McKinley climbers find man’s body

ANCHORAGE — Remains found on Mount McKinley may be those of a 32-year-old Wyoming man who died there in 1969, the National Park Service said.

The body was found recently by climbers poking around in a high-elevation camp cache.

The remains have not been identified positively, but the Park Service believes they are most likely those of Gary Cole of Cody, Wyo., who died of acute mountain sickness 35 years ago.

The body was lowered last week from the 17,200-foot high camp on the mountain’s West Buttress route, where it was found, to the 14,200-foot basin, said Darryl Miller, a Denali National Park ranger based in Talkeetna.

Once the body is identified, troopers will try to locate members of his family.

Of the 93 people who have died on Mount McKinley since 1932, the bodies of 35 are still on the 20,320-foot mountain, many of their whereabouts unknown, according to Park Service records. Others bodies were left in locations where they could not practically be recovered.

The body was discovered mostly covered by ice and snow at 17,000 feet.

In phone interviews last week with the Anchorage Daily News, Walter Vennum, 63, of Sebastopol, Calif., and a second member of the six-person climbing group from 1969, Henry Noldan, told how Cole, an engineer, succumbed quickly to a buildup of fluid in the lungs and had to be left on the mountain.

“He had passed away and we had left him in a cave that was at 17,200 feet, and some of the other climbers went back up and buried him,” said Noldan, 74, of Wilmington, N.C.

Days earlier, the party left the 14,200-foot basin for the upper camp intending to return after caching supplies, Vennum said. But a storm struck, and they were forced to stay in an ice cave at 17,200 feet.

“When the storm broke the next day, we went for the summit,” Vennum said.

But Cole was vomiting and decided to stay back. A friend of his, another climber from Wyoming, stayed in the cave with him. The others went to the summit but had problems on the way down, including bad weather and ill effects from the altitude, he said.

They did not return to the high camp until about 9 a.m. the next day, 24 hours later. They collapsed and slept for about six hours, Vennum said. On waking, they found Cole unconscious and heard gurgling in his lungs.

The weather was poor, but they got out a plea for help. An Army helicopter from Fort Richardson with a surgeon aboard tried but failed to reach the team on June 18, according to a newspaper account. Meanwhile, the men had found an oxygen bottle at what was known as the medical cache and were able to revive Cole for a time, Vennum said.

“But the oxygen ran out, and that was the end of him,” he said.