Our group, Dick Irvin, leader, Bill Isherwood, Barry Nash, Carl Smith and I, repeated the route pioneered by the Harvard Mountaineering Club in 1946 with the exception that we were flown in and out of Base Camp on the Tyndall Glacier instead of hiking. The route is a series of giant steps starting at 3000 feet, climbing up and around the north side of 12,000-foot Haydon Peak and continuing up the main bulk of the mountain from the Haydon-St. Elias col to the summit. The climb rises 15,000 feet in seven miles. Most of our food and gear had been dumped by helicopter at 4600 feet just below an ominous black shale ridge. After getting to the dump, during three of the next six days we repeatedly climbed the shale ridge, which disintegrated with each step, and climbed the snow slopes above to stock Camp III at 8000 feet. The other three days we sat out drizzle and downpour. In periodically stormy weather we established a route across a level but moderately crevassed bench beyond Camp III and then up a broad shale and snow slope to another ridgetop at 10,000 feet. Camp IV was set up next to Haydon Peak at the edge of steeper crevassed terrain stretching another mile to the St. Elias-Haydon col. On July 30 Nash and Isherwood made a route from the col to a rock band at 11,000 feet. Aided by their efforts, Smith and I stomped our way to the top of a large snow dome at 13,400 feet. Three days later Camp V was placed on the dome. Two reconnaissances above confirmed the belief that the southeast face would be a speedy route and that we would not need a higher camp. We had five days of food, but we agonized as three days slipped by in the wind. Finally the fourth day of our sit-in was clear, calm and cold. Even with five people alternating, it was a gruesome job getting through powder and crust to 16,000 feet. Bill Isherwood developed stomach cramps and had to turn back. We four continued up broken rock and deep snow on the ridge until it steepened. We traversed onto the southeast face, gradually approaching huge, ice-encrusted cornices which line the summit ridge. We moved diagonally right to an apparent breach in the cornices. After some steep icy step cutting, Carl Smith disappeared up a gully and onto the summit ridge. We were soon revelling in the perfect weather and the view on the summit.

—Richard M. Nolting, Unaffiliated