Sport-heute: Sailing - Mount St. Elias: Survival on Skies

09. Oktober 2009, 19:07

Mount St. Elias: Survival on Skies

Axel Naglich, Red Bull Vertical Rush

Axel Naglich’s breath, condensing on the cold night air, catches in his headlamp beam as he confides about his fears, his team and the journey ahead. It’s mid-May on the Tyndall Glacier and nighttime temperatures dip as low as -40 degrees. Northern lights sweep the Alaskan sky, creating a halo around Mount St. Elias’ silhouetted summit. “You crash, you’re dead,” the Austrian says matter-of-factly about skiing the icy 65-degree slopes that descend from Elias’ peak. Along with fellow Austrian Peter Ressmann and American Jon Johnston, Naglich is here to do what some have called impossible — become the first to descend the mountain’s entire 18,008-foot (5,488-meter) vertical on skis. (By Amanda Follett)

Brüttisellen, 8.10.09 (mk) n the morning, the team will fly to Hayden Shoulder at 10,000 feet (3,000 meters), an exposed perch prone to heavy snowfall where the only escape is by airplane. Naglich stands, throwing back the kitchen tent’s canvas flap and offering a final vow before turning in for the night: “I promise, I will survive,” he says.

The man eater

Soaring from the Alaskan coastline to an impressive 18,008 feet (5,488 meters), Mount St. Elias’ massive vertical dwarfs even Mount Everest, which is only 11,428 feet (3,483 meters) from summit to base camp.
Due to its remote location and notoriously heinous weather, it rarely makes media headlines. Its imposing mass is mostly obscured by clouds that roll in from the Pacific Ocean and rarely attempted. Just making the summit is a true test of endurance. Attempting to descend on skis, some would say, is utter madness.

Inspiration for the descent came to Naglich, a full-time architect, three years ago while flying over the area. Viewing the mountain’s unskied slopes from the air, Naglich became obsessed with the project. Immediately, he enlisted friend and ski guide Peter Ressmann. American Jon Johnston, a builder living in Pemberton, British Columbia, Canada, was a last-minute addition to the team. When the Austrians contacted him about the Elias expedition, he agreed, but it’s easy to see that the sole American is plagued by doubts about the committing nature of the trip.

As the team moves up to Hayden Shoulder, they are faced with a high-pressure system expected to last nearly a week. For some, this would be a jewel, a true gift from the weather gods. But Elias isn’t easily taken. It’s a mountain that must be wooed — lines need to be scouted, conditions carefully assessed and time taken to acclimatize.

As the team sets out, Americans Aaron Martin and Reed Sanders, the last skiers to attempt the same stunt, aren’t far from anyone’s mind.
In April 2002, Martin and Sanders were part of a four-person team dropped on the mountain during a similarly encouraging weather window. Within days, they had summited the peak and were preparing to descend. Their success was short-lived. A few turns below the summit, both began an irreversible tumble. Their bodies have never been recovered from Elias’ upper slopes.

No way but down

Adding to the expedition’s intensity are the cameras that record the team’s every move. Filmmaker Gerald Salmina’s repertoire includes adrenalin-charged sports like B.A.S.E. jumping and rock climbing and soon, he hopes, a documentary on Mount St. Elias’ first ski descent.
It’s while Salmina’s cameras are rolling that the surprising news comes to base camp over the radio: “Probably we’ll ski down to the ocean tomorrow.” Just a day on the shoulder, and it appears Naglich is giving up. After a week of being tent-bound by heavy winds and snow, the skiers are ironically pinned at Hayden Shoulder by sunny skies and temperatures reaching 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius), which make slopes on the traverse to Hayden Col highly avalanche prone and impassible. Instead, the team plans its descent.

Early the next morning, cameras are stationed at two points on the mountain and the helicopter hovers overhead as Naglich, Ressmann and Johnston negotiate a steep, narrow couloir down to the glacier. “It’s a long way, but I said I wanted to go swimming in the afternoon. It’s always good to have a morning skiing and the afternoon swimming,” Axel jokes during the descent.

The entire ski takes only a few hours from Hayden Shoulder to Icy Bay. Officially, this is the end point in a journey that began three years ago, when Naglich first flew over Mount St. Elias and discovered its immense vertical — twelve unskied miles (20 kilometers) from summit to sea. But the boys are far from giving up on Elias’ upper slopes and Paul Claus shuttles the trio back to base camp for another attempt at the summit.

Moving on up

A week later, conditions at Hayden Shoulder have stabilized and the team begins to climb at 3 a.m. despite heavy fog — time restrictions mean they must press on. By evening, the crew is enjoying late-day sunshine from advanced camp at 13,000 feet (4,000 meters). With 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) of technical climbing still ahead of them, the next day brings 0-degree Fahrenheit (-18-degree Celsius) temperatures, high winds and the life-or-death decision of whether to push on or retreat. The decision delays their departure and the team leaves high camp at 8:30 a.m.

Just before noon, only 1,000 feet (300 meters) below the summit, the weather begins to close in and the team is forced into a disappointing retreat. For the next 12 hours, 60-mile-an-hour (95-kilometer-an-hour) winds scour the peak, bringing whiteout conditions on near-vertical ice faces. Unseen crevasses and unstable snow conditions serve up constant danger, driven home by cameraman Günther Göberl’s 100-meter (300-foot) slide, halted just in time by a skilled self-arrest. Markers and fixed ropes are located more by instinct or luck than by sight.

It’s almost midnight when the team arrives back at Hayden Shoulder. They are now stuck at 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) in a thundering snowstorm. With visibility almost nil, the team digs for its life, fighting a losing battle with accumulating snow. Finally yielding to the onslaught, they build a snow cave and sacrifice their tents to the elements.

After three days, the crew is flown to safety just as weather closes in again. They’ve abandoned gear, but they leave with their lives. It’s Jon Johnston’s ticket out, and he gladly takes it. The only American left on
Elias, language, cultural differences and unrelenting weather have taken their toll. “If we’d had one more night on the mountain we’d be in trouble,” he says before heading home. “The commitment factor is huge. When it’s snowing up there you might as well be on the moon. You cannot get off.”

The team is down to six who continue to wait for their chance to return to the mountain, but their perseverance goes unrewarded. A week later, a predicted three-day weather window fails to materialize and the team is losing acclimatization. They make the disappointing decision to return to Austria.

Seizing the summit

When they began three months earlier, the team was a dozen members strong. In August, only a dedicated four return to the mountain: skiers Naglich and Ressmann, cameraman Günther Göberl and mountain guide Volker Holzner. Their approach is typically European — light and fast.

Within days, they are back at Hayden Shoulder and shuttling gear up to the col. At midnight on Aug. 9, they set out, ascending a steep rock face in the dark, where granite crumbles to the touch. Ropes, fixed on the previous attempt, are in tatters after months of being pummeled by rock fall. The team teeters on the brink of turning back a second time. “Not again,” Naglich thinks, realizing it’s his resolve that will drive the team onward. Pushing his fears aside, he focuses on the odds for success and continues up the 400-foot (120-meter) rock pitch. The team pushes on, arriving at 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) and pitching their tents for a night’s sleep before setting out again at 7:30 a.m. the following morning.

Fresh snow makes for treacherous climbing and the team ropes up, with Ressmann leading through gaping crevasses. Slab avalanches give way beneath them, proving that danger on the face is very real, and the team unropes on the steeper sections. “One falls, four are killed,” Naglich says. “With no rope, one falls and he doesn’t take the rest of the team as well.” Climbing unroped is faster, a key to success on a mountain where weather conditions can change in the blink of an eye.

After seven hours, the team makes camp at 15,500 feet (4,700 meters) and watches the last rays of Alaskan sun disappear as the cold night sets in. After a sleepless night in -40-degree temperatures, they are feeling the altitude as they set out at 7:30 a.m the next morning.
An hour into the climb, Naglich sees Holzner’s crampons tumble down the steep, icy face, making their way toward the void below. With them, he sees the entire expedition sliding out of his grasp — without Holzner, Göberl can’t summit. Without Göberl, the ascent goes unfilmed. But today, Elias smiles on the four dedicated climbers. The runaway gear catches on a tiny ice outcrop and the ascent continues.

At times, the group plows through waist-deep snow and hard, icy conditions where wind-loaded slabs make avalanche conditions dicey. Feeling his teammates’ steps reverberate through the hollow crust and staring down the 3,000-foot (1,000-meter) slope to a freefall below, for the second time on the ascent, Naglich questions whether to continue. Just above, the summit beckons and the climbers put the expedition ahead of their own safety and push on.

Throughout the tenuous ascent, there has always been a fear that they might not be able to negotiate 160-foot (50-meter) snow pillars just below the summit. Again, Elias makes passage for the group, offering up a narrow opening on 75-degree slopes to the summit ridge. At 12:50 p.m., Axel Naglich and Peter Ressmann stand on top of Mount St. Elias, exhausted and oxygen-deprived, but relieved to have made it this far. Below them lie the unstable slopes they have ascended and the skiers choose an alternate, unscouted route 1,500 feet (500 meters) to the east. “We didn’t know what the conditions were like because we didn’t climb up there,” Naglich says.

For the first few meters, he sideslips the snow’s hard surface. When the slope holds, his skis bite the hardened crust and the pair begins carving their signature turns down the mountain’s precariously steep face, stopping frequently to rest and breath the thin air. “It was not super to ski, but I think this mountain is never super to ski,” Naglich would later say. An hour into their descent, Naglich and Ressmann rest at 15,500 feet (4,700 meters), break down high camp and continue with heavy packs through icy no-fall-zones. At 13,000 feet (4,000 meters), fog rolls in and the team makes camp for the night so they can continue through the rocks before the warming sunshine. At 2:30 a.m., the descent continues in the dark and by noon the skiers are back at Hayden Col.

It’s been three months since the descent to Icy Bay. Snow has all but disappeared from Elias’ lower slopes and the glacier below is riddled with crevasses. For now, Naglich will have to satisfy himself with completing the descent in two parts. He and Ressmann have successfully achieved what few would even attempt: to ski the world’s longest vertical from summit to sea level. The team has beaten the odds against howling snowstorms and risky avalanche conditions on slopes that plummet thousands of meters onto the glacier below. Their skis have gripped near-vertical slopes and carried them safely back to base camp. The battle has been fierce, but Naglich has survived.

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Mount St. Elias: Survival on Skies

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