Denali Ranger: A Life of Drama and Adventure on America's Tallest Peak

By Lew Freedman

Roger Robinson has been Denali mountaineering for over forty years and has worked as a ranger for most of this time. Robinson has climbed Denali, at 20,310 feet, numerous times, leading patrols on the mountain, organizing clean climb efforts on the mountain, meeting the best climbers in the world, and leading rescues that saved lives. Year after year, Robinson has studied the mountain and its climbers, its people, and he has experienced a series of adventures on one of the best-known and formidable mountains in the world, a mountain that for many is the symbol of Alaska, the 49th state.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Epicenter Press
• Release date: Sep 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781935347873

Lew Freedman

Lew Freedman is a longtime journalist and former sports editor of the Anchorage Daily News in Alaska, where he lived for seventeen years. The author of nearly sixty books, Freedman has won more than 250 journalism awards. He and his wife, Debra, live in Indiana.

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Foreword

My first trip to Denali in 1981 was an eye-opener. The demands on your psyche and the physical toll of high altitude, high winds and severe cold make an impression. A nine-day storm trapped our expedition at 17,000, feet on the Harper Glacier, leaving me scared and shattered. I left the mountain vowing never to return.

That changed. In 2008, I retired after serving more than 17 years working as a mountaineering ranger and South District Ranger in Talkeetna for Denali National Park and Preserve. When I first climbed on the mountain, it did not occur to me that I would end up working at Denali for the National Park Service or staying in one place so long.

I have been asked many times what it was like being a mountaineering ranger on Denali. Like other National Park Service rangers, many mountaineering rangers have law enforcement authority and all have some level of emergency medical certification. However, Denali mountaineering rangers are also seasoned mountaineers, avalanche qualified search and rescue professionals, and Alaskan backcountry specialists, often trained for swift water rescue.

They make tough decisions on the mountain—life and death decisions. They must also be consummate citizens and neighbors to the residents in the town of Talkeetna, since the district office is not located inside the Park. We view ourselves as guests in the community.

After my failed 1981 climb, I returned to Denali in 1986, leading a group from Colorado State University. It was on this trip I met Roger Robinson. Roger was on a ranger mountain patrol headed up the mountain on the same schedule as my group.

I learned right away about Roger’s diligence and concern regarding clean climbing and ethics. My trip co-leader brought along two cigars for us to smoke after reaching the high point on the mountain. At our first camp at 7,800 feet, Roger came over to ask if we smoked, or if we had cigars because someone was littering the mountain with cigar wrappers and he was trying to track down the violators. We said we didn’t smoke cigars. Of course, we had not thought his patrol would be shadowing us every day. At the 14,200-foot camp, we said we had not smoked any cigars, but we confessed we planned to smoke celebratory cigars after reaching the top. We had a good laugh.

In 1988, because of his expertise, I invited Roger to give a slide presentation on Denali to the National Outdoor Conference at Colorado State in Fort Collins, Colorado. After the conference, Roger asked if I would like to join his mountaineering patrol the next spring as a volunteer. I was very excited. That patrol became one of the best Denali climbs of my life. After volunteering with Roger in 1989, I applied to become a mountaineering ranger. Roger was one of the main reasons: he inspired me to want to work full-time in that job, and I was further encouraged by then-South District Ranger Bob Seibert.

After being hired as a National Park Ranger in 1991, I continued to learn from Roger. He taught me the importance of understanding the whole Park, the history of the mountain and learning to make public presentations about Denali. He, along with Dr. Bradford Washburn, Brian Okonek, and Dave Johnston, were, and are, the unofficial scholars for Alaska Range climbs and rescues.

Roger’s vast knowledge of the more than six million acres of Denali National Park and Preserve is impressive. In 1976, he and a team ascended the French Ridge of Mount Huntington, one of the most technical and grueling ascents in the Alaska Range.

When he talked about Alaska climbs, he spoke with authority. I always asked Roger where I should go and what I should expect since he had traversed hundreds of miles on foot while on patrols and climbs. The many years Roger has spent as a mountaineering ranger in Denali are one-of-a-kind for the level of risk one can be exposed to in working for the National Park Service.

Roger’s mission to keep the mountain clean began in the 1970s on Oregon State University-sponsored climbs devoted to eliminating trash from the mountain. Roger first climbed Denali in 1975 as part of the Denali Rehabilitation and Education Project. That project initiated a new ethic in mountaineering and wilderness travel. His climbs in 1975 and 1976 focused on cleanup efforts on the popular climbing routes. Accumulated litter and waste left by climbers represented one of the worst examples of environmental degradation found in the National Park system. Improving conditions became a long-term focus for Roger.

As far back as 1977, Roger assisted with raising money for a research project and an education program for climbers on clean climbing practices on Denali and in the Alaska Range. In 1980, as a full-time ranger, Roger helped incorporate these ideals of Leave No Trace principles into Denali’s evolving mountaineering program.

He is the person who developed the concept and implemented the clean mountain can program, which has successfully removed human waste from Denali. His tireless efforts for more than thirty years have represented the voice for change in mountaineering management. These views have now extended internationally to other major climbing destinations and Roger led the way.

After 37 years, Roger is still on the job. He is the most compassionate person with whom I have ever had the joy to meet and work. He is understated as a climber and a tireless advocate for ethical travel in wilderness environments. Roger has received, for those efforts, numerous and prestigious awards from outdoor organizations around the world. He has organized conferences and traveled nationally and internationally, educating people about the importance of light-on-the-land travel.

Denali and Talkeetna have been Roger’s life and work for more than forty years. This book will provide realistic insights into living and working as a mountaineering ranger in one of the great National Parks.

—Daryl Miller,

retired South District Ranger, Denali National Park and Preserve

A Note from Author Lew Freedman

During the 17 years I lived in Alaska working for the Anchorage Daily News, I became fascinated by Mount McKinley, as it was officially called in those years between 1984 and 2001. Although many residents preferred to use the Native name for the peak, Denali, because McKinley was the legal name, that was what we used in the newspaper.

In my mind, Denali (officially approved by the federal government in 2015) is the true symbol of Alaska. It is not only the High One, as Natives call the peak, it is the highest mountain in North America. It is a mesmerizing chunk of real estate—snow-covered, forbidding in its size and remoteness. The stories of adventure on its slopes wooed me, attracted me, and impressed me.

When the mountain was out, as Alaskans frequently said, meaning that the clouds had broken and its majestic peak could be glimpsed from afar, I was often hypnotized, readily spending long stretches of time simply staring at its beauty and the way it dominated the horizon.

I have read all the literature on Denali that I could find, and can take pride in saying that I also contributed to it with some early work. During those years in Alaska, I frequently wrote articles that related to the annual climbing season, which is between April and July, and explored Denali’s history.

Over time, I developed a friendship with Dr. Bradford Washburn, who mapped Denali and pioneered the West Buttress route to the 20,310-foot summit, and wrote his autobiography with him. In 1947, his wife, Barbara, was the first woman to climb Denali. I later collaborated on a book about her. In 1988, Vernon Tejas became the first climber to complete an ascent of Denali in winter. I wrote a book with him.

Either through writing about them in the newspaper or meeting at special events, I became friendly with significant Denali climbers Art Davidson and Dave Johnston, and Park personnel Bob Seibert and Roger Robinson. Seibert, once the supervisor of the climbing rangers, is retired and living in Montana. Robinson still lives in Talkeetna, Alaska, Denali’s small-town neighbor to Denali National Park.

The mountain exerts a special pull on Alaskans who go through their daily lives looking up at the sky and marveling at the peak. Many make it their dream and goal to climb to the mountain’s summit. I was one of those people when living in Anchorage, but the one time I organized my life to make an ascent attempt, I suffered an athletic injury that sidelined me, ending any personal flirtation with Denali.

The rest of my relationship with the mountain has been vicarious, through others’ stories, yarns, and experiences. In recent years, not living in Alaska, I grew homesick for the mountain’s sway. Still entranced by it, I sought a fresh topic, a new way to describe the wonders of the peak and how it grips Alaskans.

I first met Roger Robinson and his wife Pam separately in the 1980s. In fact, although they have been married for years, it may have before they were a couple.

Roger is a sincere, gregarious and earnest man who has spent most of his adult life in the shadow of the mountain, never mind what it was called. I approached Roger with an eye toward producing a book, seeing through one man’s eyes both the marvels and challenges of Alaska’s greatest natural feature. Denali has been a constant in Roger’s life since the 1970s. He experienced it in a variety of ways: as a student in college on his first wide-eyed climb, a vagabond climber to whom every penny counted, a young idealist who joined forces with some of the first Denali climbers who were turned off by the trash left behind by climbers hurrying from the summit to sea level.

As a National Park Service ranger, he has dispensed advice to the uninitiated as they were about to make their first approach to a very large mountain. He made certain they understood the risks and lengthy test they would experience from thin air and perhaps stormy, intimidating weather. Sparked by his early involvement in the clean climbing movement, Robinson has been a prominent advocate for the health of the environment, most specifically Denali, but also elsewhere, and is now internationally known for his work.

Robinson was always a climber. Just as enthusiastic as other young men in tackling the Alaska Range peaks that are both difficult and alluring, and, of course, Denali. He has led Denali patrols during the climbing season for the National Park Service and dramatically engaged in several life-and-death events that required emergency. He assisted climbers caught off-guard by weather, or who simply underestimated the potential for Denali’s fury.

Why Roger to provide an as-told-to life story? To me, there were several reasons, the first was that I knew him way back when. The second that his longevity climbing on, living near, and working on the mountain provide him with a unique perspective and involvement with Denali.

In addition, whether athlete is the proper word or not (although it should be noted that the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame has voted in mountaineers for their achievements as athletes), to me, Roger is one of the most inspirational athletes I have met during my fifty years in journalism.

This part is definitely personal. In 1971, I underwent an operation on my right kidney to cope with what had been a congenital defect. I have been affected physically by this in the decades since, although in a minor way. When I heard Roger needed a kidney transplant due to disease shutting down those functions, my first thought was for his health. Second, I assumed his Denali climbing career was over. I was wrong.

What has inspired me most is the manner in which Roger handled this setback, and his accomplishments in the years since this life-altering development. To this date, Roger Robinson is the only transplant patient to ever summit Denali. That is a story in itself.

—Lew Freedman,

May, 2017

Introduction

Over the last 37 years, thousands of men and women have attempted to climb Denali, the tallest mountain in North America at 20,310 feet. The average number of ascent tries is about one thousand per year. Those who come to National Park Service headquarters in Talkeetna, the small community about 110 miles north of Anchorage, must first check in with the stewards of the mountain before they set out on what looms as a likely three-week adventure.

There is an excellent chance that when these ascent-hopefuls arrive they will be greeted by Roger Robinson. In a sense, for much of his time working there, Robinson has been an official government greeter, a man who welcomes climbers from around the world, signs them in, and in more recent years as the education and orientation programs have grown more sophisticated, fulfills a teaching role.

Fair-haired and younger looking than his 63 years, Robinson is an ambassador to the public, and somewhat of a screener, seeking to weed out the foolhardy and ill-prepared who believe Denali is a mere walk in the park rather than part of a much larger wild Denali National Park.

This is no average clerical position, but a key one designed to help head off disaster and tragedy—for the history of this prominent mountain is writ in tales of danger and sometimes terrible consequences. Denali’s potential for fierce weather and frightening temperatures have often exacted costly prices from those who underestimated the challenge.

Due to his longevity in proximity to this beautiful, beloved and yet forbidding essence of Alaska, Robinson has played a major role year after year on the mountain, leading patrols to high camps, climbing to the summit, and when circumstances demand it, involved with the critical responsibility of saving lives.

Robinson has been at the center of heroic rescues where the grateful owe their survival to him. There aren’t many jobs beyond firefighter and police officer (and as a ranger Robinson is also trained in law enforcement) where so much can be at stake based on quick judgments made in the midst of fast-moving events. There have been select days when Roger Robinson may have held the most dangerous government job outside of the Armed Services. He has lived to tell about it.

Robinson fell in love with Denali when he was a college student in Oregon. He could not have known the love would never wane, nor would it have been clear so long ago that he would have built his life around the mountain and Denali National Park. As someone growing up in the Pacific Northwest, with many climbing opportunities near at hand, it was logical Robinson and his friends eventually look northward for bigger mountaineering challenges. In the world of American mountaineering, the biggest lure of all—once a climber has ascended Mount Rainier outside of Seattle and Mount Hood near Portland, Oregon—is Denali.

For some it is a stepping stone to the great 26,000-foot peaks of the Himalayas. For others, climbing Denali even one time represents the pinnacle of achievement in North America. Robinson fit into neither category. He did not set out for foreign countries to climb the tallest mountains in the world. Nor was once enough for him on Denali.

Some people learn early in life which special place in the world is for them, where they wish to settle, where they wish to stay. In the case of Roger Robinson, he felt his destiny was spelled out for him once he became enraptured by the scenery of Alaska, its looming mountains and vast wilderness.

It was Alaska itself that engaged him. He adopted an I’ve gotta move there philosophy. Denali was only generally part of the equation. All Robinson knew as a young man was that he wished to look out a window to gaze upon the mountain’s slopes for the rest of his life. Initially, he felt that would suffice, although like so many swept away by Alaska’s remarkable natural wilderness, he was faced with the question of how to make a living, how to pay the bills.

He had no idea how his bold move north would play out, but he committed to Alaska and scraped together enough money to buy remote property—complete with at least a distant view of Denali. Similarly to generations of Alaskans, he proved up his ground, building a log cabin in the bush.

By happenstance, luck and perseverance, Robinson ended up with a career that required him to study the mountain, climb the mountain, and aid others in coping with the mountain. He fell into the sub-category of Denali National Park climbing rangers and upon the joy of discovering it was a natural fit, he never left. For that reason, Robinson became a walking history of Denali. He was not a pioneer climber putting up new and difficult routes, but rather through the regular course of his job assisted some of those who did. He became close to all the important figures in modern Denali history as a man in the background.

Robinson does indeed have several notable accomplishments on his resume, though most were achieved years ago, as a younger man, some even before he moved to Alaska. These accomplishments were a prelude (though in some cases overlapping a little) to his Denali life.

After all this time, it is possible Robinson has a more thorough and intimate awareness and understanding of Denali the mountain than anyone who has ever trod there. He is too self-effacing to make that claim, however. Longevity helps. So too does hiking and climbing many times in all conditions, as well as exploring the surrounding Denali National Park backcountry

Robinson’s connections to the clean climbing movement date to its embryonic stages in the 1970s. Even before he ventured to Alaska and to Denali for the first time, Robinson was linked to the founders of the concepts. Long before most habitués of the world’s largest mountains took notice, or adopted plans to stress Leave No Trace climbing, Robinson was a proponent. It seemed astonishing to him that supposed wilderness lovers would dirty the places of their dreams, leaving behind garbage. It takes years for these types of lobbying efforts to take hold and change old habits. Americans need only to think back to the 1960s when it was commonplace for drivers zooming along highways to throw paper, plastic and cigarettes out the window. Nobody was then fining those who made a mess with this behavior. Now, signs are prominent along highways warning of the penalties for such littering actions.

This clean climbing ethic has slowly taken hold on Denali and other big mountains. A you-bring-it, you-take-it-home philosophy is ingrained in many areas where no such thoughts were entertained not many years ago.

When it comes to such programs on Denali, Robinson has been at ground zero. He has written grant proposals that brought in funding from concerned mountaineering groups and, as the 2017 climbing season began—the hundredth anniversary of Denali National Park—for the first time ever, climbers will be asked to remove one hundred percent of human waste when they descend from the mountain.

Robinson’s influence and involvement in clean climbing campaigns has expanded into the international realm, and during his personal free time he has traveled to far-off regions to spread the gospel of clean climbing to anxious-to-learn foreign groups. He takes great pride in seeing innovative ideas exported to help keep the wilderness free from the sometimes overbearing and destructive side effects of human presence.

Given that a quarter of a century has passed since Robinson underwent a life-threatening scare from kidney disease, it is something he rarely discusses. He does not use it as a crutch to hold back from the challenges issued by Denali and the ever-enticing opportunities to explore the backcountry of the six-million-acre park.

Compared to many of the high-profile mountaineers who made daring ascents of Denali, who have guided hundreds or even thousands of climbers to the summit, Robinson’s personal story is little-known. Many of Robinson’s adventures, accomplishments and even the basic nitty-gritty work that is less glamorous than climbing, has allowed him to say, I’m going to work on Denali today. Many of those adventures, tasks, jobs, have been shared with Pam Robinson, his wife of 33 years, another person who, in many ways, has constructed almost her whole adult life around Denali.

Pam Robinson has devoted many years to the mountain. At one time she was the office manager for a local air service that flew mountaineers and their gear to the Kahiltna Glacier, where most climbs begin, and from where they disembark after they finish. She has also spent years working for the Park Service.

One might be tempted to call the Robinsons the First Couple of Denali, but that appellation was long-ago taken by the Washburns: Brad, who has a feature along the West Buttress named for his exploits on the peak, and his wife Barbara, who sixty years ago was the first woman to climb Denali.

Roger Robinson has seen Denali up close and personal many times over. He reveres it in the golden light of sunset and in the harsh moods of winter. This book is one man’s inside view of one of the world’s greatest mountains, a special place on earth that means so much to so many.

—Lew Freedman

Air National Guard lower Kim Hongbim in the overnight rescue, 1991. Photo courtesy of the National Park Service.

Kim Hong Bim being lowered during the storm, 1991. Photo courtesy of the National Park Service.

Rescuer, Nick Parker on a belay stance during the Kim Hong Bim rescue, 1991. Photo courtesy of the National Park Service.

Chapter 1 - Rescue Against the Odds

Roger Robinson’s Story

The distress call came in while I was at the 14,000-foot ranger camp on the West Buttress route on Denali, six days out from the 7,200-foot Kahlitna Glacier Base Camp and in the early stages of a planned mountain traverse.

This was a regularly scheduled four-person ranger patrol with myself as the leader, plus three volunteers: Dr. Donald Slack, Randy Waitman, and Ann Lowery. We planned to climb up the West Buttress route, the most popular, and after nearing the summit, veer off, exiting the peak via the Muldrow Glacier route. It was a scheduled 21-to-24-day trip.

It was May 22, the height of the spring climbing season in 1991, and to that point our trip had been routine. Between April and July each year, more than a thousand people attempt to reach the 20,310-foot summit of the tallest peak in North America.

As a climbing ranger, one of my assignments is to lead periodic patrols on the mountain while those climbers embark on their adventures. For most climbers, Denali is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, with or without expert guidance. My job requires checking on the progress of climbs, the health of individual climbers, and ensuring that mountaineers follow the National Park Service rules and show respect for the cleanup guidelines—garbage in, garbage out. Basically, the patrol exists to see if everything was okay on the mountain. Usually it is. This time it was not.

Denali is a formidable peak and it conjures up its own weather. That means there can be blizzards, heavy snows, and high winds, even in spring and summer. Things can go wrong in a hurry as the weather shifts.

As soon as the patrol reached the ranger camp, we were notified there was a climber higher up who was possibly in trouble. It takes time to acclimatize to the high altitude. At the same time, as Park Rangers we have a duty to act and provide assistance if safely possible. You drop what you have planned, you change your schedule, and you attempt to reach a party who may be injured or suffering from exposure. Yet, you cannot simply run up the mountain and go above ten thousand feet without adjusting to the elevation. The original plan called for us to acclimatize for a couple of days at the ranger camp.

We pitched three camps on our way up to 14,000 feet. If you go up in faster than five days, someone is likely to get sick with pulmonary edema or cerebral edema, where excess fluid builds up either in the lungs or brain. Climbing too fast also means you would be too exhausted to help anyone. We arrived in the afternoon and planned to rest. I was carrying a Park Service radio and a CB radio, and I received a concerning report over the radio. The report said a South Korean climber was at risk around Denali Pass, or 18,200 feet above sea level.

What we