It wasn't easy, but we got Fred out. It took a while and I had to have him stay in the hole so that he could help us rescue his bulky pack and sled first. When he finally emerged, he was cold and shaking. I think we were all near tears of some sort, joy... relief... anger... pain... frustration... I forget which. He'd banged around pretty good going in and we all knew we'd darn near lost him.
A few hours later, we'd climbed to where Base Camp had been back when we started the trip. The clouds were in again and so flying was out of the question… no Sparky Burgers, just another camp to build in the snow. I got the stoves going and mixed up some beige and khaki food. I tried to inflict it on the gang but they were already passed out in their tents. If it was the hardest day I had ever worked, I think I'd win money betting that it was the hardest day any of them ever worked (I'd lose money with such a bet on Spike if he weren't so modest. But he'd never think to burst my bubble by mentioning the really tough ones he's survived over the years).
Just about everybody was unconscious, except Laura. I knelt in the snow, in the quiet shadows that pass for an Alaska Range summer night, outside her tent. Ever the eager student, she was trying to learn from our ordeal so that given similar problems without guides, she'd know how to handle them. She'd seen me pulled from a crevasse a few days before, farther up the mountain. And she'd seen how we got Fred out. Laura wanted to know if there were ever situations where we'd get the person out first and then the gear they carried. I laughed, reached up to my sunburned yet blissfully twitch-free face and pointed out to her that if it were herself, we would waste no time in getting her out and back on her feet, gear be damned.
As I write this, word reached me that Laura died this past week. Cancer — relentless and unbeatable when it visited her again. The day I learned that, I happened to be going through my dusty boxes of climbing gear and papers and keepsakes and I found a summit picture from that McKinley trip. A nice blow-up that somebody was thoughtful enough to send me. And although my defining memory of that trip has always been about surviving the last day, I was happy to see from the photo that we had also made it to the top of North America.
