When recently elected 2005 Class President Merrick Johnston was 15 years old, she was grounded for the first and only time. After completing a guided tour for a honeymooning couple through the glacial Alaskan Range, Johnston and her coworker scaled the faces of "Dragon Spine." The plane that came to retrieve her could not find Johnston anywhere.
"I knew all the pilots, so they were worried about me because I'm like their little girl," said Johnston. A search-and-rescue effort started right away to find that little girl "lost" in the mountains. "I was grounded for being late to my plane and for having a search-and-rescue for me," she said, laughing. Such uncommon misbehavior does not faze Johnston, for she is an uncommon Dartmouth freshman.
Growing up in mountainous Anchorage, Alaska, Johnston was surrounded by towering peaks her whole life. She was eight when she first went ice climbing, nine her first time rock climbing.
In the summer of 1995, when she was 12 years old, Johnston was the youngest person ever to summit Mt. Denali. Six years later, Johnston has climbed Denali, known as "the high one," two more times.
This past summer, she worked as a guide on Mt. Denali. "You have to be 18 to be any sort of guide there," she said. "There's only been one other 18 year-old guide -- and he died."
Reaching the top of Denali takes about one month on average, but when Johnston guided 12 men with one other leader this summer, it took 18 days. Carrying a pack that weighed 80 pounds, hiking for two consecutive 19-hour days, and being the only female with 13 men, Johnston was not afraid. As a leader, she "could not complain."
Johnston's work as a guide began five years ago, when she guided for her mother, a cross-country ski coach, downhill ski instructor, glacier guide and director of a guiding service. Clearly, Johnston's aptitude for altitude is innate.
Her mother's guiding service runs out of Anchorage, where Johnston led beginning climbers and "lowered them into crevices" for practice.
Johnston does not only ascend mountains -- she also descends them with great speed and skill on her snowboard. In 1999, Johnston made the Junior National Snowboarding team.
Last year, she took first place overall for her age group at Mammoth Mountain in California, where she competed in the Junior National competition with the Alaskan team. From Mammoth, her team traveled to the Junior World event in Italy.
"I cracked my tailbone the first day," she said, but she persevered. Despite difficult conditions -- "one day the lift opened late because there was an avalanche" -- and the fact that she "couldn't sit down and stand up," Johnston came in third place overall for her age group.
This year, she plans to snowboard for the Stratton Mountain School and prepare for the U.S. Open and Grand Prix competitions. Johnston also telemarks in the summer and cross-country skis. In fact, two years ago, she skied 250 miles across Alaska with her mother in commemoration of the Serum Run, the dog race that inspired the Disney movie "Balto." Norman Vaughn, a 95-year-old family friend who has done the Iditarod several times, organized the event.
"We spoke about the Serum Run in all the schools we stopped at," said Johnston, who hopes to follow in Vaughn's path and complete the Iditarod in the near future.
Her "immediate" goals at Dartmouth are also lofty. She hopes to break another record by becoming the youngest to climb Mt. Vincent Massif in Antarctica and snowboard down.
"So far, the youngest person to have done that is 25," she said. "I'm going to try to get some people from Dartmouth to come with me."
Why would Johnston leave mountainous Alaska for a comparatively hilly Dartmouth, if she evidently belongs in the elevation? Her heart belongs here.
A few years ago, Johnston was stormed out of a mountain in Alaska for five days with two Dartmouth graduates. "I spent five intense days with Chuck and Josh. They were sort of visionaries, had all these huge plans mapped out."
Tragically, as she found out soon after their fateful encounter, the men were killed in an avalanche. One man's mother invited Johnston to speak in their memorial service at Moosilauke Lodge.
"They made me promise to come to Dartmouth. I felt like I had to keep that promise."
And now here for only a month, Johnston is more than following through with her promises. Just last Friday, Oct. 12, she was elected president of the freshman class.
