Climbing the Highest Mountain but Descending the Hard Way: Mountaineer Ann Coffey's Story

By Laura Proctor

Life can change in an instant.

One minute you're reveling in reaching the summit of one of the world's toughest mountains, the next you're sliding down it with a crushed leg, wondering what happened, and when you are going to stop.

Just ask Ann Coffey, who on May 13, 2006, left Louisville bound for Alaska on her second attempt to summit one of North American mountaineering's most coveted goals. On May 30, one day after successfully reaching the top of forbidding Mt. McKinley, Coffey found herself glissading down its slippery slopes with her crampons unfortunately pointed towards the clouds above.

Ann Coffey's mountaineering accident literally came out of the blue when a 36-year-old male climbing mate, who was descending above her, slipped and fell from sheer exhaustion and careened into her on the treacherous slopes of McKinley. “I never saw it coming,” says Coffey, who is still recuperating three months later from the comfort of her St. Matthews home. “One minute I'm looking down the slope at the tents of base camp, and the next, schbam! My feet are pointing up at the blue sky – and one is not pointed the right way.”

Ann's climbing tale is one of bravery and toughness, splashed with a dose of good humor and topped off with a whole lot of level-headedness under pressure. However, that composure briefly left her when she was whistling down the face of 20,320-foot McKinley headfirst.

“I now know what it feels to be in an avalanche,” says 48-year-old Coffey, who has 20-plus years of high altitude mountaineering under her belt. “I was careening down the slope. I had snow shoved down my throat, driven up my nose, into my ears, and packed in my eyes. I was choking and spitting trying to catch my breath … I thought I would asphyxiate.”

But in order to truly understand the events leading up to Ann's accident, one must first understand what is involved with scaling a “big mountain.” And a “Big Mountain” McKinley is. Rising almost 4 miles from sea level, McKinley is the highest mountain in all of North America. At 20,000-plus thousand feet, Ann had significantly less oxygen per breath at its summit than at sea level. Taking in enough oxygen became a job in itself, with much of Ann's efforts focused on sucking enough air into her lungs to take another step, and then another, day after day, for weeks at a time.

Altitude alone is not what makes McKinley such a tough customer. Sitting at latitude of 63 degrees, McKinley is much closer to the North Pole than Mt. Everest. If Everest were at the same latitude as McKinley, the atmospheric effect of such northern latitude would add the equivalent of 3,000 feet to its height.

Northernmost latitude also means frigid temperatures. Cold is a killer on McKinley, also known as Denali, with temperatures in May rising to the low 40's during the day, but falling into the teens during the night (excluding the wind chill factor). The weather is wickedly unpredictable, with diabolical storms regularly rolling off of the Pacific onto the mountain's flanks. A recent National Geographic climbing documentary explained that a summer on McKinley was often colder and more severe than a winter in the Himalayas.

Reread that last sentence.

Think about it.

Some say that if Mt. Everest was at the same latitude as Mt. McKinley, it would not be climbed to this day.

McKinley's remoteness only serves to compound the difficulty of staging enough supplies to reach its summit, and then return. Most climbers of Ann's petite 120-125 pound frame don't even attempt the trip due to the brute strength needed to haul supplies for the three-week climb up, and then down the route. There are no yaks, porters, or Sherpas — the workhorses of most big mountain expeditions.

Instead, members of Ann's climbing party, commercially guided by Rainier Mountaineering, Inc., were on their own to haul and stage the expedition's nearly 1,000 pounds of gear up and down the mountain. Weight was even an issue getting to the starting point. Gear and climbers were divided by number of pounds and then distributed between tiny Alaskan bush planes for the flight from Talkeetna, the tiny town where climbers depart, to the Kahiltna glacier on which the planes land.

“The flight was an adventure in itself,” recalls Ann. “Three climbers with their allotted gear and the pilot boarded for a 45-minute gorgeous flight through the mountains. The scenery was spectacular. The plane landed using skis on the Kahiltna glacier at about 7,000 feet.”

But instead of kicking back and resting before setting off on a multiple-week journey, Ann's guides had the group immediately get to work sorting gear and then start off up the mountain. To sustain the party for a possible 21-plus day trip, each climber was assigned approximately 100 pounds of gear. For Ann, this equaled nearly two-thirds of her body weight. Heavy expedition backpacks and sleds were used to take the food, fuel, tents, sleeping bags, stove, ice axes, ropes, and other miscellaneous gear, such as the “Clean Mountain Cans” used to pack out human waste.

Ann carried 60 pounds on her back while pulling a 40-pound sled wearing snowshoes. “I turned the sled over three times during my first few steps out of camp,” recalls Ann. It was an ominous start to a trip for a veteran climber with 18 climbs and 13 summits under her belt. “It's not easy, which is why so few women climbers of my size even attempt McKinley.”

To prepare for the climb, Ann, who serves as the executive director for Louisville's Women 4 Women organization, packed on 12 pounds prior to her departure working under the guidance of University of Louisville strength coach Tenna Murray. Eight of those pounds were muscle, which she gained through a vigorous six-day-a-week workout schedule and high-protein diet. It took her six months to bulk up. “I felt huge — like the Hulk,” laughs Ann.

She needed every extra ounce on the trip. After a hard day's hike hauling sleds, or later climbing without the sleds at the higher altitudes, rest could not be obtained until a shelter was constructed. This could take in excess of an hour, depending upon whether the group was able to use the remnants of a previous party's camp, or if they had to construct one from scratch.

“It's not like pulling into a state park and setting up camp,” explains Coffey. “You have to use the snow to build walls to protect your camp, and the higher you go the harder it gets.” Coffey's group constructed four camps during their stay on the mountain, which they used during the ascent and descent. “It's hard; you're tired after a long day's work hauling gear. Yet you have to do it — you just don't take any chances. The storms on McKinley, they are horrendous. And they arrive with little warning.”

The journey's first crux involved the 2,000-foot headwall just above 14,000 feet. “This is where a lot of people say ‘ain't no way' and simply turn around,” laughs Ann. It's steeper than anything they've ever seen, and it goes on forever.” An ample amount of ridge walking is also involved during the ascent, which in good weather can be glorious. But as the name implies, walking on a ridge at high altitude has inherent risks. A slip could send a climber on a nasty slide, with the ability to self-arrest and stop with one's ice axe simply a wishful thought. As wind gusts on Denali regularly reach in excess of 50 mph, climbers must stay ‘hyper focused' for hours on end to remain in balance. Catching a crampon on a pant leg, tripping over a rope, or simply taking a careless misstep all could end in tragedy, as Ann would find out.

Two weeks into the climb, working exhausting days to stage supplies up the mountain, Ann's party reached their final camp at 17,000 feet. The next day they faced an eight-hour-long push up 3,000 feet to the summit, and then back. “I'm not sure how I got there,” recalls Ann. “It's the hardest thing I've ever done, physically. I almost didn't leave 17,000 feet. For the first time climbing, I wasn't sure if I could make it.”

Ann had cause for concern, for the final push up McKinley involved climbing up and over Denali Pass, a steep ridge with a several thousand foot drop on either side.

The wake-up call on summit day sounded at 8 a.m. After nervously choking down a hasty breakfast oatmeal and hot chocolate, Ann's 20-plus years of climbing experience kicked in and she decided it was a go. She roped up with her fellow climbers and started for the top. The temperature was in the low teens as Ann and her rope mates carefully ascended the highest reaches of McKinley. They were literally walking in the clouds, which prevented them from admiring stunning views, but also lessened the vertigo from being able to see thousand foot drops merely feet away.

At 7 that evening, Ann was the first in her party to reach the top. “I cried,” admitted Ann. “We'd been socked in all day by clouds, and then it miraculously cleared. The 360 view was magnificent.” Her 15-year quest to summit McKinley was obtained. After a brief 20-minute stay on top of North America, Ann's party carefully descended back to their high camp and fell into their tents a little after 11 p.m. — just as dusk was beginning to fall on the long Alaskan day.

Exhausted beyond description, Ann and her teammates wished for a rest day before making the dangerous descent to lower elevations. But the young lead guides seemed concerned about the weather, and required that the group start out the very next day for the long and dangerous journey back to base camp at 14,000 feet.

“Tired is not the word,” recalls Ann. “We were descending with heavy packs and facing a lot of exposure (vertical drop-offs of thousands of feet). It was a crevasse minefield … very precarious.” It was here, less than an hour from the safety of base camp, that Ann's world literally turned upside down. “It came out of nowhere,” recalls Ann of her teammate plowing into her from above. “Totally out of the blue, and then into the blue.”

Thankfully the accident occurred in a place where several other climbing parties were ascending. Within seconds a senior guide from another party was on hand and quickly took control of the situation. “I knew it was broken the instant it happened,” recalls Ann. “Immediately they started a full-blown rescue. The guides who were EMT trained lowered me to base camp in a sled after stabilizing my leg with ski poles and sleeping pads.”

Ann was very coherent during the resulting rescue even though she was fighting hypothermia. She was placed in a medical tent at 14,000 feet where she lie waiting for the weather to clear so that she could be airlifted out. “The morphine was wonderful,” laughs Ann.

The National Park Service headed up the resulting rescue. Two long days passed before Ann got word that the Chinook helicopters were on their way. “The airlift was something right out of Hunter Thompson's ‘Fear and Loathing,'” chuckles Ann. “Here I was drugged up and looking up at the rescuers in their goggles and oxygen tanks (which they had to use as they had come straight from sea level with no time to acclimatize), and hearing the deafening whoosh of the helicopters. Definitely surreal.”

Ann was flown to an emergency room in Fairbanks where she was prepared for surgery. One of Ann's many concerned friends back in Louisville, Julie Hermann —University of Louisville's senior associate athletic director — asked the attending surgeon to e-mail Ann's X-rays to Louisville surgeon Ray Shay. Stunned by what they saw, Hermann and Ray intervened and insisted that Ann be airlifted to Seattle to be seen by an orthopedic specialist. Ann credits the two for saving her leg.

After a day arranging logistics, Ann was flown by air ambulance for the second time to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle and underwent surgery on June 3, four days after the fall. Her broken tibia and fibula were repaired with a rod and pins. Four days after her Seattle surgery, Ann returned to Louisville and spent the next two months recuperating on her couch (where she also resumed her duties with Women 4 Women).

“Through it all I learned how many people care about me, and how many people I put in distress. I doubt I'll ever do a big expedition again, mostly due to the worry that it would cause those closest to me.”

But Ann's climbing days are far from over. “There are a lot of great climbs in North America and around the world that don't require such risk. My goal is to be in climbing shape for one next summer.”

What continues to compel Ann to climb mountains? Not just the ability to bag another peak. “Climbing is not just accomplishing a physical goal,” explains Ann. “It's a spiritual and emotional journey as well. For me, the summit is no longer the main goal. It's just the place you turn around.”

Laura Proctor is a Semonin Realtor who summitted Mt. Rainier with Ann Coffey in July 2002.