Thayer’s plan was to snowshoe cross-country twenty miles to the Ruth Glacier and then continue another twenty miles up the Ruth to the Great Basin (now known as the Don Sheldon Amphitheater), where Ginny Wood, Morton’s wife, would airdrop 400 pounds of supplies.(A remarkable woman, Ginny Wood had served with the WASP air corps in World War II; she arrived in Alaska in January 1947 after she and another woman ferried a pair of war-surplus planes to the territory in a twenty-seven-day midwinter journey.)
The expedition immediately fell behind schedule as the climbers slogged through heavy spring snow, battled through willow and devil’s club, and backtracked from wrong turns. Their cotton, wool, and nylon clothes were saturated with snow and sweat. After a week of struggle, they arrived at the Great Basin on April 24 and Ginny Wood dropped two loads of supplies onto the glacier. The foursome would not see another person for the next month.
The team began ferrying loads ten miles up the West Fork of the Ruth to their basecamp, passing beneath the towering north face of Mount Huntington. From there, they climbed a forty-five-degree slope to a pass above the Kahiltna Glacier, then across a narrow ridge and around Peak 13,050. By May 2, after two and a half weeks of effort, they finally reached the base of Denali’s South Buttress.