Worth the Weight?

This feature story by Michael Gardner originally appeared in Alpinist 77 (Spring 2022). On October 7, 2024, Gardner fell to his death while attempting Jannu East (7648m) with his close friend and longtime partner Sam Hennessey, who made it down safely with another team of climbers. The details of the accident are still unknown and his body is yet to be found at the time of this writing. The following is a note from Editor-in-Chief Derek Franz in remembrance of Gardner:

One of Michael Gardner’s best attributes was his ability to express compassion.

If you had the privilege of being in his presence—and he was very present in any situation—you probably felt it. He had a way of conveying warmth, respect and appreciation just by looking you in the eye. He was at the top of the game in the extreme sports world, as comfortable on skis as he was ice tools, or on a skateboard or a horse, for that matter. But he was never one to exert machismo; never too proud, too tough to use the “L” word, love. In all my time talking to him, he frequently emphasized his appreciation and gratitude for the people in his life.

He wasn’t defined by his activities; he made a point not to be. That must have been a challenge, because his accomplishments rank in the annals of mountaineering history. To give one example, in June 2022 he set the speed record on the Slovak Direct (AI6- M8-, 9,000′), one of the hardest routes on Denali (20,310′), with Hennessey and Rob Smith in 17 hours, 10 minutes. There are too many first ascents, ski descents and huge linkups to list here. A more recent success happened in Alaska this past May, when he completed a new route on Begguya (Mt. Hunter) with Hennessey and Smith. Gardner was keen to write about it for Alpinist. He told me that when they arrived back at base camp, Jack Tackle had a pizza and a bottle of whiskey delivered to them by air taxi. On Instagram, Gardner wrote:

Call it a route, call it a variation, we simply called it “One Way Out” AI6 M6+ R. Our line shared the final exit pitch of the original route as well as the entire upper ice arete. But to me it matters not what we call it or how we define it. All that matters is that we climbed high, we climbed hard and we came home.

Suffice to say, during a typical season Mike Gardner would lap Denali (20,310′) like it was his job, because, as a guide for the Alaska Mountaineering School, it was. But when he wrapped up his work he’d head back up with his friends—often Hennessey—add a new line on the mountain and ski down. If you asked him what he did last week, he’d smile and say he went for a ski tour with his good buddies, and it was a fun time. Then he’d ask earnestly what you did, and he’d listen with genuine interest as you listed some local climbs or minigolf ski tours.

“MG” was a blazing bright human. I didn’t get to spend much time with him in person, yet I remember our interactions so vividly, the strong energy of his presence. I interviewed him for a podcast in 2021 and collaborated with him on stories, but there were at least as many hours of rambling personal conversations in which the time would shoot by. That’s the kind of person you’d want to share a shiver bivy with, and he weathered plenty of shiver bivies. On the phone, in between expeditions, we’d talk about life and skateboarding.

In our podcast interview and in a video for Arc’teryx, he asserts that all his athletic ability stemmed from skateboarding, which he picked up when he was a kindergartner. I had to relinquish my wheels years ago after too many bone bruises, but that only gave me more appreciation for MG’s ability. He could shred creative lines through concrete bowls and halfpipes as well as unusual features, such as a giant, rusting section of industrial pipe that he found off the side of a highway. He was almost always shirtless with no pads. It was as though he was protected by an aura of confidence as he danced with gravity. His Zen-like attention to the present moment probably accounted for a lot of his prowess to execute flawless movements at high speeds.

When MG and I were first getting to know each other in 2020, he was eager to understand the tangled emotions that had twisted him up since 2008. That was the year his dad—a revered mountain guide—died while running a routine free-solo lap on the Exum Ridge of the Grand Teton. MG was 16 at the time. He’d had an inner conflict ever since, a duality of emotions, between what the mountains had taken from him and what they continued to give him; he wanted to understand why he kept going back. In the podcast he says: “I don’t have a really clear, well-thought-out answer … why I go to the mountains when there’s so much hurt and tragedy there for me. Yet there’s so much joy, and the answer lies somewhere in the middle of these paradoxes.”

He came to Alpinist eager to get to work on the writing that he sensed he needed to do. He knew it would be a journey, a full process, and that is probably what attracted him to it. MG was always game to undertake a long journey, whatever the format. Legs, heart, soul. He had it all in spades, and it emanated from his eyes and smile, which were often framed by a shaggy mullet haircut and a trucker hat.

On that note, for the superstar that he was, his style was far from flashy. The only bright color I can remember him donning was the purple 1980s windbreaker that he wore while skijoring. Drab Carhartts were more to his taste. Mike Gardner would fit in at a Wyoming truck stop as well as anywhere else. And—no matter his fashion choices—he fit in everywhere, because connecting with people was one of his superpowers.

I first met him during the Covid pandemic over Zoom in 2020. He was giving a slideshow for the Teton Climbers Coalition, hosted by Christian Beckwith. I was familiar with Gardner’s name, but I didn’t know his face. At the beginning of the event, Beckwith put all the Zoom audience members into breakout rooms for a one-on-one, two-minute meet-and-greet, along with some questions to get the conversation started. The questions were something like, “Where do you live, and where do you like to climb?”

Staring back at me on the computer screen was this young stranger with shaggy hair and flat-brimmed hat, flashing that grin. “Mike” was his screenname, but I didn’t make the immediate connection. He jumped in, “Where do you like to climb?” I told him I was from Carbondale, Colorado, and that I enjoy the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. He lit up. “I’m from Ridgeway! I love the Black. What are some of your favorite routes?” I listed some classics, swelling with a bit of contained pride. He tossed out some easy routes that he liked—certainly not the hardest ones he’d climbed there—and kept asking me questions before I could fire back with my own. The next thing I knew, Beckwith was introducing him as the featured presenter for the evening. He sandbagged me! I thought. MG’s eyes twinkled innocently on the screen. I know the sandbaggery was not his intention at all, though. He simply loved being among people who enjoyed the same things that he did. It was a privilege when I finally got to sip whiskey with him by a campfire on a drizzly autumn night on the north rim of the Black.

In June 2021, Mike’s close friend and mentor Chason Russell drowned while kayaking a severe rapid known as Meatgrinder on the Crystal River near Redstone, Colorado. Mike drove from wherever he was to help pull his friend’s body from where it was pinned amid the thundering whitewater. It was a dangerous undertaking that involved approximately 30 people. Mike and I talked about it privately and we talked about it on the podcast, and he writes about it in the story you’re about to read. That’s just one part of his complex life.

In the podcast he talks about how he promised his mom and sister to always come back from the mountains: “There’s the reality that maybe I won’t be able to make good on that promise…. I don’t take any of it lightly.”

He did not want to leave this world in the way that he did. In the story below, he writes:

“Well, at least they died doing what they loved—that phrase has never sat well with me. It feels reductive. Every loss creates an irreplaceable void. The fabric of a community is altered forever.”

I struggle to find words that might offer some sort of closure for our loss, a 32-year-old treasure of a human who is no longer with us, so I’ll let MG’s words take it from here.

—Derek Franz

A BEAD OF SWEAT TRICKLES FROM MY BROW and nearly makes its way to the bridge of my nose before it freezes solid. I brush my face with a gloved hand, as much to rid myself of the ice as to check for any remaining sensation in my skin. I look over my shoulder and out of the deep maw of the chimney that I’m precariously wedged in: Mt. Huntington shines bright under a rich full moon. The ridges and valleys of the central Alaska Range are bathed in soft light. The void is almost comforting, as if I’m staring into a deep, clear body of water with the landscape reflected across its surface.

CRACK. 

My heart skips a beat as a subtle shift in my weight causes a crampon point to slip off a slight edge.

I swing my arms violently, grasping for anything solid to push against in the dark. Whenever my pack scrapes across the rock, the skis attached to it make a sound like nails on a chalkboard. After a brief struggle that feels like an eternity, I secure myself. My back presses against one wall and my crampons bite into a thin veneer of ice on the opposing side. During that chaotic lapse in concentration, I’ve slid down the frozen cleft for nearly a meter. I glance at the neon orange rope as it snakes out of sight below me. Frantically, I paw with ice tools again at the walls, searching with my headlamp for any weakness in the rock. I find a small fissure and slot a nut in, and when I clip the rope to it, I sigh. 

As my breathing returns to normal, I’m acutely aware of how far out we are. I doubt Sam has even noticed the subtle regress of my movement. He’s probably just star-gazing patiently at the belay, waiting for me to get the rope up. I shake life into my hands, wincing while the blood surges to my fingers. I grab my tools. Narrowing my focus to the task at hand, I engage with the dark mountain. I climb upward, moving beyond my doubts, out of the shadowy chasm and into the moonlight. 

After I reach the snow slopes, I build an anchor and bring Sam to me. Despite the thousands of meters of climbing beneath us, his eyes glint. A trace of a smile passes across his face. It’s cold, bitterly cold. We’re tired and hungry, and yet we’re climbing. I hand Sam the remains of our small rack, and he gives me half of a granola bar. No words break the eerie stillness. We nod at each other, and away he goes, leaving me alone with my thoughts and a handful of calories.

The silence is overwhelming. As Sam’s small beam of light weaves upward through fluted snow, the only perceptible external noise is the slight trickle of crystals that stream down behind his chosen line. But I can hear my heart beat in my chest. The frigid air stings when I take deep breaths. I revel in this spare existence. At play is a wonderful paradox. We’re in one of the most inhospitable places on the planet I can think of—around fifteen thousand feet on a remote part of Denali in April at 3:00 a.m—yet I feel so comfortable and alive. In moments like this one, I don’t question the value of this pursuit. 

The rope comes tight to my harness and I follow it into the maze of snow flutings. My movements feel in tune with our environment. A rhythmic tempo takes over my thoughts: I simply kick, step and breathe. Our line of ascent feels like water flowing uphill, naturally rolling through the terrain. An expression of life rather than a fight for survival. 

My relationship with the mountains has always been conflicted. On the one hand, it has given me a chance to feel deeply alive. Often when I’m climbing, I feel certain that my existence has purpose, a cathartic relationship with people and the environment. A sense of close connection hushes my thoughts. An indescribable awareness of place and peace takes hold. On the other hand, there are consequences to devoting yourself to the mountains. I know them intimately, and yet year after year, death after death, I continue to climb.  

Well, at least they died doing what they loved—that phrase has never sat well with me. It feels reductive. Every loss creates an irreplaceable void. The fabric of a community is altered forever. 

My father was a climber and a mountain guide for my entire life. He went on expeditions to large mountains in the Himalaya and the Andes and routinely climbed peaks in the Rockies. As a family, we spent our summers in the Teton Range of Wyoming where he worked. I was sixteen years old when he died in a climbing accident on the Grand Teton. At that point in my life, I hadn’t willingly chosen the mountains. This was the world I was raised in, but I hadn’t accepted the potential impacts of climbing, the seriousness of the pursuit, for myself. And then it abruptly changed the course of my life forever. 

For years after my father’s death, I tried to stay away from the mountains. 

April 27, 2021, Ruth Glacier 

On the approach to the Isis Face, as Sam and I skinned up a pocket glacier, I felt heavy. There is a weight that often surrounds the start of a large climb. It is the moment when the reality of a dream starts to take shape. The drawn-out banter and the lengthy planning give way to the sheer vastness of adventure. There is so much at stake. I am young. I have loved ones. There are many people who might be left behind wondering what the hell we were doing. And despite all our efforts to maintain sound judgment and all our attention to detail, I might be swatted off a peak by sheer bad luck. 

Once we’re committed to a route, I know my doubts will slowly give way to trust, to a kind of faith in the powerful resonance with my partners and the place. Sam and I had arrived in Talkeetna only a day before, and we had many plans for the next two months. It had become something of a tradition for us to spend the first two weeks of our Alaska summer seasons climbing at lower elevations for ourselves. Then, in mid-May, we’d both guide clients on the West Buttress of Denali. Once those contracts ended, we might be better acclimated to attempt some personal ascents of high-elevation routes. In past years, this schedule hadn’t aligned with good weather windows before and after our work trips, but we were always able to get up something. We had high hopes that we might manage more than one climb this season.

Ahead, the angle of the glacier steepened. Winding around crevasses, we reached a wildly broken bergschrund. Skinning was no longer feasible, so we donned crampons. The wall above us felt daunting to say the least: almost seven thousand feet of steep rockbands and sugary snow flutings rose between us and the shoulder of the South Buttress.

Questing through snow the consistency of oatmeal, I aimed for a break in the headwall. We intended to climb a new line up the center of the face rather than the original line. I’d spent years dreaming about this face, and as I became immersed in its actual folds, I tried to place myself on the map. To climber’s left, a ridge seemed to delineate the path of Dave Stutzman and Jack Tackle’s first ascent. When I looked straight overhead, my mind wandered. Is that the large left-facing dihedral that makes up the edge of our line in the photos? I was only a speck in this immensity. 

July 19, 2009, Grand Teton, Wyoming

The angular rock in my hand felt familiar as I swung it against the hardened surface of the snowfield, chopping small steps for my feet. The deeper into the mountains I went, the lighter I felt. 

I’d left the Lupine Meadows trailhead that morning with no climbing equipment and no particular destination. My only goal was to honor my father on the anniversary of his passing. My feet carried me past the end of the hiking trails, deeper and higher into the mountains than I’d been since he’d passed away. I felt a lump in my throat as I looked over my shoulder at the south aspect of the Grand Teton. He’d fallen to his death a year ago from that face. 

I shut my eyes hard and shook my head to rid myself of the emotions. I carried on chopping steps into steep snow, making a path across the headwall. Twenty minutes later, I arrived at the high camp on the Lower Saddle just after the guides had put their guests to bed. I walked in sheepishly, wearing soggy running shoes, faded blue jeans, a cotton sweatshirt and my father’s worn purple backpack. Several guides looked up. Christian stood. He set the remains of his dinner on a nearby boulder, and he embraced me. A tear shone in the crease of his eye. He smiled through the pain. “I am so glad you’re here.” 

He kept an arm over my shoulder as he steered me toward the circle of kin perched on the rock clearing used for a helipad above the hut. I looked from face to face without noting a trace of surprise: I was where I should be and with the people I should be with. 

“I would like to show you where we found him, if you want,” said Andy. He was sitting against a boulder, his hands folded. I nodded, incapable of words. 

The fading sun glinted off golden granite as the group of us—Christian, Andy, myself and several other guides—jaunted upward. Occasionally we used our hands to surmount short steep parts along a series of ledges. In unison, our pace slowed. Each move became drawn out. The shift was more intentional than somber. We were taking our time, our hands and feet lingering just a second longer on each hold to engage with the mountain. On the other side of a bend, we stopped. Christian squatted on his haunches, his palms together in front of him. We all circled around. I took up a similar position on his side. Christian touched one hand to the ledge. “We found him here.” 

My vision blurred slightly. I reached out, collected a small stone and clung to it for orientation. The vast, dark wall above us was overhanging. Viewed from afar, it resembled a large black heart in the center of the golden south face. To the west, the sun was beginning to set over the plains of Idaho. A raven flew high overhead, dancing on unseen thermals.   

April 27, 2021, Isis Face 

Before me, streams of water glinted off the first major rockband. I slotted in a few cams and belayed Sam up. We both mashed our faces into the wet stone and sipped drops of precious water from the mountain. As he racked the gear onto his harness, Sam dished out a few lyrics of a song running through his head. His confidence rolled over me. I joined in, singing into the mountain, while he continued skyward, torquing his tools in minute cracks of steel-grey rock. His movements flowed, smooth and controlled, and I felt the weight lifting. 

I had chosen to be here, and now, despite whatever else was happening in my life or in the world outside, my sole purpose was to engage with this moment. 

July 20, 2008, Lupine Meadows, Wyoming

The midday sun was high overhead, its intense light reflecting off the metal hoods of Park Service vehicles. A helicopter hovered above. I felt the thump thump thump of the rotor wash in my heart as much as on my face. I felt the pressure on my hand as my best friend Jane squeezed it. It felt like another person’s hand, not mine. Below the helicopter, a line dangled. A load was clipped to it, wrapped securely in red canvas. Hikers, headed up the trail for a day trip, might easily shrug at the airborne cargo—as gear, as supplies. To me, the form was unmistakably that of a human body. It was everything. It was my father. 

The pilot steered the helicopter toward a stand of trees near a creek where I swam as a boy. The pressure on my hand swelled. Jane and my mother were crying next to me. My eyes were hot, yet dry. I felt numb. The climbing rangers put the precious cargo down under a tree. The rangers on the ground unhooked the line, and the mechanical bird flew away.  

After doing what they needed to, the rangers waved my mother and me over. The earthy smell of sage rose from beneath my feet as I walked across the meadow. I moved slowly, each step drawing me into a new reality that I was unwilling to accept. 

April 28, 2021, Isis Face 

As I pop through the lip of the cornice at the top of the Isis, the wind scours my face. I walk over to Sam, who coils in the rope. The dark night sky is scattered with stars. We embrace and shout into the gusts. We’ve just climbed a direct new line up the center of the Isis Face in a mere eighteen hours. But the journey isn’t over. 

Sam and I stomp a platform out on the ridge crest and pitch our small tent. We crawl inside and drape our light down blanket over ourselves. The cold light of the moon shines through the fabric walls. Shivering through the night, we wait for the sun to return and restore warmth to our bodies. 

At last, the fiery ball rises in the sky, and the flanks of Sołt’aanh glow orange and red. Along with warmth, however, the start of a new day brings low-hanging clouds up the glacier. We set to work breaking down our tent, and then we begin skiing and down climbing the South Buttress toward Denali Basecamp. Abruptly, smooth snow gives way to seracs and blue ice. My brain seems to rattle in my skull as I bounce along chunks of debris. Some slopes are so icy that we have to rappel. Some icefalls dead-end, and we have to reascend their teetering blocks. 

When I glance over my shoulder, I notice Sam waving me left through another icefall. I give myself willingly to gravity and make wildly arced turns underneath giant seracs. I’m riding some unidentifiable line between control and catastrophe. Eventually, the terrain becomes more predictable, with fewer hidden crevasses and serac debris. We straight-line out underneath building clouds and onto the Kahiltna Glacier. Finally, there is nothing except flat snow. We’ve made it through the odyssey.  

March 15, 2021, Victor, Idaho

A few weeks before heading to Alaska, I’d thrown gear into random piles on the floor of my home in Idaho. Ice screws and sharp crampons seemed so out of place in this warm, comfortable living room. A fire crackled in the woodstove. The smell of hearty stew drifted from the kitchen. Cedar, the dog, pawed himself a nest to lie in among my down jackets and sleeping bag. 

“So what exactly are you and Sam going to climb?” my girlfriend Katie asked. She looked concerned.

“I am not sure yet,” I said, and I shrugged. This was only partially true. We had plenty of ideas, but to utter them out loud seemed foolhardy. 

“Hmm.” She frowned. Katie and I had been together for years, and she’d watched my trajectory as a climber. She knew that whatever Sam and I planned, our objectives would undoubtedly push us. She’d been there to greet me in Talkeetna when I came back from my first big climb in the range; I’d lost nearly twenty-five pounds and was a gaunt, withered shell of myself. The narrative that I told myself in my head—that I could protect her from worry by waiting to tell her the details—was complete bullshit. 

When we’d first met, Katie was also working in the outdoor industry, and often she’d be the one leaving for long periods of time to head into the mountains, while I guided closer to home. Since then, she has gone back to grad school, while also working full-time as a teacher and creating a farm and garden program for her students. I’ve been amazed at her courage and her ability to reinvent herself, by her tireless efforts to contribute to a community. 

As I gazed at the guitar in the corner, the well-seasoned cast-iron pots hanging above the fireplace and the photos of Katie and me on the walls, everything seemed to fit together to create a picturesque ideal of home. Why did I need to flee to the mountains? To try hard in some arbitrary dance with the elements to justify this peace and simplicity? I knew many climbers before me had locked themselves into a similar moral stalemate, alternating between restlessness and guilt. Hell, this was bigger than climbing: many people have put stock in external challenges in faraway places, hoping those experiences might allow for growth, risking not just their lives, but their loved ones’ happiness. 

Once more, I stuffed those nagging questions deep in the bottom of my heart as I shifted Cedar off my sleeping bag and shoved gear inside the duffel bag. I tried to avoid his all-knowing stare. The bag was heavy with the weight of my selfish pursuits. 

May 2, 2021, Begguya

A mere three days after the Isis Face, Sam and I are climbing again. Flying-saucer-shaped clouds hover over Denali and Sołt’aanh, but they have produced no weather of note at lower elevations, at least for now. Still, the forecast predicts some sort of storm over the next few days. 

Sam and I are honed by our recent ascent and in tune with each other. The Bibler-Klewin on the North Buttress of Begguya seems like a logical choice for a short weather window since it starts directly above our base camp. At 5:00 a.m., my alarm goes off in my sleeping bag. I turn it off and roll over. From the quick shuffle on Sam’s side of the tent, I know he’s also looking for extra minutes of sleep. Neither of us has ever been good at waking up early. At last, we crawl out of our tent, grab our packs and start skinning to the base of the climb. 

As if by natural force, we flow upward. High on the route, I have to belay in the firing line of debris that Sam knocks down a steep ice chimney. I sit slumped in my harness and keep my eyes down, letting the shards bounce off my helmet. But the rope moves steadily upward. Sam barely makes a sound as he dispatches the hardest part of the climbing. Pitch after pitch goes by in a blissful state of synergy. I remember someone once asking Sam what our strategy was for fast-and-light ascents. He shrugged and looked at his feet. “I don’t know. We just don’t stop climbing.” 

By the time we reach the upper ice fields, my hands feel wooden. I pull and push through an immense fatigue as I swing my tools into low-angle ice that feels like sheets of steel. The intense evening sun bores into me. I swallow hard against a mounting thirst. The rope weighs heavy on my harness. I need to focus and not miss a beat. The rope runs in a large arc through a single carabiner clipped to the bright orange ice screw between Sam and me. The image is a subtle reminder of how intertwined our fates are. We are simul-climbing; if either of us falls, we both might be seriously injured. 

Lenticular clouds shroud the summits of Denali and Sołt’aanh. At the top of the buttress, we pitch our small tent for the few hours of dusk to see what weather will actually arrive in the morning—rather than just hypothesize and perhaps go down prematurely. There’s still no precipitation or wind. If a storm arises, however, we’ll be screwed.  

That night, I keep losing feeling in my extremities, and I cling tightly to Sam for warmth. Ice crystals form on the edge of my hood. I bury my face deeper into my jacket, cursing our light style and our lack of a sleeping bag. Sam coughs and mutters, “Wanna switch sides?” Sensing my lethargy, he flips on his music. Black Sabbath shatters the icy silence. From behind a patchwork of hoods, his smirk is barely visible. 

Eventually, the sun rolls back around. The storm hasn’t yet appeared. Sam and I hardly speak. We set off toward the top, compelled more by a feeling than a goal. Wind whips through Sam’s jacket as he embraces me on the summit. I gaze around at the infinite peaks of the range. I feel momentarily fulfilled by a sense of having nothing more to climb. 

April 10, 2007, Lizard Head Pass, Colorado

I squinted hard into the darkness. My knuckles gripped the steering wheel with ever-increasing pressure. Snow pounded the windshield until I could barely make out the road—which at this point in the storm was nothing more than a monochromatic illusion of security. I had no idea if I was driving in the middle of the pavement, on the shoulder or even moving at all. I glanced at the dashboard for reassurance of my progress. The speedometer read twenty miles an hour. The clock blinked 3:00 a.m. There was a faint ringing in my ear as my fear completely took hold. 

And then a head popped up from the backseat of the car. “No way, look at this storm! How cool. You really can’t learn these kind of skills in drivers’ ed.” My dad leaned forward, awoken from an hours-long sleep in the backseat. 

“Dad, can you start driving?” I said. “I’m terrified, and I have no idea what I am doing. I’ve never driven in a storm like this.” 

“No way, buddy,” Dad said. “You’re getting the experience of a lifetime. Just keep it steady and relax. You’re doing so good.”

I was fifteen years old, and I’d only recently begun driving with a learner’s permit. To be eligible to take the test for a license, I needed something like fifty hours of driving with an adult. My dad insisted the best tactic was to get all the hours in one go. So for my spring break, we loaded the station wagon with surfing gear, skateboards and climbing kit, and we headed for Southern California. He told me to drive the entire trip no matter the weather or traffic. Everything went well until the return journey when we hit an early spring storm in the San Juan Mountains.

My dad slithered from the backseat into the passenger seat, and he turned on our favorite Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album. I relaxed and kept the wheel steady and my gaze fixed into the storm,  finding that soft focus between the incoming torrent of snowflakes and the vast expanse of night beyond. Finally, the snow began to subside, and I could see clearer skies ahead. My dad seemed a bit deflated. “We don’t really need to be home tonight, do we?” he said. “What do you say we pull over and sleep in a snow cave or something?”

The question seemed rhetorical to me. Of course, why let our adventure end with a smooth, casual drive home? And so, although we were a mere hour away from home, I found a place to pull over. My dad selected a spot in a clearing of aspen trees illuminated by the moon. We piled the heavy, wet drifts high, and as he pointed out some of the finesse involved in a well-built snow cave, his voice became joyful. He dropped to his stomach to burrow deeper into the mound. The San Juan front range formed a jagged outline above our sparkling meadow.

“You see, if you build a little cold air sink on the ground like this, and your sleeping zone a bit higher, you can ride out even the roughest storms.” Dad had poked his head out of the cave looking absolutely elated, and as I passed him the sleeping pads and bags, I imagined him on one of his expeditions, high on some Himalayan peak, displaying the same enormous grin, the same delight in the experience of riding out some storm.

As I lay beside him buried in my sleeping bag, I felt a warmth that had nothing to do with being in out of the cold. 

June 4, 2021, Talkeetna, Alaska 

I lie on my back on a soft couch in the Yurt, one of the many guide hangouts around the Alaska Mountaineering School compound. I’d just returned from twenty-something days of guiding on the West Buttress of Denali. After three lengthy trips in the Alaska Range, it feels like a gift to lounge around on furniture. My phone is pressed to my ear.  

“When will you be home?” Katie asks. I can hear the hope in her voice. 

“Well, soon, maybe one more week or so. Weather seems good for our main objective.” 

Katie sighs. She needs me home for a number of valid reasons, and all I can think of is how perfect the weather looks. I’ve been in Alaska for a while now, and in every sense, I’ve had an amazing season: a new route on the Isis Face and an ascent of the North Buttress of Begguya. I’ve guided trips up the West Buttress and Peak 11,300. But I decide I need one more big climb. Somehow, I justify it to her. Or I think I do. 

The silence buzzes in my ear. A lot feels left unsaid. I lie with the phone still pressed to my ear. My spoken words seem hollow: excuses, not reasons for going back into the mountains. 

Slowly, I get off the couch and step outside into the thick summer air. The buzz of an airplane fills my ears. Sam and Adam stand in the driveway. After nearly two months in the mountains, their unshaven, leathery faces seem out of place in our lush green surroundings. Adam is a dear friend from back home. He’s been having his own set of adventures in the Alaska Range with other partners, and now that we’ve all just finished guiding, we think that the three of us will make a good team to climb up the Cassin Ridge, ski down the Northwest Buttress, and trek out to Wonder Lake.

 It has been a dream of ours for years to traverse Denali and exit through the tundra under human power. The Alaska Range is isolated on all sides by raging rivers, endless marsh, dense thickets and other rugged terrain. Sam and I had felt that our Alaska trips had lacked the creativity and commitment of the early climbers’ expeditions. We wanted to thrash our way through head-high brush and traverse swamps for miles as they did—instead of simply boarding a plane at base camp and gazing out the window for an hour. 

Sam’s well-worn wranglers and faded T-shirt cling to him. His clothes now seem too big for his skinny frame. Adam’s face has a tinge of purple from too much high-altitude sun. He’s wearing slipper sandals; his feet are already too battered for closed-toe footwear. “Weather looks perfect for one more go, but we need to leave first thing tomorrow,” Sam says. I nod my approval, only dimly aware of what we’re getting ourselves into.

November 8, 2020, Yellowstone Wilderness, Wyoming

The golden hues of the tall grass shone bright against the looming dark clouds of a distant mountain range. Katie and I ran in unison, laughing deeper into the wild. Only hours prior, Katie had convinced me that we should spend our Sunday afternoon going for a mellow jog. Now, it was already late in the day, and we were breaking all of the rules of sensible backcountry travel. We were miles from the trailhead, wearing just shorts and T-shirts and carrying little more than some granola bars and a liter of water. But the simplicity of the outing was powerful. No long, drawn-out planning sessions, no need for technical equipment, just the two of us moving through a landscape only a short distance from our home. 

After longer than I expected—some ten or so miles into the run—we arrived at our goal. Steam rose from behind the final hill as we jogged toward a band of trees. There, tucked among the creek banks, was one of the most picturesque hot springs I had ever seen. Katie’s laughter seemed to dance through the stillness. Thunder cracked in the distance as the dark clouds rolled closer with bulging bellies. As we scrambled down the bank, stripped off our clothes and sank into the water, I was enveloped by more than just soothing warmth. A sense of complete peace welled in my heart. 

This season was the first in nearly a decade that I hadn’t gone on any major expeditions, and I’d felt restless, idle and lacking direction. But now the connection with my surroundings and my partner was as complete and fulfilling as anything I’d felt while climbing in the mountains. Light rain began to fall. Katie and I exchanged knowing glances: it would be dark soon, and the rain might turn to snow. We were a long way from the car with hardly any clothes. Katie cocked her head slightly as if to say, Isn’t this nice?

 In that moment, I felt a balance of elements in my life that all too often are askew. She was thriving in this wild, uncertain place. We were riding out the storm together.

June 2021, Cassin Ridge, Denali 

I lean into my ice axes and kneel into the steep terrain. My breath comes in ragged strokes. I focus hard on keeping my eyes open. I feel a hand on my shoulder. “Nice work, Guarddog, you’re a beast.” Sam uses a nickname that he and another friend gave me on our Himalayan expedition a few years back. Perhaps he’s hoping to conjure more energy from my withering reserves. 

Sam wades past me and punches a trench through waist-deep snow with his hands and knees. The light is soft. The midnight sun glows crimson. Gold dances along the profile of Begguya and Sołt’aanh. 

After only minutes of stalling, my feet begin to go numb in my thin ski boots. Movement is survival. I look down just briefly: Adam’s beard is caked in snow. His smile is weak, but he still tries it out. I wave my ice axe at him, and he returns the gesture. The fatigue creeps into my mind as I try not to think of how outrageous our goal is. This deep snow is shit for climbing, but maybe it will make for good ski conditions on the other side. We’ve never heard of anyone else attempting the Northwest Buttress as a ski line, and we have little information, apart from an old photo of the route. With our lightweight strategy, we’re counting on favorable conditions. 

At 18,000 feet, in the coldest part of the night, we stop to brew water, piling on each other for warmth and force-feeding ourselves cookie dough for sustenance. Finally, after high-fiving on the South and North Summits, we can remove the nagging weight of our skis from our backs and start, cautiously, making turns down the first slopes of the Northwest Buttress. With a bit of navigating and some down climbing through rocks, we find the way into the large couloir we identified from the photo. Sam eases out into the middle of the face. The snow seems deep yet stable. Almost tenderly, he skis in elegant curves through the powder. The evening sun shines on his tracks. Adam lets out a hoot of joy. 

“Mind the rocks,” Sam yells at me as I cut hard out of the bottom of the couloir to join him on his perch. Below us, the mountain falls away into a jumble of large seracs and icefalls. When we consult the photo on Sam’s phone, we can see that we must wrap hard left above all this broken terrain. I set off in that direction, but clouds drift up from the glacier, obscuring some of my view. The light goes flat. For a moment, I feel weightless. Unknowingly, I’ve soared over a small crevasse. My stomach lurches. I reach a safe spot on the far side of the slope and holler. “Stay on my line, and heads up for the crevasse!”

Adam swings into the lead to decipher the next pitch of skiing. We know we need to cross one more ridge to find the lower snow slopes and a safe exit through the icefall to the glacier below. Lower on the mountain, the snow has become wet and the cloudbank is rising. Adam is making slow, controlled turns, with a ski pole in one hand and an ice axe in the other. Abruptly, several inches of snow give way to blue ice. Adam slides for a moment, and then stops himself with his axe. Hanging from the tool, he places an ice screw, clips to it, and begins to switch from skis to crampons. I try a line slightly right of Adam, but some fifty feet below him, I also have to self-arrest. Between the two of us, we’ve scraped the slope clean of snow. Above us, Sam gets out his crampons. “I think Gardner was able to ski more of the ice than you,” he says to Adam, ribbing him.   

The clouds engulf us on the next pitch of skiing. Although we’re only meters apart, we can’t see one another. Squinting into the abyss, I aim for a subtle break in the dense mist, Adam and Sam close on my heels. After swerving around a crevasse and navigating a small icefall, we find ourselves below the cloudbank on a scree slope at the start of the lower Peters Glacier. Glacial melt gurgles nearby. Still stunned, we drink from clear-silver running water. 

March 15, 2009, Somewhere in New Mexico

The moon reflected off the asphalt between the cactus and caliche. A rabbit scurried into the brush on the far side of the road. The Grateful Dead blared from the speakers as Chason and I sang together. I pushed the accelerator closer to the floor. The old beat-up minivan whined as if in protest. The neon glow of the dash read 2:00 a.m. Empty cups with residue from gas station coffee slid from side to side on the floorboards.

“There is just something about a desert highway in the middle of the night, you know?” Chason mused out loud. “It’s like everything is right in the world, just a full tank of gas, fresh coffee, good tunes and nothing to do but drive.” 

I nodded. I cast my eyes sideways at him. He slouched in the passenger seat sipping at his coffee, gazing out the window with a half smile. A knit hat capped his unruly hair. He was still wearing his ski pants although it had been almost ten hours since we’d stopped skiing and it would be at least that long until we skied again. 

My heart swelled as I thought back to earlier that day. We were boot packing up a snowy ridge in Taos, New Mexico. Chason was in front, and I was merely a step behind him. Our footwork was in sync as we crested a rise. We stopped and gazed out at the unfolding peaks and valleys beyond into the vast expanse.

The wind picked up. Chason cracked his familiar grin. “It is good to be up here with you, man,” he said. He turned and continued higher up the ridge. A sense of lightness filled me. After my father passed away, I’d sometimes wondered whether I’d ever recapture that feeling of deep connection with another person in the mountains. 

As we drove deeper into the night, I tried to think about how to express my gratitude to Chason. Before I’d met him, my teenage mind had tried with reckless abandon to fill the void left by my father’s loss. I was in desperate need of a mentor. Chason’s soft-spoken demeanor immediately provided solace. Our bond grew stronger as he helped me channel my emotions into my skiing and my life in the mountains. 

The van creaked. Painted yellow lines streamed by. Stars twinkled overhead. The dark night seemed to pulse with life at the edge of the van’s headlight beams; our existence was a small bubble of light roaring through the landscape with an entire world just beyond view. I shifted in my seat to catch another glance of Chason. As I returned my gaze to the open road, the similarity between the man sitting next to me and my father knotted my heartstrings. 

“Yeah, man, there is something about a desert highway,” I said. That was all my confused teenage mind could come up with.

But Chason’s eyes shone with all that remained unspoken. He clapped me on the back and cranked the volume of the radio to eleven.

June 14, 2021, Somewhere near Wonder Lake, Denali 

“Think of this as training for the bigger rivers,” I say sheepishly as I glance at the raging torrent. For more than twenty-four hours, Sam, Adam and I have been skiing and walking with few rests. Since taking our skis off at the toe of the lower Peters Glacier, we’ve been wading across lake-size bogs and tunneling through never-ending overhead brush. The ever-present scat is a constant reminder that beyond every thicket might be a monstrous grizzly bear or annoyed moose.

Our idealistic banter just days prior—about how we needed to walk completely out of the range to have an adventure like that of the early mountaineers—seems distant and foolhardy now. The scale and wildness have far surpassed our dreams. My feet ache from hiking for so many miles in thin-soled running shoes. My mind feels in a state of delirium: each high point we’ve crested has only shown endless tundra ahead. And here we are at the edge of one of many rivers we’ll have to ford. Although it’s one of the smaller ones, it’s still at least waist-deep, and the current looks strong enough to sweep us all downstream.

Adam looks at me, unsure. “You know I don’t really swim, right?” Sam is already in the middle of the river. As he creeps along, poles outstretched for balance, the frothing water rises near his thighs. 

“I don’t think you have much of a choice,” I say. We both glance over our shoulders at the distant mass of Denali. Adam nods reluctantly. As soon as we dropped off the north side of that mighty mountain, we’d begun a one-way trip. Reaching the Wonder Lake Campground is our only option short of calling for a rescue.

“It’s not too deep,” Sam calls from the far shore.

And with that encouragement, Adam grabs my shoulders and we step into the current together. The icy torrent pushes hard at my waist, and I remember the snow we waded through high on the mountain the day before. My running shoes skate for purchase along the river bottom while we inch sideways to the far shore. 

Images from the whole adventure somersault in my head. We’ve traveled through every possible landscape in the region: skiing blue-ice glaciers and dodging moulins and crevasses; drinking from filthy ponds where angry beavers defended their waterways; stumbling through waist-deep tussocks and now crossing fresh glacier-melt rivers. Adam claws tightly to me, and the far shore grows closer. 

I dream of all this coming to an end when there is nowhere farther to go, nothing more to climb. Where there will be no more walking. We will make it.

June 17, 2021, Teton Valley, Idaho  

Days after returning from Alaska, I’m sitting on a friend’s porch in Teton Valley, Idaho, on the west side of the mountain range. Crushed tins of beer lie strewn at my feet. I am alone, now, by choice, and I sip slowly as I listen to the breeze rustle through branches of aspen trees. I am barefoot and I am savoring the simple act of being alive and feeling warmth on my face. After I return from expeditions that have so much uncertainty, I often find it hard to communicate with loved ones. I push those closest to me away in search of quiet places where I can process my experiences. Whenever I ponder just how thin the line can be between life and death in the mountains, the congratulations from friends and acquaintances begin to seem unwarranted. My phone rings. 

“Michael, can we talk? No, not over the phone. Come here,  please.” Katie’s voice is level, but a subtle gravity emerges in it. Something is amiss. 

When I walk through the door to the house, she embraces me. 

“Michael, Chason is gone. I am so sorry.” 

Disbelief crashes over me. Tears pour down my face. My knees feel weak, and I sit stunned on the floor. I can feel the pain weighing me to the ground. 

Nothing makes sense. Chason gone now? How? What the fuck? 

Never again would I hear his steady voice. His jovial tone as he made light of all things beyond our control. A guttural “OH YEA” from high above when you ripped under a chairlift. Lost. I will never get a chance to tell him what he meant to me. Never again would we drive together through a starry night on some forgotten desert highway mulling out loud over life. 

Chason had become my best friend. When I lost my father, he’d helped me find a peace with the mountains that I’d felt would never come.

The weight of it all feels too much. He was lost to the same life that killed my father. This spring, I’d exposed myself repeatedly to fatal risks. And I’d been rewarded with fleeting experiences of interconnectedness. I’d felt the euphoria of a sense of place and purpose: the way the blood rushed back to my fingers as I reminded myself time and time again that I am alive. How the sun crested the ridge, bringing hope and survival, infusing me with the will to step one foot in front of the other. How a smile from a knowing partner reminded me that we were seeking not the end to a journey, but a timeless feeling of harmonic resonance—in which our efforts become one, and all thoughts of any arbitrary goal fade away before the simple experience of the pulse and lifeblood of the mountains.

Now I feel stripped of all that joy. I still feel a connection with those landscapes and those people, but it’s one of the earthly condition—which is to say that everything and everyone changes, and when we pass on, only fleeting memories linger like the ephemeral glow of dusk over a mountain range before all that remains is dark night sky. Like the emerging light of dawn that seems, at first, like a promise of life, before it turns into a threat as rising temperatures dislodge seracs, and debris tumbles down steep mountain walls. All the beauty that I find in the mountains is constantly shifting, and the moments of clarity and purpose seem to shine and fade as quietly, but surely, as each day’s sun. 

A moment of brilliance, a brief time in the vastness of space, a spark vanishing into the eternal—and all I can do is wonder if it was worth the weight.

[This story originally appeared in Alpinist 77 (Spring 2022). Only a small fraction of our many long-form stories from the print edition are ever uploaded to Alpinist.com. Be sure to subscribe or pick up a hardcopy for all the goodness.—Ed.]