Profile in courage, an episode of telling endurance and dedication by U.S. National Park Rangers; a rescue squad of seasoned mountaineers embarking on an intrepid rescue in the face of a raging mountain storm of 110 mph winds and lashing snow on Denali, 1992.

My query about the state of the Korean team was being answered. One of them was staggering back into camp screaming pitifully. His name was Duk Sang Jang, and at his insistence, Ron Johnson, the mountain's rescue ranger, sent four others, including John Roskelley and Jim Wickwire, up the Headwall in blizzard conditions, to see if anyone was alive.
The tale they told later of what they found when they arrived at the crevasse's lip was chilling -- a gaping hole approximately 150 feet long, 50 feet across, and almost 80 feet deep. Hundreds of other climbers had been crossing over this same shelf for the past two weeks, thinking it solid. Even Roskelley admitted, with all his experience, that he, too, thought the shelf was as solid as they come. The Koreans hadn't made a terribly bad decision, just a very unlucky one. In their struggle to return to the relative safety of our camp, they'd stopped on the only flat spot along the trail up to the ridge, and the flat spot had simply caved in. The crevasse itself was filled with a jumbled pile of broken ice blocks and layers of snow, and buried in the middle of it all were two Koreans, one trapped from the waist down, the other, his hand protruding upward.
Roskelley and another rescuer rappelled down and onto what appeared to be the bottom of the crevasse. They could only pray that this layer of ice and snow wouldn't collapse farther into the crevasse with them standing on it. Seong Yu Kang, the Korean buried from the waist down, had attempted to scratch and claw a conical pit around his waist using only a pocket knife, but he was a long way from freeing himself. He'd been trapped now for at least three hours and at an air temperature of minus-15 degrees [F], was probably freezing to death.
Both Roskelley and the other rescuer dug with a focused energy, intent on getting Kang free while not shaking loose the fragile pile of rubble they were all perched on. Johnson, who had arrived at the scene with a Sked Sled [a heavy, plastic rescue sled], set up a pulley system and helped the team haul up Kang.
While Kang was getting hauled out, Roskelley and the other rescuer turned their attention to the hand reaching skyward from his arctic tomb. Laboring in an eerie silence punctuated by their heavy breathing, they began cutting ice away from part of the body. It appeared as if the Korean was dead, so they decided to bolt before the entire ice shelf collapsed. It was a difficult decision, but the risk of staying in the crevasse outweighed the benefits in attempting to rescue a dead person. As the rescuer turned to leave, the hand clutched at his ankle. With one grab, the body managed to convince its rescuers that their efforts would be worth the trouble.
As they dug, they uncovered Dong Choon Seo's face and he began to scream, horribly. The snow around his head was crimson and blood flowed freely from his mouth. Although Roskelley and the other rescuers didn't know it at the time, blood was flowing because Seo had done the unthinkable. Assuming he was trapped for good in the crevasse and likely to die slowly by freezing, Seo had attempted to chew off his own tongue in an effort to speed up his demise.
After the Sked was lowered again, Roskelley and the other rescuer loaded Seo onto it, wrapping him in a sleeping bag and strapping him in like a trussed package. According to Ranger Johnson, he used "more duct tape on [him] than I've ever used on my car". With so many injuries, the only items in camp left to make splints of were the trash-can lids -- so he used them, too.
They returned to camp later that night. One of the rescuers, eyes vacant and lip pressed into a tight line, referred to the event as "a rescue patrol from hell and the most frightening mountaineering experience of my life". Even the venerable and unshakable Roskelley admitted it was the most terrifying thing he'd ever been through. Ranger Johnson, who'd slept only one hour in twenty-four by his own admission, just shook his head and muttered something about "having to get the hell off this mountain", and disappeared into his tent. What had happened to the rest of the Korean team was anyone's guess.

From: Facing The Extreme; Ruth Anne Kocour/with Michael Hodgson

U.S. National Park Service  

Credit: NPS Photo / Tim Rains

Sunrise alpenglow on Denali