In 1963, seven members of the Harvard Mountaineering Club became the first—and, so far, only—climbers to ascend the notorious Wickersham Wall, a near-vertical ice cliff on Alaska’s Denali mountain, whose constant rockfalls, frequent avalanches, and hidden crevasses make it one of the most dangerous mountain faces in the world. Among those climbers was John Graham ’64, who went on to a career as an author, adventurer, and diplomat in war-torn places—and who now, at 83, dispenses life lessons on TikTok under the username “Badass Granddad.”
Cleaning out his office a few years ago, Graham stumbled upon a diary he kept during that 1963 climb, as well as a cache of his black-and-white photos from the trip. Last fall, he published them as Denali Diary, available free online at johngraham.org/denali-diary. The writing is spirited, full of his younger self’s “boyish enthusiasm,” as Graham puts it. The photographs—of the laborious ascent, the beautiful and formidable terrain, and the climbers’ down time at camp—are often stunning.
The image above is one of Graham’s favorites, showing (from left) David Roberts ’65, Don Jensen ’65, and Peter Carman ’64 breaking for camp at 12,600 feet, so high up that “you can hardly tell the snow from the clouds,” Graham says. At that moment, the climbers were nine days and one calamitous snowstorm from the summit. “Good news,” that day’s diary entry reads. “The top of the Wall is almost in sight.”
