Durango Herald

Denali: Doing it right

July 11, 2003

The camp at 14,200 feet is visible from the top of the fixed lines 2,000 feet higher. The Kahiltna Glacier, where the Animas City Expedition team landed and started the ascent, makes up the background valley floor.

By Gregory Moore
Herald Sports Writer

Other teams at Fort Lewis College got a lot more press during the 2002-03 school year.

But the members of one team worked as hard as any athlete on campus, and maybe harder, to make the cut.

They faced tough academic as well as physical challenges. Their histories and performances were analyzed; their strengths and weaknesses judged. These guys were up before dawn for conditioning drills all winter long.

When it counted, they performed flawlessly together, and they finished the year on top.

On the afternoon of June 12, 2003, after nine months of training and conditioning and 23 days on the mountain, five students – Josh Kling, Chip Jewell, Douglas Gibula, Chad Pranger and Rob Meeker – and one staff member from FLC’s Outdoor Pursuits program stood at 20,320 feet on the summit of Mount McKinley, better known in the climbing community as Denali.

First of a two-part series

This is the first part of a two-part series on the Animas City Expedition to Denali. Part 2 will appear in the Sports Section on Saturday.

It was the first ascent of the peak for all of them, and the high point of an experience none will ever forget.

"It was amazing," said Kling, who wasn’t sure the team would reach the top even on summit day because of weather and crowds on the mountain. "We spent 45 minutes just hanging out and taking pictures. It was gorgeous."

Above all Alaska: from left, Chip Jewell, Rob Meeker, Chris Nute, Doug Gibula, Chad Pranger and Josh Kling, members of a Fort Lewis College climbing expedition, celebrate on the summit of Denali on June 12, 2003.

"I was kind of in disbelief," added Meeker, who led the roped team to the summit. "Two days earlier we were stuck in our tent, and I was thinking, ‘It’s not going to happen.’ But there we were, on top."

The successful expedition was the result of a collaboration between the Division of Student Affairs and the Division of Academic Affairs at FLC.

The college’s Outdoor Pursuits (OP) program, which had already conducted a successful student climb in 2002 of Mexico’s Orizaba (at 18,700 feet the third highest peak in North America), and a glacier-intensive climb of Washington’s Mount Ranier, teamed up with professor David Kozak of the Department of Anthropology to offer a unique course.

Not only would a team of six students receive extensive training in arctic mountaineering skills, but while on the mountain, they would conduct ethnographic research on expeditionary travel. The goal would be to observe and document such factors as individual drive, limitations and group dynamics among their own team and other groups of climbers on the mountain during Denali’s busy climbing season.

Meeker, a senior at FLC in the spring of 2002, heard about the tantalizing offer. Here was a chance to climb the highest peak in North America, and earn the college credits he needed for graduation to boot.

"I definitely had no plans for (climbing Denali)," Meeker said. "But when this opportunity came up, it was something I definitely wanted to do. Having so much of the logistics done for you made the climb easier to take on."

Climber Rob Meeker works on his daily survey and journal assignments in the kitchen tent at the camp at 11,200 feet.

Out of more than 20 interested students who began the training program, a team of six was selected by the end of the fall semester. Objective data such as grades, essays, attendance and performance in the classroom and in a grueling conditioning program went into the selection process, said OP coordinator Chris Nute, who led the expedition alongside OP assistant coordinator Tom Whalen, a Denali veteran.

But when it came down to deciding who was taking to the snow and ice in Alaska, some intangibles came into play as well.

"Tom and I have wives and families," Nute said. "We weren’t going to rope ourselves up with anybody we didn’t have 100 percent confidence in."

There was even a "Survivor- style" ballot given to all participants so they could make their preferences in teammates known.

"There were a lot of people who were friends in that classroom," Kling said. "It was one thing to say you would go out and climb with them, but you may not want to do something on this scale with them."

Despite the amount of information gleaned over the course of a semester, making the final cut was difficult, Whalen admitted.

"The ones who didn’t make it were really sad," he said. "Clear up until we left for the mountain in May, people were still coming to me asking why they didn’t make the team."

Unfortunately, by New Year’s Day the team knew that one student member, Sarah Baskins, wasn’t going to Alaska. Baskins injured her knee racing for the Fort Lewis College ski team, and professor David Kozak had to withdraw from the expedition with an injury as well.

From January until leaving for Alaska in May, the Animas City Expedition, an official moniker chosen in part due to the team’s many predawn conditioning climbs of Animas City Mountain in climbing gear and carrying full backpacks, focused on more training, team-building activities, and fund-raising to reach the $18,000 mark the expedition required.

"We had some kind of physical conditioning going on five or six days a week, every week," said Whalen, who, with Nute, participated along with the rest of the team.

Nute and Whalen even offered a "shaving party" to the team as an incentive, and when the fund-raising goals were met, both happily took their turns in a chair while the students cut their hair and then completely shaved their heads.

By spring the logistics of the trip were coming together, and one entire room of the Student Life Center was devoted to sorting and organizing the 1,451 pounds of gear, food and fuel the expedition needed to reach the summit.

On May 21, the team was on the road to Albuquerque, and then in the air, bound for Talkeetna via Anchorage, where the team members did some last-minute shopping.

Three days later, two De Havilland Beavers from Talkeetna Air Taxi Service landed on Kahiltna Glacier at the foot of the shining white giant, and promptly departed, leaving six student climbers, their two "team captains," and a mountain of gear on the ice.