I was running through an airport like O.J. after a rental car and my head was spinning a little as it does when I'm headed for mountains in odd corners of the globe. Passing a magazine rack, I did a double-take and a quick purchase when I realized that one of the slick outdoor rags had a lead story all about mountain guiding... which is now hip.

The guy in the article was living the life, guiding the big hills, sweeping women off their feet, and getting dumped by the smart ones. It had a familiar ring to it all, except the sweeping and dumping parts, which are rare, if you really hide out in the hills.

As I recall, they even tried to make it sort of a balanced piece by letting you know that the pay was bad and the work hard. They said it wasn't all fun and games and warned you not to try it at home.

I was completely on board. I liked it all; I liked the dude they were featuring; I liked the glossy ads for shiny new trucks and cool Gore-Tex and must-have gadgets. And I like my profession (which is still guiding, not writing) but it did get me thinking a little about days when it maybe wasn't so fun being a mountain guide — or a transient and migratory worker.

I thought about the time I ended up alone with three clients on the top of McKinley (Denali). My assistant had taken a couple of guys back from Denali Pass that day, and I'd pressed on to the summit, even though there was a weird looking cloud oozing onto the scene.

Up there at 20,320ft things were okay, but it was getting kind of obvious that the cloud meant business. My guys and I scurried back down to the 19,500-foot "Football Field," a level spot that very few people play actually ball games on. I was fishing my CB radio out of a pocket to call our bush pilot in Talkeetna. As it was late season, there was no Park Service on the hill, no base camp, no doctors at 14,200ft; the mountain was kind of empty and our way of getting word to our pilot about our desired escape from the Alaska Range was in my hand. But before I could key the mike, one of my guys began to faint.

I'm a good guide; I caught him. Looking to my other men for help, I saw one guy getting doubled over. He began vomiting bright red onto the snow while moaning and heaving and gasping for air. The last guy joined the party just then, ripping down his climbing harness and multiple trousers for a bout of loud and violent diarrhea. Still holding my fallen man, I gazed out then at the Football Field and found I could no longer see it. The whiteout had arrived. Freeing up one hand, I got pressing on that CB to find it just plain old frozen and inoperable. Did I mention that it was about ­25°F up there?

I hate to say it, but had that radio worked the way I wanted it to, my career probably would have ended soon afterward. Because I'd have positively cried into the thing. Down in Talkeetna, they'd have been gathered around listening to the guy blubber about fainting, puking and pooping and how he wants to be done with his trip now.

Denied an outlet for my angst, I pulled myself together and went to work. The crapping guy finished. The puking guy had just chugged a quart of cherry Kool-Aid and lost it... it wasn't blood splashing down between his crampons, as I'd feared. The fainter came around, had a rest and a bite to eat and was good to go.

The whiteout was real and worsening, but I peeled back my eyelids and worked my memory for every little landmark and swerve and turn in the route and pointed that rope toward high camp. We got down, no sweat, I even got to call the day a runaway success and nobody ever knew how close I'd come to cutting the rope and heaving myself down the South Face.