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Dream Merchants DREAM MERCHANTS INVESTIGATING THE MYSTERIOUS DEATHS OF THREE JAPANESE CLIMBERS ON DENALI IN 1989 BY JON WATERMAN Kahiltna Pass, 10,000 feet, lower left with trail to 11,200-foot camp and up West Buttress; Denali Pass visible upper left. TOM FALLEY TOM 22 ASCENT 2020 ASCENT 2020 23 This photograph and another shot from the The 17-man rescue team hauls the bodies of air show that none of the deceased climbers Yamada, Saegusa and Komatsu to a waiting helicopter. Cyclonic winds delayed the body recovery held their knees or burrowed or assumed for over a month. The three climbers were found just the fetal position of those trying to shelter 15 minutes from their last camp. from the extreme cold. Nor had they begun removing their clothing in the frequent final act of “paradoxical undressing” by translated), were weirdly incomplete. It was hypothermic victims flushed by dilated blood as if Yamada’s deferential Japanese supporters vessels that cause a burning sensation. could not dig up or divulge how the men really From my experience as a Denali perished. WHEN NORBORU YAMADA and his two mountaineering ranger performing scores of Several accounts of successful winter Japanese companions didn’t return from searches for climbers, rescues or recoveries— climbs on Denali serve as noteworthy and theW West Buttress, Denali’s easiest route, in along with a study of accident victims for even inspirational models, such as the book February 1989, no one could understand my book Surviving Denali—I wanted Minus 148 (detailing how three climbers what had happened. Known as “the Dream an explanation and conclusion for every survived a similar storm at Denali Pass Merchant,” Yamada was famed for his misadventure on the mountain. Even long by digging a snowcave). But tragedies like visionary Himalayan climbs including the after I gave up working on the mountain, that of 1989 garner most of the attention. South Face of Annapurna and Everest in I wanted to prevent tragedy. But with the Disaster, after all, stimulates empathy. And winter. Several years earlier he had led the Japanese team’s demise, the report (written by on another level, comprehensive accident race to climb all 14 8,000-meter peaks. His the South District Ranger) was unintentionally reports (which, as far as I was concerned, many admirers (including me), friends and mysterious and inconclusive. I needed to hadn’t been completed for Yamada) expose family wanted to believe that the climbers understand what really caused their deaths. human error, ultimately evoking coping were sheltering out the lengthy storm in a Teruo Saegusa—eyes wide open like his BOTH ARMS HUNG mechanisms—allowing other mountaineers snowcave. The official park service report and the autopsies noted that Norboru Yamada and his two companions, partners’—alone escaped broken bones. All of to ask themselves if they could have survived More than two weeks after the Japanese Teruo Saegusa and Kozo Komatsu, died of hypothermia. But the three, as seen in the page from the book the team appeared to have perished quickly SUSPENDED IN THE in similar straits—teaching us how to avoid Death Wind, were highly experienced. For them to die on Denali’s easiest route just didn’t make sense. team’s disappearance, supporters had to and were dead before arrival—they made similar mishaps. Yet regardless of nationality, accept the inevitable when the bodies were no attempt to crawl to one another. Their AIR AS IF HE WERE climbers are essentially members of an spotted from fly-overs. In one attempted days into spring, the mercury still plunged wasn’t the only one who cringed about friends exposed skin, whiter than the surrounding extended family, and losing three brethren recovery a military Chinook helicopter flew to -40 F. The rescuers also observed that the and family hearing the tuna-locker elucidation snow, was not bloated or badly distorted, IN THE MIDST OF A can hit hard. half out of control and at full throttle, with wind blew even harder here than it did on or seeing the image, showing Yamada with a preserving each man’s facial features, as if As a lucky survivor of a winter climb on the veteran pilot breathing bottled oxygen and their storm-swept Mount Fuji in Japan, where peculiar, bared-teeth grin. The photograph they had been sprayed with liquid nitrogen. DANCE STEP. DenaIi—up the Cassin Ridge in winter 1982, trying to break out of a 2,000-foot-per-minute wind speeds exceeded 100 mph. did not show that he was roped to his partners Hence the notation “Flash Frozen.” As if similarly accident-prone and exposed to downdraft.Rescuers strapped inside the Denali insiders will never forget the Teruo Saegusa and Kozo Komatsu. mountain weather alone could explain what Compared to 44 other climbers who have inhumane conditions—I knew that someone bouncing fuselage could see three red-suited photograph taken by the body-recovery team Yamada was seen with straightened legs really killed them. disappeared on Denali, the bodies of the as talented as Yamada Norboru, my winter and motionless figures lying below, spread up and leaked from a thick, yet still unfiled atop a several-inch snow pedestal, which Given their body positions and the autopsy Japanese team at least could be examined, brother, wouldn’t simply flash freeze in to 100 feet apart in the shape of an upside- folder that remains—until this writing— the weight of his body held in place as the showing that their limbs were broken after and this was only by luck. If not for their rope his tracks because he underestimated the down isosceles triangle. Cyclonic winds on in the South District Ranger’s office in surrounding snow had been blasted away. DEATH WIND death, the photo shows signs of human flight: catching in the sastrugi, the trio would have mountain. There had to be a more thorough frozen snow had carved abstract sastrugi Talkeetna. Normally, climber accident These winter pedestals suspend everything The leading Japanese alpinist had landed continued being blasted down by the winds that explanation that would allow closure. And I that, from the aerial perspective, looked like narratives, called Case Incident Reports that can’t be pried off by the wind: amber here after a long ride through the sub-Arctic blew away their packs, ice axes, video cameras, confess that the sardonic smile frozen on his texture on a skip-troweled sheetrock wall. (CIRs), are filed three hours north at Denali colored urine stains, mummified human feces, night, blown from the wind-machine of Denali hats and mittens down past blued hanging face has haunted me for years. Since the violent weather and thin-air flying National Park headquarters with a century’s and footprints left over from more than a Pass. Meteorologists agree that the pass, a low seracs, down the two-mile-long, elevator-shaft and landing were deemed unsafe, the Japanese worth of mountaineering arcana. After a thousand Denali climbers who make this same funnel between the two summits of Denali, steep plunge to the Peters Glacier. Down there, TO MOST JAPANESE CITIZENS the name remains lay on the 30-degree slope for more few years, most accidents are forgotten, but pilgrimage from May through July. In summer, could, due to the Venturi Effect, triple the in the catch basin of the winds, all is buried in Denali elicits respectful recognition. In than a month. the Talkeetna rangers and Alaskan old-hand when the wind eases and it starts snowing, all 100 mph winds commonly buffeting the upper deep-snow remnants of the last Ice Age. Japan the mountain’s name happens to Finally, on March 26, a 17-man Japanese climbers still see the 1989 tragedy as an is once again blanketed over. mountain. To be lifted and bodily blown off At the time, the tragedy had been briefly be synonymous with that of Japan’s most rescue team climbed to the accident site after unsolved enigma. It didn’t make sense that Yamada’s blue flap hat had long since would take winds greater than that of terminal covered by newspapers, lamented in climbing famous mountaineer, Naomi Uemura. The being pinned down by another prolonged Yamada, a veteran at high altitude and who blown off, while one-wool mitted hand was velocity—or 120 mph—the maximum speed a journals, detailed (but not resolved) in that thick story of Japan’s knight errant of cold weather storm with wind they described as a “devil’s had done technical 8,000-meter peaks in crooked toward his heart because of a broken human can reach while falling through the air. CIR file, and expanded upon in a respectful adventure, killed on Denali five Februaries roar.” The rescuers were shocked to see that winter, would perish on what was essentially arm. Since either a fall or wind had partially Due to the climbers’ lack of fatal injuries, book, 死Shi-fù, or Death Wind, published only in before Yamada, is also cloaked in mystery— Yamada’s team all lay on their backs on an a steep ski slope. unzipped his jacket and blown back the fur- DEATH WIND and given the cold location, through process of Japan. The authors had only concluded “it was a except to those alpinists who understand the innocuous-looking snowslope merely 15 The troubling photograph captures a supine ruffed hood, his signature red bandana could elimination most coroners would call the causes fatal mistake for them to adapt their experience oddities of this mountain in winter and the minutes away from their last camp.
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