of us pack up five days of food to eighteen thousand feet and climb to the summit the following day.”
One of those boisterous discussions followed during which holes were punched in Wilcox’s plan. McLaughlin worried that they were climbing too fast and argued for an intermediate camp at 16,500 to allow for more acclimatization. Luchterhand said rushing to the summit before bringing more supplies up from the Coxcomb cache would leave them without enough food and fuel if they were halted by a bad storm. The expedition members pushed this way and that against Wilcox’s ascent strategy. He was neither defensive nor dismissive, allowing the discussion to continue.
A consensus was reached: the two Taylors, Schiff, and Russell would remain low for another day and pack enough food to feed ten men for six days from the Coxcomb cache to Camp VI. The other eight men would move up to 18,000 feet, each carrying four days’ worth of food, and go on to the summit on July 15. The other four would move up to the high camp on the fifteenth with three more days of food and make their summit attempt on Sunday, July 16.
The Colorado men ate in their own tent and had not been part of the meeting. But when Wilcox relayed the plan through the wall of their tent they agreed. Howard Snyder was “a bit apprehensive about depending on the Wilcox group’s food and stoves, since both left a great deal to be desired,” but he decided they could handle it for the two or three days it would take to get to the summit and back to Camp VI. Soon the camp was alive with preparations. They began paring down their gear to the essentials needed for a fast summit turnaround. The cook tent would remain there at 15,000 feet along with other unnecessary gear. They would carry a few pots, two stoves with full fuel tanks,two shovel scoops minus their handles, trail-marking wands, a first aid kit, two gallons ofBlazo fuel, and the five-watt CB radio. Each man had a small amount of emergency food and his own personal gear and sleeping bag.
On the morning of July 14, eight men prepared to ascend the Harper Glacier and establish high camp around 18,000 feet. After the five-day Karstens Ridge ordeal, it looked like a cakewalk: a 3,000-foot ascent spread over 3 miles of hard-packed snow punctuated by two large icefalls. It would be easier going but not without danger, according to Washburn’s guide: “There are a number of treacherous crevasses in this upper section of Harper Glacier, just where one would expect the going to be the best,” he wrote. “The high winds up here often form smooth but very flimsy bridges of soft snow across many of the smaller cracks.”
The route up the Harper also was rich in history. At 16,000 feet it passed beneath the Sourdough Gully, which Pete Anderson, Billy Taylor, and Charlie McGonagall ascended to reach the top of the north peak in 1910. At 16,400 feet it traversed the plateau separating the Upper and Lower Icefalls, passing through the site of Belmore Browne’s high camp from which he staged his unsuccessful summit bids. Around 17,500 feet, in the middle of the valley, Stuck and Karstens had pitched the final camp from which they conquered the peak in 1913.
They had arrived. This was it.
Then flames erupted into the cold mountain air.
There are two versions of what happened and the ensuing tent fire that nearly halted the expedition. Snyder described it this way: “The men in the tent had been using two stoves simultaneously, a hazardous practice at best. One had almost burned dry, and W. Taylor decided to refill it. Instead of taking the stove outside, he opened the filler cap while the stove was sitting right beside the still-burning second stove. As the cap was unscrewed the pressurized fumes from the fuel tank filled the tent, and were immediately ignited by the second stove.”
Wilcox, who was in the tent when the explosion occurred, drew a slightly different picture. “At 8:00 A.M. Hank, Walt, Steve, John,
One of those boisterous discussions followed during which holes were punched in Wilcox’s plan. McLaughlin worried that they were climbing too fast and argued for an intermediate camp at 16,500 to allow for more acclimatization. Luchterhand said rushing to the summit before bringing more supplies up from the Coxcomb cache would leave them without enough food and fuel if they were halted by a bad storm. The expedition members pushed this way and that against Wilcox’s ascent strategy. He was neither defensive nor dismissive, allowing the discussion to continue.
A consensus was reached: the two Taylors, Schiff, and Russell would remain low for another day and pack enough food to feed ten men for six days from the Coxcomb cache to Camp VI. The other eight men would move up to 18,000 feet, each carrying four days’ worth of food, and go on to the summit on July 15. The other four would move up to the high camp on the fifteenth with three more days of food and make their summit attempt on Sunday, July 16.
The Colorado men ate in their own tent and had not been part of the meeting. But when Wilcox relayed the plan through the wall of their tent they agreed. Howard Snyder was “a bit apprehensive about depending on the Wilcox group’s food and stoves, since both left a great deal to be desired,” but he decided they could handle it for the two or three days it would take to get to the summit and back to Camp VI. Soon the camp was alive with preparations. They began paring down their gear to the essentials needed for a fast summit turnaround. The cook tent would remain there at 15,000 feet along with other unnecessary gear. They would carry a few pots, two stoves with full fuel tanks,two shovel scoops minus their handles, trail-marking wands, a first aid kit, two gallons ofBlazo fuel, and the five-watt CB radio. Each man had a small amount of emergency food and his own personal gear and sleeping bag.
On the morning of July 14, eight men prepared to ascend the Harper Glacier and establish high camp around 18,000 feet. After the five-day Karstens Ridge ordeal, it looked like a cakewalk: a 3,000-foot ascent spread over 3 miles of hard-packed snow punctuated by two large icefalls. It would be easier going but not without danger, according to Washburn’s guide: “There are a number of treacherous crevasses in this upper section of Harper Glacier, just where one would expect the going to be the best,” he wrote. “The high winds up here often form smooth but very flimsy bridges of soft snow across many of the smaller cracks.”
The route up the Harper also was rich in history. At 16,000 feet it passed beneath the Sourdough Gully, which Pete Anderson, Billy Taylor, and Charlie McGonagall ascended to reach the top of the north peak in 1910. At 16,400 feet it traversed the plateau separating the Upper and Lower Icefalls, passing through the site of Belmore Browne’s high camp from which he staged his unsuccessful summit bids. Around 17,500 feet, in the middle of the valley, Stuck and Karstens had pitched the final camp from which they conquered the peak in 1913.
They had arrived. This was it.
Then flames erupted into the cold mountain air.
There are two versions of what happened and the ensuing tent fire that nearly halted the expedition. Snyder described it this way: “The men in the tent had been using two stoves simultaneously, a hazardous practice at best. One had almost burned dry, and W. Taylor decided to refill it. Instead of taking the stove outside, he opened the filler cap while the stove was sitting right beside the still-burning second stove. As the cap was unscrewed the pressurized fumes from the fuel tank filled the tent, and were immediately ignited by the second stove.”
Wilcox, who was in the tent when the explosion occurred, drew a slightly different picture. “At 8:00 A.M. Hank, Walt, Steve, John,
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