Clash of Cultures on Denali

Ersun N Kurtulus

Climbing the crowded West Buttress of Denali, we had made good progress. Carrying single loads to the Motorcycle Hill and double loads to the Basin Camp, we had reached the High Camp (5200m) in nine days. Then, we were stranded for four days due to high winds. On the summit day, I was slow. Sluggishly climbing the steep slope to the Denali Pass, I was taking a break after every ten or fifteen steps and leaning on my ice axe to catch my breath. Our pace was making my climbing partner more on more nervous. After reaching the Denali Pass, on my suggestion, we unroped and decided to go for the summit independently, on our own pace.

“Stop!”

This was our first experience with expedition style mountaineering and we had been making what were perhaps the typical mistakes of the inexperienced. My climbing partner had apparently underestimated how tedious waiting at a high camp could undermine one’s determination. He was missing a shower, his fiancé and his I-pod – in that order, if I remember correctly – and had been talking about going down. Myself, I should have trained much more intensively for the expedition and should have become much fitter. Now, I was paying the price at high altitude for my laziness at low altitude. To make things worse, we had miscalculated our food rations and were having barely more than 500 calories a day during the last couple of days. We were more or less starving at the High Camp.

“Stop! Wait!”

I couldn’t ignore the rangers shouting at me anymore. With my ice axe, I pointed ahead to a place where the slope eased, implying that I would be waiting for them there.

“You are not going anywhere. You are too slow. You probably have HAPE. You are going down.” one of the rangers more or less ordered.

Calmly, I tried to explain to them that I had neither HAPE nor HACE nor AMS, and that I even didn’t have MMS. The only altitude related symptom that I had was breathlessness, which slowed me down. I told them that I was always like this at high altitude, but that this had never stopped me from summiting and returning safely to the high camp. Yes, it was true that we were expecting 20-30 miles an hour winds tonight, but winds of that magnitude were doable, even if they were unpleasant, and that after all, this was only a forecast. I also told them that I could always return back if the weather deteriorated.

They were adamant.

“You will create a rescue situation up there. You are going down!” ordered one of the rangers.

“Can you put your ice axe like this and attach a sling to your harness like that and clip it with a screw gate carabineer to the ice axe like this” requested the other.

I was outraged. I escape to mountains from authorities, from my boss, from the taxman who takes my money to waste on God knows what, from the policeman who reprimands me for cycling in the opposite direction on a one-way lane, from the straitjacket of social etiquette, from the suffocating intellectual conformism – in short, from everything that is repressive in our society. And here I was standing in front of two young men, half my age at most, telling me what I should do.

I asked one of them if he had the authority to send me down and bluntly told the other that I didn’t need an ice axe anchor on a slope that wasn’t even 30 degrees. They implied that I would be fined or banished – “sanctioned” was the word which one of them mumbled – if I didn’t do as I was told.

I had no doubts about the good intentions and kindness of the rangers. What I was encountering was probably a clash of cultures, a collusion between the free spirit of mountaineering and the bureaucracy of the National Park Administration; between the idea of Denali as a mountain to be climbed and the notion of Denali as a tourist attraction to be regulated; freedom of the individual encountering the patronizing behaviour of the state. Later back in Taalketna, I would learn that just a couple of days after this incident, and in a questionable culmination of this overprotective attitude, the rangers had declared a paraglider “mentally instable,” bundled him up and helicoptered him off the mountain to a mental hospital. I had no doubts about the good intentions but I was unable to reign over my anger.

I told them that I, as a free individual, had the right to risk my life on mountains… I even had the right to get killed on mountains… And if my body was disturbingly near to a route, then, my insurance and my park fees should cover the cost of rolling it over to the nearest deep crevasse.

They had no counter arguments.

In the meanwhile, using their walkie-talkies, they had traced my climbing partner higher up on the mountain. He returned rather agitated. A guide on the way up had told him that there was a thousand dollar fine for soloing the mountain. Having spent his last penny for this expedition, the thought of having to pay another huge sum was more than what he could bear. I suggested to him to check with rangers if this was the case, and if it was not, then to go for the summit solo – which he eventually did.

Demoralised, but with the hope of making another summit attempt within the next couple of days, I started walking slowly down from the Denali Pass. The rangers reappeared and asked me to rope up with them. I politely declined. I don’t rope up with strangers. They had denied me the possibility of reaching the summit, but I wasn’t going to let them deny me the enjoyment of a solo descent from the notorious Denali Pass under bright blue skies.

10 July 2010

Anchorage

Epilogue:

I met one the rangers (the obnoxious one) a year later, on the way down after finishing my solo ascent of the mountain – this time successfully. I met him at around 3400 meters after descending the Motorcycle Hill. He asked me about the “German guy” who had disappeared at the High Camp. I corrected him, saying that there were Germans up there but an Austrian guy who was a guide and whom I had met on the High Camp. I then recognized him: “You were the guy who stopped me last year” I said. He sheepishly mumbled something. Victoriously, and somewhat sarcastically, I said that he wouldn’t be able to stop me this time because I was returning from the summit. He said, again sheepishly, “you were abandoned by your partner last year.” “Abandoned!?” I hissed and with a wry smile, I continued my descent towards the Base Camp.