INTRODUCTION:  HOW DID ALL THIS START?

Background and idea for the hike. 

The idea for this hike actually began during a July, 2010 Kantishna Wilderness Tour bus ride.  On the way back from Kantishna I heard the bus driver tell an interesting story.  The driver, John Miller (easy name to remember), told the story of the first successful climbing party of Mt. McKinley in 1913.  At the start of their trip, the group of climbers (led by Hudson Stuck) had to find a convenient way up the mountain from the north/Wonder Lake area.  They found the best route was by going through McGonagall Pass.  John Miller mentioned that you can still hike the same route today:  from Wonder Lake to McGonagall Pass. Basically, that’s all he said... but he also said that he hoped to make the hike himself one day.  The next week, after we had returned home, I tried to find information about the hike on-line.  It turned out to be fairly well described on the National Park Service website, as well as in the book “Classic Hikes of the World”, by Peter Potterfield.  This book ranked the hike 4 out of 5 for physical difficulty, and 5 out of 5 for psychological difficulty.  5 out of 5 for psychological difficulty?  What does that even mean? I was intrigued and felt like I had to know more.

 



The hike to McGonagall Pass with landmarks shown

I then undertook an effort to contact John Miller.  On LinkedIn, I found a John Miller from Fairbanks who worked for Aramark.  I requested to be his contact and (to my surprise) he accepted me. I sent him an email telling him about my thoughts and he encouraged me to give it a go.  Therefore, in August, 2010, I hatched a plan to hike from Wonder Lake to McGonagall Pass. So John Miller of Fairbanks, Alaska… thanks-a-lot for getting me started on all of this (I mean it).

 

Denali means "the Great one"

 

Labor Day has always been one of my favorite holidays.  The time between July 4 and Thanksgiving would be really long if not for Labor Day.  The week of Labor Day, 2010 looked like a good week to do this hike.  Of course, Labor Day was only weeks away, so I had to act fast.  I began preparing - - purchasing plane tickets, arranging for a rental car, forming a gear list.  Wait a second… WHO would go with me?  This became a question that troubled me for several days.  After thinking it through, I decided that whoever went with me would absolutely need to meet the following requirements:

1)      Be physically able to hike 40 miles over several days while carrying a 40lb backpack,

(this narrows it down to maybe 100 people that I know)

2)      have the money to do the hike (airfare, meals, etc), (down to about 25 people that I know)

3)      have the time to do the hike (one week absolute minimum), (down to 10)

4)      be passionate about reaching the goal (Alaska is not for sissies), (down to about 5)

5)      be someone that I would get-along with & trust,  (more accurately:  someone who I could put up with). (this pretty much eliminates everyone else)

BUT most importantly:

6)      their Wife would let them go. (zero, zilch, nada, no one I know) 

Wife?  Wife!!!  I hadn’t even gotten the go-ahead from MY OWN wife!  Linda has always been one-step-ahead of me for the 26 years we had been married (2010).  She might be a real problem for me to go. In fact, if she finds out the danger and the cost, NO WAY she lets me do this. Especially the cost part. :) I hatched a plan to rent the necessary camping equipment to save money.  My only hope would be to: “Be honest, but she didn’t need to know everything about the bears… nor the river”.

Before I even told Linda… um, let me re-phrase that:  before I even asked Linda, another thought came to me… MY MOTHER.  Mom was 82 and I didn’t want to make her worry. Yes, I was 49 years old but still the baby of the family.  And, I’ve always been fairly certain that I was her favorite child.  NO WAY Mom would approve of this. I was certain she would tag-team with Linda to nix this crazy idea. A vision of laying on the couch on Labor Day came through my little brain. Then, the vision changed to mowing the lawn and other suburban things. It didn’t take long to make a decision: I would not tell MOM anything. Total silence would be my approach to my parents. Dad? Dad wouldn’t care. Dad would ask if he could go with me. 

Lastly, I decided I would not tell anyone at work, nor church, nor at the racquetball club, nor anyone… except my immediate family.  It would be a stealth hike and I liked the idea. In, and out, piece of cake.  At the family Christmas gathering, I would show some great pictures and not have to answer the question “are ya stupid?” very much.   If I had told any of my family BEFORE the hike, it would have been bad news. This is new stuff for the Barr family.  Much of my family comes from the prairies of Illinois… Linda and I now live in northern Alabama. There’s not a lot of grizzly-bear-worry in those two places, even though some people in my family may actually look like grizzly bears. 

So the truth can now be told:  the decisions to go solo on that first hike was made mostly because of a lack of time to search for an appropriate partner.  Of course, AFTER the hike was over, I had a rush of testosterone which made my story change to an outline of:
 

A.      “Yes, I solo-hiked Denali”,

B.      “I didn’t want to go with anyone”, and

C.      “No, I wasn’t scared at all”. 

Only ‘A’ was entirely true.



Crossing the McKinley River is one of the major obstacles to the hike.

 

Getting the go-ahead from Linda was next.  The build-up took several days for the speech preparation (well actually, “groveling” would be a more accurate word than “speech”). I waited for the right time.  After carefully explaining what I had in mind and what I wanted to do, I was stunned when she offered no objections: “Go-ahead. I think you should do it”. 

I consider that exact moment to be one of my finer accomplishments in 2010.  I have a great wife and she was great to let me do this.  Linda, the life insurance policy (as it always is) is in the underwear drawer.

Final prep for the hike included asking some Denali experts at TripAdvisor.com – Denali National Park and Preserve Travel Forum which I credit with some great advice.  It quickly became clear to me that crossing the McKinley River would be the first big obstacle to achieving the goal.  Some people on TripAdvisor advised me NOT to attempt to cross the McKinley, others said it would be ok.  I found a most excellent travel blog at:  http://withoutbaggage.com/essays/alaska-mckinley-river/.  I emailed both Hank Leukart and his brother. Both were very helpful with advice about the river.  I recommend reading Hank’s account of crossing the McKinley River…part of his story states:

“In an instant, water was above our heads and we were floating downstream at 20 miles per hour in 36-degree water with 45-pound backpacks strapped to our backs.  As I looked into my brother’s eyes, I could see that he thought we were going to die, and I telepathically agreed. I thought to myself, “This is how those stupid people you read about in newspapers die in the wilderness.” 
 

River crossings cause more deaths than grizzly bears in Denali

River crossings cause more deaths than grizzly bears in Denali

 

River, shhmiver… it didn’t bother me one bit… (riiight). Then, I found this harrowing account of another person:

“It shouldn't end this way...I thought to myself as I felt the frigid, silty waters of the McKinley pour over me. I didn’t think that it was possible to find myself in this same position again, pack forcing my face into the murky flow. I tried to kick myself over and look for Joel on the bank, who would hopefully fish me out with the large branch that he had dangled into the water. I kicked, but couldn’t reach bottom. My horizontally mounted skis rammed the overhead shore line as I desperately reached out for the life and salvation that was the far bank”.

And this other one:

“The first several braids of the river were trivial--knee deep at worst and pretty gentle current. Then they got a bit deeper and faster moving. I was crossing one that was about waist deep when I got swept off my feet and went for a swim! This is water that’s fresh off a glacier, so it’s about as cold as it gets. Fortunately the air temperature wasn’t bad--probably in the 60s. So I changed into dry clothes and started hiking and it didn’t take me too long to warm back up. All in all not too bad, but the swim was pretty scary”.

And this other one:

“I changed to my tennis shoes and stepped slowly into the first branch. That was easy, it was barely deeper than my shoes. Some channels were deeper than others, but gradually I was able to cross each one without incident. Seeing the bank on the south side, I felt a sense of relief as I ventured into the last channel. It seemed just like the others at first, but suddenly, my left foot stepped into a very deep channel and the raging current immediately pulled me off my feet. I found myself floating face down in the water and advancing downstream at lightning speed. At first I was not even able to get my face out of the water and was sure I would drown quickly. I found myself imagining my mother who was now on a plane out of Fairbanks, as she was given the grim news of my demise.

My backpack was so heavy that the large pocket on top was forcing my head into the water. I was finally able to force my face out of the water and gasp for breath. But I was still rocketing downstream. I felt my legs go completely numb from the combination of being smashed on the passing rocks and the icy near freezing temperature of the glacial water. I struggled, and gasped, and fought, but just when I figured I was lost forever, my backpack suddenly caught on the rocks along the shore. This slowed me down long enough that I was able to roll over onto my back, and stop myself from becoming another disaster statistic of the Alaska wilderness. I was able to meekly crawl out onto the shore.

I was now both soaking wet and freezing cold. Fortunately my backpack was relatively waterproof and my sleeping bag and extra clothing had stayed dry. My legs were an agonizing mass of bruises, but I was still able to walk and had the strength to set up my tiny bivouac tent, light my stove, and change into dry clothes”.

These didn’t sound too bad.  :)

 

I decided that I would try it.    

 

I was going to hike (alone) to McGonagall Pass during Labor Day week, 2010!!!

Click on this link to continue to Chapter 1: 

Chapter 1: 2010 - "Quest Denied"