Two Alone In Alaska

In July 1970, in the third year of our marriage, Sharon and I shared the only expedition I ever concocted for just the two of us. A month before, I had graduated from the University of Denver with my PhD in English, while Sharon secured her MA in the same discipline. I had landed a teaching job in Amherst, Massachusetts, at Hampshire College, an “experimental” school that would open its doors the next September. It was a hectic sprint to the finish line for both of us, but also the crossing of a new threshold half a continent away in New England.

In early June I skipped the DU graduation and set off at once for my eighth Alaskan expedition. On a spur-of-the-moment whim, Hank Abrons, my teammate from Denali in 1963, and I decided to head for the Kichatnas, where four years earlier our team of five had made the first ascent of that small but spectacular range’s highest peak. On a two-man expedition planned