Summer Proves a Peak Experience for Stateside Receptionist

Every summer, Annie Duquette leaves the comforts of suburbia and a 9-to-5 job on the East Coast for the rigors of life on a glacier.

For the next three months she will live in a tent to serve as traffic cop, den mother, messenger and nurse for the 1,200 climbers hoping to reach the 20,320-foot summit of Mount McKinley, North America’s highest peak.

Duquette, 46, is base-camp manager on the Kahiltna glacier. From her perch at 7,000 feet, she is the link between the climbers and the air-taxi operators who ferry them to and from the mountain.

The job is not for everyone, says Duquette, who is spending her sixth season managing the Kahiltna camp. Even in summer, the base camp can see heavy snow, fierce winds and bitter cold. The mountain routinely claims the lives of climbers.

But Duquette says the simplicity of the environment--ice, rock, snow and the towering peaks that surround her tent--draw her back.

“Words can’t describe it. I think it has a really strong force,” she said.

Her routine during the McKinley climbing season is in sharp contrast with her life the rest of the year. Duquette lives in West Lebanon, Maine, and works as a receptionist for two dentists in nearby Somersworth, N.H.

“It takes me a little while to ease my way into glacial living,” said Duquette. “I would normally feel naked without mascara.”

She swaps mascara and business suits for heavy boots, layers of fleece clothing and strong sun block. She lives on a steady diet of macaroni and cheese. Moist towelettes take the place of hot showers.

“We can’t get her to come out and take a break. We fly her in fresh food and she takes it and gives it to the climbers,” said Paul Roderick of Talkeetna Air Taxi.

Duquette jokes that she doesn’t leave her post because there are too many mosquitoes in the flatlands down below. But the real reason runs deeper.

“If I can’t get back up because of the weather, I feel responsible,” she said. “I feel I owe it to the climbers. I don’t take my job lightly.”

It didn’t start out quite that way. Duquette first took the job on a whim after a McKinley flight sightseeing trip.

The Talkeetna-based air taxi operators who set up the runway and camp each year had difficulty finding anyone who would stay for more than a few days. Duquette, enthralled with the mountain after her first visit, eagerly volunteered.

After settling in on the glacier, reality hit. She was in the middle of nowhere and yet the center of the universe for those on the mountain who depended on her to maintain the runway and keep track of the climbers--a 24-hour-a-day job.

“I thought, what am I doing?” she says of that first season. But unlike so many of her predecessors, Duquette was determined to stick it out and to come back the following year.

She sought donations of equipment to make the camp more hospitable for ill or injured climbers. Exploration Products of Spokane, Wash., provided a sturdy, insulated tent.

Duquette decided she needed to broaden her skills to handle the emergencies that arise during the climbing season. She went back to school and is now an emergency medical technician.

On a typical day, Duquette will have 125 people at base camp, preparing to ascend the mountain or anxiously waiting for the next flight out. She delivers weather information to the climbers each evening on a citizens band radio. The climbers check in to let her know their elevation and location and she passes along messages and news.

“The foreign climbers like to get information on soccer tournaments,” said Duquette. “It’s a link with the outside world that’s reassuring, I guess. Especially when someone’s weathered in at 17,000 feet. It’s the small things that people appreciate. Up here, you give someone a cup of coffee, something to drink, and they’re so grateful.”

Best of all are the calls from climbers who have reached the summit.

“You can feel their joy,” she said.

During her first couple of seasons as base-camp manager, Duquette toyed with the idea of climbing the mountain. But the deaths of 13 climbers in separate accidents during the 1992 season abruptly put an end to her dreaming.

“I have no desire to go up there. I would just as soon stay on level ground,” she said. “That mountain is just too dangerous.”

Back at the dentists’ office in New Hampshire, a temporary receptionist fills in. When Duquette returns in late summer, she will have a glacier tan--brown hands and face with white rings around her eyes from her sunglasses.

Dr. Leslie Bouvier, one of the two dentists for whom Duquette works, visited the base camp last year, “just to make sure she wasn’t spending the summer in Bermuda.”

“It’s almost like she lives two separate lives,” Bouvier said.

It’s an arrangement that suits Duquette, who says only age or infirmity would keep her from the mountain.

“I don’t think they could get a wheelchair up here,” she said, laughing.