Day 13

Woke up about 8 AM. The weather didn’t seem too bad in camp, meaning the wind wasn’t too strong. It was hazy and cloudy, but seemed like a doable day. I still wasn’t hungry or thirsty. I thought that was a bit odd, but didn’t do anything about it. I should have. I wasn’t thinking too clearly. The altitude, dehydration, and lack of food and sleep were getting to me and I made a foolish decision. As we geared up to descend I decided it wasn’t going to be windy and I wore my glacier glasses instead of my ski goggles. Everyone else on the team had their ski goggles on. It may seem like a small thing, but on Denali small mistakes can have big consequences.

Preparing to leave High Camp

We packed up and left camp about 10:30 AM. Kyle, Dove, and Punches left as the first rope team. The second rope team, with David leading, me in the middle, and Ryan bringing up the rear, left a few minutes later. After about a quarter of a mile we walked around a corner and onto the ridge. It was like jumping into a hurricane of ice and snow. The wind was ferocious, it started snowing. Visibility dropped. We were in it now. It was hard to stand up in the wind. I pulled the hood of my parka up tight to keep the wind from blowing my hat off, and to keep it from blowing inside my jacket. Then my glasses fogged up. I tried to wipe them clean, but they just fogged again instantly. David was keeping a good pace, wisely wanting to get past this, off the ridge, down to a lower elevation, and out of the wind, as fast as possible. There was cluster of large rocks ahead of us with lots of people seemingly milling around. I looked closer and saw a young woman on her knees desperately clinging to a rock and crying. I found out later she had lost a crampon. She and her partner ended up turning around and they made it safely back to the 17 camp and then down to 14 later on. But at the time the situation looked intense. We passed them, and some other people who were trying to decide whether or not to continue. The wind was blowing so hard it was impossible for me to stand without using my ice ax or ski pole, which I had in the left hand, for support, or letting the pole and ax dangle from their safety straps and grabbing a rock. I was also blind with my fogged glasses, so I took them off. Then I was blind because the snow was blowing so hard it stung my eyes. All I could do was shield my eyes with my hand when I wasn’t struggling just to stay upright and look straight down at the ground. I could see which way the rope pointed, and I simply headed in that direction as best I could. The wind was screaming from all different directions. Sometimes it was at my back, then I made good progress, but from the front or sides, I was blind and stumbling. We were a little above Washburn’s thumb, on a fairly steep section when the wind came up from my left side and slammed me to the ground. I learned later that Dove, on the first rope team, had been blown ten feet through the air at about the same spot. He was unharmed, scurried back up to the trail and the team continued down. But I was pinned. As I hit the ground, my arms flailed about and my right hand found a rock to push against. The wind gust was coming from my left, so I was pushing against the wind. My left hand was groping for anything to hold onto, without a lot of success. My feet were scraping on the ground, trying to find purchase for the crampon points. I couldn’t see. My head was on the snow, looking to the right to keep the snow out of my uncovered eyes. After several seconds of this, I raised my head to try and evaluate the situation. The wind got underneath me and I slid across the ground about a foot. Wildly thrashing, my right hand found a good rock to push against and I stopped sliding. My position was more secure now, but I still couldn’t see where I was. David told me later that I was on a steep slope that dropped away for about ten feet, then went over a cliff. Now my nose was in the snow. I could feel the wind on my backpack, like some animal, trying to roll me over. I couldn’t let that happen. I was breathing hard and fast, and felt desperate, and a little panicked. A part of me was detached from the whole scene, calmly wondering if the wind would get stronger and blow me off the mountain, dragging my teammates with me, or if it would lighten up and let me go. Either way, I had nothing to do but wait. After what seemed a long time, but was probably less than a minute, the gust eased up and I scrambled down the ridge a few feet and hid from the wind behind a large rock.

I could feel the adrenalin, fear, and desperation coursing through my veins. I was huffing and puffing like I was running wind sprints. And I was determined to find my ski goggles. I took my pack off and looked inside. I couldn’t see my goggles, and I couldn’t feel for them with my mittens on, so I took my gloves off. I still had my lightweight fleece glove liners on, but that was all. I was hurriedly rumaging through my pack, cursing and even unloading part of it. I knew that was a stupid thing to do, setting my stuff out on a steep snow slope in a driving wind, but I was desperate, yep, that’s the word. Soon Ryan came around the corner. He shouted, "This is crazy! We’ve got to go back. This was a poor decision!" I agreed with him that it was a poor decision. But I was too busy looking for my goggles to engage in a discussion. Then David showed up. He had figured something was wrong and had climbed back up to us. He told Ryan the best thing to do was to keep going downhill. It would get better as we went lower. I agreed, it almost always gets better as you go lower. I still couldn’t find my goggles. I told David that my glasses were useless and I had to find my goggles, but couldn’t. David said to me, "We can’t stay here, we have to keep moving." He pulled out his sunglasses and handed them to me. I said ok, took the glasses and put them on. They instantly fogged up and I was blind again. But David was right, we had to keep moving. So I went down as best I could. I tried peaking over the top of the sunglasses, but the snow would hit my eyes like little bb’s. I tried turning them cock-eyed on my face and looking out of one eye, sometimes I ended up almost walking backwards to keep the snow out of my eyes. But nothing worked. I was essentially blind. As we got below the fixed lines at Washburn’s Thumb, the wind eased a bit, it stopped snowing so hard, and I could see better. Then we blasted down to the 16.2 camp and met up with the first rope team. Collapsing with relief to be out of the wind and out of danger, I pulled off my pack, reached inside, and instantly grabbed my ski goggles. Isn’t it funny how things always seems to go like that?

Looking around at the other guys, they looked whipped. Everyone was covered with snow and ice. It was hard for me to see because my eyelashes were iced up. Finally we took some pictures. You never think to take pictures during the tough times. It’s just not a high priority. But later on you wished you had.

The whole trip down the ridge had taken less than an hour.

Down from the ridge - do these guys look tired or what?

Dove after the ridge

David after the ridge

Simonsen after the ridge

I had been tired when we started. Now I was exhausted, and embarrassed that I had been so stupid.. We rested up and took our time descending the fixed lines. With my goggles on, it was a piece of cake. We had decided to go unroped, so I got a little alone time on the mountain, but I was too tired to enjoy it. Thankfully, the wind was much less down here and it wasn’t so cold. I stopped several times on the way down to rest and let the residual fear drain out of me.

When I got back to camp I thought it was odd that the first two fingers on my right hand were numb, even though I was sweating. It was common for my fingers to go a little numb for a while, especially after removing my gloves in order to do some task, like tie and untie ropes, putting on my harness, etc. They usually came back to life after 10 or 15 minutes, so I hadn’t given much notice to my fingers. I took my gloves off and was surprised to see that the tip of my index finger was white. The tip of my middle finger was a faint purple. Punches was standing nearby, I said, "Wow, look at this." He took one look and said, "Frost nip." David looked and suggested I go see the doctor. I went right over. He took a look at them and said it was frostbite, but there should be no permanent damage. I was relieved, but also saddened that this had happened. This was supposed to be fun, and now I had hurt myself. I realized that my mountaineering skills were not what I had thought. That all my life I had climbed with people who were more experienced than me and I had depended on them. That’s not the best strategy for staying injury-free.

Simonsen's hand after the ridge	The same hand two weeks later

The doctor didn’t tell me what was going to happen, that my fingertips would turn black and become as hard as the horn on a bull. That after a couple of weeks they would peel off, revealing fresh, pink, new skin underneath. People did tell me that for they rest of my life those fingertips would be especially sensitive to cold. The mountain had marked me. I took this event as a message, and the message was not to go harder, climb higher, do more, faster, better. The message was about slowing down, staying inside my limits, keeping things recreational instead of desperate and life-threatening. It was the last nail in the coffin of my envelope-pushing, faster and higher, Peter Pan "I won’t grow up" attitude. I was changing my approach to life. At that point I wasn’t sure how much I would pull back, but I was definite about backing up. All life is a story about change, and somewhere up there on the ridge I had turned a page in mine.