Denali 1967: The Worst Climbing Disaster in North American History (Part 1)

In the summer of 1967, twelve men set out to climb Denali - then officially Mount McKinley - the highest mountain in North America. Nine of them had been recruited by a 24-year-old graduate student named Joe Wilcox, and most had never met before they arrived in Alaska. The other three were a Colorado team who had lost their fourth man in a car accident weeks earlier, and who were forced to merge with Wilcox's group days before the climb because park rules required a minimum of four. Twelve strangers, one leader, and a mountain that none of them had any real experience of.

Denali in 1967 was a different proposition to Denali today. There was no rescue service. Weather forecasts came from a radio DJ reading out the temperature in Anchorage. Radios were so poor that a message from the mountain had to be relayed through Fairbanks and back again. From base to summit it is a bigger climb than Everest, and its position close to the Arctic means the death zone starts lower down.

On 15 July, four men reached the summit in near-perfect weather. Three days later, the remaining seven made their own attempt - and radioed from the top as the cloud closed in around them. It was the last anyone ever heard from them. What was building over the mountain would be described as the worst storm ever to hit Denali with climbers on it.

Andy Hall joins Hugh for the first of a two-part series. An Alaskan journalist and former editor of Alaska magazine, Andy has a personal connection to this story: in 1967 his father, George Hall, was superintendent of the park, and Andy was five years old and living inside the crisis as it unfolded. His book Denali's Howl draws on five years of research - tracking down the survivors and rescuers, and unearthing the lost tapes and documents of that summer, including recorded interviews with his late father.

In Part 1: the mountain, the men, the merger that shouldn't have happened, and the decision to split the team that has been argued over ever since.

Denali's Howl: The Deadliest Climbing Disaster on America's Wildest Peak is out now.

The Art of Adventure is brought to you by Arthur Beale, outfitters to sailors, adventurers, vagabonds and explorers for over 500 years.