Review: ‘Should I Not Return’ by Jeffrey T. Babcock

“Denali, that Great Grail Castle in the Clouds continues to thrill and kill with each passing year. As of the fall of 2011, 133 climbers have perished on Denali, ever since Allen Carpe and Theodore Koven became the first to die on its icy slopes in 1932.” – Jeffrey T. Babcock in the dedication to “Should I Not Return”

When Jeffrey T. Babcock and his older brother Bill set out to climb the highest mountain in North America, Alaska’s 20,320-foot Denali (Mt. McKinley) in 1967, they knew before they reached “The Great One” that they would be tested in a dangerous world of rock, ice, snow and wind where every climber is at risk and may not return. They did stand on top of the continent on a cold and windy day that July, but en route to the summit, their Mountaineering Club of Alaska (MCA) team stared into the eyes of tragedy from an unexpected combination of events.

The MCA team was several days behind the twelve-person Wilcox-Snyder Expedition. A class-6 storm suddenly raged over Denali, separating the members into those who were able to retreat and those who were stranded high up on the mountain in the bitter cold blizzard conditions. Injured and greatly worried about the other members of their group, the descending Wilcox-Snyder team members met the advancing MCA team, made radio contact with the National Park Service to report their status, and then made their way off Denali. Due to its position on the mountain, the MCA team became the primary rescue group. Jeffrey and Bill Babcock found two of the dead; the others were never found.

The death of seven members of the Wilcox-Snyder group in one day has been called North America’s worst mountaineering tragedy. It has also generated a fair amount of controversy as the actions of leaders Joe Wilcox and Howard Snyder and the National Park Service have been scrutinized under multiple microscopes leading to multiple accusations of blame. Jeffrey T. Babcock, who went on to lead other climbing expeditions including another successful summiting of Denali, has spent a lifetime pondering whether or not the MCA team could have accomplished the impossible and saved any of the Wilcox-Snyder climbers. Now, most experts think not.  But nobody knew this during the summer of 1967.

Babcock has, to the extent it’s possible, come to terms with Denali in 1967 via his “non-fiction novel” Should I Not Return. While the novelization combines real life events from two climbs into protagonist Henry Locke’s coming-of-age climb of Denali on a team led by his brother Johnny, the book’s account of the tragedy and the rescue attempt is based on facts. The result is a compelling and accessible adventure story for a general audience as well as a riveting true-to-life account of a widely known mountaineering event for climbers familiar with techniques, routes and high-altitude weather conditions.

West Buttress of Denali – NPS Photo

Should I Not Return is richly illustrated with photographs from the MCA and other teams as well as sidebars containing historical information about earlier Denali ascents and the climbers involved. While the sidebars are nice time capsules for climbers and others interested in Alaska and its mountains, they can be skipped by those who prefer to stick with Henry and Johnny’s trial by wind and ice.

The emotional and practical need for young Henry—whom some of the other characters view as “Johnny’s baby brother”—to prove himself adds impact to the story. While Johnny and the other MCA team members know each other well, Henry is viewed as a neophyte easterner who will more than likely them back or put them at risk. The terror of the story is amplified because readers see events unfold through the eyes of the youngest team member rather than a veteran climber.

In addition to their geographical and historical value, the photographs serve the same purpose as the illustrations in adventure novels of an earlier era. For example, when Johnny falls through a snow bridge into a crevasse, an accompanying photograph of a Lower Ice Fall snow bridge on Muldrow Glacier demonstrates for non-climbing readers how precarious Johnny’s situation was. The inhospitable conditions Henry and the others face on that glacier is illustrated by a bleak photograph  (by the author) showing just how tiny a man is when he stands next to the sheer walls of Pioneer Ridge. While Babcock’s prose is strong enough to stand on its own, the pictures add greatly to the reading experience.

If Should I Not Return were the product of Jeffrey T. Babcock’s imagination, I would recommend it to everyone who loves compelling adventure stories. For mountaineers, the book adds immeasurably to the historical record of Denali from a very capable writer who was first on the scene of a controversial climbing tragedy.

–Malcolm R. Campbell

Malcolm R.  Campbell is the author of four novels, including the 2011 contemporary fantasy adventure “Sarabande”

Remembering Favorite Moments in 2008

Both the Internet and the print media are filled with lists these days, the best fiction and nonfiction, the biggest tragedies, the most important events.

I could make my own list and then dwell upon it as though the existence of the list somehow validates something about my life.

I would include the fact that my nephew took his own life and that my novel completed in March has not yet found a willing publisher. I would include the fact that I saw my daughter and her husband and my 11-month-old granddaughter and that I’m stepping down as the chair of our local historic preservation commission in two more days. My wife and I had a great time with family in Memphis over Thanksgiving and with my wife’s folks on Christmas day.

Yet, I can see that even if I took these events and listed them with numbers or bullets, the presentation would completely miss the joy and the pain they brought me and other people.

So, as the year ends, I’d much rather leave a photograph or two, each of which is worth a thousand words, and say that the moments captured in pixels will always bring a smile to my face when I think of  both the innocent deer and the sweet voice of the water.

Deer along the roadway between Lake Louise and Banff

My wife Lesa and I along the Bow River

Best wishes for a happy new year as you think back on your favorite moments of 2008.

Glacier National Park – New Employee Dorm for Lake McDonald

Andrews and Anderson Architects, PC

Drawing of new employee dorm to be constructed at Glacier National Park’s Lake McDonald Lodge for seasonal employees.

WEST GLACIER, MONT. – Glacier Park, Inc. (GPI), a concessioner in Glacier National Park, has awarded a construction contract to Swank Enterprises of Kalispell, Mont., for the construction of a new employee dormitory near Lake McDonald Lodge in Glacier National Park’s Lake McDonald Valley.

The concessioner- funded construction of the new dormitory will begin late October 2008 and continue over the winter with completion anticipated by summer 2009.

The new dormitory was first conceptualized and approved in the park’s 2005 Commercial Service Plan/Environmental Impact Statement which was completed by the National Park Service at Glacier after an extensive public involvement process. The new dormitory will house approximately 43 employees and will replace housing provided in three other buildings currently located at the lodge complex in the vicinity of Snyder Creek.

According to Park Superintendent Chas Cartwright, “The buildings to be replaced lie in the flood zone of Snyder Creek and have significant life health issues. The utility systems that service the buildings also need replacing.” Cartwright noted, “Rather than put additional funds toward rehabilitating these structures and the utility systems within the flood zone, the decision was made to relocate the housing into a new structure away from the flood area.” The new dormitory will be located adjacent to the Lake McDonald Post Office near the Going- to- the- Sun Road and is compatible with the architectural design of the historic Lake McDonald Lodge, a National Historic Landmark.

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The new dormitory will provide double occupancy rooms with individual bathrooms for each dorm room that will allow GPI a more flexible type of housing.

“As employment demographics at western national parks have changed in recent decades, it has been increasingly difficult for park concessioners to retain summer employees for the entire work season. This new facility will greatly enhance GPI’s ability to attract and hire employees who are not constrained by college schedules,” said Cartwright.

After the dormitory construction is completed and when funding is available, the old dormitories will be removed from the flood zone as planned for in the Commercial Service Plan.

According to Cartwright, “Removal of the old, dilapidated dormitories will provide additional space for expanded parking that is needed for the entire lodge complex and adjacent hiking trails.”

A quote from one of my favorite authors

“Once in a lifetime, perhaps, one escapes the actual confines of the flesh. Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with sunlight and air and running water that whole eons, the eons that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort. The mind has sunk away into its beginnings among old roots and the obscure tricklings and movings that stir inanimate things. Like the charmed fairy circle into which a man once stepped, and upon emergence learned that the whole century had passed in a single night, one can never quite define this secret; but it has something to do, I am sure, with common water. Its substance reaches everywhere; it touches the past and prepares the future; it moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of the air. It can assume forms of exquisite perfection in a snowflake or strip the living to a single shining bone cast up by the sea. “  - Loren Eisley, from The Immense Journey

Naturalist Eisley wrote The Immense Journey in 1957. My 1982 paperback copy is yellowed with age and will soon need a rubberband top hold the pages together. When he talks about the real, it seems almost magical.

River

Here in Georgia, and south of us in Florida, water has been scarce. Even the deluge from Tropical Storm Barry wasn’t enough to put out the fires along the Georgia-Florida border.

A few days ago, my wife, brother, and his wife drove up to a small town in Western North Carolina and stayed in a hotel with balconies above a river.

In a sense, I travelled back in time, for I spent many sun-filled happy days from grade school through college with family and friends along this same river in cottages a few hundred yards from where the hotel now stands.

In our days of drought, the sound of the river flowing through the night outside our open balcony door brought dreams of continuity. While the river was about six inches lower than normal, it was there carrying whitewater adventurers as it always had, drawing trout fishermen as it always had, serving as a home for geese as it always had, while catching sunlight and moonlight in the same way it did when I was a child.

I had not stood next to that river for 40 years, but returning to it briefly undid all the years of having been away.