I spent hours editing this and internally debating how much detail to go into when writing something that would be published online, because I genuinely don't want to say anything that's hurtful to anyone else who was involved in the expedition. I might not hold certain people in the highest regard, but they are individuals living their lives the way they want to.
This was not a climbing expedition of friends (or even mountaineers of similar skill and experience levels who have mutually agreed to form a team to attempt a specific peak or route). Essentially, we were what the National Park Service would define as an illegal guiding operation. Two people gave James* money to guide them on a climb of Denali. I essentially acted as "assistant guide" -- I was another competent mountaineer on the rope, I helped our "client" out with a variety of things on the mountain, and I split the majority of camp chores with James. In return, he used some of the money he got from them to pay for my air taxi from Talkeetna to basecamp ($550) and ground transport from Anchorage to Talkeetna ($180).
I went into it knowing this. I knew we were probably going to generally move slower than I would have liked, and that I'd have to carry more than my share of the group gear. I didn't realize how much this, along with the guide-client dynamic, would wear on me -- physically and mentally -- after 15 days on the mountain.
Another thing that absolutely played into this was the cultural difference between the clients -- both of whom are Indian -- and myself. Cultural differences are a difficult subject to write about in the age of political correctness where anyone who disagrees with the writer is quick to label their writing as "racist" or "prejudiced." But they exist. There were situations where I thought the clients were being rude and entitled, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it was because of their own cultural norms, not because they are assholes.
At the same time, I know enough about the world to know that anyone from India who has travelled extensively and gone on numerous guided climbs of world-famous mountains is very wealthy.
When I first met Diane* and Andrew* in Anchorage, they reminded me of the 40-somethings commonly seen in the Seattle REI preparing for their mid-life-crisis ascent of Mt. Rainier, sporting thousands of dollars worth of brand new mountaineering gear without the slightest idea of how to use it.
"I'm going to get frustrated on this trip," James told me as we were pre-cooking some of our expedition food in the hostel kitchen. At that point, I was trying to keep an open mind.
Less than an hour before we were supposed to leave Talkeetna and fly into base camp, Andrew was forced to leave the expedition due to a family emergency. I felt bad for him -- flying halfway around the world to climb a mountain and then not being able to do it because of a completely unforeseen circumstance would suck -- but I didn't really know him. And I couldn't help but think that this would make things easier and safer for the rest of us. Two experienced mountaineers on a rope with one inexperienced person is a manageable situation.
On July 1, we decided to take some gear up to the top of the headwall (~16,000') to cache to make our move up to Camp 4 (17,200') easier. After an hour of slowly slogging up to the base of the fixed lines, the weather was deteriorating -- it was beginning to snow harder and the wind was picking up. James asked Diane if she wanted to stay there while he and I took the gear up. She was obviously tired and having a difficult time with the climbing (I'm not sure whether that was because of the cold, altitude, or her fitness. It doesn't really matter), but still protested that she wanted to continue up with us.
"I really don't think that's a good idea," I objected. My self-preservation instincts were kicking in at this point -- we had to get up, drop our cache, and get down, fast. Diane was just going to slow us down. In the end, she decided to stay. James built her an anchor, and he and I continued on. "Sorry for being a dick, but we need to move," I told James as he and I prepared to ascend the fixed lines.
"Yeah, you were kind of being a dick," he replied. "Remember, she paid to be here."
If she had gone with us, things might have gone badly. At the top of the headwall, we were getting slammed with 50mph gusts. The task of digging a cache was hard enough without having to look after someone who didn't know what they were doing, and as we descended, fractures were forming in the snow off to the right (climber's right). It might have been a dick move to tell her to stay, but in retrospect, it was necessary. I'd do it again.
A guide's first responsibility should be to keep herself and her clients alive, even if that means a few bruised egos.
Running into bad and stressful situations is inevitable on mountaineering trips. There's always something that doesn't go the way it's supposed to. It's almost like a twisted family vacation, only with dad getting pissed off at mom because there's always too much slack in the rope, the teenager complaining because the group is taking a rest day when he/she wants to keep going, mom can't figure out how to get her inReach to work properly so she keeps asking the teenager what's wrong with it, and instead of a toddler in a baby backpack, there's just a big plastic poop-can (aka CMC) that people take turns carrying.
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