Camp Kahiltna

MT. McKINLEY — Flat light, landing on a glacier, veins of blue ice running down peaks on every side, a dizzying loss of scale.

“Hey Loomis, where’s the other pee spot?” brings you right back down to earth.

Denali base camp manager Lisa Roderick shouted this unceremonious welcome to a plane-full of fresh climbers. Tasked with controlling the chaos at 7,200 feet on Kahiltna Glacier, Roderick dispensed with the necessities first. “Oh yeah, it’s by the orange sled.”

Roderick has become a fixture in her ninth year as manager of the jumping off point for most trips up Mount McKinley, Mount Hunter and Mount Foraker. With the beginnings of gray at the edge of her blonde hair, her air of authority is only matched by her unbreakable sprit.

Roderick is technically an employee of the four air taxi companies that fly climbers to base camp. From her canvas tent, she acts as air traffic control for the glacial runway. A weather station powered by batteries and solar panels sits opposite the tattered Buddha flags, as she relays the ground conditions to the pilots.

When the visibility takes a turn for the worse, the returning climbers stack up. A few weeks ago, Roderick said, there were 90 climbers in base camp waiting for a ride home. Even the nicest people can get testy after three weeks on the mountain and then more delays at base camp, she said.

The backed up climbers do serve a purpose, however. The weather that closes the airstrip usually drops fresh snow. The runway needs to be packed down, so Roderick has the climbers walk back and forth single file with their snowshoes or skis. The more climbers, the faster the process. Roderick said her record is 150 climbers all walking the runway.

To survive the 10 weeks she spends at base camp each season, Roderick has outfitted her dome-shaped tent with all the required creature comforts. A knitted quilt tops her sleeping bag. A propane stove keeps her warm. She remodeled her cabin in Talkeetna and brought the old gas range to the mountain. The only problem, she said, is bathing.

Roderick gets relieved about once a month, and the first thing she does is take a shower. But not wanting to go four weeks without washing her hair, Roderick improvised a solution. Climbers use plastic sleds to tow extra gear they can’t carry on their backs. The sleds are about three feet long, one foot wide and just a few inches deep. Roderick takes one of these into her tent, fills it with water heated on her stove and preens herself like a finch in a birdbath.

“You can’t take yourself too seriously up here,” Roderick said. “You have to have a sense of humor if your going to make it.”

She recalled a time when a climber lost his humor and how she taught him some humility. Roderick reads the weather report over the radio every night at 8 p.m. Because weather in the Alaska range is so variable, the accuracy of the report is only around 60 percent, she said.

One night, she decided to read the report in a New York accent. A climber at the 14,200-foot camp felt this was a very unprofessional thing to do and got on the radio to give Roderick a piece of his mind, she said. Little did he know that Roderick controls the pick-up schedule for climbers flying back from base camp to Talkeetna.

“You should have seen him following me around in camp after he realized his mistake. He kept offering to do chores for me and help me out in any way he could. It was great,” Roderick said with a smile.

John Loomis, a National Parks Service ranger, agrees. He remembers when he was at the 14,200-foot camp when the telephone radio rang. It was a telemarketer trying to sell them a subscription to the Anchorage Daily News. His fellow ranger said he didn’t think they could deliver to where he was, but the salesman insisted they covered most parts of the state.

“We made sure we didn’t have to pay until we received the first copy, and then gave our address as 1-4-2-0-0 Camp Mt. McKinley, Denali Park, AK 99755,” Loomis said. “Sure enough, he said his computer didn’t say they couldn’t deliver there.”

Roderick and Loomis keep track of the climbers heading up the mountain. When climbers arrive, they hand Roderick a base camp card with their route, projected departure date, and how much fuel she is supposed to give to them. Roderick uses these cards, along with the gear cache each group flags and buries in case of delay at base camp, to alert the park rangers if a group is overdue.

Loomis, experienced in search and rescue and emergency medicine, has become a bit jaded with the increased number of climbers on Denali. More and more people are climbing here with less experience and as a warm-up for Mount Everest, he said. There are fixed rope lines on sections of the mountain, without which many climbers would not be able to summit.

“Self-sufficiency is dropping. More climbers now expect others to help them out if they get in trouble,” Loomis said.

He points to increased number of climbers experiencing heart attacks as a sign more non-climbers are attempting Denali. One climber was just evacuated Monday for heart problems, and one died at the beginning of this season. There is actually a climber buried 200 feet away from the summit who died of a heart attack, Loomis said.

Solo climbers are just as misguided, he said. While many do it for bragging rights, they are not soloing anything unless it is the dead of winter, Loomis said. At any given time during climbing season, there are 450 to 600 other people on the mountain.

“I often ask a soloist what they are going to do if they fall in a crevasse. They reply one of two ways. Some say they will call for help, some say they will climb out,” Loomis said. “I find both to be whimsical, to be honest.”

The best thing climbers can do to ensure their safety is to have high technical skills and know the risks involved, Loomis said. Understand the storms here are colder and faster than anywhere else, and know the rangers only have limited medical equipment.

This season, however, the rangers — and Roderick by extension — do have a secret weapon. A big mountain of a man emerged from the yellow ranger tent, hair and beard as white as fresh runway snow. Sasquatch in Carhartt overalls is the first impression. Al Gallo, a retired park ranger from Talkeetna, volunteered to work at base camp this year.

“Loomis is my neighbor and asked me if I wanted to come,” Gallo said. “I said ‘Yes, but all I’m going to do is cook!’”

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or (907) 352-2252.