The Mountain's Deadliest Storm
Near Talkeetna, Alaska
Talkeetna sends climbers to a mountain that does not forgive mistakes, and no season made that clearer than the summer of nineteen sixty seven. Please note, this story involves multiple deaths. That July, two groups of young climbers merged into a single team of twelve, organized by a graduate student named Joe Wilcox.
In mid July, part of the group reached the summit. Then a ferocious storm swept across the upper mountain, pinning climbers high on the exposed slopes with hurricane force winds that lasted for days. Seven of the twelve men died, unable to descend through the whiteout.
It remains one of the deadliest mountaineering accidents in North American history. At the time, the famous mountaineer Bradford Washburn called it a disaster caused partly by the climbers' own decisions. But later analysis by weather scientists concluded that the storm's conditions high on the mountain were simply not survivable, no matter how skilled the party, a judgment that has been far kinder to Joe Wilcox.
The tragedy reshaped how Denali is climbed. Today the National Park Service rangers based here in Talkeetna require registration, brief every expedition, and patrol the route, a safety system born partly from hard lessons like nineteen sixty seven. The mountain is beautiful from town.
It is also deadly serious.
