May 2004, I was excited my first big peak at the age of 24. We packed and loaded and all the typical blah blah of a trip report. Airplane landed on the glacier with a skid on the spring snow, we were off, loaded with sleds and the terrible idea to traverse Denali on skis. We hauled for days, back and forth between camps, three trips between camps to get all of our junk higher.
Weeks later we descended after spending five days at high camp, awful weather, frozen hands a few times while trying to shit in a squall (no frostbite, but definitely a challenging part of Denali). Descending, I poked on a section of wind blown snow, it disappeared into the gaping black maw and I with it. Steve had me on the line, fish on. He pulled me out crawling on his knees with crampons on, a commercial fisherman by trade. We laughed, I was shook, and had been able to assist his haul by stemming on the walls of the crevasse to climb to safety.
I went on to climb Denali more times. It is a formidable mountain and always changing.
-Luke Smithwick | 1052 | 1400m | Pokhara, Nepal | April 11, 2020
