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Jackie Paulson joined the staff of Wilderness
Outings in 2001 after working as a Deputy District Attorney in
Los Angeles County.
She has been a life long backpacker and outdoor enthusiast and continues
to pursue skills in her latest passion, alpine climbing. She is currently
writing a book entitled "On the way to the Summit: Life Lessons
Learned on the Mountains of the World."
I heard the rumble, low and steady, as I lay in my bag, trying
not to move. Even the slightest shift in position would cause the
hard-earned hot air enveloping my exhausted body to stealthily escape
past the draft collar on my sleeping bag. It took one hour, two Snickers
bars and a Peppermint Patty to warm it up in the first place.
We’d been five hours up the headwall, a forty-five to fifty
degree wall of snow and ice, wallowing through knee-deep new powder
only to top out on the West Buttress of Mt. McKinley to thirty-five
mile per hour winds laden with snow. In the time it took to remove
my gloves, strip off my shell jacket and add another fleece pullover,
my fingers became numb and stiff and my tent mate had frozen parts
more, uh, let’s say “equatorial”!
The wind continued to punish and despite our hard-earned progress,
painstakingly working our way up the headwall on the frozen fixed
lines clotted with snow and ice, nobody needed a Magic Eight Ball
to see what would happen next. Reluctantly, with no hope of continuing
along the exposed ridgeline in that weather and no place to dig in
for the night, we clipped into the rigid fixed lines and began the
tedious descent to our previous camp at 14,000 feet.
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