Anchorage Daily News

They call it "the coldest mountain," and a 29-year-old Spanish woman resting at Alaska Regional Hospital on Thursday had the frost-damaged toes to prove it.

Nadia Cuadrado, who reached the 20,320-foot summit of Mount McKinley with three other Spanish climbers on Tuesday, woke Wednesday with purple feet.

At first there was no pain, Cuadrado said, speaking through an interpreter in her hospital room. But as she hobbled around the team's camp at 17,000 feet the morning after the summit, her partners decided to contact the National Park Service for assistance.

Rangers and volunteers helped Cuadrado descend to a lower camp at 14,000 feet, then a Park Service helicopter airlifted her to an ambulance, which transported her to the hospital -- the fourth evacuee in a climbing season that's still young.

HOW COLD? 'TOO COLD'

Last Friday, two other McKinley climbers -- a 40-year-old Frenchman with frostbitten toes and a Korean climber suffering pulmonary edema -- were airlifted off the mountain as well. Another climber suffered chest pain.

Since the climbing season began in late April, about 33 climbers have summited -- a success rate of just 29 percent so far, according to Park Service spokeswoman Maureen McLaughlin at the Talkeetna Ranger Station. Typically in a season, about half the 1,000-plus climbers who attempt McKinley reach the summit.

The weather high up the mountain for the past few weeks has been typically cold, with temperatures often dipping under 25 below at elevations higher than 17,000 feet, McLaughlin said.

Cuadrado, who works as a gardener in Madrid, had previously climbed taller peaks in the Himalayas -- but never anything as cold as "Denali," she said.

"Too cold!," Cuadrado said, gritting her teeth in a smile.

Dr. James O'Malley, the general surgeon and frostbite specialist who treated the climber, said the "dipped in grape juice" appearance of the tissue at the tips of her toes is an ominous sign.

"It's clearly dead," he said.

For the next month or two, he said, some of Cuadrado's toes will proceed to mummify. Eventually they'll have to be amputated.

Find George Bryson online at adn.com/contact/gbryson or call 257-4318.

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