AK 239: The Enemy Is Already Here

Palmer Glacier — Mount Hood, Oregon

My Diary

^{Seven Days ’til Christmas}

^{G.P.S . Elevation: 8,324’}

It was clear but brisk, really brisk: Twenty-four degrees Fahrenheit brisk. But it was that kind of rare December night perfect for climbing the highest mountain in Oregon:

Mt. Hood (11,249’).

The, rare, clear moonlit night reflecting on the white snow made the night-climb easy and beautiful.

I’m kind of a big guy: Six feet four inches.

Some say handsome.

“My, my! You look like a chiseled Greek god, JD!” But that’s Nadene in my office and she wears glasses.

My name is John Denning, but I prefer JD.

I’ve hiked to the top of Hood twice before but today would be different: Today, I would never make it.

I’ve never made excuses for stupid behavior, like the fools who attempted to climb this mountain in the winter without proper equipment, but I always figured,

I’ve got personal issues too.

Everybody’s gotta fight their own demons.

If I just could corral mine, I’d be happy.

I wasn’t one of those types who blamed my mother or father for all of my failings cause. For all of their shortcomings, on balance, with all they went through they were pretty phenomenal people.

People tell me I love doing everything at full throttle. I guess that’s true but I do it because it’s just plain fun. What’s wrong with simply enjoying life?

Whether it was racing motorcycles through the woods of Oregon, jumping out of planes HAHO (High Altitude High Opening) style, or helping a friend’s ninety-year old mother move all of her possessions to another state, I operate at full throttle.

A friend, Doug Meyers, once told me,

“You hug your motorcycles more than you hug your parents.”

I’m not married. My father passed after a long illness. So I try to treat everyone like family.

My life changed after a speeding ticket on my motorcycle.

I wound up in jail.

They claim I was doing 130 m.p.h. through Yuma, Arizona. I told the officer,

“Impossible! This thing can’t do more than 120!”

So, sitting in jail, I said to myself,

Self:

Instead of causing the police so much grief, you might as well do something for your country.

What do you like to do?

Well, I liked thrilling, daring, crazy things.

So after 9/11 I joined the Navy.

After eight weeks of Navy boot camp I signed up for the toughest twenty-seven-weeks of my life. This was Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training, better known as SEALs. I broke my leg just three days before the end of Phase II, meaning I had to wait for the next class and take the entire nine weeks of Phase II over again, which usually means: Washout.

And it appeared that was exactly what was happening, although I could run on my leg after six weeks, my underwater swim times were over ten minutes behind the basic minimums for passage.

In fact, the instructors/motivators (What we called drill sergeants at boot camp) started calling me: Washout number one.

There were two others who washed out of Phase II and were taking the phase over again with me.

Washout number two and Washout number three.

They both quit on their first day back!

On my last possible attempt at the underwater course, I squeaked by just in time:

With two seconds to spare!

I went on to easily pass Phase III.

Looking back on it all, I really had come a long way.

SEAL Qualification Training (SQT), jump school, Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE), Personnel Qualification Standard (PQS), and six months of probation now all seemed worth it as I was officially:

A Navy SEAL!

No brag.

Just fact.

I rose to a Chief in Navy Seal Team Six (Now “affectionately” called the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, NSWDG or DEVGRU) quicker than any SEAL in history, (From enlistment to DEVGRU in just under seven years!)!

But that’s where the bragging ends.

I really want nothing do with the Navy or Navy politics whatsoever (More on that later!).

Anyway, I really want to tell you about this hike.

Mt. Hood is one of the deadliest climbing mountains in the world with over 130 souls lost to date.

Of course, there are more novices who attempt this climb than many of the more difficult mountains.

Deaths average about one a year but that doesn’t seem to stop anyone.

I love the outdoors.

And when things became really stressful at the Portland FBI office I would take a hike, literally!

Well, things were now especially stressful as over 800,000 terrorists are on various FBI watch lists, and that was just inside the U.S. But since there are only 35,664 total FBI personnel everyone knew it was only a matter of time before some nut or nuts would do something far worse than shoot up a nightclub and murder forty-nine people.

When I left the SEALs I applied to the FBI’s counterterrorism department and became a Gold Team Instructor training FBI agents. We war-gamed chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) material attacks in U.S. cities. I always thought,

Even if just a few true believers got hold of a nuke, God help us all!

My job was to train counterterrorism, sniper and other personnel in every terrorist situation imaginable. I met many of my current and retired friends from DEVGRU here.

Routinely, the FBI would run Top Secret ops, like shut down NRG stadium in Houston, Texas a couple of months before the Super Bowl, just for practice.

Inside the stadium we would run an active sniper, or various CBRN scenarios.

On other occasions I’d be whisked away by private jet to a major city to war game a chem weapon in a movie theater or an attack on a nuclear power plant.

More recently, however, I was doing something far less exciting and far more boring:

Surveillance.

Currently, I had been assigned to a potentially high-risk person of interest. But I was trying very hard to compartmentalize and not think about office work today.

“Always pay attention to your surroundings!” as I was told by my very first SEAL instructor on Coronado, just across the bay from San Diego.

Again, I had to snap myself back to reality. I know that on Mt. Hood, storms can come out of nowhere, especially in winter. You are so high that, during the day, the weather looks sunny and fine, like in an airplane. Unless you’re experienced, however, you may not notice the difference between fog in the valleys below and a storm pushing quickly up the mountain. When a storm system is pushed into the side of the Cascade mountain range the sun can disappear in an instant and a zero visibility blizzard can come out of nowhere.

But city slickers in their, just purchased, state of the art, flashy clothing, and cell phones could never totally be deterred, despite all the warnings. These were the people that didn’t know squat about mountaineering but, rather, were here for their latest Facebook selfie. But hey, to each his own!

During the day, the upper Palmer Chairlift would carry skiers to 8,397 feet. U.S. Olympic ski teams would train on Mt. Hood, sometimes all summer long. In fact, Hood is the only mountain in North America where you can generally ski all summer!

But this is the dead of winter. As I walked near the last tower I heard the frozen cables on the lift start. The icy cold, braded steel grumbled like an old man trying to get out of bed.

I sure hope they don’t start allowing faux mountain climbers to use the chair lifts now, I sarcastically mumbled to myself.

I remember thinking: These idiots will probably get hit on the head by a rock or an icefall.

Even a small rock sized chunk of ice can slice skin, brake bones or knock you unconscious. In which case:

They’ll be seeing Jesus before they see the top!

Most came up the South side, as it’s the easiest of the fifteen ways to the top. Even in December rocks are always a major concern. The Old Chute is the last leg but the easiest way to ascend the top. But even this route is a forty-five-degree climb and nearly vertical in some places.

Rookies were always wondering up here with the latest designed, neon chartreuse parkas (Sorry I guess I am a little bitter at the novices who attempt this climb without any prep.) I always carried a good climbing helmet, crampons, ice ax, and rope. I’d spend other savings on more important things, like a nice, quiet Alaskan vacation.

My father’s old friend, Richard Bass, gave me his twenty-year-old ski pants and an ugly, thirty-year-old, black drab parka. Bass was the first person to climb all seven of the world’s tallest mountains. I’d always remembered Bass’s comment when I was little:

“Prepared doesn’t mean flashy clothing, son. It means: Warm clothing, proper equipment, oh, and a damn good map!”

Although times have changed, my old school philosophy remained the same:

You can have MotionX GPS and Elevation Pro on your phone but if your phone breaks or your battery goes out you still need a map!

That’s the advice I’d give my co-workers who wanted a hike to the top.

That and:

If your phone breaks none of your hot new-fangled GPS garbage is worth your life!

If your battery goes dead,

“You’re on your own, son,” as Bass would say.

No sir! When your life depended on it, I wanted to pull out my old, trusty, waterproof map!

I was on point in a SEAL platoon that breached a compound in Kandahar, Afghanistan when I lost contact with my team. I wondered why, suddenly, I was the only guy in the place shooting bad guys. Our satellite feed had gone down and no one, except for me, seemed to be able to function!

After that I always thought,

Keep your stupid high tech stuff! I got my map!

Also, I didn’t mind people but they were sometimes a distraction from simply enjoying nature. As I continued up the mountain I did something very dangerous. I pulled out my iPhone 7 and put in ear buds. I searched for: “Sunrise” by Duran Duran[2] and hit play.

I knew this was dangerous, as I might not hear any calls for help or rocks hurling at me. But, for the moment, I wanted to be a rookie climber too and just enjoy the moment:

Sunrise!

It was beautiful.

Rays of golden light shot across the mountain and in an instant hit the fog in the valleys below like a beacon from heaven.

Whoever says there is no God clearly hasn’t seen this.

As I turned my head back up the mountain my mind couldn’t help but wonder to Mohammed Al-Aqsa, MAA, my new surveillance project.

My brain quickly buried that thought and I slammed that door shut.

I have to stop thinking about everything but this climb!

My mind immediately wandered again.

I found it hard to believe, at age thirty-five, Portland, this sleepy little town, in the valleys below, had grown into a sprawling metropolis of over two million people. So with rising numbers of good people comes the bad.

My latest job was to track and determine whether MAA was bad or just another Muslim caught in the red tape of government surveillance. MAA had already been watched 24/7 by the Bureau in Minnesota.

MAA was only twenty-three years old and a U.S. citizen because he was born in Minneapolis to Somali parents. MAA had no friends or family in Portland and was coming only to study engineering. The FBI had given us this really stupid six-month rule from the Department of Justice (DOJ). If the guy you are surveilling doesn’t do anything criminal within six months you must stop all surveillance. Court order or no court order!

Now my best friend in school was Muslim but after entire evenings discussing politics and religion I still couldn’t understand how an American citizen could get on a plane and go join ISIS. But that is exactly what MAA’s brother had done! Never to be seen or heard again! After reading literally dozens of these files at the office my team concluded something no one else at the FBI had concluded: While some of these guys were radicalized, others were just plain bored and wanted some excitement.

Suddenly, my senses transported me back to reality! The sun had completely emerged from its slumber and the snow would soon be a blistering white. I had been climbing since before 4 a.m. but this made it all worth it.

Fortunately, I was given a great pair of Ray Ban Aviator Polarized lenses and I had purchased zinc oxide at Government Camp the night before for my nose: Old school all the way!

I had spent the night with old friends from school at this beautiful twenty-five-room chalet my science teacher from school owned. We had a great night telling old stories that, now, with the passage of time, might have been just slightly exaggerated. I felt like a kid again by running on only two hours of sleep!

I smeared the oxide all over my nose. Kids would think I was some crazy old man but I didn’t care. I stood out from some of the very white locals with my naturally dark skin but I could still get sunburned. You actually can get an Oregonian sunburn in December as the sun and snow can still really magnify and burn you.

As the sun brightened, I was on the Hogsback, the last stretch before the top of the mountain. I had already traversed around the Bergshrund Crevasse.

The day was perfect. Clear, except for some patchy fog in the lowlands. Just as I was admiring the stunning beauty, my crampon slipped and some ice gave away from under my foot. Okay, don’t panic. Everything’s fine.

While this looked like a harmless, beautiful white landscape I knew that if I fell here I wouldn’t be able to stop ’til I fell another 300 hundred feet into the Devil’s Kitchen. It was a fumarole, a vent that releases toxic volcanic gases, such as deadly sulfur, from deep inside the earth.[3]

Several people died on Hood just from being trapped near the gases and not being able to hike out in time. This morning I could see the deadly gases puffing like Indian smoke signals, out of what looked to be a bottomless pit. I was told, no one knew how deep that crevasse was and thought:

And I don’t wanna find out!

After regaining my footing, I looked up and couldn’t believe my eyes. There were two people above me already at the top of the Old Chute, which is near the top of the mountain! As I looked closer one had on a t-shirt and jeans!

No helmets and probably not even crampons.

Twenty-four degrees and in a t-shirt?

Morons!

With loose rocks surrounding them I actually mumbled out loud,

“Crazy!”

No sooner had I finished saying that than I heard a shriek.

The guy slipped and is now shooting toward me like a bullet.

His girlfriend began screaming!

I yelled, “Dig in! Dig in! But quickly I realize the poor kid has on an old pair of tennis shoes.”

I pull my ice pick but quickly realize this will likely do me no good. So, I sling the pick around my wrist and take my twenty-five-foot rope and tosses it into the path of the speeding bullet yelling,

“Grab the rope!”

As this perfect stranger hurdles toward me on his back, I wrap the rope around my waist and think,

Goodbye cruel world!

Miraculously, the guy hits my rope and the rope tangles onto his arm as he now rolls.

Unfortunately for me I didn’t have time to calculate the inertia that would be involved in my stupidity. I’m immediately catapulted into the air on the other end of the rope, flying downhill.

Now both of us idiots are going to die today! I thought.

I struggle to get the ice pick into the ice but instead it’s acting more like a ceiling fan whirling dangerously around my head, the sharp edge coming closer and closer.

Everything is now in slow motion.

Nice move, JD! I’m gonna die twice today! Once with my own icepick and then again in the crevasse!

I’m finally able to grab the handle of the ice pick but this is now the least of my worries.

In a second I’m going to hit the crevasse but first we both go flying over the smaller Bergshrund crevasse as though it’s not even there!

The bloody body of this poor guy I’m attached to has been sliced like sushi over ice.

What am I thinking? In about two seconds I’m probably going to look worse than that! I snap back from feeling sorry for myself as I hear and see some jagged rocks rip off what’s left of this poor guy’s University of Oregon t-shirt as he hurls into the crevasse.

Dragging closely behind, I somehow manage to stop just short of going into the abyss as well. Fortunately, my old Richard Bass parka and ski pants have paid off, as they are still on me and in one piece!

“Oh God, oh God, oh God, I don’t wanna die,” says this bloody mass something now barely resembling a human.

Now I’m feeling just as hysterical but I take a deep breath and then flat on my stomach holding the rope and one arm I calmly say,

“What’s your name?”

“Trevor,” answers a quivering voice.

We’re both dead.

Of course, I only thought that. I would never ever show this. Sixteen years of Navy SEAL training and one year of FBI psychology profiling comes rushing into my brain. I take another deep breath and say,

“Ok Trevor. I’m gonna get you outta here but we’ve gotta work together, okay?”

Trevor nods slightly.

I then begin pulling Trevor out of the crevasse.

But just as I’m about to free Trevor, I hear a girl’s voice behind me yelling and screaming.

I turn my head just in time to see Trevor’s hiking partner trying to run down this steep, forty-five degree chute! I start yelling,

“Stop! Stop!”

But it’s too late.

Trevor’s girlfriend falls and begins sliding head first toward them.

As I turn my head again, Trevor has already heard his girlfriend falling and has pulled out a knife.

Trevor then calmly says,

“Save her, save her, please!”

“I’m not letting go. You don’t have to do this.”

Her screams are getting closer and closer and now I have the decision of my life.

Trevor says, “Do something great with your life. I did.”

In that split second I did not understand what Trevor was saying. So I say,

“What?”

Trevor then cut through the rope and fell into the blackness.

I remember screaming,

“NO!”

But it’s too late.

Trevor is gone and all I can hear is that blood-curdling scream. Trevor’s last echo on planet earth seems to take forever to stop. I will live to the day I die with that sound haunting my head. I had been told I was brave before but in an instant I feel like a helpless child.

Standing, frozen in place, all I can think about is:

My God! I just killed someone. I should’ve pulled harder, faster.

Seemingly, minutes go by but that’s impossible. It was seconds. But in those seconds passed eternity and Trevor’s screams were still echoing in my head.

Then, in an instant, I was back hearing a second set of screams hurling toward me.

She was flying like an alpine bobsled directly toward me, face first.

I stood up and ran, like an idiot, toward her and, without thinking, I dove for this poor helpless woman whose t-shirt, body and jeans are already mangled and bloody. She had no gloves and her hands, trying to grab ice and snow, are bleeding.

What am I thinking?

I thought as I flew dramatically over the top of her, grabbing her shoulder and arm for just a split second.

She sailed right passed me but in that split second I was able to grab her shoulder and arm just long enough to stop her from going into the crevasse.

This area, fortunately, is almost flat but jagged rocks still protrude through the snow.

And, unfortunately, this poor girl has hit her head on one of them.

I ran to her unconscious, lifeless, body.

I took off my parka and put it under her head.

I then quickly checked for a breath or a heartbeat.

Now the sulfur gases begin to engulf us and I remember starting to cough.

Some distance parallel to us I hear,

“You need help?”

I ignored them thinking,

“They’ll figure it out!”

Now every Navy SEAL must pass a basic medical life-saving course but I start thinking,

That was over sixteen years ago! What do I do next?

I try to breath some life into this young woman, who could be no more than 21 years old. I now hear others yelling behind me and can hear someone talking to the 911 operator. I stopped breathing for her and again checked for a pulse.

Finally!

I was able to feel a faint heartbeat on her neck. I remember coughing again thinking,

Wouldn’t it be ironic if I died and she lives?

Who said I was brave and heroic?

I suddenly realized just how selfish human nature is. But it’s also in our nature to help others.

So I looked around for a place to move her.

A group of climbers now arrive. The first guy couldn’t be more than eighteen.

“Hey man, is she dead?”

“No, did you call 911?” I answered.

Then the kid hands me his phone,

“Ya, they want to talk to you.”

“My name is John Denning. I’m an FBI Special Agent. We have a female, approximately 21 years of age. She’s barely breathing and unconscious. She fell a few hundred feet down ice, multiple lacerations, maybe broken bones. She looks to have hit her head and is in critical condition.”

Then I look at the kid who gave me his cell phone and ask,

“Can they call back on this number?

“Ya, Ya, sure.”

I then say to the operator,

“Okay. Get them here ASAP. Were you able to pull GPS coordinates from this phone? Okay, good! We’ll set up a landing zone.”

I looked over to the mangled mess of a girl and hiding a tear in my eye I said,

“Hurry. Please.”

I hand the phone back to its owner while I hold the unconscious girl’s head in my hands.

The teen with the phone asks, “What did they say?”

I ignored him as I try to take care of the girl.

Suddenly, the thought crosses my mind,

She might die and I don’t even know her name.

A crowd of nine other looky-loos have traversed to us, just to watch this girl die.

Later I got mad thinking,

No one. Not one asked or even tried to help.

But what I really became worried about next were the sulfur fumes.

“We’ve gotta get her away from here. The chopper will be in the air in three minutes!”

Several kids finally helped me pick up the unconscious girl and move her.

After she’s been moved I looked into the crevasse that just took a young man’s life.

I suddenly felt nothing. No worry. No sadness. Nothing. That didn’t last long.

As I looked down the majestic mountain I saw what every climber on Mt. Hood fears, a huge storm is about to hit. As the storm rapidly flies up the side of the mountain the kid’s cell phone rings and the kid answers.

“Ya.”

The kid sounds confused.

“What? We ain’t got no shovels.”

The kid, looking terrified, hands me the phone.

I knew exactly what was happening as I spoke to emergency dispatch.

“You have our GPS co-ordinates, right? You’ll never be able to land here.”

We’ll hunker down right where we are.”

Tell the chopper to stand down.”

Send the CAT and a rescue team.”

Hurry. No one here is prepared for this, and this girl won’t live much longer!”

The dispatcher tried to tell me something positive but I just hung up the phone. We didn’t have much time.

“All right everyone start digging. We’re building snow caves.”

The kid, shaking, asks,

“Have you ever done that?”

I reassured him by saying,

“Oh ya, I took a wilderness survival class in high school. We did all this stuff!”

The kid seems satisfied and starts digging.

Little did he know and I wasn’t about to volunteer that I about froze to death in that high school snow cave 4,000 feet lower and in much warmer weather!

Also, I wasn’t about to share this either:

I nearly died when I was eighteen and fell down the mountain in this very spot!

All I could do was be a good example for some stressed out kids. I started digging with my hands as none of us had a shovel.

After just about one minute at this elevation and not being acclimated I was exhausted.

I look at my hands and they’re bleeding.

As I sat back into the snow and ice, I give a deep and long sigh.

I’d be happy right now knowing we are going to make it off this cold rock, alive. A nice warm Christmas dinner at Denny’s would be a plus.

Two things I hate most in this world:

Being cold and wet.

Looks like I’m gonna be both.

And, as luck would have it, on my iPhone Dust in the Wind by Kansas[4] starts to play.