After the success of the National Geographic Society-Pan American Airways Mt. McKinley Flight Expedition in 1936, Bradford Washburn continued to return to Denali, climbing the Muldrow Glacier route on a variety of science-based expeditions. In 1947, on Operation White Tower, he took part in the testing of cold weather gear and equipment and establishing a cosmic ray station at Denali Pass. During this time Washburn began discussing the possibility of an easier and safer route to the summit up the West Buttress. By this point he was, in the words of climber and mountaineering historian Fred Beckey, "...the Mt. McKinley expert." While planning his own expedition to investigate a new path, he agreed to join a group from Colorado aimed at climbing the western route in 1951 and set out for the mountain that summer.
Jointly sponsored by the University of Alaska, University of Denver and Boston's Museum of Science, the 1951 West Buttress Expedition hinged on aviation. As Washburn later wrote in National Geographic, "We were going to try what time after time had been declared impossible—to climb McKinley's rugged West Buttress. More exciting still, we were going to try to do at least a third of the climb by airplane."
Terris Moore, mountaineer, academic and pilot, became the second president of the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1949. Enlisted to fly his 150-horsepower Super Cub, he transported team members and provided extensive air support, landing at high levels on the mountain. On June 20 they departed on their first flight and Moore and Washburn soon found themselves under a layer of fog searching for a landing spot on the Kahiltna Glacier.
"It was like flying through a gigantic tunnel," wrote Washburn. The fog was about 2,000 feet above them and the glacier climbing steadily. "If the two met, we would be out of luck."
Utilizing photographs from the previous expeditions as a guide, Moore managed to deliver Washburn to the 7,700 foot level of the glacier. The Kahiltna was rough, in Washburn's words, "some boulders were as big as bungalows, piled helter-skelter in heaps more than a hundred feet high." When a clear valley appeared, Moore took a chance and went for it, conducting a perfect landing at 6 p.m. Washburn and his supplies were quickly unloaded and Moore was gone: "An hour before I had been 40 miles away at Chelatna Lake; now here I was a third of the way up Mount McKinley!"
Moore was able to take off from Chelatna's gravel strip and land on the glacier because his aircraft was equipped with aluminum skis that could hydraulically retract for wheeled takeoff and then be lowered for landing on snow. This allowed for a quick turnaround and by 8:45 that night, shortly after Washburn had finished marking out a runway on the snow, Moore returned with a second member of the party. He called Washburn over the radio and reported 5 miles from the camp; the mountaineer replied that "landing conditions marginal, ceiling 300-500 feet, absolutely calm." Moore landed and was back in Chelatna only 30 minutes later. "Without his skill and determination as a bush pilot," wrote Washburn, "we could not have been where we were."
After a two day break for poor weather, Moore got back into the air and brought the remaining two members of the base camp party to the glacier. In the meantime, the overland four-man portion of the expedition was on the move circling the mountain from the north, studying geology and planning to meet Washburn's group up high on the 30th.
With his half of the party now together, Washburn moved to establish the main camp at 10,300 feet. At this altitude they were relieved to discover they could pick up the Civil Aeronautics Administration station at Talkeetna and thus were assured of reliable communication in case of emergency. The station relayed their message to the Alaska Air Command 10th Rescue Squadron in Anchorage that they were ready for their prearranged aerial drop of equipment and the next morning a ton of supplies landed around them. "In the old days," Washburn noted, "it would have taken a 20-horse pack train and three wranglers weeks to move this load from Anchorage to the lower end of the Kahiltna Glacier, 44 miles below our camp." And then they still would have had to haul it up from there, mostly on their backs.
In the days that followed the crew climbed, set up survey instruments and set about making a new map of the mountain. A USAF B-29 made vertical mapping photographs from 32,000 feet while the men did ground survey to "tie the pictures together". The rest of the expedition arrived as scheduled sharing a story of being "drenched by our blizzard-thunderstorm, plagued by swarms of bloodthirsty mosquitos, and had almost lost a packhorse in a bottomless bog." The expedition was now together and with the survey work complete, a summit via the West Buttress could be attempted.
Terris Moore arrived two days later, with his base camp landing at 10,100 feet setting a new record on the mountain. He brought film, supplies and mail, including a letter from Boston that had been mailed only three days earlier. While enjoying a snack with the expedition, Moore lost track of time, prompting this unexpected announcement as recalled by Washburn:
Good night! It's 5 o'clock. I have only two hours to get back to Fairbanks for a faculty meeting!
His meeting was 160 miles away and 9,650 feet below us on the other side of Mount McKinley. In a jiffy he was off over the pass and out of sight. Later we learned he made it in plenty of time to shed his heavy clothes and parka, have a shower, and don a summer suit.
In the days that followed, the 8-man party set out to establish an advanced camp carrying 60-to-90-pound packs. Three members conducted high-level geology while the remaining five progressed directly to the summit. On the way they measured an 80-mile-an-hour gale, were forced to shovel a trail 400 feet up the mountainside and suffered from anoxia. When they were ultimately successful at climbing the western face on July 10th (and the rest of the eight man party did so in the following days as well), Washburn was elated. After descending back to their main camp, Terris Moore was contacted and began the flights to transport the climbers off the mountain. A new era for Denali, in more ways than one, had dawned. Washburn wrote:
McKinley had been climbed from the west, safely and speedily, in only seven days from Kahiltna Pass. We had proved that airplanes, loaded or unloaded, could land and take off halfway up that side of the peak. . . . Not even a minor accident had occurred.
Something else happened the summer of 1951 as well, a short meeting between Washburn and a young Talkeetna pilot named Don Sheldon. At this point, Washburn realized that to continue his survey and research of the mountain he needed a pilot who was physically closer to Denali. While all of the men he worked with in the past were exemplary aviators, none of them were available for the length of time he needed for the type of large scale projects he was planning. At the urging of Bob Reeve, who landed Washburn on Mt. Lucania fourteen years before, Washburn sat down with Sheldon in August.
"I've heard a lot about that kid [Sheldon]," Washburn recalled Reeve telling him, "and he's either crazy and is going to kill himself, or he'll turn out to be one hell of a good pilot!"
Contact Colleen Mondor at colleen(at)alaskadispatch.com