Alaska (165 page)

'Women will do the cooking and mind the camp,' the sensei had said at the conclusion of his instructions. 'Men will set up camp and carry the heavier loads.'

The five-man team with all its gear was ferried to the starting station on Kahiltna Glacier in two easy flights in LeRoy Flatch's snow-ski Cessna, and the first afternoon, at

7,200 feet on the face of the snowy glacier, was spent getting the gear in order.

When that job was half finished, the sensei said: 'Let's run the first load up,'

so the three men suited up, put on their skis, hefted the huge loads onto their backs, and started smartly up the first part of the climb while the two women finished setting up the camp. In ninety minutes the men were back, wet with perspiration and ready for a rest. Excellent though their condition was, the altitude had forced them to breathe heavily and they were not unhappy to have the women prepare the evening meal.

Patiently, during the next days they lugged their packs upward, losing in weight only what they ate, and after the most cautious preparation, as if they were heading for the top of Everest, they reached the 11,000-foot mark, where they cached the first of their gear, their skis. Next morning, when 1009

they prepared to put on heavy steel crampons, they were reminded of a critical rule of mountain climbing: 'Keep your head clear and your feet warm.' If a climber faulted either of those commands, he or she was already in deep trouble, so Takabuki himself supervised how his team was shod. On bare feet which had been allowed to breathe during the night, each member put on a pair of finely woven, extremely expensive socks made of a silk-polyester-like material, a fabricated stuff that would lead perspiration away from the body. Over them came a second pair of very thin socks, then a third pair of heavy, loosely knit socks which provided warmth and protection from jarring and jabbing. On top of this came one of the lightest, most flexible shoelets one could imagine, in part some exotic metal, in part a canvas made from some newly invented material. This was the secret of the Japanese climber, this flexible, extremely strong, resilient shoe which gloved the foot and readied it for the very heavy Koflach plastic boot that was pulled on over it, forming a massive protection and also a kind of air-conditioned comfort.

A casual observer, seeing that the foot was now encased in five different layers of cloth and metal and space-age materials, might have concluded: 'Now you can clamp on the metal crampons,' but that would have been premature, for over the Korean boot was drawn a heavy, flexible insulated legging which made it impossible for snow to drift down into the boot or up the pantl
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Only when this was tied in place was it permissible to attach the crampons by means of heavy lashings. When this was done, a climber had on nearly four hundred dollars' worth of footwear so effective that without it there would be little chance of getting to the top and back down without serious frostbite, but so heavy that to lift one leg after another, kicking footholds up the steep icy incline, required unusual strength, even without a sixty-pound pack.

Not one person on the Takabuki team would suffer from frostbite that year; not one toe would have to be amputated by the doctors in the hospitals near the foot of Denali.

The climb went well. The three men proceeded boldly along the Orient Express and straight up the last slope to the peak, where amid snow and ice each man photographed the other two. Finally the sensei propped his camera on packed snow at an angle, set the self-timer and shot a picture of all three, with Takabuki proudly raising the banner of the Waseda University Alpine Club atop the world at 20,320 feet.

On the critical descent, things continued to go well, and when they reached the camp at 16,900 feet at about noon, they considered starting down immediately, but Takabuki, 1010

not liking the look of the clouds rushing in from the west, said: 'I think we'd better get out the two shovels,' and by the time the June blizzard struck for blizzards could hit Denali on any day throughout the year the five Japanese were snug in their snow cave, where they huddled for three storm-swept days.

There was only one untoward incident. Kimiko stepped outside, intending to move only a few steps to relieve herself, but when her father saw ”the terrible thing she had done he screamed in a way she had never heard before: 'Kimiko! No rope!' And Oda-san reached out and grabbed her by the l
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When they had her safely inside the cave, Takabuki said quietly. 'It is just stepping outside, no rope, that kills,' and after apologizing for her error, Kimiko said: 'I still have to go outside,' so she roped up, and Oda-san held the rope around an ice pick jammed into the snow inside the cave, and she was safe.

When the storm abated, they descended to a lower level and started setting up their last major camp, but Takabuki sensei, mindful of the fact that deadly errors resulted when climbers were tired, personally tested the snow for safety and only then allowed the strong nylon tarp on which the tents would be placed to be laid out. In accordance with Takabuki's ironclad rule 'No fire in the big tent' scores of teams having lost their tents, their provisions and sometimes their lives in fires the crew erected a simple cook tent nearby, and into it went Kimiko to prepare hot rations. After a few moments Sachiko went to help, but almost immediately came out, screaming: 'She's gone!'

The next twenty seconds were an exercise in iron discipline, for Takabuki moved gently before the exit, arms extended to prevent anyone from running out into what might be mortal danger, for if some terrible mishap had befallen his daughter, the same might engulf anyone who went chasing after her. 'By the book,' he said quietly, still barring the passage.

Kenji Oda had reacted within seconds, instinctively wrapping a rope about his body, tying knots in strange and powerful ways, reaching for a spare ice pick and handing the far end of the rope to Sachiko and Yamada. Then, moving the sensei aside, he went gingerly outside the tent to see what had happened, certain that behind him Sachiko and Yamada would keep his rope taut, so that he would not drag them to their deaths if he fell into some deep crevasse.

Peering into the cook tent, he at first satisfied himself that Kimiko had not by some freak accident fallen through the heavy nylon flooring. But when he explored the area just to

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the left of the entrance he gasped and returned to the big tent, ashen-faced: 'She's plunged into a crevasse.”

No one panicked. The sensei crept into the cook tent, probed with his ice ax, and saw the mysterious hole through which Kimiko had dropped to a depth unknown. Oda, continuing to act swiftly and effectively in unbroken movement, placed the wooden handle of his ice pick at the edge of the hole so that when his rope cut at the edge, the handle would prevent it from digging into the snow and perhaps starting a small avalanche which would engulf the person below. Where Kimiko was, and in what condition, no one could guess.

Without a moment's hesitation Oda eased himself into the opening down which Kimiko had plunged, and deftly lowering himself along his rope by using a figure-eight device to brake his fall, he descended deep into the crevasse.

It was a monstrous, gaping hole, yards wide and with no discernible bottom, but by the grace of the forces which had carved it, the sides were not unbroken smoothness but a series of broken ledges onto which a fallen body might plummet. But Kimiko was not to be seen, and even when Oda switched on his lamp and looked at the terrible icy formations, he saw nothing.

Then he heard a moan, and on a ledge about thirty feet below he saw the outline of Kimiko's body in the dim light, and with rope signals devised decades ago he let the others above know that he had at least seen her. Again without hesitating, he lowered himself deeper and deeper. When he was but a few feet above her he could see that the violent plunge had not only knocked her unconscious but had also wedged her tightly into a constricted area from which she had no way of extricating herself.

'Kimiko!' he called as he drew closer to her, but there was no response. Then, as he waited for the rescue rope to reach him, he considered how he might attach it with maximum effectiveness, but before he started he tied her so securely to himself that if anything happened within the next minutes, she would at least be prevented from falling to her death.

Only then did he grasp the second rope, and with a bewildering series of knots designed for just such emergencies, he tied her into a sling from which she could not fall.

But when he tried to pull her loose, he found that she was so firmly wedged into her corner that he could not do so. However, a pull from above, if strong enough, might do the trick, so he signaled for one, and as the three above tugged on the second rope, having secured the first, Oda saw with relief that Kimiko was being eased out of her prison.

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As soon as she was freed, he signaled for the hauling to stop, and there in the icy mists of the crevasse, with evening light filtering down, he pinched her face and compressed her shoulders to bring her back to consciousness, but the second part of his therapy was exactly the wrong one, for in her fall she had dislocated her right shoulder, and his pressure was so great that she revived, saw him holding her, and sobbed with pain.

At that moment Alaska had a population 460,837, which meant that perhaps 75,000 young people were of an age at which they might fall in love or consider marriage. Indeed, 6,422 marriages did take place that year, but none was founded upon a troth more extraordinary than the one pledged between Kenji Oda and Kimiko Takabuki as they dangled forty-seven feet inside a crevasse on the frozen slopes of Denali. As she reached over to kiss him, they both saw that had she missed slamming onto the projection which dislocated her shoulder she would not have bounced across the chute and onto some other ledge lower down. She would have plummeted to a depth unfathomed.

This time the Orient Express claimed no Japanese victims.

WHEN KENDRA SCOTT RETURNED TO DESOLATION POINT after her unpremeditated visit to Jeb Keeler's Anchorage apartment, she became vaguely aware that a newcomer had moved into an abandoned shack north of the village, where he was said to be living in squalor with thirteen beautifully trained malamute and husky sled dogs. The rumors were correct.

He was one more of that inexhaustible breed of young American men, graduates of good colleges like Colgate, Grinnell and Louisiana State, who had been trained to take over their fathers' businesses, but who quit after five dreary years, leaving both an excellent job and often a wife just as superior, to try their luck racing sled dogs in the wilds of Alaska. You found them on the outskirts of Fairbanks, Talkeetna and Nome, working like slaves unloading barges or other cargo during the summer shipping season to earn the huge salaries that they spent in the winter feeding their fifteen or sixteen dogs. They usually refrained from shaving; sometimes they picked up a little money offering dogsled excursions to tourists; and quite often adventurous girls, from colleges like Mount Holyoke and Bryn Mawr, who also wanted to experience the arctic worked as waitresses and moved in with them for longer or shorter periods.

The dream of each of these men, and they numbered in the scores, was to run the Iditarod, not to win it, for God's sake, 1013

just to complete the course which was rightfully considered the world's most demanding organized competition. In the depth of the arctic winter, with blizzards howling out of Siberia and temperatures down to minus-forty, some sixty odd intrepid dogsled drivers left Anchorage and ran a punishing course to Nome, a distance which was officially stated as 1,049 miles1,000 miles plus the 49th state but which actually varied between eleven and twelve hundred miles over incredibly tough terrain. 'It's like running from New York City to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, before there were roads,' Afanasi told Kendra, 'and contrary to what many think, the driver does not usually catch a ride on the rear runners of his sled. He runs behind it four-fifths of the time.'

Kendra could not understand why any sane person would dump so many thousands of dollars into dog food and pay a $1,200 entry fee to be so abused, especially when first prize was only $50,000, but Afanasi said: 'I ran it when I was younger, and the glory of gliding up to that finish line, win or lose, lasts a lifetime.'

Of course, the young men from the Lower Forty-eight who came north to compete usually ran the grueling course only once; then they returned home, married, and resumed managerial work in their family business. But behind their desks, as they grew older, hung that framed certificate proving that in 1978 they competed in the Iditarod, and finished and that separated them from the local athletes who had shot a hole in one at the local course in 1979.

The young man who had moved into the shack at Desolation, wanting to give his dogs the experience of the real arctic, was in many respects a typical example of these intruders Stanford University graduate, thirty years old, five years of work in the family business, divorced from a socialite wife who, hearing that he had decided to emigrate to the Arctic Circle with thirteen dogs, told her friends that he suffered from a mental disorder but in certain important respects he was unique. First, he was Rick Venn, scion of the powerful family that controlled the Ross & Raglan interests in Seattle; second, of all the newcomers, he alone had historic ties with Alaska; and third, because he was the grandson of Malcolm Venn and Tammy Ting, he had Tlingit and Chinese blood, which made him part Native. His complexion was so dark and his features so reminiscent of Asia that he could easily pass as another of the half-Russian, half-Native young men of Alaska.

He also differed from the others from the Lower Forty-eight in that whereas he kept his cabin as chaotic as theirs, he did maintain his personal appearance much as he would

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have in Seattle: he shaved; he cut his hair with his own barber's shears; and he washed a tubful of clothes once a week. But he was like the others in the affection he showed for his dogs and the loving care with which he worked them in the sand when there was no snow, in the deepest drifts when there was.