Photos below from this morning’s preparations for the arrival of the USS Hopper, a Navy destroyer that is paying a call to Homer, Alaska today.
Volunteers posted 1,200 feet of American flags along the beach of the Homer Spit to welcome the 300+ sailors aboard the ship, which will be taking part in Northern Edge military training in the weeks ahead.
As noon approached, motorcycle clubs and members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars were beginning to arrive. A barbecue is planned for the military this afternoon. As the ship came into the dock, a few protestors showed up, but were outnumbered 10-1 by flag-waving supporters. (Photos by Larry Zuccaro.)
It’s tempting to join the fray this week and dive more deeply into the various budget scenarios being considered by the Legislature. But it’s way too early.
Win Gruening
In their quest for a sustainable budget, the Republican-controlled Senate addressed $2 billion of the deficit by passing SB 26 calling for a lower Permanent Fund Dividend and incorporating a government spending cap.
The Senate is balking at any new broad-based taxes – relying instead on continued development of our natural resources and some belt tightening to see us through this period.
In contrast, furthering their quest to sustain ever-growing government dependence, the Democrat-controlled House Majority Coalition is calling for a much higher level of spending. Their plan includes a reduced PFD but no genuine government spending cap.
To support this higher spending, the House passed HB 111 and HB 115 restructuring oil tax credits and imposing a new personal income tax that would raise about $660 million annually beginning in 2019.
Currently, the two plans are $280 million apart. That’s a number that exceeds our entire state general fund appropriations in the early 70’s. Whittling that number down will take some serious negotiations.
Tensions are ramping up. The tough are talking, and the talk is tough.
Talking the toughest is Sen. Pete Kelly who unequivocally stated, “The only thing standing between Alaskans and an income tax is the Senate.”
Taking a contrary view is Renegade-Republican Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux who stated emphatically, “I want to make this perfectly clear. If the Senate thinks we’re going to get out of here with just a (Permanent Fund bill), they’ve got another think coming.”
Really?
So, the discussions continue. We’ve passed Day 90. Day 120 will come and go, special sessions will be called, discussions will drag on and eventually someone will blink. Whether one side or the other gives or they both do remains to be seen. Then we’ll have something more to talk about.
*************
Meanwhile, as legislators debated “To Tax or Not to Tax”, storm troopers from the Chicago airport police hauled a passenger off an airplane after he refused to give up his seat for a “dead-heading” United Airlines crew member.
The passenger, Dr. David Dao, was battered and bloodied during the incident and is threatening to sue United Airlines and the City of Chicago for damages.
This incident, replayed over social media thousands of times, has some unique aspects to it. Some may be inclined to join the “tar and feather” mob and rejoice in bashing airlines generally and United Airlines specifically. Certainly, there is some reason to do that.
Yet there are some interesting observations to be gained from this debacle.
The airline initially offered to pay $800 to anyone willing to give up his seat. When no one volunteered, they selected four passengers to de-board. Three of them left without incident, but Dr. Dao resisted.
In refusing to increase the $800 offer, United Airlines moved away from the free market system and was only left with using force. Force is required, it seems, when using solutions outside the free market. (Note to legislators: This is why an unwillingness to trust the free enterprise system results in unnecessary measures being proposed).
United Airlines CEO, Oscar Munoz, compounded the mistake by initially attempting to justify his company’s actions instead of sincerely taking responsibility. This first public pronouncement from the airline “apologized” for having to “re-accommodate” the passenger. Public outrage followed. Later apologies were too little, too late.
Munoz should have immediately admitted the airline’s mistake, promised a review of the incident to include whatever action was necessary to fix the problem and compensated the passenger for the way he was treated.
On the other hand, while we really don’t know all the details, it appears Dr. Dao might have prevented the situation from escalating out of control. When a uniformed law enforcement officer asks you to comply with an order, you should do so. If you have a problem, it almost always can be ironed out later but resisting someone with a badge is generally not a good idea.
We don’t know if Dr. Dao behaved belligerently or not. But more and more our nation is becoming a collection of ever-offended victims demanding their right not to be offended.
Treating each other civilly and without rancor is a pre-condition to reaching any kind of understanding and agreement.
After all this, United and a whole host of other airlines have changed their policies regarding the “bumping” of passengers – particularly after boarding. That is a good thing.
No doubt United Airlines will be negotiating seriously with Dr. Dao to arrive at a mutually agreeable compromise.
I hope the House and Senate can do the same without drawing blood.
Win Gruening retired as the senior vice president in charge of business banking for Key Bank in 2012. He was born and raised in Juneau and graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1970. He is active in community affairs as a 30-plus year member of Juneau Downtown Rotary Club and has been involved in various local and statewide organizations.
Today is the 100th day of a Trump presidency, but Monday, May 1 is our 100th — the 100th edition of the Must Read Alaska weekly newsletter, delivered to close to 10,000 Alaskans weekly in their email inbox.
It’s a quick read of small bites of Alaska news — some political, some otherwise — that is part Skimm, and part Politico Playbook — but all Alaska. It links to stories here and around the web. We often break stories in the newsletter on Monday and then develop them here on the web site throughout the week.
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Fair warning: The newsletter is scrappy, politically incorrect, and leans conservative. Close-minded liberals won’t like it. But you? You’re not that. Go ahead and subscribe.
JBER photo of 2015 YMCA Combat Fishing Tournament in Seward.
On Thursday night, the Armed Services YMCA hosted its annual auction to raise funds to support programs for active duty, guard, and reserve military members stationed in Alaska.
The auction was specifically for the YMCA’s Combat Fishing Tournament, which is held in Seward, offering members of the U.S. Armed Services a chance to go fishing for a day.
At the Hard Rock Cafe, the auction was typical in every way for an Anchorage fundraiser — it included live and silent auctions, bucket raffles, and a cash bar. For 11 years it’s been a typically pro-military, pro-outdoors, and pro-conservative crowd, but it’s never been a political event.
But then Gov. Bill Walker showed up unannounced during the evening and offered himself up as an auction item.
Walker announced to organizers that he’d allow some Alaska student to shadow him for a day in either his Juneau or his Anchorage office. What were the auction sponsors to do? The state’s top politician had offered himself up to raise money for the YMCA. Do you tell the governor no?
The bidding was started at $7,500. It was a little awkward, as there were no takers.
The auctioneer dropped it down to $5,000. Still…crickets…
Now things were a bit more uncomfortable.
Come on, the auctioneer said, this is your governor. By then, Walker had left the building.
The price dropped to $2,500. And still no bids.
Finally, when the price dropped to $1,000, someone in the audience put the item out of its misery and bid on it. When the auctioneer tried to inch it back up to $1,050, he could get no one to bite.
The combat fishing tournament costs tens of thousands to put on. Charter boats in Seward donate their vessels for the event, so the Armed Services YMCA can meet its goal of taking 200 to 250 service people to Seward. They get them out for a day of epic fishing, serve them lunch and dinner at a banquet and transport them all back home.
Whatever is left over from auction supports the 20 different Armed Services YMCA programs, such as free child care at the hospital, on-base transportation, and the food pantry.
Congressman Don Young looks on as President Donald Trump announces an executive order allowing offshore drilling, a reversal of a President Obama late-term order.
GOVERNOR WALKER ISSUES TEPID RESPONSE
President Donald Trump threw Alaska’s future economy a life ring today, signing an executive order that directs the Department of Interior to reverse its ban on Arctic oil and gas exploration, which was imposed by President Barack Obama.
The order opens up federal waters again that were sealed off in December as Obama left office.
Prior to signing the order, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who was standing next to Trump, leaned over the president and said, “North to the future is what we say in Alaska.”
Trump looked at her and responded, “We love Alaska.” He then signed the order and handed her the pen.
Alaska Gov. Bill Walker issued a mild statement that neither criticized the Obama administration nor praised the magnitude of the policy reversal by Trump.
Gov. Walker said: “I am pleased with the announcement that areas of the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas are once again open for consideration for future energy exploration and development. Last year, our administration made clear that we supported an Offshore Leasing Plan which balances subsistence concerns with our need for economic development, and as a result, made nominations consistent with those principles to the Department of Interior. Disappointingly, our recommendations were not only excluded from the Department’s plan, but those same areas were withdrawn from eligibility for inclusion in future plans. Today’s executive order is an important step towards spurring additional oil production through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.”
Tuckerman Babcock, chairman of the Alaska Republican Party, responded to Walker’s statement with this: “Those are the words of a man who is not in the room.”
The measured tone of Walker’s statement is in line with his climate change-focused Lieutenant Governor, Byron Mallott, who is on record saying Alaska must move to a post-oil future: “We can see, likely, the end of the petroleum era…It will be hopefully an orderly transition. It will be a transition that is probably 25 or 50 years away, in terms of graduation to a different energy future.”
Mallott has been working on climate change policies for the Administration and worked closely with the Obama Administration on its climate change policy, which was much of the political motive underlying Obama’s exploration and development ban in federal arctic waters.
During his remarks, Trump repeated himself to emphasize the importance of his order on the Arctic: “It reverses the previous administration’s Arctic leasing ban. So hear that, it reverses the previous administration’s Arctic leasing ban.
“Today we’re unleashing American energy and clearing the way for thousands and thousands of high-paying American energy jobs,” Trump said. “Our country is blessed with incredible natural resources, including abundant offshore oil and natural gas reserves.
“But the federal government has kept 94 percent of these offshore areas closed for exploration and production. This deprives our country of potentially thousands and thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in wealth,” Trump said.
The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953 defines the OCS as all submerged lands lying off of state coastal waters, which extend three miles offshore. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, both agencies of the Department of Interior, are charged with management of the OCS.
Under the Obama Administration, 94 percent of the OCS was off-limits for development. Of the 1.7 billion acres, just 16.3 million are under lease, with 3,087 active leases. More than 97 percent of those leases are in the Gulf of Mexico. Altogether, the OCS provides 18 percent of domestic oil production and 4 percent of domestic natural gas production.
Shell had been in Alaska for nine years, working on a promising prospect in the Chukchi Sea. But it became the target of environmental activists, who blocked its ships from leaving port in Portland, Ore. and Seattle, Wash., and protested Shell’s every move in the Arctic’s Outer Continental Shelf. Shell also received slow-roll permitting treatment from the Obama Administration that seriously delayed the project and drove costs skyward at a time when oil prices were plummeting.
Shell wound down its Alaska efforts in 2015, eliminating over 125 high paying Alaska jobs.
EDGMON RETURNS BROKEN BILL TO COMMITTEE FOR AMENDMENTS
The Alaska House Majority was on “Gabby Damage Control” today.
If Speaker Bryce Edgmon had allowed a simple bill about recognizing the problem of sexual assault to be debated and voted on he might have seen his fragile majority fracture over a right-to-life amendment. Because debate was surely in the cards.
Rules Committee Chairman Gabrielle LeDoux of Anchorage had so bollixed up the modest resolution that Edgmon sent it back to her committee, safely avoiding a floor blow-up.
After all, Rep. David Eastman,of Wasilla, seemed prepared to add a right-to-life amendment to the bill on the floor of the House, since LeDoux had blocked him from offering it in committee.
If Eastman moved ahead with his amendment, it would have put every one of the 40 members on record on abortion, a dangerous place to be for the Democrat-run House in a session that is now two weeks over due.
It started out as a simple resolution to recognize April as Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and it was offered several weeks ago by Sen. Kevin Meyer, as it is each year. The bill does nothing more than offer moral support to the victims of sexual assault. It couldn’t make its way out of LeDoux’s committee without rancor, however.
Then, on April 26, LeDoux attempted to water it down, roll in some amendments, adding recognitions for Child Abuse Awareness Month and Go Blue Friday into Meyer’s bill.
Meyer also has a bill that is aimed at ending the kind of lobbyist influence-buying that LeDoux has engaged in by starting her own political action committee, Gabby’s Tuesday PAC. LeDoux may have thought she would try to strip Meyer out of his own bill and replace it with hers as a micro-aggression against the senator who was implying her political action committee was corrupt.
Yet in the same meeting where LeDoux’s amendments were inserted into the bill, she refused to allow Republican minority members of the Rules Committee to also offer their amendments.
When asked by Rep. Lora Reinbold why there could be no other amendments, LeDoux responded, “Because I don’t want any amendments.” Except for hers, of course.
LeDoux took a vote, got her majority to go with her, and abruptly ended the four-minute meeting without even so much as allowing public testimony.
Rep. Lora Reinbold reads a passage from Mason’s Rules of Order describing the committee process, while on the House floor today, while Rep. David Eastman, right, listens. (360north.org screenshot)
DO-OVER MONDAY
By the time Monday rolls around, Sexual Assault Awareness Month, traditionally April, will be in the rear view mirror. It will be May 1.
But LeDoux has rescheduled a Monday meeting of the Rules Committee and has put the pretzel-like SCR 2 on the agenda.
Reporter Liz Raines of KTVA reports tonight that she has heard LeDoux will accept amendments on Monday.
Meanwhile, Eastman has asked for an apology from LeDoux and a censure of her for her behavior.
She did not apologize, but House Majority Leader Chris Tuck could be heard privately apologizing for her behavior to both Eastman and Reinbold during an at-ease in the House today.
Twenty-six bills now are stuck in LeDoux’s committee awaiting her actions.
NAMED AFTER WOMAN WHO CO-INVENTED COBOL COMPUTER LANGUAGE
Somewhere in the Gulf of Alaska right now is cruising a Navy destroyer that’s named after a woman known by many as “Amazing Grace,” and the ship is heading for Homer.
In Homer, the USS Hopper will be greeted by environmental protestors, as well as military supporters, because this is America, where the military defends citizens’ right to protest and celebrate patriotism — sometimes all on the same sandy spit.
The shipwill arrive in Kachemak Bay on Saturday, docking at around noon, Must Read Alaska has learned.
The destroyer and its 330-sailor crew are taking part in the Northern Edge joint military training exercise in the Gulf of Alaska and will be in port through Tuesday. Although no tours are planned, there will be activities on Saturday, such as the Navy Band Northwest Brass Quartet, a welcoming ceremony, and a greeting by Mayor Brian Zak.
A Facebook post from the Kachemak Bay Conservation Society is calling protestors to stage a demonstration at the dock where the Hopper is expected to tie up.
“This action is intended to raise awareness and speak out against the timing and location of the U.S. Navy’s upcoming ‘war games’ in the Gulf of Alaska,” according to the group, which has partnered with another environmental group, Eyak Preservation Council. Protests are planned for 1-3 pm and protesters are encouraged by the organizers to bring signs and to “be creative.”
But there are also other Homerites who are planning a far warmer welcome for the sailors and officers of Amazing Grace. Several Homer citizens are planning a barbecue for the crew of more than 300 sailors, starting at about 4 pm, according to one of the organizers, who said they wanted to welcome the military to Homer.
Navy Capt. Grace Hopper takes the oath of office from Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, during White House ceremonies promoting her to commodore, Dec. 15, 1983. President Ronald Reagan is looking on. (U.S. Navy photo by Pete Souza/Released)
‘AMAZING GRACE’ HOPPER
The Hopper is named after Capt. Grace Hopper, who signed up to join the Navy after Pearl Harbor was bombed on Dec. 7, 1941.
Back then, the Navy had no women as commissioned officers, so Hopper was one of the early Women Appointed for Voluntary Emergency Services — WAVES. She was a computer programmer; she created the COBOL computer language and worked on one of the first computers while at Harvard University. She’s sometimes referred to as “Amazing Grace” or “Grandma COBOL,” a computer pioneer who brought the Navy into the digital age.
The USS Hopper is only the second Navy ship to be named after a woman from Navy ranks. Commissioned in 1996, it is a multi-mission ship with capabilities for ballistic missile defense, air defense warfare, submarine warfare, and surface warfare. Pearl Harbor is its home port.
Navy ship visits to Homer are few and far between. People traveling to the Homer area on Saturday might be able to get a glimpse of the ship as it comes into Kachemak Bay starting at about 11 am.
Another ship, the USS O’Kane, is taking part in the exercise and will be at the dock in Juneau between May 12-14. The Capital City has created an adopt-a-sailor program to provide the personnel with great local experiences, including home-cooked meals.
NORTHERN EDGE DETAILS
Northern Edge is a classified, U.S.-only exercise that tests the leading edge of what the Navy can do with technology, tactics, and procedures, sources in Washington, D.C. tell Must Read Alaska. There are no explosions — no bombs, no missiles – involved with the three ships that take part.
Approximately 15 naval gunshells are used. All are inert and nonexplosive.
“If one of these shells lands in the water and happens to hit a fish, that’s one fish. It doesn’t explode.” one source told us.
The biennial exercise is conducted in the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex — which includes the Gulf of Alaska, as well as land and air within the state, according to a press release from the Alaska Command at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.
Several commands take part, including Alaska Command, U.S. Pacific Fleet, U.S. 3rd Fleet, Marine Corps Forces Pacific, U.S. Army Pacific, and others. Approximately 200 aircraft at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson and Eielson Air Force Base will take part, along with the three Navy ships.
A handful of contracted commercial fishing boats take part in the exercise, possibly playing the role of potential threats so that military personnel can train in detection of such threats.
Northern Edge 2015 brought approximately $13 million to the state of Alaska’s economy.
Connor Chilcott and Forrest Barker, climbing Mount Denali in mid-April. (Photo: Forrest Barker)
POSSIBLY THE SECOND EARLIEST ASCENT IN HISTORY FOR THE CASSIN RIDGE
Two Washington climbers were the first to scale Mount Denali at the outset of the 2017 climbing season, arriving at the top of North America’s highest peak, and lingering for only a minute in the sub-50-below temperatures before making a dash for safety, with both suffering from altitude sickness.
Forrest Barker and Connor Chilcott of Seattle reached the top on April 16. So far, they are the only two who have summited this year in a climbing season that is just getting started. They’re still trying to determine if this was the second earliest ascent of the Cassin Ridge, but they weren’t looking to set a record, just looking to finish.
Barker, 27, and Chilcott, 23, have climbed together before – Mounts Rainer and Baker in Washington, and they’ve each climbed in faraway places around the world, but this hill nearly kicked their butts. They drove themselves hard to be first up the technically challenging Cassin Ridge this season so that they could pick their own way, rather than tread through the steps of hundreds of others that will pack a path to the top over the next three months.
The Cassin Ridge is only for the hardest of hardcore climbers. It is accessed by the Valley of Death, and goes up Denali’s south face, with four pitches of plus-60-degree steep ice climbing, up a gully of snow and ice known as the Japanese Couloir, followed by the Knife Ridge — a blade of hard ice. Then comes a hanging glacier, rock bands, ice climbing, bergshrund, and a mix of other terrain. They only fell into crevasses six times, and only shallow falls…or that’s the story they’ll be telling their moms.
Barker and Chilcott look like they come straight out of central casting for “dirtbag climbers,” those young men (mainly) who live for epic adventure and the pursuit of mountains.
Must Read Alaska interviewed the two climbers who just completed their odyssey on April 21. Before they flew out of Alaska today, we got their story of how they scrambled up the 20,310-foot feat, and then returned to civilization with only a frostbitten pinky toe paining one man and some bloody sputum coughing up out of the other… and how they packed out 30 pounds of their own human waste.
But they tell it best in their own words, offered up over a plate of tater tots at the Spenard Roadhouse in Anchorage…
CONNOR: Eight months ago I was on Rainier and there were some random people hunkered down at Camp Muir (elev. 10,000 feet) during a storm. Forrest and I spotted each other in the group and decided that each other was an actually competent climber. That’s how we met. I’d been traveling around for the year, staying in my car, climbing in places like Yosemite, Europe, Oregon, Washington, Canada.
So then Forrest and I did a hard climb on Mount Baker and tested the water out with each other. I left for Europe, but we stayed in touch and Forrest applied for the Denali permit in December. I added onto the permit a little bit later.
This was the second earliest ascent in history for the Cassin Ridge. – Connor Chilcott
The West Buttress is climbed a lot during the winter and the Cassin Ridge is usually later in the season. We weren’t really sure what the conditions would be.
FORREST: Right when we got there, three feet of snow dumped on us right away. So there was a lot of trail breaking. We were dropped on the glacier with 125 pounds each — 60 to 80 pounds on sleds and 40 to 60 pounds in a backpacks, breaking trail through three feet of new snow. It was physical.
CONNOR: Temperatures were below zero at night, but in the days it might have gotten up to the 20s. We got into Kahiltna Base Camp and spent two nights, and then decided to start up right after the storm to 14,000 camp. We had four to five days between base and 14,000 feet, with no visibility for the first two days. We made it to 14,000 feet on April 9th.
A lot of pros told us not to go this route this early due to the cold. – Forrest Barker
FORREST: It’s a completely different experience when you’re following someone else tracks vs making your own trail, and making those decisions for yourself.
CONNOR: This was my first time to Denali and I wanted to experience it in a different way. It was the need for exploration. This is known as one of the most beautiful climbing routes in the world, so I wanted to do it, but make it an adventure. It was Forrest’s second Denali summit — but the first time up this route.
At 14,000 feet, the weather forecast only showed a three-day window. We originally were going to go up to 17,000 feet and get acclimated to the altitude, but with the weather window, we said, ‘This is as good as it’s going to get.’ We were more concerned about the cold weather than the altitude.
Camp 3 – waste cans, as seen on the right, were packed out full by the climbers. (Photo: Forrest Barker)
FORREST: Yeah, the cold weather was a bigger threat. We buried most of our stuff in a cache at 14,000 feet and took in our backpacks what we needed for the climb.
And so we went back down on the 11th [of April] and then up the Valley of Death, starting at about 5-6 pm. [The climbers had planned to go further up to acclimate, and needed to come back down to head up the valley.] It was a great weather window. Then we tried to snowshoe up to Safe Camp, but Connor was breaking trail, and was starting to sweat a little too much.
CONNOR: I got exhausted and cold. So Forrest broke trail, I put my parka on, and we made it to Safe Camp at 9,450 feet. We were breaking trail in snow that was three feet deep.
FORREST: The next day we started up the Japanese Couloir, which is the first ice pitch. Connor is a stronger technical climber, it had been a long day just getting to the Japanese Couloir, which is 1,000 vertical feet of ice.
The sun was going behind the west ridge of Denali and Connor saw what looked like an appropriate spot for us to camp for the night on the Cassin Ledge, but we climbed up and couldn’t find it. It was hard, technical stuff, and we were exhausted.
They exited the Japanese Couloir and found this bivouac at about midnight.
CONNOR: I led up a hard series of pitches, and it was midnight and I was starting to make stupid decisions. So I climbed down to Forrest, and we found a ledge. Not the Cassin Ledge, but Forrest hadn’t slept well for three days, so basically we said this was our last spot, the next section we had to commit to going up. There would be no going back.
Forrest’s air mattress popped on that ledge, but we slept for four hours. And in the morning I made breakfast and coffee, and we talked.
FORREST: It was a good discussion. We were behind schedule, and now we had an unplanned bivvy.
CONNOR: Yeah, we’d gotten caught out at night.
FORREST: My sleeping pad had popped — was it worth it to keep on going? But we both felt really strong and it was a gorgeous day. It was a great “coffee discussion.” And we decided to continue. Once you get to the Knife Ridge, it is safer to go to the top, so this was a point of no return situation. Go down now or continue all the way up. The latter decision was better. We don’t regret making that decision at all.
CONNOR: Then you have the Rock Crux — just rock climbing, and they grade that 5.8. I led that pitch. And our next interesting thing happened — I flicked my rope to get it out of a little crack, and it dislodged a football-sized rock. I yelled “rock!” and Forrest ducked under his helmet and it smacked him right on the top — and cracked his helmet.
Once we got to the Knife Ridge, it took a long time. It’s a blade of snow that is 70-degrees on each side and goes for 1,000 feet of elevation. We thought it would take us two hours, but it took us six.
Knife Edge Ridge behind him. (Selfie photo by Connor Chilcott)
FORREST: The quality of the snow was tough. I’ve had a lot of avalanche training, starting from when I was 14 years old. The snow crystals were all facets, it didn’t pack down. We weren’t worried about avalanche, but it offered zero support, no place to put any sort of protection in. Usually you can put a picket into hard snow, but not this. In the back of our heads, we were both thinking, one misstep and down you go, both of you.
CONNOR: One fall on the beginning of that part was certain death for both of us.
FORREST: That put us a whole day behind schedule. We’d climbed for 16-17 hours two days in a row.
CONNOR: So we get to these “M-shaped” rocks that are sort of a landmark, and we go up a gully of ice, and it’s getting dark again. We had a lot of route-finding issues in that gully. And we were at 15,000 feet and looking at -20 again, and so we needed a spot to bivvy.
FORREST: We saw a rock protrusion sticking up at the edge of the ridge. A big cantilever of snow created a nice saddle, but we needed an anchor. We were just short of having enough rope to anchor to a rock about 20 feet away, so we just chopped into the side of the slope, pulled out the tent and since there was no place to put it, we just used it as a wind screen, didn’t use the poles. We didn’t sleep. We kept slipping down all night.
CONNOR: Forrest slept in his boots. I was wearing more technical boots because I was leading the technical parts, and I took my boots off at night. We were sliding a lot and I got out of the tent not thinking at one point and stood in the snow in my down booties and socks and I think that’s when I got a tiny bit of frostbite. I had a hard time that night with cold feet. I was definitely slower in the morning.
We knew we really had to move that day, because we were out of food. We had just one night of food left, and basically just one breakfast to split and one day of pro-bars and energy chews for lunch.
We looked at each other and said, “Today’s the day. We’ve got to make it to the next bivvy and not get stuck out and “benighted” [overtaken by night] again.
That was on the 14th. We needed to move. We quickly finished up the first rock band, then Forrest broke trail on the snow slog, between the rock bands.
Finally we reached the triangle-shaped roof bivvy at 16,000 feet, and we got there at 6 pm.
That night we ate our last dinner, watched a gorgeous sunset on a ledge, without the tent. We were pretty comfy, so there was no point in setting up the tent. We slept a solid nine hours.
The last two technical pitches were next. It was brutally cold, at 16,500 feet and -30 with wind. Our hands — we had immense pain, the “screaming barfies” type pain, but we finished the last two technical pitches and got into the snow slopes in the sun.
FORREST: As soon as that sun hit, we warmed up. But once we got to 18,500 feet, Connor started to get acute mountain sickness. We had no food left, and we kept on pushing, and I had one little energy “goo” left, and I gave Connor some of it. We brewed up a bit more water and drank it. AMS can give you this exhaustion that you have never felt before. Every step is such a big chore. We were moving slowly with no calories, and making steady progress, but not nearly as quickly as we needed to be making at that point. We got to 19,900 feet, and were looking at our watches. It was 6 pm. Connor was ready to bivvy there but I said, no we can’t. So we went on.
CONNOR: We went up and we reached the top, and the sun was disappearing, so we knew we had to turn on the jets to make it back to 17,000, and at this point Forrest started to cough and have pink phlegm come out of his lungs. High altitude pulmonary edema.
FORREST: I’m a wilderness EMT and work with mountain rescue, so I knew what was going on. I took some dexamethasone to deal with it. It’s basically a steroid, reduces swelling. It doesn’t cure it. The cure for HAPE is to drop in altitude. I couldn’t take a full breath of air, and we were climbing on no calories.
CONNOR: We didn’t even take a picture at the top — couldn’t get the camera out, it was -50 and windchill, probably -90 with the wind. We knew it was -30 at 18,000 feet so if we could drop a few thousand feet…otherwise we’d be looking at any part of our skin getting frost bit, and exhaustion, climbing abilities getting slow, making stupid decisions.
FORREST: Another symptom of AMS — acute mountain sickness — is not the clearest thought process.
CONNNOR: I was looking for a spot to sleep, but Forrest wanted to drop in elevation as quick as possible. The sun was completely gone, and during the next part, we would not be able to stop until 17,000 feet. Should we pull out the headlamps and go on?
So we looked at each other — I was at the end of my rope. I knew a lot of people who have done things like this and I felt we would make some bad decisions. I told Forrest, “We’ll live through the night here, I promise.”
FORREST: Even more than that, we were exhausted, that traverse would have been way too dangerous.
CONNOR: It’s hard to say where the “end of your rope” is. I was at this point in my brain that I knew if we stopped and rested everything was going to be OK.
FORREST: HAPE — High Altitude Pulmonary Edema — can go downhill quickly, so I took some more “dex.” Connor pitched the tent at the bottom of the “football field,” right between Denali Pass and the field, and the wind picked up, howled, and kept collapsing the tent on us. The elastic in the tent poles gave out. The poles bent and we tried to bend them back. They’re kind of S shaped now. If it had been a lighter weight tent, it would have been shredded.
CONNOR: In the morning, we had no food. We had some water, we packed up the tent, and still at 18,500 feet, with high winds, we got on the traverse that is called the “Autobahn” and it was just ankle breaking. It had not been packed down by other climbers so every step tested our ankles.
FORREST: It’s a hard windblown slope, walking perpendicular to the fall line. Your ankles want to bend. We got to 17 camp, and found a backpack there, and searched around, but there was no food. We went to the fixed line on West Buttress and descended.
CONNOR: At Camp 14, we dug out our food cache — it had been buried in drifts by now — and dove into the cheese, sausage and smoked salmon. Yes, we ate and were merry!
Our morals are not to leave anything. So after two days at 14,000 feet, we went and retrieved all our gear. On the 20th we skinned our way to the air strip. Talkeetna Air picked us up. They were kind of surprised because they didn’t think we’d even survived.
We went back to Talkeetna and went first to the National Park Service, and they awarded us pins for the earliest ascent of the season and also a sustainable Denali award for hiking out all our human waste — it was 30 pounds.
Connor Chilcott and Forrest Barker packed out all of their waste from the mountain, furthering a clean-climbing ethic for mountaineers. (National Park Service photo)
CONNOR: Then we went to the Fairview Inn and had whiskey, and we went to the brewery and had beer, and to Mountain High Pizza Pie, and ate a whole pizza. A nice guy — an Alaskan — covered our tab there, and we didn’t know it until we went to pay.
FORREST: I lost 20 pounds. We got dropped off on the glacier on March 30. I started out at 140 and came back on April 21 at 120.
CONNOR: I lost 5-10 pounds.
FORREST: I had more to lose. I work at a desk, and Connor is a guide, so I definitely had more to lose!
Forrest is employed as an emergency medical coordinator for a company that coordinates care in remote areas, such as Africa, Siberia, Antarctica, and for shipping companies crossing the oceans. Connor is a mountain guide who will start his guiding season in Washington State in a few weeks. Connor and Forrest work with “Peaks of Life,” a Seattle-based non-profit that raises money to help pay for children’s hospital bills. They were the first two climbers to participate in Denali’s 2017 Birthday Pack-Out Initiative, packing out all their human waste from the Cassin Ridge and West Buttress.
The House Rules Committee, which is the last stop before bills make it to the House floor for a vote, finally had its first meeting of the year today. There are 24 bills awaiting the committee’s action, but until today, none was heard or decided upon. It’s not unusual for the committee not to meet, but is unusal for bills to be held up as they have been.
Chairman Gabrielle LeDoux had several noncontroversial bills on the agenda today, but only let the meeting go for four and a half minutes and then ended it abruptly after passage of a resolution recognizing Sexual Assault Awareness Month. In short, the bill was a nothingburger — a routine piece of resolution that makes people feel better about the world but does nothing.
But then things went sideways.
LeDoux introduced her amendment, Committee Substitute 2, which amended SCR 2 that had come over from the Senate, where Sen. Kevin Meyer was the sponsor. LeDoux’s aide explained the amendments to the committee.
LeDoux was not making small changes to the resolution, but added major items to it: She rolled in April as Child Abuse Awareness Month and designated Go Blue Friday, a day when people wear blue clothing to signify solidarity against child abuse.
This resolution had been amended into a brand new piece of legislation that had never been heard by any other committee.
Rep. David Eastman of Wasilla decided that if amendments were being made, he would like to offer his own, and it would relate to child abuse and a person’s right to life.
LeDoux refused to allow him to offer his amendment.
Rep. Mike Chenault tried to offer an amendment to simply correct the date of the resolution.
But LeDoux was having none of it.
“We’re not going to take amendments,” she said. In fact, she could not accept the Chenault minor date correction because then she’d have to entertain the right-to-life amendment by Eastman.
Eastman persisted, trying to explain that if some amendments were entertained — her amendments — it was only fair that others be allowed to be offered and considered for an up or down vote. Otherwise, why have a committee?
When asked for an explanation by Rep. Lora Reinbold, LeDoux said, “Because I don’t want any amendments.”
In a written statement late Wednesday, Eastman said: “Representative LeDoux believes in a process in which other legislators must come to her and earn her support before the voters they represent are entitled to have a voice in the legislature.
“My constituents will have none of that – They have a word for that where I come from: ‘Corruption.’ – Rep. David Eastman
“No American, No Alaskan, should have to tolerate that type of Pay-to-Play mentality existing in the halls of their legislature,” Eastman said.
LeDoux has a political action committee, Gabby’s Tuesday PAC, and collects money from lobbyists, which she gives to some legislators during election season; she has been accused of running a pay-to-play operation since as Rules chair, she controls so much of what goes on in the House. She was accused earlier this month of threatening Rep. Reinbold, saying she would withhold money from her during her next campaign if she didn’t vote a certain way.
LeDoux violated the rights of Alaskans to have their opinions and beliefs expressed through their representatives in Juneau, Eastman said.
“Such flagrant disregard for the legislative process is unacceptable and should not be tolerated,” said Eastman. “I call for the immediate censure of Rep. LeDoux. That may be the way they do things in New York, but this is not how we should conduct the people’s business in Alaska.”
As LeDoux ended the meeting without addressing the other items on the agenda, she and Rep. Louise Stutes of Kodiak can be seen on the video (4.08 minutes into the recording) nervously laughing with their heads together.
The entire four minutes of the meeting can be watched at 360north.org
