In 1967 a climbing team, led by Joe Wilcox attempted to climb Mount Denali/Mckinley. Most of the climbing team made it to the summit, but in all 7 people died during this attempt. This climbing group was conflicted from the beginning of their climb. At the time this was one of the biggest tragedies in the climbing community, and certainly in North America. The mountaiin was under the administration of the National Park Service and not many people attempted this climb at the time. the NPS has a very small staff at the Park at this time, almost none of whom had mountain climbing experience. The debate over who was to blame for this tragedy continued for years, with people who were on the mountain and who were not on the mountain pointing the finger. Of course this was never actually resolved. One of the major factors was a major storm that hit the mountain just as parties were summiting. The author does a good job of pesenting both sides, sometimes in too much detail. But also does well describing the geography and weather conditions that were present at the time. The major thing I cam away from this story is that if you were not there, and in some cases even if you were, you cannot really know what happened and why.
