal idiots.

“How much fun would this be in shorts and sneakers?” Peter mused as we stood on a little pillar half-way up the second rock band surveying a smooth series of slabs above. For some of us, mixed climbing on granite and hard ice was a new and intricate dance, being mostly a winter thing in the Tetons. Now it would be done front-pointing on the tiny nubbins of the slab. It was sunny – and seemingly warm – a fantasy intensified by the UV bombarding us. It was pointless to worry about consequences so we tippy-toed up the slab and the short wall above to the snow. We had climbed a vertical mile since the Japanese Couloir and rumor had it that the second half was a bit easier – not counting altitude, cold and commitment.

Peter was our zinc oxide poster child, always liberally smeared with the stuff. He liked to remind us of the gift of his “delicate Grecian skin”, saying the reason he looked so much better than the rest of us was that he took care of his radiant natural beauty. He was a handsome guy - and he had a point. Presented with a choice, women walking into the ranger station almost always took their questions to Peter, unaware that behind the smile was a consummate - and happily married - alpinist.

Doyle, the third in the Oval, was a relative newbie, but his strength and quiet confidence quickly won the trust of the crew at Jenny Lake. During his first season, he led most of the hard pitches on some of the most sought-after routes in the Tetons. But he had the cool of a warrior, and he came back for more, eventually making a career of the National Park Service. What was a goal became a comittment. We remain inseparable friends.

Keith and Renny were in the incredibly efficient Early Winters Omnipotent – the “Blue Gusano” as Keith called it. They were snug as bugs in the “womb of the worm”, but as life in it wore on, they would excel at describing entries and exits in ever-evolving scatological and gynecological terms.

George and Hugh had chosen a Whillans Box – a beast to carry but an acknowledgment of ultimate respect for the weather Denali could dish up. As we climbed the ridge, we would encounter the detritus of failure – broken axes, abandoned equipment, fuel canisters, severed ropes, even plain ordinary garbage - all frozen in place - and remains of each of the three tents we were using – sobering signs of bad karma, desperation and dumbfuckery.

The third rock band meant the end of the “serious” climbing but it was serious nonetheless. At 17,000 ft. The air was getting thin and we were all now on partial rations. There were frostbite issues and some edema. We skirted the rocks above the third rock band and set up camp. Almost a third of the elevation remained – it seemed like a long way …

We regained the ridge the next day at about 18,500 ft. A huge lenticular was forming over the summit, so we dug in to wait out the wind. For nearly 48 hours we listened to the constant 25 knot drone and peed in our water bottles. We were down to the last few ounces of gas and a few dates. Anything that could have otherwise served as a diversion had long-since been consumed. Doyle's tobacco had been destroyed by the rock bomb. We were getting tired of each other. By the morning of the second day, the winds dropped and we packed up, thankful to be moving. Keith contemplated the carcass of an abandoned Omnipotent – burst by some unimaginable wind, and exclaiming that the boulder field ahead “looked Scottish”, led up to the final slopes below Kahiltna Horn.

Plodding to the summit, the spectacles of Mts. Hunter and Foraker (which had become almost boring over the past two weeks) were now worth another picture – and a pause up the endless shuffle, a sad denouement to the superb days now far below. The rest of Alaska was a sea of clouds. Someone said “I think we’re here”. We were.

Belaying the 1,000 ft. down from Kahiltna Pass quickly seemed complicated and pointless - why slide off together when we could do it individually, so we stashed the ropes and picked our way down the notorious stretch to the 17,000 ft. camp. Here, Peter's worrisome edema had subsided but Hugh's feet were not good. We found some oatmeal in a cache from a previous expedition. The days were now officially endless. We would make our way back to KIA in two stages – with a stop at our igloo at the N.E. Fork. Along the way, we encountered an almost continuous stream of expeditions on their way up the West Buttress. There was a little bit of everything. The season was in full swing - and there would be a path all the way to the airplane.

The airstrip was lined with the base camps of the hopeful. The flying services shared a canvas wall tent (with a stove) - Concourse A. We were some of the first returning climbers. Someone was frying bacon. As we waited for Jim to come get us, I eyed the bottle of Jack Daniels on a shelf behind the table. I actually eyed it several times but I never got a nod. Who cared - the sins of Talkeetna awaited. As we flew out, I had an odd thought: Next time, I would bring bacon.