When a Mountain “Warm Up” Turned Into a Struggle For Survival

Peak 11,520 is a feisty mountain at the head of the Tokositna Glacier, Denali National Park, Alaska. Dwarfed by its neighbors Mount Huntington and Mount Hunter but with little respite for an easy route, it remained unclimbed when Scottie Simper, Anna Keeling, Karen McNeill, and I flew into the Tokositna cirque in April 2002.

The north face of 11,520 is a complex mile-wide matrix of steep ice gullies and rock buttresses, interspersed with shields of iron-grey ice. When I first saw the wall, it reminded me of the east face of Aoraki (Mount Cook) back home, but was steeper and more technical. It was daunting.

We had no intention of climbing 11,520, but after fast ascents of the Nettle-Quirk on Huntington (all four of us) and the Colton-Leach, also on Huntington (Karen and I), we set our sights on the unclimbed mountain and set up a temporary basecamp at the foot of its north face.

The two ice routes on Huntington had tested us; in particular the Colton-Leach, which took Karen and me 30 hours to complete. But by now we were hyped, feeling fit and strong and up for whatever 11,520 threw at us.

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