Mount McKinley. (Michael DeYoung/Alaska Stock)"Mountain Madness" by Timothy Egan, New York Times
For nearly two weeks, a friend of mine had been trying to reach the roof of North America, a place no bigger than a dining room rug, about 200 miles south of the Arctic circle. He’s a restless soul, briskly roaming the world in search of thin air before he gets too worn and cautious in late middle-age.
Last I checked, he was pinned at high camp by the kind of storms that keep nearly half of the 1,400 people who attempt to climb Mount McKinley from succeeding. Winds, 60 to 70 miles an hour. Temperatures, even in the first weeks of summer, hovering near zero.
Then came sudden news –- a 51-year-old man had died on Denali, as most Alaskans call the mountain. He made it to the top on the Fourth of July, and then collapsed –- the first climber ever to die on the mountain’s summit. He was buried in a frozen grave at 20,320 feet.
It took a few hours before I confirmed the name of the dead climber. I was relieved, of course, that it was not my friend, but I found no comfort in the details of the death.
The victim, James Nasti from Naperville, Ill., was an experienced mountaineer, with no history of heart trouble, and had shown no signs of altitude sickness. He belonged to a club whose members try to reach the highest point in all 50 states. For James Nasti, Denali was number 49.
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