Farmington Police Sgt. Keith McPheeters, Farmington Police Officer Rocky Fails and Farmington Firefighter Kent O'Donnell plan the climb in June.

World-class alpine mountaineers Dougal Haston and Doug Scott in 1976 reached the summit of remote Denali, The High One, the native name for 20,320-foot Mount McKinley. In a story published in the American Alpine Journal, Haston said of  their experience, "We were drawing heavily on all our Himalayan experience just to survive and it was a respectful pair that finally stood on the summit ridge." "Everything was cold, even our souls," he said. 

This year among the 1,200 or so climbers that will lay siege to the mountain will be two Farmington police officers, a Farmington firefighter and three Dutch men: two police officers and a steel worker. Just under half the expeditions make it to the summit. 

Climbing Denali has been the lifelong dream of Farmington Police Sgt. Keith McPheeters. Over the past two years, his growing determination to bring the dream to fruition resulted in the final group of six men assembled for the journey. 
 
McPheeters hopes to launch an expedition to one of the world's notable mountains every year in honor of a police officer killed in the line of duty. 

He is a member of the Farmington Police SWAT team that assisted in the massive search for the suspected killers of Cortez, Colo. Police Officer Dale Claxton, shot May 29. His alleged killers were three camouflage-clad men with reported anti-government leanings who reportedly killed Claxton following a routine traffic stop. 

Hunkered down with other SWAT team members in the canyons near Hovenweep National Monument following cold footprints that led nowhere, McPheeters decided the McKinley climb would be for Claxton, he said. 

The team boasts impressive athletic credentials and are experienced backpackers, but most are novices at expedition climbing. "McKinley is clearly a step up," McPheeters said. 

Climbers must be roped together at all times, wear crampons - spiked boots for grabbing the ice under foot - and carry ice axes, McPheeters said. 

Each man will be responsible for 200 pounds of gear, some of it in back packs, some dragged by sled, and the mountain is ascended and descended two times; as a higher camp is established the supplies from the lower camp must be retrieved, McPheeters said. 

American members are Farmington Police Officer and fellow SWAT team member Rocky Fails, and Farmington Firefighter Kent O'Connell. O'Connell is a former Marine and a trained Emergency Medical Technician. Dutch members are Henk Bezema, a former Dutch Marine and commander with the Dutch National Police, Frank Stevelmans, a patrolman with the Dutch National Police and his climbing partner, Paul Kern, a steel worker. 

Bezema, 42, is the lead climber of the expedition. He is a commander with the Organized Crime Squad for the county of Utrecht and has led the Dutch Mountaineer Club since 1980 on extensive climbing in the Alps. 

All three Dutch participants have trained for Denali on glacier covered Mount Blanc, highest of the Alps at 15,771 feet. 

The American team routinely charges up Colorado's 14,000 foot peaks and camps in the winter at high altitude to prepare. Fails, McPheeters and a Dutch member of the team reached the summit of Washington's 14,410 foot Mount Rainier last summer. "Rainier is glaciated so that totally changes things. You have to wear crampons, use ice axes, stay roped to one another; the danger factor goes way up, the temperature way down," Fails said. 

"Rainier is one of the tried and true training grounds for McKinley," McPheeters said. 

The hazards of high altitude climbing are numerous: Crevasses, fissures in the glacier as deep as 500 feet caused by stress, are often hidden under snow or only passable by snow bridges the width of one foot. Glaciers create fields of crevasses one after another that must be negotiated. Ice and snow avalanches, frostbite, storms, and low barometric pressure make breathing more difficult. 

As a result, McPheeters, the expedition team leader, has planned 25 days for the climb, taking the least technically challenging West Buttress route, the route taken by most who climb Denali. The 200 pounds of equipment per man represents an American philosophy to be prepared for all contingencies, he said. 

"What I bring to the team is planning and logistics,"McPheeters said. "The American style of climbing is paranoia - we treat everything like it is the end of the world," he said. 

When a roped member of the team falls, Americans fall to the ground and drive their ice picks into the glacier. Europeans rely more on the ropes, tying knots meant to get caught in the ice and snow, McPheeters and Fails said. 

The Europeans plan for economy, taking only necessary things; the Americans plan for the worst-case scenario, taking everything, Bezema said. 

The differences are a source of humor among team members. 

"It can go together. Hopefully, I don't have to carry an American backpack," Bezema said. 

"What's kind of interesting about this is we are from different cultures and nations but their ideas and ours in how to assault the mountain are the same. We believe in a very disciplined approach ­ Plan your hike and hike your plan," O'Connell said. 

Denali, the mightiest of the monumental glacier covered peaks of the Alaskan Mountain Range, is nestled in Denali National Park and Preserve. At 6 million acres, it is the size of Vermont, park literature states, and the team will access the base of the West Buttress route by plane. 

Park rangers expect climbers to be prepared, they say. Registration is required and a $150 fee is charged to anyone climbing the mountain. Although Denali's peak is 8,000 and 9,000 feet below its Himalayan sisters K2 and Mount Everest, its temperatures, whiteout storms, and latitude make 
it uniquely challenging, mountaineers say. It is situated just a hair's breath south of the Arctic Circle. The air is thinner at 20,000 feet on Denali than the same altitude on Everest. 

Storms year round off both the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea collide with the mountain to create treacherous weather. Severe snow storms and winds of up to 100 miles per hour are common on Denali and temperatures may range from 90 degrees to minus 50, park literature states. "The Himalaya is tropical in comparison," Doctor Peter Hackett said in Jonathan Waterman's "Surviving Denali." 

About 20,000 climbers have attempted to reach Denali's summit since the first successful expedition in 1913. Every year about 100 climbers succumb to altitude sickness or frostbite, Bradford Washburn writes in "Denali's West Buttress." Thirty-four people have died attempting the West Buttress Route, Washburn says. 

With a June 1 start date rushing toward them, excitement is mounting. 

"It is like a fever,'' Bezema writes. ``As I am typing this letter, in this room there are things like down jackets, backpack and skis. From now on I am counting the weeks.'' 

Asked what his mountaineering experience is, Bezema said, "Too many mountains in the Alps." He calls Denali the last frontier and is attracted to its extreme cold, lack of services, "no Sherpas," the 4,000 meter ascent from base to summit and the park's strict rules for keeping the mountain clean. 

"You are forced to grow, you are absolutely forced to grow," McPheeters said of the challenge. The promise of mountains like Denali is that they pierce the climbers' dreams of and preparations for the climb when the climber pits his survival against the mountain, he confirmed. 

For a cop it is no more dangerous than going to work, he said. An officer punches his time card in the morning never knowing whether he will go home, he said, pointing to the example of Claxton. Why the mountain then? 

"To me, it is the absolute purist sense of accomplishment I know. When you get there, you know you've made it. There aren't words for the euphoria you feel when you get to one of these peaks," McPheeters said.