The Daily - The Sunday Read: ‘Ghosts on the Glacier’

Episode Date: January 7, 2024

Fifty years ago, eight Americans set off for South America to climb Aconcagua, one of the world’s mightiest mountains. Things quickly went wrong. Two climbers died. Their bodies were left behind.Here is what was certain: A woman from Denver, maybe the most accomplished climber in the group, had last been seen alive on the glacier. A man from Texas, part of the recent Apollo missions to the moon, lay frozen nearby.There were contradictory statements from survivors and a hasty departure. There was a judge who demanded an investigation into possible foul play. There were three years of summit-scratching searches to find and retrieve the bodies.Now, decades later, a camera belonging to one of the deceased climbers has emerged from a receding glacier near the summit and one of mountaineering’s most enduring mysteries has been given air and light.This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

Hi, my name is John Branch, and I've been a reporter at the New York Times since 2005. I grew up in Colorado, skiing and hiking in the mountains. But the people I write about are often doing things that I would never or could never do myself. I think I live vicariously through them, and I find that readers sometimes do too. This story that you're about to hear began for me in 2020, right before COVID. I got a note from somebody I didn't know, a journalist and mountain guide in Argentina

named Pablo Betancourt. He said that he had a story that might interest me. So we started talking, and he told me that some porters had found an old camera on a massive melting glacier atop Aconcagua.

It's a mountain in the Andes, the tallest in the world outside of Asia. And the camera had undeveloped film in it. Then Pablo told me something else. He said that the camera had a label on it, and a name, Janet Johnson. In 1973, eight Americans set out to summit Aconcagua.

It was an interesting expedition for a couple of reasons. One, because it happened to include a NASA engineer, a man in the control room for the Apollo missions. But also, there was a woman in the crew, which was rare for the time. That woman was Janet Johnson. She was probably the most experienced climber of all of them. Most of the Americans were weekend climbers.

Aconcagua would be the biggest, toughest mountain any of them had climbed. Back then, not a lot of people had climbed Aconcagua. It was hard to get to. There were no real established base camps like there is today, with Wi-Fi and hot showers. So these eight Americans started up toward the summit. Things quickly went awry. Some in the party began to fall victim to the life-threatening effects of high altitude. And soon, half of the expedition had returned to base camp.

But four Americans remained, including Janet Johnson. They continued climbing toward the summit. What happened next has been the subject of debate ever since. But this we know. Four people went up.

Two people came down. Janet and the NASA engineer did not return. The two survivors returned to base camp and told the others what had happened. News ricocheted around the world and back to the families in the United States. Then the Americans went home. And in their wake, they left a lot of unanswered questions behind. and in their wake, they left a lot of unanswered questions behind.

In the States, the narrative seemed simple. This was a tragic mountain accident in which two people died. But in Argentina, the story of the eight Americans who attempted to summit Aconcagua never really faded away. Rather, the mystery grew. The American expedition became a ghost story. In the void of any official explanation, people devised their own theories about what happened. Was it a love triangle gone bad? Maybe the CIA was involved. And wasn't there a bag of money that was never found? But beyond these outlandish conspiracies,

there were serious questions being asked by very reasonable people who believed something strange did happen. That, maybe, foul play had occurred. That's where things stood for decades, basically until I got that message from Pablo Betancourt.

We would look at the camera and try to develop the film inside. We had no idea if it was salvageable after all this time. And even if we could develop the images, would we get any answers to all the questions surrounding the deadly expedition 50 years ago? So I flew to Argentina twice and interviewed anyone who is still alive who might know something, hoping that they might give me clues. Back in the United States, we tracked down the families of the American climbers

who are now all dead to see what they knew. It was all part of a mission that led to this story. Who was Janet Johnson? And what really happened to her? So here's my article and this week's Sunday read from the New York Times, Ghosts on the Glacier. Our audio is produced by Jack Disodoro. The interviews you'll hear were produced by Emily Rine and Noah Throop.

And the original music was written and performed by Aaron Esposito. High on Aconcagua, the Western Hemisphere's highest mountain, the shrinking Polish glacier spits out what it once devoured. In this case, a 50-year-old Nikomat 35mm camera. Two porters preparing for an upcoming expedition had been securing ropes in the thin and arid air of a clear February day. It was midsummer in South America. The camera glistened in the sun, daring to be noticed. The lens was shattered.

A dial on top showed that 24 photographs had been taken. The bottom half of the camera was saddled into a worn leather holster with a thick strap. On the holster, in blue embossing tape, was an American name and a Colorado address. In the snow and ice seasonal cycles of the mountains, abandoned and lost equipment is discovered each summer. Tattered tents, dropped ice axes, lost mittens. Occasionally, a body. This was not just another camera, though the porters did not know that yet.

One of them carried it down to camp. There, a veteran guide named Ulysses Corvillon was cooking lunch. Corvillon glanced up. He casually asked about the name on the bottom of the camera. Janet Johnson, came the reply. Corvalon gasped and swore. Janet Johnson, he shouted. Excitement boiled instantly.

Do you know about Janet Johnson, the schoolteacher? About John Cooper, the NASA engineer? About the deadly 1973 American expedition? Have you heard the legend? It had been handed down for decades, veering toward myth, whispered like a ghost story. Here's what was certain. A woman from Denver, maybe the most accomplished climber in the group, whispered like a ghost story. Here's what was certain.

A woman from Denver, maybe the most accomplished climber in the group, had last been seen alive on the glacier. A man from Texas, part of the recent Apollo missions to the moon, lay frozen nearby. There were contradictory statements from survivors and a hasty departure. There was a judge who demanded an investigation

into possible foul play. There were three years of summit-scratching searches to find and retrieve the bodies. Their discovery stirred more intrigue, leaving more questions than answers. That's the imbalance of all the best mysteries, facts that don't quite add up, gaps that imaginations rush to fill.

That is how Janet Johnson and John Cooper became part of the folklore of Aconcagua. And now, nearly five decades later, an old camera had emerged from the receding glacier. It was wound, prepared to take the next picture. More clues emerged from the ice. Here was that left arm, still wearing a delicate silver Rado watch

with a broken blue face. There was a tattered pack and scattered belongings, down mittens, a red jacket, a single crampon, a canister of used Kodak film. Like that, by the whims of climate change and chance, a long-lost legend was given air and light. Aconcagua is the broad-shouldered behemoth of the Andes, shaped more like a fist than a finger. It is brown and rocky, scrubby and dusty, dry and wind-whipped. With few trees or wildflowers, it can feel like a vertical desert. The first

person known to reach the 22,838-foot summit was Matthias Zerbergen of Switzerland in 1897. In 1934, a Polish expedition successfully tackled a perilous route on the northeastern side of Aconcagua, up a massive glacier that stretches nearly 2,000 vertical feet towards the summit. The ice sheet was named for that group, Glaciar de los Palacos, the Polish Glacier. These days, Aconcagua is part of a vast state park with helpful rangers and a helicopter rescue service. Two base camps provide hot meals, showers, and internet. Some consider Aconcagua among the easiest to climb of the Seven Summits, the prestigious name given the highest mountains on each continent.

But Aconcagua is not easy. Trouble lurks in the thin air. Through 2022, there were 153 known deaths on the mountain. In 1973, Johnson and Cooper were numbers 26 and 27. Back then, Aconcagua had only the most rudimentary of services. Climbers had no GPS trackers, no way to communicate between base camp and the summit. The Americans carried binoculars and a flare gun. The mountain was virtually deserted. If trouble came, there was nobody to help but the other members of the expedition. Most of them were part of the Mazamas Climbing Club, founded in Oregon in 1894. Their leader was a Portland lawyer named Carmine Defoe, known as Carmy.

Their leader was a Portland lawyer named Carmine Defoe, known as Carmi. Defoe, 52, pushed for the Aconcagua trip, noting that a Mazamas member had climbed it in the 1940s. His group, Defoe announced, would attempt to be the fifth a couple of places where we'll want hand lines, not any more difficult than the normal route of Mount McKinley, Defoe wrote in a 1972 memo. The guide would be Miguel Alfonso, a 38-year-old Argentine who had been to the summit five times, once up the Polish route. Defoe asked for a $50 deposit from anyone interested, along with a list of successful assents and references. In June 1972, Defoe announced the members of the party,

all-American men, whom he briefly described. Jim Petrosky, a psychiatrist from Portland, Oregon, would be the deputy leader, he said. Bill Eubank, a physician from Kansas City, Missouri, was highly recommended by Petrosky and would be the deputy leader, he said. Bill Eubank, a physician from Kansas City, Missouri, was highly recommended by Petrosky and would be the expedition doctor. Then came Arnold McMillan, a dairy farmer from Otis, Oregon, and Bill Zeller, a police officer in Salem, Oregon. Bill and I shared a blizzard in the Canadian Rockies in 69, a solid citizen, Defoe wrote.

John Shelton, 25, was a Brigham Young geology student fluent in Spanish from a two-year Mormon mission. Been through Latin American customs about 25 times, which must take more energy than climbing Aconcagua, Defoe wrote. And John Cooper, a NASA engineer from Houston, was, quote, highly recommended. They were weekend climbers, mostly. None had been above 20,000 feet. Defoe organized hikes in the Northwest designed as training and get-to-know-you exercises. I have some trepidation about the party because of a fear that we might have someone who has unknown problems or who is some kind of a fink, Defoe wrote in a memo to the group. It turned out, however, that I either know everyone in the group

or they are people I have been able to find out about. This leaves me with no reservation or qualification about the party. In November, Defoe sent reminders about packing lists, passports, vaccinations. Everyone is probably already rounding in the top physical condition, he added. Don't take any chances on this. Work hard at it, especially with lots of jogging. He also announced the final member of the eight-person American crew,

a woman from Denver named Janet Johnson. She was born on November 30th, 1936, and soon was adopted by Victor and May Johnson, who lived in a stone and timber tutor on the south side of Minneapolis. He helped run his family's paper supply company. She was a bookkeeper. The Johnsons believed in manners, rules, and God. Janet, with a tidy bedroom upstairs, was a quiet girl and a voracious reader. She needed glasses early. She played an organ at St. John's Lutheran Church. When she was 10, she wanted a baby sister, so the Johnsons adopted a five-year-old girl named Judy.

The new sisters met at the neighborhood park. Janet took Judy home and gave her a doll named Lois. Janet never married or had children. Judy Abrahamson, now an 83-year-old widow in Oregon City, Oregon, is the only close relative alive. I'm Judy Abrahamson, and I'm her sister. Janet was very tall, very straight-shouldered, blonde, dressed nice, very studious. Straight A's. She wouldn't settle for nothing less. And just like she got her master's in music, she got her master's in teaching. And I'm sure if she could have gotten another one, she would have. If they had her for mountain climbing, she would have had it.

And then, of course, when they found out she was gay, that's a whole different story. It was when her sister was away at college that Abrahamson discovered notes hidden in a jewelry box. Love notes between her sister and another young woman. Being a snoopy little sister that I was, I read them, and I happened to mention something to my mother. But my mother thought, she's sick. She's got to go in the hospital. So because she was gay, my mother thought she could get healed and sent her to the hospital over in St. Paul. And it didn't heal her. But that was a big rift between Janet and my mother.

It chased Janet away from home. She settled in Denver, renting part of a two-story home on York Street, near the Botanic Gardens where she volunteered. She got her teaching certificate, then a master's degree, eventually a Ph.D. in education at the University of Colorado. She taught in elementary schools and then became a school librarian, figuring it would be easier to keep her nights and weekends free for the mountains. Johnson joined the Colorado Mountain Club. By 30, she became the 82nd known person

and among the first 20 women to reach the summit of each of Colorado's 14ers, the more than 50 peaks higher than 14,000 feet in elevation. Her name was regularly in the club's magazine, Trail and Timberline, detailing various excursions. Her photos graced the magazine's cover. The companionship on the outing was tremendous, that is, except for the wood ticks, which somehow managed to find their way into my abode on top of the hill, she wrote in a 1961 report about a weekend trip in the Rockies.

Strangely enough, few other people even found one tick. Why they picked on me, I don't know. They say everyone was put here for a purpose, so maybe I was meant to sustain the ticks. More and more, she headed overseas. She was one of 38 members of a 1963 club expedition in Peru On the way home, she climbed Iztaccíhuatl, which rises more than 17,000 feet near Mexico City It is unclear how many of the world's summits she reached She climbed Kilimanjaro and hoped to climb Denali after returning from Aconcagua Most summers, she tied a kayak atop her Nash Rambler and headed to the Northwest. She would stay with her sister, hike Mount Hood, and paddle in Puget Sound. Abrahamson's children knew her as Aunt Janet, the free spirit. In 1971, the graduation

announcements for her PhD, sent out by her mother, included a formal portrait of Johnson, for her PhD sent out by her mother included a formal portrait of Johnson smiling with her cat-eye glasses on. She wanted to reach the highest levels of education. She wanted to reach the summit of mountains. I think Janet was trying to prove to herself and her mother that she could do anything she wanted to

even as a gay person. She was free when she was up there and felt at peace with herself. She loved the mountain. That was her life. If Johnson had a significant other, Abrahamson never knew of her. Boxes of slides that she left behind show mostly landscapes, not people. She took the 1972-73 school year off. That fall, after a hiking trip in Europe, she joined the upcoming Mazamas expedition to Aconcagua.

Climbed all 67 of the 14,000-foot peaks in the United States, except Alaska, Kilimanjaro, Orizaba, Popocatépetl, Iztaccíhuatl, Fuge, Mount Blanc, Matterhorn, Iger, Peru, etc., etc., Defoe wrote of Johnson, recommended by two of my climbing friends from Denver. She was happy to be going on this one because she had been selected. She had told me that she got new climbing clothes, and she was all set to go. And I probably will never see you again. And I said, well, I hope I'll see you again. And she said, don't plan on it.

This is my last trip. And it was. She was not coming home. And it was. She was not coming home. She packed her belongings into an aluminum-framed backpack. Boots, flannel shirts, a red down jacket, thick mittens, glacier glasses, a sleeping bag. She used a marker to write her name or initials on most of them. She wore a dainty Silverado watch and a ring with a brown stone that she got on a trip to New Mexico. And she brought the Nikomat, the consumer version of Nikon's professional cameras of the era.

She probably bought the camera during her trip to Japan a couple of years earlier. She used a label maker to punch her name and address onto blue embossing tape and stuck it on the bottom of the leather camera case, just in case she lost it. She carried the camera with her to Aconcagua, taking photographs along the way, almost to the top. American newspapers sent them off, and Argentine newspapers greeted them at the Nativara Hotel in Mendoza's city center. Rafael Moran, a reporter for Los Andes, a daily newspaper in Mendoza, interviewed the mountaineers near the pool. He did not cover every Aconcagua expedition,

but this one was especially intriguing. Americans, the Polish glacier, a woman, a NASA scientist. Moran had a dark inkling about this group. The Americans seemed disconnected from one another and unprepared for the serious task of climbing Aconcagua. Moran whispered to the photographer, Take each of their photos today.

I don't think they're all coming back. The next day's newspaper previewed their planned ascent. It showed them huddled around a photo of Aconcagua. The caption noted the NASA engineer at the center. Just a month before, in December 1972, John Cooper was at mission control in Houston for the 17th and final Apollo mission, wearing a black mustache and a headset, speaking

to Eugene Cernan and other astronauts on the moon. Cooper was a surface operations engineer, helping guide the lunar module. Cooper also wore his new mountain climbing boots to work, to break them in for what he anticipated would be a difficult expedition to Aconcagua. what he anticipated would be a difficult expedition to Aconcagua. Cooper grew up in El Dorado, Kansas, with a love of the outdoors. He went to Oklahoma University to get a degree in geological engineering, but the flat oil fields where his father worked were not for him. He spent college summers working for the Forest Service and then as a smokejumper in the American West.

Later in the U.S. Coast Guard, he became a pilot and won awards for rescues off the coast of Florida and in the Caribbean. He learned a deep-sea dive, and he climbed. Cooper summited Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya, the tallest mountains in Africa, and Popocatépetl, the volcanic behemoth in Mexico. and Popocatépetl, the volcanic behemoth in Mexico. In 1966, Cooper joined NASA just as the Apollo program was set to get underway.

He had a bit of swashbuckler in him, more like an astronaut than a desk engineer. He sometimes wore a beard. He smoked a pipe. Around NASA's Houston campus, Cooper drove an old military Jeep, sometimes taking his nieces for a ride. My mother would say, John, you put the doors back on and put up that windshield before you take my girls with you, Deb Koons, Cooper's niece said.

It was at NASA that Cooper fell in love with the secretary, a young divorced woman named Sandy Myers. They were married in 1968. In 1969, they had a baby boy that they named Randy. That was the year of Apollo 11. Cooper was in the surface operations group that guided Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin as they became the first humans to walk on the moon. Three years later, on December 19, 1972, Apollo 17's three-man crew splashed down safely in the South Pacific. On January 12,

1973, Cooper's flight from Houston landed in Miami, where he met Janet Johnson. They flew together to Argentina. Cooper kept a diary of his expedition. Like other men in the group who wrote in their own diaries about Johnson, nothing feminine about her, one said. Cooper was unsure what to make of the only woman. Janet sure is weird, he wrote from the comfort of Hotel Nutabara. She went swimming in her bra, blouse, and panties today, and the pool was full of people. On the mountain, the Americans struggled from the start.

On January 20, 1973, aided by mules and porters, the group hiked 25 miles to Casa de Piedra, a stone house at the confluence of the Vacas and Relentios rivers.

In his diary, Cooper described, quote, the stark beauty of a landscape baked hard as concrete. He mentioned that Eubank, the expedition doctor, was already sick. The next day, the group reached base camp, a treeless, rubbled plot in a wide valley at about 13,500 feet.

These days, during climbing season, it is a buzzing village. In 1973, the American expedition members were the only ones there. Alfonso had hired Roberto Bustos, a 25-year-old climber and student, to manage the base camp. Now a retired geography professor,

Bustos recalled his early impression of the group. A lot of high-quality gear, but an unsettling dynamic. There was no group attitude, Bustos said. I was thinking, oh, I am on my own. Everyone has to take care of himself. In my opinion, they weren't ready for such a strange and big mountain as Aconcagua. Alfonso, despite his experience on Alconcagua, was relegated to merely a guide, someone to point the way. Defoe was in charge. Petroski, his friend from Portland, was the deputy leader, followed by Eubank, the doctor, and Shelton, the interpreter for Alfonso. Then came Zeller, McMillan, Cooper, and Johnson, without defined roles.

Back then, like today, getting to the summit usually required a week or more of shuttling up and down the mountain, moving gear and adjusting to the altitude. The group carried loads to Camp 1, at 15,500 feet, higher than anywhere in the continental United States. They returned at day's end to base camp. The high-altitude ups and downs were made more difficult by Aconcagua's notorious obstacle course of penitentes, icy pillars as tall as six feet, caused by solar radiation. They're sturdy enough that even the small ones can't be knocked over. The group called them white monsters.

The trek to Camp 2, at nearly 18,000 feet, took seven hours. Brother, was it bad, Cooper wrote in his diary. Between the ice and scree in altitude, I was done in. He later wrote about others in the group. Bill Zeller is the real man behind the work, he said of the Oregon State Police officer. He lugged 80 pounds up to Camp 1. Then after getting back, he made the water haul, and I'm here in the sack.

I guess I'll do our share of work, but some more than others. Johnson was little help, Cooper wrote. She is a real loner and appears to be for only one thing, to get herself to the summit, at the expense of everyone or on everyone's back. Soon the expedition fractured from the effects of altitude. Three Americans, including Defoe, the leader, stayed at Camp 1. Five others, including Johnson and Cooper, moved up to Camp 2 with Alfonso. Cooper felt miserable. For two cents, I'll go back, Cooper wrote.

But they plotted upward to establish Camp 3 behind an outcropping of boulders near the base of the Polish glacier at 19,400 feet. A storm swept through, holding the group in place

for a rest day. Behind it were clear skies, a perfect window for a climb to the summit. The group was expecting it to take at least all day, Zeller later wrote in his account of events But the lower part of the glacier seemed to present no problem as it seemed to be in good condition No crevasses, not too steep, good snow for crampons, etc But after a late breakfast, Petrosky lost coordination and struggled to put on his crampons, etc. But after a late breakfast, Petrosky lost coordination and struggled to put on his crampons. Others diagnosed it as a sign of high-altitude cerebral edema, a potentially

deadly swelling of the brain. Alfonso escorted Petrosky back to base camp. Now the expedition was cleaved in half. Gone were the expedition leader, the deputy, the doctor, the interpreter, and the local guide. Remaining were Cooper, Johnson, Zeller, and McMillan. None had been this high anywhere. They barely knew one another. When they looked up, they saw the Polish glacier stretching to the sky. It was sunny. Their jackets were unzipped. They wore crampons, carried ice axes, and carried light packs, leaving most of their possessions behind.

But movement up the glacier was slow. By nightfall, the four Americans gave up on reaching the summit that day. They were at roughly 21,000 feet. They dug a small snow cave on the glacier with their ice axes. They had no sleeping bags, so the climbers lay on reflective space blankets. During the night, cramped and uncomfortable, Johnson and Zeller moved outside. They sat, shivering. Wind blew a fine powder off the summit, filling the opening of the cave with snow and burying Cooper's legs.

Johnson unburied him about an hour before sunrise. But Cooper was finished. Cold and tired, he announced that he was turning back, Zeller and McMillan later said. It was about two hours down the glacier back to Camp 3, McMillan figured. He and Zeller expressed a little concern about letting Cooper go down alone. He appeared to be very capable, alert, Zeller later told his hometown paper. He had no trouble with his reasoning. There was no concern about his climbing ability, and we were not too far above high camp. John Cooper never made it. He died on the glacier. Not long after, so did Janet Johnson. Exactly what happened to them is speculation, spun around the globe for 50 years. Two men from Oregon, Zeller, a police officer, and McMillan, a dairy farmer,

were the last to see Cooper and Johnson alive. They gave detailed versions of events. Slight contradictions and the confounding effect of high-altitude hallucinations raised questions for Argentine authorities and teased the public's imagination. After Cooper headed downhill alone, Zeller, McMillan, and Johnson continued up.

They moved slowly. They took photographs. They reached the top of the Polish glacier, where it meets a ridge that leads to the summit. But darkness descended again, and snow on the ridge was waist-deep. The men took turns breaking the trail, 25 steps at a time. The summit in sight, the men later said, They turned to find that Johnson was not there. "'We looked and looked and called her name "'and got no answer,' McMillan recalled "'in a letter he wrote two weeks later.

"'Finally, I stumbled across her axe "'and figured she couldn't be too far. "'We called some more and finally a faint little voice said, "'My name is Janet Johnson. "'She was about 100 feet off our trail in the snow, "'laying there. "'When we got to her, she said, my name is Janet Johnson. She was about 100 feet off our trail in the snow, laying there. When we got to her, she said, don't make me suffer. Just let me lay here and die. Zeller said that he roped himself to Johnson. McMillan said that Zeller took her by the arm. Zeller said that the three got lost and camped another night together.

McMillan said that he went ahead of the other two and spent the night by himself. Their stories converged again the next morning. Johnson wouldn't stand, and her hands were swollen and black, McMillan wrote. So they, quote, anchored her from three different directions so we could hold her standing up, and they led her past a crevasse. They reached the snow cave where they had last seen Cooper. Some of their equipment was there, including the flare gun. McMillan said he shot it. It was 7 a.m. It made a noise as loud as a rifle, but I guess no one heard it below, McMillan wrote. Johnson's condition seemed better, so the men decided that McMillan should go down alone, following the route that Cooper presumably took 24 hours earlier.

McMillan said he lost his ice axe in a steep section of the glacier and slid 1,000 feet headfirst. It would account for the black eye he had later, he said. Then he saw members of the Argentine army coming to rescue Zeller and Johnson. He heard people calling his name. He saw dead mules, and he saw a dead soldier lying in the snow. Only later, after following a sleep in camp,

did it occur to him. None of that was real. The dead soldier, he realized, was John Cooper. Up on the glacier, Zeller too was having hallucinations. He later recalled visions of construction trucks working near the summit and hearing phantom voices of rescuers who were never there. Janet and I continued coming down till we were through the worst part. Then we took a long spill also, continued coming down till we were through the worst part. Then we took a long spill also, Zeller wrote in an account later that spring. Again, doing no serious damage but breaking both of our dark glasses and cutting our faces some. We ended up three or four city blocks from camp

and could see the tents. He and Johnson came untethered in the fall, Zeller said, so he went back up to check on her. That is when he saw Cooper. I saw John's body about halfway between us and off to the right as we faced uphill, Zeller wrote. I checked him and he was dead and appeared to be frozen. I didn't see any cuts on his exposed skin and no tears in the clothing, so assume that he didn't die as a result of a fall, but exhaustion and hypothermia, etc. Janet seemed to be okay, best as I could tell, so we decided that I would go ahead and set up the tent and she would follow as soon as she got her wind, Zeller said. He arrived at Camp 3 a couple of hours after Macillan. They slept through the night, awoke, and saw no sign of Johnson, they said. The next AM, Bill and I decided to go on down, McMillan wrote.

Bill was so confused, he didn't know which direction to go. He concluded, that's the story, as near as I can recall. Questions followed them downhill, like a dry, cold wind. John Shelton, the college student who served as interpreter on the climb, turned 76 this year. He had been receiving hospice care in a VA hospital bed in Utah

for more than a year. He had a Kringle-like white beard and eyes that sparkled when he laughed. He was the last American from the expedition still alive. My name is John Shelton. I am 76 years old today. I was on the 1973 Mazama expedition to Aconcagua. Unfortunately, it wasn't 100% successful.

Shelton remembered getting sick from the altitude and becoming the first in the group to return to base camp. I could not move my feet. It was as if they were in concrete. So I just decided this must be a sign that I'm not supposed to climb today. So I backed myself up and I went back down to base camp. He kept company with Bustos, bonding over their shared affinity for science. Both were 25, the youngest in the group.

A day later came Eubank and Defoe, more sick than Shelton. After another day came Petroski, with the help of Alfonso, the guide. Shelton described looking through binoculars at the Polish glacier, expecting to see the remaining four climbers and spotting only three. And later, only two. At this time, we could see them through the binoculars, but we could never find the right number of people. That's when we decided that there was definitely something wrong, and we started up the mountain. He remembered rushing uphill with Alfonso to see whether they could help.

They came upon Zeller and McMillan walking toward them. Shelton remembered the weight of the moment. Four people had gone up the mountain, but only two had returned. I looked up and I see two climbers coming down the mountain. And I thought, no, this doesn't look good. As they approached, it was obvious that there weren't the right number of people. And they just said, John and Janet are dead. That's when the shock set in.

It did not occur to Shelton that Cooper and Johnson were anything more than victims of a high-altitude accident. Foul play? Hogwash, he said. Hogwash. When Zeller and McMillan were telling their story, they were telling a pretty straight story. And I took them at their word. Everything that they told was just as I could see, you know, happening. And I believe them, every word of it. Word traveled off the mountain.

Families were called. Wire services and hometown newspapers wrote hasty dispatches, filling gaps with presumptions and wild falsehoods. In Cooper's hometown in Kansas, the paper reported that he, quote, was presumed dead after a fall from the top of the mountain into a deep crevice during a blinding snowstorm. The U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires sent a memo to the U.S. Secretary of State's office trying to stanch misinformation. Deaths did not occur as a result of a fall, as reported by United Press International and Associated Press, or as a result of an avalanche, as reported by Reuters, the embassy said. News outlets in Mendoza were on the story more exhaustively and accurately.

The first news was reported in Los Andes on February 4th. There are fears for the lives of two North American mountain climbers, the headline read. There was a map of the route. Featured prominently were two smiling photos of Johnson and Cooper taken at Hotel Nutabara two weeks earlier. photos of Johnson and Cooper, taken at Hotel Nutabara two weeks earlier. The expedition was starting to fall apart before even the work on the ice began, the next day's story said, just as Americans were getting false accounts of avalanches and blinding snowstorms. At the base of Aconcagua, Alfonso and the American survivors were held for questioning. In Mendoza, a judge was assigned to the case. So was a police investigator.

Officials labeled the case Averagüesión de Homicidio Colposo, Investigation of Manslaughter. Even the American government validated the suspicion. It was standard procedure for the case to remain open, the embassy wrote in its files, to, quote, ensure that foul play may be ruled out. The seeds of speculation were planted.

It needs a deeper investigation, Los Andes wrote. The Americans returned to Hotel Nadebara, hiding from reporters staked out in the lobby. Bustos, the base camp manager, came to say goodbye to his new American friends. They would not see him. Fifty years on, it still saddens him. The U.S. State Department didn't have much luck either. Consul Wilbur W. Hitchcock tried to speak to the Americans during an overnight layover in Buenos Aires. All five looked tired and somewhat dazed, Hitchcock wrote in a report. The sixth survivor, Eubank, had already left the country.

Defoe cautioned Hitchcock about the effects of high altitude on mind and memory. He said that the others had experienced hallucinations and perhaps a, quote, feeling of unreality coming at such heights. Hitchcock returned to the airport the next morning. He spent another 30 minutes trying to question the Americans before they boarded a plane to leave Argentina. They were unable to reconstruct the climb with sufficient accuracy, Hitchcock wrote. Newspapers published a photograph from the tarmac. Shelton and Petroski smiled

as McMillan appeared to say something over his shoulder. They carried packs and ice axes. A reporter asked Zeller to clarify the events on the mountain, papers reported, but Defoe stepped between them and would not let him answer. If any of the smoldering speculation followed the survivors back to the United States, it was quickly snuffed out.

In Portland, the president of Mazamas wrote a secret memo. He called for a special closed meeting of club leadership and the survivors of the expedition to be held two days later. None but the above-named will be allowed to attend, he wrote in All Capitals. The location is to be kept secret. Repeat, secret. The memo said that the idea was to, quote, learn the straight of things from people involved. Presumably, it continued, a resultant will be the dispelling of certain suspicions, uncertainties, rumors, whatever, which may have come to your attention and have been amplified by the confused communications during the expedition and by conflicting or incomplete newspaper reports.

The meeting was held at Defoe's law office. Two days later, on February 15th, Defoe's secretary typed a three-page chronological summary of events. It was the story that survivors told their hometown newspapers. And it was the basis for Defoe's formal expedition report, published in the Mazamas Annual in 1973, which concluded that the deaths were an accident, that Johnson and Cooper were desperate to reach the summit, and that, quote, they probably died of pulmonary edema. They did not. The Johnsons and the Coopers were religious Midwestern families.

They trusted higher powers and government officials. They grieved but did not wallow, at least publicly. It is unclear how much they interacted, if at all. The Coopers held a memorial service in March, but desperately wanted John's body recovered for a proper burial in Kansas. Cooper's father, also named John, wrote letters to Los Andes, to Alfonso, to the State Department, in search of help. He learned Spanish so that he could read the news reports coming from Argentina. Janet Johnson's widowed mother, May Johnson,

held a funeral service in April at the Minneapolis church where her daughter played the organ as a teenager. She did not ask for her body back. She understood that her daughter had said that if anything happened to her on Aconcagua, she wanted to be buried in the little cemetery not far from the trailhead. Like John Cooper's father, Mae Johnson collected newspaper clippings and documents. In places where her daughter's name was spelled Jeanette by Spanish-language papers, and even by some American ones, she crossed it out and carefully wrote, Janet. And in places that quoted her daughter as saying, let me die here,

her mother blacked out the words, so she never had to read them. In Argentina, Judge Victoria Miguel Calandria Aguero wanted to know, how did John Cooper and Janet Johnson die? There could be no sure answers without the bodies. In late 1973, on the crest of a new summer climbing season in the Andes, a four-man team was assembled to look for them. Alfonso, wounded by criticism of his role as guide, would lead it. A National Geographic reporter and photographer named Lauren McIntyre heard about this and showed up to join the team. Alfonso was glad to have him. They carried two plastic toboggans, the kind children use to sled down icy slopes, that they had reinforced with sheet metal screwed to the bottom.

A week later, at the foot of the Polish Glacier, they found the ghostly evidence of the American expedition. Two tattered tents, a torn blue sleeping bag leaking feathers. About 150 yards uphill from camp, they found John Cooper's frozen body. He was stretched out on relatively flat terrain. His legs extended and crossed.

His hands were bare across his abdomen. His jacket was on, but his hood had fallen behind his head. John Cooper was a tall and large man, and he was frozen stiff, McIntyre reported to investigators. He was like a statue of ice, and the toboggan was about half the length of his body, He was like a statue of ice, and the toboggan was about half the length of his body, so arranging him so that his clothes and body would not be damaged in the descent was not an easy thing. And it was cold and windy, and tempers were running short as we tried to get him lashed to the sled. A storm blew in. The men left Cooper for the night, driving stakes around him to keep him in place,

and descended to the safety of camp. The next day, McIntyre was first to the body and did a closer inspection. He took detailed photographs of Cooper and his belongings to, quote, make it supremely evident how he was equipped in case there were questions from investigators or reporters. He found Cooper's diary. He found an opened letter from Cooper's wife, Sandy. McIntyre read it aloud and translated it for the others. Keep roped up and don't forget

the crampons, as I don't know how I'd replace you, she wrote. You are by far the best husband and loving one and really good dad in the entire world. There was no sign of Johnson. McIntyre combed the snowfield for several hours before giving up, he said. He considered her death the bigger mystery and thought she might have wandered off the glacier's sheer edge. Details about Cooper got out fast. He was missing a crampon. There was no ice axe. He was on a gentle slope. His battered face held a look of frozen terror, and his abdomen had a cylindrical hole, bloody and deep. It had gone undetected until his body thawed at a lower elevation, and his frozen hands could be moved.

The highest percentage of possibility is that Cooper's death was an accident, Alfonso told reporters. But if Cooper had fallen on his own ice axe, it must have been very violent, he said, given the five layers of clothes that he wore and the depth of the wound. Alfonso also said that Zeller told him that he had found Cooper sitting, dead, with his head between his hands. But the way Cooper was found reveals that Zeller's account was not exact, Los Andes wrote. McIntyre insisted that, quote, there is no mystery at all. He fell on his ice axe and he injured himself, he said in a statement to investigators.

He was in so much discomfort and pain when he was nearly to base camp that when he finally got off the steep part of the glacier, got down on the flat, he had evidently stopped, sat down, and removed his gloves, and was probably trying to examine himself and his wound when he fell unconscious and froze to death. McIntyre left a sliver of doubt. In a 1974 letter to Sandy Cooper, he suggested that Macmillan and Zeller, quote, have probably formed some conclusions in their own minds, which may be true or which may be an adjustment with conscience they can live with. He continued, I wonder whether you have ever talked with them? It is unclear if the Cooper or Johnson families ever did. Cooper's body, per the family's wishes, was transported to Kansas in a carved coffin

shipped inside a plain wooden crate The coffin was buried in the cold December ground in El Dorado The empty crate sat for decades in the garage of Cooper's parents, who couldn't part with it The results of the full autopsy were sealed by the judge But he released the cover page, which noted the cause of death. It was not exposure, not pulmonary edema, not even the mysterious wound to the abdomen that plunged through five layers of clothes.

Causa de la defuncion, contusion cranioencephalica. Cause of death, cranial contusions, injuries to the skull and brain. The judge made only one declaration. We need Janet Johnson's body. Alberto Colombero was 17 when he and two others found Johnson's body. He keeps the photos from that day in a small box.

It was February 9th, 1975. Colombero was climbing Aconcagua with his father, Ernesto, and Guillermo Vieiro, both experienced Aconcagua climbers. A storm forced them to abort a summit attempt. The three decided to come down the Polish glacier. They knew Johnson's body might be somewhere. Colombero saw something orange or red to his left. It was obscured by knee-high penitentes,

the ice pillars characteristic of Aconcagua, and partially covered in fresh snow. The men thought it was a tarp, a tent, maybe a backpack. They found Johnson face up. My father recognized her because he had met her in Mendoza, Colombero said. He is now a retired man of 65. Johnson's face, blackened from two years of exposure, was battered in three places. White bones stuck out of her nose, her forehead, and her chin, where skin hung down like a flap. There were bloodstains on her face and jacket.

A crampon was missing from one foot. Ropes were tangled around her. Her hands were bare, her light jacket unzipped. They could not find her ice axe. The slope was shallow. Didn't Zeller say that he and Johnson had a long fall together? There was no way this is where they fell, they thought. Colombero's memory holds one other striking detail.

A rock sitting on top of Johnson. Her body was in a field of ice. Colombero said that he was too young and inexperienced at the time to draw conclusions. But the older men, who are now both deceased? They were sure Johnson was murdered, Colombero said. They thought everything was planned, Colombero said, that it wasn't an accident, that someone had hit her and tried to make it look like she rolled down the hill in exhaustion. Their discovery and version of events were soon highlighted

in the Mendoza newspapers, along with gruesome photos they took. Johnson's body was just 20 meters from where Cooper's body had been found, the report said. The three men were unprepared to bring Johnson's body down, so they dug it out and shifted it so that a future recovery expedition would see it. They found a ring with a cloudy brown stone on her finger. They found a ring with a cloudy brown stone on her finger. They removed it and passed it to an American climber named Alan Steck, who happened to be on the mountain at the same time. In April 1975, he sent it to Abrahamson, Johnson's sister.

I am enclosing the ring that Janet was wearing when we examined her, he wrote. We did not find anything of her equipment or her camera, assuming she had one. The ring is the only possession from the trip that Johnson's family received for 50 years. In February 1976, William Maltabano, the Latin America correspondent for the Miami Herald, wrote two articles about the deadly mysteries of Aconcagua. The second focused on plans for the recovery of Johnson's body. How did Janet Johnson really die? The headline read, There is sufficient mystery and enough unanswered questions surrounding the death of Janet Johnson and NASA engineer John Cooper on the same 1973 expedition to have raised the suspicion of foul

play. William Montalbano, the reporter, wrote. The article focused on Ramon Arrieta-Cortez, the lead investigator, who, quote, must establish if Aconcagua killed Janet Johnson or if she was murdered, Montalbano wrote. Soon after, a team of men, mostly police officers in Mendoza with climbing experience, found Johnson's body.

Her face was darker, far more mummified than a year earlier because of recent exposure to sun and wind. They found no other belongings. The men struggled to extricate Johnson from the ice. They crudely sliced her left arm at the shoulder and left it, with a broken watch still on her wrist. We had to dig the ice to get her unfrozen from the glacier, said Rudy Parra, one of the men, now a retired police officer, in his Mendoza home. It was like taking a piece of the glacier off the mountain. The room where the Cooper and Johnson autopsies were performed in Mendoza

is still in use today. It sits in a worn, one-story stucco building that looks like a barrack. where the Cooper and Johnson autopsies were performed in Mendoza is still in use today. It sits in a worn, one-story stucco building that looks like a barrack. It is equipped with stainless steel tables, electric tools that hang from the ceiling, and concrete floors that slope to drains. Daniel Araujo was a medical student and an assistant to the medical examiner, Dr. Carlos De Chico, on the Cooper and Johnson autopsies. Today, he is a neurosurgeon in Mendoza. My name is Daniel Araujo. I was part of the team that autopsied the bodies of John Cooper and Janet Johnson.

Although 50 years have passed, and Janet Johnson. Although 50 years have passed, they are still somehow fresh in my memory like very few other cases. Both John Cooper and Janet Johnson, they were traumatic. It was very unusual. He still remembers Cooper because of the skull fracture,

and especially the tubular hole to his abdomen. It was like a bullet hole, perfectly round. The wound was so deep that it reached all the way to Cooper's spine. Araujo always suspected an ice screw. I remember that the cause of death was the head injury. But also what impressed me was a lesion that he had. It was a lesion that we had trouble to understand the mechanism or what kind of weapon was used to cause it. And we found a circle indented in the body of the vertebra. Clearly suggested

a aggression. It's more consistent with the mechanism of stabbing and not just falling over the ice crew. just falling over the ice crew. Johnson's autopsy stands out because of the damage to her face, bone exposed in three places. Araujo recalled deep cuts on her boot that made him think someone had taken some hard wax at her. I think that Janet Johnson had several injuries in one of his legs as a result of repeated hammering with an ice axe over her boot, crossed through the leather of the boot, and injured the tissues.

Johnson's autopsy report, with photos, was submitted to the judge. Like Cooper, she officially died of contusio cranioencephalica, a brain injury. Rajo has been haunted by the memory of those autopsies for most of his life. I think that John Cooper and Janet Johnson both were killed. The reason for that is that the kind of injuries that both of them had were not caused by a fall but were inflicted by someone else. At the time, the whole team thought that John Cooper and Janet Johnson were killed. All of us used to think that. News media coverage did not go that far.

In, quote, forensic circles, Los Andes reported, it appeared to be a crime, though the police had not made any accusations. It left the case open for public interpretation yet again. Were the wounds to the head from a fall or deliberate? Los Andes asked. Perhaps the truth will never be known. That is where any serious consideration ended. On March 24th, 1976,

Argentina's government under Isabel Perón fell to a deadly military coup. Argentina was turned inside out, and tens of thousands are thought to have died in the seven-year upheaval. Whatever formal investigation into the American expedition that was in motion was turned over to the collective imagination. The mystery seemed to freeze in place. Days before the coup, the body of Janet Johnson was buried in a small cemetery in the dusty High Mountain Valley near the trailheads to Aconcagua. No one from her family came, but among a few flower bouquets was one that rested on her coffin that read,

Dei tu Madre, from your mother. Among the two dozen witnesses were members of the police group that recovered her body, including Arieta Cortez, the investigator who led the effort. According to his son, Juan, Arieta Cortez died in 2017 and never reached a conclusion in the case. Under the sky of America, we bury a daughter here on Argentine soil, Arieta Cortez said at the graveyard gathering. Alfonso, the guide, arrived late but paid his respects. Representatives from the American embassy

had made the 650-mile trip from Buenos Aires. The ceremony took 15 minutes. I wish to inform you that your daughter, Janet Johnson, was buried on March 19, 1976, pursuant to your request, at the Mountain Climber Cemetery at Punta del Inca, the embassy wrote to Johnson's mother. Funeral services at the gravesite were very dignified and impressive. A man arrived late, rushing to the service just as it ended.

It was Miguel Alfonso, the guide, there to pay his last respects. For nearly 50 years, a Nikomat camera, carried by an American woman, sat frozen in a high-altitude time capsule. But it was not frozen in place. Where the camera was dropped may not be where it was found. The Polish glacier has been shrinking and shifting, cracking and moving downhill by the pull of gravity

and with the change of seasons. And on a sunny day in February 2020, the heart of the Argentine summer, the camera sat on a stocky penitente, like a museum piece on a pedestal. It was Marcos Calamaro, a young porter, who brought it down to camp. It was Ulysses Corvallon, the experienced guide, who recognized the name stamped at the bottom.

At the camp that day was a photographer named Pablo Betancourt. He recognized that the film inside might be evidence to be preserved, as it had been for most of five decades. He put the camera into a case and stuffed it with snow. been for most of five decades. He put the camera into a case and stuffed it with snow. He contacted the New York Times, wondering whether such a discovery might be of interest. And he wondered what else the melting glacier might be revealing. Calamaro spent his off time looking. Near the glacier's edge, he found Johnson's arm in a red jacket sleeve, still wearing a watch. Then, her knapsack, filled with possessions.

Among them, two more aluminum canisters with film inside. In Oregon City, Oregon, an 83-year-old widow named Julie Abrahamson, Johnson's only surviving immediate family member, got a surprise call sharing the news of the discovery. Her response was clear. Yes, please develop the film. Find out everything you can. Please. She's still my sister, she said. I still want to know what really happened to her. Indian Head, Saskatchewan is about an hour east of Regina. Its tallest structure is a grain elevator. There is not a mountain in sight.

On a downtown corner is a former bank, a two-story brick structure from the 1800s. Today, it is home to Film Rescue International, run by a man named Greg Miller. His small team of technicians receive and process old and damaged undeveloped film from all over the world. Cases found in attics, reels discovered in shipwrecks, the forgotten Instamatic abandoned with film inside. Now Miller was holding a camera that had been locked in a glacier at roughly 20,000 feet for almost five decades. The camera was intact. The only crack was inside the lens.

The mechanisms worked. The leather holster had probably protected it from leaks. It turns out an Aconcagua glacier is not a bad place to store film. Humidity is always a detriment, but the Andes are notably dry. High-altitude radiation can be a concern, but the camera had been entombed in ice. Cold temperatures are much better for film than hot ones. Miller took the camera into a dark room, flicked on an infrared light that would not expose the film, and clicked the back of the camera open. I think we're going to see something, he said. The processing responsibility fell to Eric Labossiere, a 35-year-old part-time pro wrestler and metal band guitarist with a bald head, a soft voice, and arms covered in tattoos. He was nervous. There was only one chance to do this.

Under infrared light, Labossiere moved automated version of the dunk-and-soak method from old photographic development. When Labossiere emerged from the darkroom, he seemed pleased. Had he not known the origin of the film, trapped on a glacier in Argentina for decades, Labossiere would have assumed it was on a shelf somewhere, he said. Labossiere would have assumed it was on a shelf somewhere, he said. After more machines and more solutions, Labossiere unspooled the film and held a stripped delight. Yeah, he said. Mountains and people. Johnson was a good photographer. The photos are beautiful, haunting, marred only by streaks of moisture that color the frames, some more than others.

They turn ordinary landscapes into something closer to art. One of the rolls was unused. Johnson had carried it toward the summit with the apparent expectation that she would need it. Another, found in a canister, had 36 exposures. The first frame was shot from a valley just short of base camp, an ethereal image of snow-covered mountains. Then came lots of penitentes and snow-covered peaks. They chronicle the expedition's up-and-down method of moving from one camp to another, acclimatizing and hauling gear. There is one photo of Johnson having handed her camera to someone else. She is smiling, wearing a floppy hat and heavy-duty aluminum-framed glacier glasses. She has an ice axe in her right hand and an overstuffed pack on her back.

The roll found inside the camera had 24 photographs. The seventh photo was taken near camp at the foot of the Polish glacier. Only Johnson, Cooper, Zeller, and McMillan went higher than that. Johnson snapped pictures. Recent footprints dent the soft snow. Around midday, the sun high and the shadows short, Johnson took a photo of one of the other climbers, who was downhill and sitting on the glacier.

Afternoon shadows got longer with each photograph. Soon the four climbers would dig a cave to sleep in. Cooper would head downhill the next morning, while the other three continued up. Johnson took more photos. The 21st photograph showed either Zeller or McMillan climbing ahead of her, into the afternoon sun, each step making deep holes in the snow. Published in the Mazamas Annual later that year is the opposite photograph, taken by Zeller, downhill of Johnson hiking up the Summit Ridge at about 22,000 feet. Johnson wore her floppy hat, her coat was unzipped, and her mittens dangled from strings at her sleeves. She held her ice axe in her right hand. Before dark, Johnson snapped three more photographs of the

surrounding Andes. If she was oxygen-deprived or delirious, she still knew how to focus the lens, compose the frame, and hold the camera steady to take clear photographs. That is where the film ends. That is where the legend begins. The film does not solve the mystery. It only adds to it. It tells you what Johnson saw in her final hours, but not how she felt. Not how she died. Not every discovery leads to revelation.

Some just make you want to know more. If Janet Johnson and John Cooper were still alive, they would be in their late 80s. All of the Americans from the expedition to Aconcagua are gone. Defoe, the leader, died in a car crash on a rural Montana highway in 1975. Zeller died in 2003. McMillan in 2011. Shelton died in November, leaving behind a collection of old photos Mazamas memos

and newspaper files It remains the greatest mystery of Aconcagua said Moran, the Argentine journalist who covered the expedition and its aftermath He is 80 now This story had nearly faded from popular memory, he said but there are enough reasons for doubts and arguments to make the mystery persist.

Folklore happens when facts are short and time is long. After all these years, this story is not about long-gone Americans on the mountain, but the unknown that lives in those who remain. It is less about certainty than memory and imagination. A question arises again and again among those familiar with the story. Just what are the possibilities? An accident is a tidy catch-all, a useful way to move on. What if it was something else? My name is Ulises Corbalam. I work in Aconcagua as a guy. I was doing that for the last 30 years. I was running a trip in Aconcagua when we found the camera of Janet Johnson, which is really part of the history of Aconcagua.

Corvalan, a dean of Aconcagua guides with 59 successful summits, first heard the stories from old-timers when he began climbing the mountain 35 years ago. We definitely believe what they say. Some of the guys actually, they was there, they was working on the rescue of the body, so nobody was sure in the moment about what happens, how they die. There were theories and embellishments, dots connected with fuzzy lines. A love triangle gone wrong, a stash of money that was never found. Cooper as a government agent. Assassins who crossed the nearby Chilean border. Is that why Lauren McIntyre, an American, had shown up as if from thin air to find the bodies?

Why was he taking so many photographs? Corvalon studied Johnson's photos from 1973. He noted the shallow slope and the uncharacteristically soft snow on the Polish Glacier that year. A long fall and a deadly slide down the ice were improbable, maybe impossible, he said. But something else bothered Corvalon. He has seen bodies ravaged by even shortfalls. Bones are broken. Clothing and equipment are shredded. I saw a lot of bodies, unfortunately, on the mountain. Many of them, some friends.

When they fell, there's a lot of broken bones and blood around. Sometimes you find pieces of brain. I mean, falling on the ice is almost like a free fall. Why, Corvalon wondered, did so little of that appear to have happened to Johnson and Cooper? Why was the damage confined mostly to their faces? Corvalon thought about it. He is a mountaineer. He has been atop the Seven Summits.

He knows what experience and common sense tell him. An accident. But more than before, Corvalon believes that maybe there was foul play. The survivors, the rest of the expedition, they say that they fell

when they was coming, but the police, the way they find the body, they don't look like a foul. They have no rope and they have no broken bombs. The clothes is okay. It doesn't have any evidence of falling in the snow.

The way they find the body, I think, is a mystery. Foul play. It is a persistent, vague euphemism in this story. Negligence? Manslaughter? Worse? How? How? Why? Is it even possible at such an altitude? With such fatigue?

Corvallon shrugged. Something happened. I won't believe that. It's really weird. Roberto Bustos, the base camp manager, is now 76. He has a file of yellowed clippings and photos at home. He has a rope that belonged to Shelton that he holds as a treasured memento.

Johnson's newly developed pictures stir memories, but do not change his mind. He sees what happened to Johnson and Cooper as a, quote, mountain accident, he said, but does not dismiss the possibility of something violent or nefarious. Norms shift at high altitudes, he said. Desperation toys with right and wrong. One thing that has not changed in 50 years on mountains from Aconcagua to Everest is the notion of ethics and responsibility. They get squishy at high altitudes amid the dangers and limits of the moment. It's a different world at 6,000 meters with different laws and rules, Bustos said. And the behavior, you would go down to 5,000 meters and think these people are crazy.

If their climbing partners did all they reasonably could to help Cooper and Johnson, wasn't that enough? If they abandoned their colleagues to save themselves or somehow did harm to them, could they be blamed? Zeller's widow, in her 90s, said through her son that she did not want to talk about the expedition and requested no further contact. As a state policeman, he is precise, exacting, and careful, the local newspaper wrote of Zeller in 1973.

When he speaks, he says only what needs to be said. There are mysteries of the mountain he cannot explain. He is not used to that. McMillan's family said that he continued to climb mountains for the rest of his life, including Denali twice, even after he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He had more than a hundred dairy cows and would give slide presentations of his climbs to friends and family in the barn. His children recall McMillan talking about how he and others were held and questioned in Argentina because of the deaths. They know little about any speculation of foul play of the stories spun in Argentina. Judge Victorio Miguel Calandria Aguero

never made a ruling in the case. Shortly before he died in 2022, he was asked about the American expedition by a local journalist who said that readers had followed the coverage, quote, like a novel, and raised a specter of murder. None of that was ever proven, the judge

said. And then, from the ice, came Johnson's camera. And whatever ghosts had been laid to rest were stirred back up again. In Oregon City, Oregon, Judy Abrahamson had not gone through her sister's belongings for years. They were stashed under the house, ignored if not forgotten. None of it made a lot of sense. These slides of mountain landscapes and strangers in climbing gear, those yellowing newspaper clippings in Spanish where her mother crossed out every suggestion that her daughter ever wanted to die alone.

To Abrahamson, Janet Johnson was not an accomplished climber in Colorado or the haunting name that echoes in the Andes. She was not a legend or a mystery. She was Janet, a brainy 10-year-old who asked for a little sister and welcomed her to the family with a doll. She was an overachiever who grew into a woman that her mother could not understand.

She was the accomplished big sister who set out to prove that her mother could not understand. She was the accomplished big sister who set out to prove that she could do anything she wanted, even climb the highest mountains. Abrahamson thinks about Johnson and wonders how she might have grown old, might have climbed more mountains, might have come out, might have felt accepted, even celebrated. I want to know what really, really happened to her. Because she was experienced. And it's been too many years. But I still think about her.

No matter how many years go by, Janet was my sister. What an adventurer she was. How she loved life. And that she was a good person. And she was. She was my sister. In Kansas, Joy Cooper is nearly 90. The older sister who remembers John Cooper as a little boy with so much wanderlust that their father had to build a fence to keep him in.

She remembers when people filled the church for his funeral and they buried her little brother in the little cemetery. Her parents were never quite the same after that. In Texas, Randy Cooper, raised by a widowed mother who has since died, does not remember much of anything about his father. But he has been told that they share some of the same mannerisms, like the way they pop their knuckles. As Randy got older, he decided to go by his middle name, John.

And when people asked about his father, he would tell them the only thing he knew. My dad died mountain climbing. The Johnson and Cooper families never learned much about what happened on Aconcagua. They just knew that things went wrong and that Janet and John were gone. The details, the newspaper stories, the letters, the official documents, all the questions and regrets, were swallowed up by sadness, then by time. you