As a Climbing Ranger for Denali National Park, I spend a lot of time preseason talking to climbers, reviewing permits, trying to suss out illegally guided groups, and yes, looking through social media to see what the people have to say about coming up here to attempt the highest summit in North America.
One post that caught my eye this spring was from a would-be soloist asking for advice on a social media site. One of the things he wrote made me laugh out loud, as I already imagine people listen to maybe half of the advice we share:
“I’ve already heard it from the rangers, and yes, I recognize the inherent hazards of solo travel, thank you.”
Besides confirming the self-image of us yapping at climbers while they nod “uh-huh” while also thinking, ok, let’s get this over with so I can go self-flagellate my way up to the summit, I had to think, sir, you do not understand the full picture of the “inherent” risks of traveling on this mountain.
Before I get to that, however, a few notes about the place every climber must visit for their permit before they set foot on the mountain.
Talkeetna is a wonderful place. I have been lucky enough to call it home for half of my year since 2020. Before I moved here, I lived in Palmer, Alaska and guided the Muldrow Route to 20,310’ for several seasons. I have spent a decade of my life during the climbing season in the Alaska Range, wandering ever upwards with others who want to be in the mountains for a wide array of reasons.
When I first moved to Talkeetna, it was with trepidation. I didn’t know anyone. I moved right as COVID was taking over the world. And perhaps even more problematically, it was just so much flatter than any place I had lived since moving west from the east coast in 2010. “The flattest mountain town in North America” is one of the monikers I appreciate the most about Talkeetna. But at about 45 miles in a straight line from Kahiltna Basecamp, this is where the majority of climbers who come to the Alaska Range start their climb. And they all have to come here and talk with us climbing rangers before they can receive their permit.
I have come to love Talkeetna, dearly. It is full of amazing, special, talented people who care deeply about their community. They are here for so many different reasons, and their backstories are so wide and varied that they could fill an entire anthology of fascinating life journeys.
Many of these people live here for the same reason I do–because they are climbers, or used to climb, drawn to the Alaska Range because it is one of the most special places in the world. The tallest mountain in North America does not exist on its own: it is surrounded by miles and miles of amazing glaciers, mountains, tundra, rivers, and wildlife that make my heart sing every time I have the privilege of spending time in this wild country and out of the office.
View of the Alaska Range in the spring, standing on the banks of the Susitna River in Talkeetna. NPS Photo/C. Oken
Every March I return to Talkeetna with joy. Hoping to catch a last glimpse or two of the aurora while it’s still dark, getting some skate skiing in while wandering around in the woods, watching the new moose calves awkwardly plod through deep snow. Enjoying time training with our small Search and Rescue team and hanging out with local friends before Talkeetna is inundated for the summer.
I also have made it a habit to visit the Climbers’ Memorial in the Talkeetna cemetery every spring. I have had the honor the last few years of helping place the plaque commemorating the previous year’s fatalities in the Alaska Range. Unfortunately, this plaque has been a necessity every year since I was hired for the Park Service in 2020. Some of the fatalities I have been involved with, some I have not; nonetheless I know the intimate details of each incident.
Of course, I always look forward to the climbing season with anticipation. It means time in the mountains, it means spending time with friends from all over the country and world who I only get to see during this time of year and in this one special place.
At the same time, I dread the beginning of the climbing season. There is a heaviness that starts building in my heart and belly sometime around the beginning of March that doesn’t dissipate till about mid-July, when the last climbers leave and we have retrieved all of the NPS gear from the glacier. At some point in the spring, I start to realize I am carrying and building stress that reaches a fever pitch around mid-April. Because this is when I anticipate we will have our first SAR callout. And for 4 out of the 6 seasons I have lived here and worked for the National Park Service, that SAR callout has been a fatality.
I love my job. I love what I get to do–I climb mountains, fly in helicopters, work as a paramedic and strive to be the best part of the worst day of someone’s life. But it comes with a weight, a responsibility, and a sadness that I never could have comprehended when I signed up to do this. I would not trade it for anything, but I had no idea what I was really getting into when I joyfully said, “YES!” when I was offered a job here.
I am good at dealing with blood and guts and gore and all of that. I don’t have a problem handling deceased patients. I am quite good at cutting through the emotional distress of a patient, which can be very loud, chaotic, and stressful, to administer the care that they need to get out of often horrendous situations. I can do this with care and compassion, but also firmness and clear-headedness.
What I am less good at dealing with is the aftermath.
When I hear of someone hurt or killed on our mountain, my first thought is of the phone call. Someone on my team has to make the phone call that is going to forever change someone’s life for the worse.
My teammate has to tell them that the last time they spoke to someone they loved was the last time that they spoke to them, and whatever was left unsaid is going to be left unsaid. I think of my teammate making that phone call, and how they will be direct and professional yet compassionate and then I break a bit inside worrying how they will deal with it afterwards.
I think of the family members receiving that phone call. I wonder how much they understand about mountaineering. I wonder if they know what the Alaska Range looks like. I wonder if they will understand how and why the person they love died. I wonder if they will believe it at first. Denali National Park is enormous. 6 million acres. Sometimes it is hard to convey to someone how and why we cannot retrieve their loved one, how they can just disappear, how we cannot get to them without putting others in danger, when they were so alive and so present just days, hours, minutes ago.
In college, I majored in Latin literature. I read a lot of Virgil. In the epic poem the Aeneid, Virgil often repeats:
Ante ora parentum–Before the faces of one’s parents.
I think about this from time to time, when I think about my college education and its context in where life has led me. Virgil’s point was this: we are not supposed to die before our parents. This is not the natural order of things. When we do, the horror is unimaginable. And the pain is universal, and it has been so for millennia. He was referring to war. But mountaineering, in particular, is a pursuit that lends itself to that pain. It is a chosen, unforced objective that we impose upon ourselves.
Mountaineering has left so many parents to bury their children.
When my teammates respond to fatalities or horrible injuries, I worry about them so very much. I worry about what they will remember, and the things that will stick with them for years after the fact. Sights, sounds, smells. I know from personal experience how, in the future, the weirdest visceral memories will hit you at the randomest of times in such unpredictable ways. And sometimes, that will be fine. And sometimes, it will not be.
And finally, I think of how these deaths will rend holes in the fabric of communities.
The glaciers and mountains of Denali National Park attract all sorts of people, from novices to world-class climbers who are renowned across the world. No matter where these people are from, however, they all share one thing in common: they have communities and people that love them and will miss them if they pass and leave things unsaid and don’t get to say goodbye.
Rangers Tucker Chenoweth and Chrissie Oken after placing the plaque honoring the lost climbers from the 2024 season. NPS Photo/C. Oken
This brings me to the Climbers’ Memorial. I invite all of you to visit this special place in Talkeetna before your climb. Not out of morbid curiosity, but for a few important reasons:
I think that we can honor the dead by learning from their accidents. Not by judging them, but by humbly approaching and learning from and accepting that every single one of us, no matter our experience, makes mistakes and are susceptible to objective hazards, and if we do not acknowledge this, we will be more vulnerable to them. Learn the names. Read about what happened to them. Consider how you may end up in their shoes. None of us are invincible in the mountains, no matter where we are on the scale of novice to expert. Learn their names and express gratitude for the lessons they have left us with even though they have passed on.
Each of these names does not represent a single person. They represent an event that affected that person, affected their team, affected their loved ones, and affected the rescuers who were there to recover them or tried to until all options were exhausted. Consider how each decision you make in the mountains does not occur in a vacuum. Poor decisions will never, ever just affect you, even if you decide to climb solo. They will have a ripple effect that will impact others in your community for the rest of their lives.
Perhaps the heaviest part of all of these events is that I see myself in the climbers we meet, travel with, and work with in the mountains. And thus I see myself in the ones who are hurt and killed. I wonder what they were thinking before their accident. I wonder if they had a moment of realization before their death. I wonder if it hurt, if they suffered, and I hope they did not. Knowing the intimate details of these events, I am usually able to infer whether that was the case or not.
I wonder if I, too, will meet my death in the mountains. I wonder that if I do, whether I will know that it is happening. And I carry such preemptive guilt about this; guilt and worry for my husband, my parents, my family, my dear and loving friends and community. This is a terrible weight to carry but I also hope it makes me better at my job and ensures that I make appropriately conservative decisions.
My ask of you, hopeful climbers, is that you carry that guilt as well, and that it informs your decision-making when you venture up high. You may accept the risk of whatever you’re doing, but have you accepted the impact it will have on the people you care about if you don’t return? Or, if that does not matter to you, have you accepted the impact you have on us, the people that will do our best to come retrieve you?
Accidents will continue to happen to all of us, no matter our experience. And our team will still assist you when we can. But as climbers, we can strive to do our best: we can be thoughtful, and conservative, and try to learn from those who have gone before us. And we must enter the mountains with the acceptance that our accidents do not happen to us alone: they happen to an entire community of people.
Daryl Miller, Brian Okonek, and Adrian Nature starting work on the memorial in 1993. D. Miller
Thank you to Brian and Diane Okonek and the other beloved members of Talkeetna’s community for creating and maintaining the Climbers’ Memorial since 1993.