"To the south face of Mount McKinley!'
With a clank of beer mugs, the four mountaineers tossed off a heady toast one night last summer and then sat down to plan their assault. They had picked a formidable foe: the continent's highest mountain, 20,320 ft. of rock, ice and swirling snow that Alaskan Indians call "the Great One." McKinley had been climbed 13 times since 1913, but never by the precipitous southern route, a feat considered the greatest pioneering climb remaining in North America.
Leader of the four was blond, slight Jake Breitenbach, 24, a guide at Wyoming's Petzoldt-Exum School of American Mountaineering....
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