Denali 1967: The Worst Climbing Disaster in North American History (Part 2)

Seven men were somewhere on the upper slopes of Denali and nobody had heard from them since a single radio call from the summit. Five survivors were pinned in their tents three thousand feet below, so battered by the wind that four hours of climbing gained them only a few hundred yards. In 1967 there was no rescue service on the mountain, no aircraft that could fly in those conditions, and no way for anyone to go up and look.

Which is how a group of climbers with no connection to the expedition became the only people who could find out what had happened. A Mountaineering Club of Alaska team, a bush pilot circling in a Super Cub, and a note wrapped around a rock and dropped onto the ice.

What they found at high camp was a collapsed tent and a body still gripping the tent pole. Below Archdeacon's Tower they found two more men, one sitting upright with a calm look on his face. Weeks later, when a return party climbed to look again, all of it was gone. The only trace ever recovered from the seven was the top few inches of a flagstaff and a scrap of nylon.

In the second of this two-part series, Andy Hall takes Hugh through the search, the fifty-year argument over who was to blame, and the night his father spent at park headquarters with Joe Wilcox, telephoning seven sets of parents. George Hall called it the longest night of his life. What Andy only worked out decades later was what his father did next — refusing a direct order to close the mountain to climbing, and paying for it with his career.

None of the seven men has ever been found. They are all still up there.

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

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