2 climbers feared dead on Alaska mountain

ANCHORAGE — Two of North America's most celebrated female climbers are feared to have perished on the slopes of Mount Foraker, leaving Denali National Park with a new and troubling mystery:

What happened to 36-year-old Sue Nott of Vail, Colo., and her climbing partner, 37-year-old Karen McNeill of Canmore, Alberta?

Not since the disappearance of Japanese national hero Naomi Uemura on Mount McKinley in 1984 has such an intensive search been launched from the park's Kahiltna Glacier base camp with so few results. Rangers found a backpack, sleeping bag and other gear that apparently had fallen as the women climbed a route known as the Infinite Spur.

Tracks believed to be those of the women come within 1,000 feet of the 17,400-foot summit.

But nine days of searching have found no other hint of the duo, who two years ago became the first women to conquer the challenging Cassin Ridge on nearby McKinley.

Faint hopes remain that Nott and McNeill, a native of New Zealand, could be alive.

As clouds swirled in the winds hammering Foraker's summit Friday, National Park Service spokeswoman Kris Fister said search-and-rescue teams would remain on standby through the weekend. They want one last, good look at the summit before officially calling off the search, she said.

Ranger Daryl Miller noted the two have gone at least a week without fuel for their stove. Without a functioning stove, there is no way to melt snow for water in the high mountains of Alaska. Without water, humans cannot survive long.

Nott and McNeill appear to have been without water for at least six days.

Still, the consensus of rangers and other climbers is that if anyone has a chance of enduring the impossible, it would be these two. Not only are they two of the best climbers in the world, said Colby Coombs of the Alaska Mountaineering School in Talkeetna, they are two of the toughest.

Coombs also knows from personal experience that Foraker can claim the best. He lost climbing partners Tom Walter and Ritt Kellog in an avalanche near the summit of the mountain in 1992.

Nott and McNeill could have been blown off the mountain by high winds. That is what is believed to have happened to Uemura, whose body has never been found.

They might have fallen into a crevasse and then been buried by drifting snow.

They could have been forced to bivouac in a snow cave, only to find themselves trapped by bad weather until their fuel ran out.

They might even have battled over the summit through fierce storms and died in a fall trying to descend one of two less-steep, but still dangerous, ridges.

Whatever went wrong, searchers and other climbers agree it began with the loss of Nott's backpack and the sleeping bag attached to it. The radio with which they might have been able to call for help apparently was in the pack. So were extra clothes that Nott appeared to have crammed into a stuff sack, and a full water bottle.

The full water bottle leads many to believe the pack fell at the start of the day, as the women prepared to climb.

All indications are the women started up the mountain after losing the pack somewhere below 14,000 feet. Tracks have been spotted at 14,800, 15,800 and 16,400 feet, according to the Park Service.

From near the summit, the women would have had access to Foraker's Southeast or Sultana ridges, both of which are far easier to descend than Infinite Spur. But if they neared the summit in hopes of gaining access to those ridges on the days the Park Service believes they may have, badly deteriorating weather greeted them.

"They were trying to move in weather that was gusting 60 [mph] at 14,000 feet [on McKinley]," Coombs said. On Foraker, the winds were probably much, much worse.

"It's a bad-weather magnet," Coombs said. "There isn't a prevailing wind. It's coming from all over the place, including straight down. It gets quite a bit of weather that can be bigger than you are.

"[Wind] is the single most dangerous weather event out there. It can blow your tent away. It can blow you away."