Pearson, Gale and
Washburn

Climbing up!

Basin Camp

2 man tent

Deep Snow

Looking back

"At last we were ready to rope down to the wrecked plane. The side of the mountain was almost straight down and it was solid ice and snow. It never thaws at that altitude. We started roping down using 200-ft.lengths of nylon rope and four of us roped together. There were no slopes less than 70% and many times we scaled walls of blue ice that leaned over backwards for 60-100 feet."

"No words were spoken because of the millions of tons of overhanging ice. A certain vibration in the voice could bring it all down and bury us."

From Everett Cook's letters to his mother.

After the climbing lines, crampons, ice axes and small gas heating stoves were air-dropped to the men waiting at McGonagall Pass,  3 men scouted the route across Muldrow Glacier and set up a tent at the site of Camp Brooks.  The rest of the party reached McGonagall Pass within a few days and they carried supplies and equipment on their backs across Muldrow Glacier to Camp Brooks.  Temperatures stayed below zero and the surface of the glacier was smooth at this time of year.

The next camp, Basin, was set up by Gale and Greany at an altitude of about 7,500 feet up Muldrow Glacier. Pearson arrived then with a snow jeep and the party pushed sleds and the jeep up to about 9,600 feet. The ice was topped with snow that was packed to hard for snowshoes but just right for climbing. The glacier was so steep in places that the men had to drag the supply sleds and the jeep over the icy humps. In some places, the slope was 45 degrees, a challenge for even the most experienced climbers. There were some deep chasms in the glacier, 600-700 feet deep, where the men could peer over the edge and see nothing but blue-green packed ice all the way down.

Basin Camp, the fifth camp along the route, was established at about 11,200 feet. From there, the men could look down and see the snow covered wreckage that had been spotted from the air. From Basin Camp, 13 members of the party hiked up to the summit and prepared to reach the crash site, which was about 1200 feet down a steep, icy slope. The supply plane dropped camp equipment near the wrecked plane and the men lowered them selves on a rope to where the main wreckage was buried in about 10 feet of snow.

On November 9, three members of the party started the descent to the wreckage. They traveled without packs, lowering each other with ropes. The almost perpendicular slope they had descended was at one point a 600-foot sheet of slippery ice. Experienced climber and park ranger, Grant Pearson, described this as the toughest going he had ever encountered. The rest of the advance party made the descent the next day and the group stayed at the site 3 days searching the area and digging around the wreckage.