Single Slip

From Alaska, George W. Argus Jr. wrote on April 14 to his parents, who run a Brooklyn bakery: he was going to climb Mt. McKinley (20,269 ft.), North America's mightiest peak, soaring upward three miles from its base. Moreover, he was going to try the formidable South Buttress. "It's as safe as walking down the street in New York," he wrote.

Like at Coney Island. Cheerful George Argus, 25, went to work on the Alaskan Railroad during a summer vacation five years ago, liked it, and stayed to take his degree in geology at the University of Alaska. Drafted, he was assigned to the Army Arctic Training Center at Big Delta. Pfc. Argus climbed a lot, but nothing really big until he tried McKinley with three friends, all former fellow students: Elton Thayer, the leader, a McKinley Park ranger and experienced mountaineer; Morton Wood; pilot and homesteader, who had assaulted the peak before, but failed; Pfc. Leslie Viereck of Ladd Air Force Base.

The four hiked about 40 miles up the ice slopes of Ruth Glacier. At 5,500 ft. up the Great Ruth Basin, supplies were air-dropped by Pilot Wood's wife Ginny, flying a light plane with a girl friend beside her. The four men packed 30 days' supplies on their backs, but, to save ten pounds in weight, no radio. At 10,000 ft. they ran into an ice wall, but cut hand and foot holds to climb it.

They holed up in their tent during a three-day snowstorm, then spent four more days cutting exactly 1,038 steps up another great wall of ice. At about 2:30 p.m. on May 15, the day they were due back, they reached the peak, left souvenirs and posed for pictures--"Like at Coney Island," Argus said. The next day they started down along the conventional north route instead of the South Buttress; it was, they knew, far easier and safer--but not really safe.

The Razor's Edge. At 13,000 ft. they crawled down the last dangerous stretch: a razor-edged ridge of blue ice. They were roped together, with Argus leading. He was carefully cutting holds when Thayer, the last man, slipped and shot down the sIope.The other three tried to brace themselves, but they went hurtling down too.

They fell 1,000 feet, bouncing over the ice toward a sheer granite precipice. Fifty yards from the edge, Les Viereck fell into a crevasse and yanked the others to a stop. Wood was the only one able to stand up. Viereck was shaken and stunned. Argus was badly injured and Thayer was dead.

"Everything Is O.K." Wood picked up their equipment, dug a flat ledge and pitched the tent. With Viereck's help, he dragged Argus to shelter and then tramped out a signal in the snow: HELP BROKEN LEG.

On the tiny ledge they waited for help to come or for Argus to heal. They waited a week, but nothing happened. Once they saw Ginny Wood flying her light plane over the crags, searching, but she did not see them. Avalanches hurtled down the open slopes on both sides of their exposed ledge. On the sixth day they wrapped Argus in the air mattress and tents, tugged and slid him down another 1,000 ft. to the floor of Muldrow Glacier and set up camp there, away from the avalanches. Supplies were running low.

The next morning Viereck and Wood, moving out of earshot, talked it over and decided to go for help, leaving Argus alone. Both had to go together because no man can descend the glacier without a roped companion, and they could not possibly take Argus. He had an agonizingly dislocated hip, great blue swellings at each knee, blackened and bloodshot eyes, smashed front teeth, other bumps and bruises. "Telegram my mother in Brooklyn," he said. "Tell her we made the summit and everything is O.K."

The Ceaseless Day. For the next week George Argus waited alone, recumbent and almost helpless, on the glacier 11,000 ft. up. Thirty inches of snow half-buried his tent. At intervals great chunks of ice clattered down the slopes. He had a copy of Mark Twain's short stories and, despite eye trouble, tried to read. With a geologist's Brunton compass, lying flat on his back, he mapped every peak in sight. He kept regular mealtimes, lifting himself on one elbow to cook tiny portions of oatmeal and dried eggs.

One day he faced a crisis: falling snow had melted on his socks. The snow, he knew, would freeze again, causing frostbite and gangrene in his feet. He struggled agonizingly to bend his knees, take off the wet socks, reach and put on dry ones. The effort required an entire day, but it succeeded. Only a few small spots on his feet were frozen black.

As his food stock thinned, he decided that he would not simply lie down and wait for death. He planned to crawl down the glacier by himself. He was carefully planning every move, on his seventh day alone, when he heard a shout: "Are you O.K.?'' Chirpily, he called back: "Sure I am!''

"Old Home Week." Before the climb, Elton Thayer had arranged for the customary stand-by party to be led by Dr. John McCall, 31, a skilled climber and University of Alaska glaciologist. On May 25, after a two-day descent. Wood and Viereck came staggering down the mountain with word of the accident. Immediately, Dr. McCall set off with his partner, Fred Milan of Ladd Air Force Base, to rescue Argus. An Air Force helicopter landed them 3,500 feet up the glacier, and soon returned at even higher altitudes, despite air dangerously thin for its blades, with more volunteers: Argus' fellow soldiers from the Arctic Training Center. A field of ice, cracked and fantastically distorted, took 14 arduous hours to cross, but they kept on going. All the way they broke a trail for the return trip with, they hoped, Argus. But his tent was lost somewhere in the fresh-fallen snow until, late on May 29, Wood spotted it from a search plane. At 3 a.m. May 30, Dr. McCall and Milan, notified by radio, set out for the tent, less than three miles away. It took them seven exhausting hours.

Kneeling beside Argus, Dr. McCall tried to joke: "There's a bunch of MPs behind us. They're looking for you 'cause you're AWOL." (Actually, the Army promoted Argus to corporal.)

With a mountaineer's hospitality, the injured man invited his rescuers into his tent and offered them his remaining oatmeal and powdered eggs, turned moldy and sour. Instead, Dr. McCall gave him some C rations. He ate hungrily, and then he saw the remaining rescuers, his Army buddies, arriving with a sled. "This looks like old home week." he cried happily.

Next day a helicopter picked George Argus off the lower slopes. Wood and Viereck had gone to McKinley Park headquarters for the "toughest part" of their ordeal: telling Thayer's widow of her husband's death. She asked that no more lives be risked to recover his body, buried on the avalanche-ridden slope. "He loved mountains, and that's where he'd want to stay," she said.

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