Alaska’s Magnificence Reminds Us of Our Fragile Insignificance

   Everyone who visits, passes through or lives in Alaska likes quoting a statistic about Mt. Denali, North America’s tallest mountain.

   The oft-quoted stat isn’t Denali’s height — 20,310 feet, or 6,770 yards — above sea level.

   No, the oft-repeated statistic folks love but few verify is that only 30% of visitors trying to see Denali actually do, given the persistent clouds often blocking their view. The region’s humidity is typically high, and Denali is so massive it creates its own atmosphere, forcing moist air from the Gulf of Alaska skyward to create clouds.

   But if you ask around or just hang around listening, you learn the “30% Club” isn’t all that exclusive if you’re patient. According to Alaska.org, only 33% of visitors taking bus tours in Denali National Park see the mountain most of the day. However, 40% get partial views, and those hanging around the region four days have an 85% chance of seeing it.

   That seems about right. My wife, Penny, and I saw Denali all the way from Anchorage, 130 miles to the south, on the clear day we arrived, May 28. But while in or near Denali National Park the next three dreary days, we got only one 5-minute view of its entirety. And though we saw Denali from its broad base to its two summits, it wasn’t the full Monty. Patchy clouds obscured parts of its snow-frosted magnificence. Still, the clouds enhanced the mountain’s beauty more than obscured it.

Mt. Denali, North America’s tallest mountain at 20,310 feet, breaks from the clouds in late May.     — Patrick Durkin photos

   And somehow, that seemed fitting for Alaska, a vast land whose warts and beauty-marks showcase nature’s abiding wrath, rewards and cold indifference. Consider the late Carl E. “Bud” Houston, 21, of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, who was a U.S. Army corporal during World War II. Houston was part of a five-man weather-monitoring team on Buldir Island, way out on the tip of the Aleutian Islands.

   More precisely, Buldir island rests 1,125 miles southwest of Homer, Alaska, which is

225 miles southwest of Anchorage. In other words, the span from Anchorage to this remote Island is the same distance as Madison to Salt Lake City.

   Houston disappeared March 3, 1945, while hiking to relieve the isolated boredom of living on a small rock — 4.3 miles long by 2.5 miles wide — with only four other humans. After he disappeared, his fellow soldiers scoured the 4,250-acre island for days and called in aerial searches during good weather. The Army never found Houston and declared him dead.

   But in 1988, 43 years later, a scientist studying Buldir Island’s geese for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found Houston’s remains while searching for a stone to pound in her tent pegs. The Army had concentrated its search along the island’s shorelines, but the scientist found his bones inland a ways, tucked into a rocky formation nearly four miles from camp.

These are the personal effects of the late Carl E. “Bud” Houston of Manitowoc, an Army private who disappeared in March 1945 during a hike on Buldir Island in the Aleutian Islands.

   A display at the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge’s visitors center in Homer shows Houston’s canteen, binoculars, hair-comb, rifle cartridges, rusted pocketknife and Army-issue wristwatch. A museum placard said he had broken his leg. Fired cartridges nearby suggest he tried signaling his location, but no one ever heard the shots, and Houston likely died of exposure.

   Meanwhile, folks in Seward still wonder what became of Michael LeMaitre, 65, an Anchorage man who vanished July 4, 2012, while running the annual Mt. Marathon 5K, billed as the world’s toughest 5-kilometer (3.1 miles) race. The race itself typifies Alaskan culture. It reportedly began in 1908 when two “sourdoughs” (longtime Alaskan residents) got to drinking and made bets on who could run the fastest to nearby Mt. Marathon’s peak (4,826 feet) and back to downtown Seward.

   The official Mt. Marathon Race began in 1915, and the winner finished in 1 hour, 2 minutes, 2 seconds. The current record is 40 minutes, 37 seconds.

A bull moose regrowing its antlers feeds along a highway near Denali National Park.

   Mike LeMaitre, however, never finished the race, which was held in typical Seward weather: foggy, rainy and low-visibility. LeMaitre had never run the race before and fell behind the pack during the ascent. He was last seen near the race’s turnaround at 3,022 feet by race volunteers who were heading back down. Multi-week searches of the mountain’s lush forest, dramatic cliffs and steep scree fields found nothing. LeMaitre was declared dead three months later.

   Meanwhile, other Alaska residents and visitors have died in full, tragic view of rescuers and onlookers after getting stuck during low tide while exploring Anchorage’s quicksand-like glacial mud flats. The flats have claimed at least three people the past decade, including a 20-year-old Illinois man, Zachary Porter, who got stuck up to his waist in May 2023. Despite 911 calls from Porter’s friends, rescuers couldn’t extract him before incoming tides drowned him.

   Other endings are less tragic, of course. As we drove past a Seward marina on our way to a kayaking day-trip June 2, one of our guides pointed to several rows of moldering fishing boats and said, “This is where old boats come to die.”

   We saw similar rows of decay in Homer, where long-abandoned boats rested awkwardly atop wooden blocks or rusty trailers with flat tires. Some old boats, their paint flaking and planks rotting, seemingly pined for their skipper’s return. Their downriggers were still bolted atop their sterns and tattered flags flapped weakly above the flybridge.

Abandoned fishing boats are common in Alaskan ports like Seward and Homer.

   You wonder what became of the boats’ owners, and whether they walked away intentionally when last leaving Seward, Homer or any other port with beached fishing fleets. Roughly 6,000 people live in Homer year-round. Far more live and work there in summer and disappear from Labor Day until Memorial Day. Chances are, the boats’ owners intended to return the next spring to caulk seams, sand and repaint gunwales, and drain and refill gear-oil reservoirs.

   But then they never did, and so the salt collected and the brass tarnished, and the locals eventually forgot who or when someone owned the boats.

   That’s no surprise, really. Alaska has a way of reminding us of our insignificance, and the fine edge between fitness and foolishness, or life and death. We carry our scars and leave our marks, but both fade in time as Denali slips in and out of clouds bearing the Pacific’s ancient mists.