Editor: Bill Sherwonit
Alaska Northwest Books

From the Banff Mountain Book Festival:

Alaska has been a measuring stick for climbers around the world and many of the best are represented in this anthology. This is an important collection of climbing literature, both from a climber's perspective and for its literary value. Many of the stories included are recognized as classics, such as East Face of Moose's Tooth: The Dance of the Woo Li Masters by James Bridwell and Lone Wolf (The Other John Waterman) by Jonathan Waterman. An historical sense is achieved by including a wide range of pieces from Bradford Washburn's time to Fred Beckey's latest. It is a collection that most mountaineers would want in their library.

Excerpt:

The Sourdough Expedition reached its literal high point on April 3,1910, when Billy Taylor and Pete Anderson reached the top of Denali's 19,470-foot North Peak, widely recognized as a more difficult ascent than the higher-and ultimately more prestigious-20,320-foot South Peak. The Sourdoughs' reason for choosing the North Peak seemed quite logical at the time; the miners hoped that the fourteen-foot spruce pole, complete with six-by-twelve-foot American flag they'd lugged up Denali, would be seen from Kantishna and serve as visible proof of their conquest.

Taylor and Anderson made their summit push from 11,000 feet. Hauling their flagpole, they climbed more than 8,000 vertical feet and then descended to camp in eighteen hours' time--an outstanding feat by any mountaineering standard. (By comparison, most present-day Denali expeditions climb no more than 3,000 to 4,000 vertical feet on summit day, which typically lasts ten to fifteen hours.) Yet the Sourdoughs' final incredible ascent is merely one chapter in an altogether remarkable story that for many years was steeped in controversy and, as Alaska historian Terrence Cole has noted, "is still shrouded in mystery."

As seems to be the case with so many legendary Alaskan adventures, the Sourdough Expedition began with some barroom braggadocio. Or so the story goes. The expedition's leader and instigator was Tom Lloyd, a Welshman and former Utah sheriff who came to Alaska during the Klondike gold rush, eventually settling in the Kantishna Hills north of Denali.

In the fall of 1909, Lloyd and several other patrons of a Fairbanks bar joined in a discussion that focused on Frederick Cook's claim that he'd reached Denali's summit in 1906. As the Fairbanks Daily Times noted in 1909, "Ever since Dr. Cook described his ascent of Mount McKinley, Alaskans have been suspicious of the accuracy of this explorer."

According to Lloyd's official account of the Sourdough Expedition, which appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine on June 5, 1910, "[Bar owner] Bill McPhee and me were talking one day of the possibility of getting to the sununit of Mount McKinley and I said I thought if anyone could make the climb there were several pioneers of my acquaintance who could. Bill said he didn't believe that any living man could make the ascent."

McPhee argued that the fifty-year-old Lloyd was too old and overweight for such an undertaking, to which the miner responded that "for two cents" he'd show it could be done. To call Lloyd's bluff, McPhee offered to pay $500 to anyone who would climb McKinley and "prove whether that fellow Cook made the climb or not."

After two other businessmen agreed to put up $500 each, Lloyd accepted the challenge. The proposed expedition was big news in Fairbanks, and before long it made local headlines. Later, Lloyd admitted, "Of course, after the papers got hold of the story we hated the idea of ever coming back here defeated."

A seven-man party left Fairbanks in December 1909, accompanied by four horses, a mule, and a dog team. Their send-off included an editorial in the Fairbanks Daily Times, which promised, "Our boys will succeed ... and they'll show up Dr. Cook and the other 'Outside' doctors and expeditions."

Original team members included Tom Lloyd, Billy Taylor, Pete Anderson, Charles McGonagall, C.E. Davidson, Bob Horne, and a person identified as W. Lloyd. But the latter three men quit before the actual climbing began, following a dispute--some accounts report a fistfight--between Tom Lloyd and Davidson, a talented surveyor/photographer whose role with the expedition, according to Cole, was "to map the route and keep track of elevations." Thus the expedition was left with four members, all from the Kantishna District: Taylor was Lloyd's mining partner; McGonagall and Anderson each had worked several years for the two property owners.

The Sourdoughs spent most of February establishing a series of camps in the lowlands and foothills on Denali's north side. By the end of the month, they'd set up their mountain base of operations, the "Willows Camp," near the mouth of Cache Creek at an elevation of about 2,900 feet.

On March 1, the team began "prospecting for the big climb," Lloyd wrote in his expedition diary. "Anderson and McGonagall examined the [Muldrow] glacier today. We call it the 'Wall Street Glacier,' being enclosed by exceedingly high walls on each side." Three days later, they set up their first glacier camp. Lloyd, who'd lost the barometer loaned him by Davidson, estimated the camp's elevation at 9,000 to 10,000 feet, but it was probably much lower. Team members then descended and spent the next several days cutting firewood and hauling it up the glacier, along with a wood-burning stove.

Traversing the Muldrow proved to be quite intimidating. As Lloyd explained in his diary:

For the first four or five miles there are no crevasses in sight, as they have been blown full of snow, but the next eight miles are terrible for crevasses. You can look down in them for distances stretching from 100 feet to Hades or China. Look down one of them and you never will forget it ... Most of them appear to be bottomless. These are not good things to look at.

Despite the danger of a crevasse fall, the climbers traveled unroped, a practice most contemporary Denali mountaineers would consider foolhardy. There's no way to know whether the Sourdoughs' decision was made in ignorance or disdain for such protection. Years later, when asked why the team chose not to use climbing ropes, Taylor simply answered, "Didn't need them." Such an attitude seems to reflect the Sourdoughs style. With the notable exception of their fourteen-foot flagpole, they chose to travel light.