Sgt. Jesse Hunt, 34, was greeted by bagpipes when he arrived at the Victoria International Airport on June 18 following the adventure of a lifetime.
Hunt is one of three members of the Canadian Scottish Regiment alpine team who travelled to Alaska to summit Denali (formerly Mount Mckinley) at 6,190 metres (20,310 ft.) in June, and following a successful attempt, the trio returned home to a hero’s welcome.
“The bagpipes were very unexpected,” he said with a chuckle. "I knew that our basecamp manager would be there and we had heard some support from the regiment, but as we cleared customs and we were going through the doors in Victoria, we heard Dennis introducing the Regimental Summit Team and then the bagpipes started. It was nice to be recognized by the regiment, but I mostly wanted to see my wife and kids,” he admitted.
Hunt is a Frances Kelsey graduate (’08) and paramedic in the Cowichan region. He teamed up with leader Sgt. Erik Carveth, and Sgt. Jesse Woods to climb Denali while Sgt. (ret) Dennis "Helen" Byrne set up in Qualicum as their basecamp manager.
Byrne had made an attempt years ago and had talked with Carveth about it. It took years for the team to plan and train to make an attempt of their own.
“It started close to four years ago, me and [Carveth] were on an exercise and we were chatting and started talking about mountains we wanted to climb,” Hunt said. “He was talking about Denali and four years later there we were, standing on the mountain."
An avid outdoorsman since his youth, Hunt has always liked to hunt and fish and hike, but climbing the third highest peak of the Seven Summits — one known for being a steep and treacherous climb, made even harder by severe weather conditions including violent winds — was on a whole new level.
To prepare, Hunt’s first step was do crevasse rope training and rescue. He then climbed Mount Baker.
“The week after we did Baker there was a fatality on it. Two skiers went into a crevasse," he noted. "It was kind of a little shot of reality as to why we need to pay attention to the crevasse rescue training. We’re not playing around.”
Little did he know, his training would come in handy during his Denali descent. As for the climb up, safety was also paramount. The three climbers were already aware of the difficulty level of the challenge set out before them but a fatality just before they got to Denali and another incident that coincided with their arrival and early days on the mountain made them that much more aware.
Three Malaysian climbers became stranded, and rescuers needed three days to complete a successful rescue — and just in time.
"We were not involved in the rescue in any way, but it was on our minds during the ascent and may give you an idea of the conditions on Denali," Hunt said. “Fatalities are kind of common on Denali,” he added. “There are a number of them every year.”
The team’s designated medic, Hunt researched what had gone wrong on previous expeditions and how those issues could be avoided.
“It was a lot of reading the horror stories and then trying to prepare for them as best as I could,” he said.
The route the team followed is called the West Buttress. They landed on the airstrip on Kalhiltna Glacier at 7,200 ft on May 28 and the trio set out immediately upon arriving and walked through the night.
Fortunately, their ascent was relatively uneventful; the reward meaningful.
“It was a real honour of getting to hold our unit flag on the summit of North America,” Hunt said. “It’s kind of hard to describe that outside of a military context. Carrying the flag up to the top of a mountain is kind of a tradition we’ve got and there’s a lot of history attached to that flag and to hold it in a brand new place was quite the honour.
The team made the summit on June 14 at 9:15 p.m. though they didn’t spent much time there.
“With the temperature reading roughly -40 C, once the obligatory photos were taken, the men began their trek down.
“I had a pretty good slip on the Autobahn coming down,” Hunt recalled. “The Autobahn is coming down into the camp at 17,200 ft and it’s so called because if you fall there, you can just keep falling and go faster and faster and faster.
“I got to test out one of the anchors when my footing came out from under me,” he said. “That was where the training came in for self-arrest training where you roll over onto your ice axe and dig it into the snow and try to stop yourself from falling.”
Wood, who was behind him, saw Hunt start to fall and immediately threw himself onto his axe as well.
“I came to an abrupt stop at the end of my rope,” he said, "which is one of the things that we learned when I was doing my research before is that the majority of injuries and fatalities are fairly avoidable with people moving un-roped-up or moving too close together and having too much slack on their ropes and stuff and we were very cognizant of that.”
On the final leg of their move from the camp at 14,200 ft down to the Kalhiltna Glacier airstrip, and their flight home, Hunt got a radio transmission from his wife wishing him a happy Father’s Day.
“I found the hardest part for me was being away from family,” he said. “I had a picture of them that I set up in the tent every night. There was something kind of neat about walking down and thinking about how every step now was getting closer to home."
The Canadian Scottish Regiment (Princess Mary's) is a Vancouver Island-based infantry unit of the Army Reserve of the Canadian Armed Forces. It is the largest reserve unit in Western Canada and one of four infantry regiments in the province.
