Alaska: Pika Glacier

Mike and I arrived in Anchorage after a late night flight around 2 am. Our shuttle wasn't getting us until 7 am so we had 5 hours to kill. I started the cycle early and busted out my sleeping pad and jacket and curled up in corner on the floor. Mike stayed awake. He's nuts.
After a couple of hours of surprisingly good sleep (amazing how exhausting pedi-cabbing can be) we caught our shuttle and arrived in Talkeetna. After dropping off our stuff, I took Mike on a short tour around downtown Talkeetna. Talkeetna is an awesome, awesome super cool hippie climber town. During the spring and summer it's packed with climbers and tourists. It's the best juxtaposition ever, you get fat princess cruise type tourists walking around next to super fit Denali climbers. Talkeetna's also got probably the best bar seen of any town I've been to in a while. The Fairview inn happens to be my personal favorite, it proudly takes the credit for President Hardings demise a few weeks after having beers there.
During the tour we swung by the ranger station and AMS, where we met our Guide/Instructor Greg Runyan and pow wowed briefly about the plans for the next day. After that it was beers and grub for the rest of the evening. Mike passed out around 730 pm as he hadn't slept the night before at all. He's nuts. I got beers, which I was super glad for cause they'd be my last libations for a few weeks.
The next day Greg picked us up at the hostel and we ran back to AMS for a morning full of skills trainings and gear checks. We met Allain, the 4th member of our team as well. Allain is a rockstar climber and french canadian and I hope to get many more adventures of this sort in with him. After a quick stop by the gear store and re packing we were set to head to Talkeetna Air Taxi, . If your ever going on this kind of a trip into the Alaska Range or simply doing a flight see, ONLY go with Talkeetna Air Taxi! They are by far the best pilots and for climbers they're the most reliable to pick you up.



Mike and Allain loading up the otter

Our destination was to be the Pika Glacier, a "small" glacier off the Kahiltna and a world class rock climbing destination. While this place is known for it's spectacular rock climbing I'm totally going to head back there in May at some point to ski. There were so many amazing looking couliors that look like they'd be a blast to get on in good snow.



A view of the Ruth Gorge on the flight in



An aerial view of the Pika Glacier, or home sweet home for the next two weeks!



Mike rockin' co pilot on the flight in.

So the plane landed and we hurriedly unloaded all the gear. (lot's of gear) and the plane piled it's other load of tourists back in and took off. This had to be one of the single most intimidating moments of my life. I won't lie and say that my first reaction wasn't "WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO!"
However, shortly afterwards we probed out our camp for crevasses and set it up and suddenly the glacier started to feel a little more like home. It's truly amazing how important a good camp set up is for this type of trip as it truly is your only shelter from the elements and in glacier terrain possibly the only place that isn't crevassed. Our tent, ice home consisted of two Mountain Hardwear Trango 3 tents, a Black Diamond Megamid and a crap hole where the CMC lived (Clean Mountain Can).









Some camp shots

So I thought originally that my body might have issues falling asleep due to the fact that it NEVER got fully dark while we were there. No issues whatsoever. I think the mental physical strain had me out like a light every night except until the end but I'm getting ahead of myself here.
The first day we did some skill work on crevasse rescue, anchor building and other useful glacier mountain skills and then roped up for a quick ski to go get a view of our potential objective, Granite creek and some unnamed spires.




View of Granite creek, a very little explored area off the Pika (future destination?)
Alain and Mike enjoying some little seen sunshine.
Skiing in mountaineering boots is freaking HARD. I consider myself to be a stellar skier and the first turn I did I feel flat on my ass. I finally made it down the equivalent of a green run looking like a total newb and to chorus of Greg cackling like a hyena. I have no idea why no one took a video of this it was hilarious.
(mike did the exact same thing)
We moved camp the next day in order to get closer to our objective (Exit Pass) and to as Greg put it, "to get away from the riff-raff". It was really nice to move camp down away from the landing zone and to what you might consider to be our own private little glacial valley. After a long trip in coupled with tons of learning moments on how to load a sled, more practice skiing roped up and with a heavy sled through heavily crevassed icefalls, we found ourselves down on what we've dubbed the Exit Glacier.

Greg on a rest break with the Dragon's spine and the Kahilitna Glacier in front of him. Notice all the sunshine. This was probably our only well timed weather window.


Mike with the Marsupial behind him.


Camp 2 with the Hobbit's path up the Dragon Spine in front of us.

This glacial valley was awesome! All around us we could see good rock, fun looking couliors and all sorts of other things that looked like a party to explore.
The next day dawned with some pretty nice weather so we decided to head over to the dragon's spine and get some "top roping" in.
After a nice short ski on in, which I got to take the lead end on through crevasse terrain (scary!). We got to the rock where we figured out a good system to get all 4 of us up it and started going!
Top roping turned into multi pitch trad climbing as the second we got above our first pitch that's where we found the really fun rock. Rule of thumb of climbing in the Alaska range is the higher up you get the better the rock gets, because it's been destroyed way less recently by the glacier and all the loose crap has gotten off it. The first pitch we climbed as fraught with perilious rock fall threat from a bove, while suddenly a good 70 meters up perfect granite cracks appeared. Delicious. It's worth mentioning that we were probably only the second people ever up this line as Greg and some of his buddies had put it up two years earlier and there were no definite quotes from anyone else putting anything else up up there.
Funny thing was, the higher we climbed the more the weather seemed to sock in, it wasn't raining so we kept on going although we were losing visibility and fast. We got to the top of our 5th pitch when Greg said we were going to do one more pitch and then head back down. This last pitch was probably the best crack climb I;ve ever done. Huge perfect jams alternating between gaping off widths and a nice traversing line. SO MUCH FUN!!! The pitch then topped out on one last bouldery move where you crawled out of a chimney onto a face that had about 300 feet of exposure dropping to the valley floor on one side and 400 feet on the other side (SCARY!)
Some Hobbits Path photos, all are by Greg Runyan, as I don't seem to have any :(




So as probably doesn't need to be said, it proceeded to start raining the second that we started our rappels. As I just described the end of pitch 6 up there, now add in lowering yourself backwards down it in the rain. Totally terrifying. The other raps after that were fairly innocous although there certainly were a lot of them and we were all getting pretty soaked and tired. As we got down to the bottom, Greg mentioned "Man, if it hadn't started raining we'd totally still be climbing."
I believe I replied something like, "Just in time for a late dinner"
Greg "What time is it anyway? 7 pm?"
Me: 10 pm?
Greg: YOUR KIDDING ME! NO WAY!

He's a madman, as he says though, "the higher you get, the higher you get!"

We had a badass ski back to camp, some rice noodles (Taste of Thai baby!) and crashed. The next day we decided to take it pretty easy and ski off to go check out Exit Glacier so we could plan out our next few days. A short snow climb and bergschrund navigation and we were up at the top of the pass. It was loose and rocky and we frankly did not like the looks of it. Our plan initiallly had been to rap down it, explore Granite glacier and the Granite spires and then ascend back up fixed ropes to regain our base camp after a few days of camping with light packs. We decided that the rockfall danger was way too great and that we should spend our next few days ice and snow climbing and working on general skill stuff instead.
Exit pass photos



The next few days were spent doing just that, ice climbing, and snow climbing. The highlight would be when we climbed a previously unnamed Coulior now dubbed the What? Coulior. This is in tribute to Alain and his language barrier that by this point had led Greg to issuing open threats of bodily harm to him for saying What? all the time. This was a super spicy fun mixed climb. It went at about 4 pitches up to the top, with the last two pitches being a mixture of snow, ice and rock. I won't write here the best thing about this coulior but if for some reason you find yourself heading there and you have the option of nice weather, bring your rock shoes with you to the top. Or hell, I'd go back and ski the damn thing given good snow conditions!

The What? Coulior and Exit Pass. I believe the what coulior is the one on the far Looker's left.



At this point in the trip I have to say our activity got severly limited due to weather conditions. I believe in the next week we managed to get two skis and two camp moves in due to rain on and off. One of our camp moves was accomplished on a rainy evening (we suck at weather windows) back up to the Hobbit's footstool and wound through a beautiful yet terrifying icefall lit up with twilight mist. I remember thinking that it was pretty damn cool looking! God bless my hardshell pants is all I have to say after this whole trip. Other than that our attempts to go rock climbing kept on getting shut down by weather or gigantic crevasse and bergschrund holes.
Here are some final highlight photos from the last of the "planned" trip.












So the last night we were supposed to be there we were given a beautiful gift and what I took as a good omen from the mountains. The skies cleared and we were given an incredible view of Mt. Foraker, in it's full summit at twilight. Little did we know that this was the last of any clear skies we would see for the next 60 hours.

My attempt at capturing the beauty that Mt. Foraker showed us, a piss poor attempt I might add...




We called TAT that evening and asked if they could come pick us up, considering we had accomplished all of our objectives. They said they were socked in in Talkeetna and couldn't. No big deal if the weather stays like this we'll for sure be out tomorrow.
I got up at 4 am to go take a pee and the glacier was so socked in you couldn't see 20 meters in front of you. CRAP. As the day went on our dreams of beer, burgers and debauchery in Talkeetna kept on getting further and further away, as this was also July 4th we were seriously hoping to get down to a rollicking good party. As 8 pm rolled around we resigned ourselves to couscous and food.
I'd say the hardest part of this kind of tent socked in was keeping our spirits up. Especially at the end of a trip when all we wanted to do was go home and yet we couldn't and other than the daily sat phone call we had no way of finding anything out about when we might get out of there. It was pretty easy to get really really down on the whole experience. Also as day 3 rolled around we were starting to run out of food and fuel pretty seriously, I know I had started limiting my consumption and trying to ween myself down to the minimum amount of food required to keep me running by this point. If we had been there one more night our dinner was going to be black beans in a tomato paste and I was already recycling green tea bags for my morning caffeine boost.
Some shots of our imprisonment:




On the third day we were stuck there we woke up to half a meter of the stickiest heaviest snow we'd seen, and my first reaction was FUCK we're never getting out of here. Around 11:30 the skies started to clear and we put a phone call in to TAT who said that t hey were trying and hopefully they'd see us soon. We started to slowly pack, heard a few planes buzzing around but not bust through the cloud cover and then went back to chill mode. Shortly before 2 pm, I got a feeling, that we needed to start doing something, so we packed up a few other things and Mike and I shuttled a load over to the LZ. Just as we were about to drop off our stuff and ask some other dudes who were there if they'd heard anything, we heard a BZZZZZZZZ and saw an Otter break through the clouds in between one of the mountain passes!
My reaction : "PLANE! PLANE!!!" and spring back to camp to break down the tents. I had our trango down in one minute 30 seconds I have to say. Short landing and loading and we were on our way back to Talkeetna and the land of the green and living!

This trip was awesome. A couple of things I would do next time I do a trip like this 1) Make sure my return plane ticket is changeable
2)Bring loads of emergency rations
3) Bring a Crazy Creek Chair

AMS is awesome. If this is the kind of experience your interested in getting I would reccomend them 100% for their knowledge and abilities in teaching. I'm definetly going to go on this kind of a trip again however, at this point I need a few weeks not in a tent!






















re

Alaska 2010 Climbing Trip! Part .05

I just started packing for my upcoming trip with AMS to climb in the Alaska Range, and the pile of gear at the foot of my bed was so stoke inspiring that I needed to throw up a quick blog about it....5 days until take off from DIA!!

The gear pile, I'd say this is at 95% complete....

Alaska Part 3: Erwin Hill and Denali State Park

So after arriving at Robin's house late the night before, we had an alpine start (leaving the house around 10 am) to grab a quick hike in Denali State Park. I'd done some reading and the Erwin Hill route seemed to be pretty minimally strenuous and (if the clouds cleared up) pretty rewarding. Mel's Mom was coming with us so I didn't really feel like breaking her on a hike. We left Talkeetna with a steady drizzle going on.

I spend a lot of time in the mountains and one of the thing that fascinates me about visiting different mountains is the different types of flora and fauna one sees in different places. One of the major differences between Colorado and Alaska is Alaska is WET! It rains and snows a ton there and after a strong summer of growth there is some unbelievably thick brush and things to hack through.

Not a ton of the photos from Ermine Hill came out great as we spent most of the hike enwrapped in a cloud with a couple of fleeting glimpses of the southern large peaks of the Alaska range coming in and out of view. Thus all of my photos from this hike are made up of subject matter that involves the little joys and excitements your able to find in nature when the broad vistas are closed.
It was a good hike through solid brush and swamp, which inevitably brought you up above treeline at the crest of the hill. We were mostly dry until the clouds decided to open up on us on the way down where we proceeded to get soaked to the bone.

One of the coolest things about this hike was the combination of lowland marshes (mosquitoes) and having the hills and treeline right there. According to all the research I did, you have a better chance of seeing Denali and getting a good view of the Alaska range from Denali State Park then you do from inside the national park, so if you ever find yourself on a clear day there head for Ermine Hill.
Next up, Hatcher Pass.

Alaska Part 2: Kenai Peninsula

Alaska: The Last Frontier. So about 2 months ago, Mel and I traveled up to AK with her family to partake in the family vacation, or as her Dad called it on our extensive itinerary (seriously this trip was planned far better than most government operations, we even had an exit strategy!) "The Great Alaskan Adventure". The trip started with us flying into Anchorage (flight arrived around 2 am AK time) and spending the first day in Anchorage. Frankly, the best thing I saw in Anchorage was the phenomenal view of the Chugach range from the museum top floor, other than that it was very gray and not terribly exciting. The next day we drove down to the Kenai peninsula, specifically Seward. This peninsula is famed for its wildlife, gorgeous views, whale watching and glaciers. The whole of the peninsula is still being actively carved away by sea ice on one side and internally by an icefield that glaciers pour down hillsides, grinding away the mountains as they work there way to the sea.

Now I'm usually not a huge fan of big touristy tour type stuff, so I wasn't too excited that our first day on this mythical peninsula was going to be spent on a boat with an all you can eat salmon or steak buffet (not kidding), but I figured that's the price of coming on a family vacation, you can't spend the whole time hacking through the bush. I was blown away by how well done this tour was. It was marketed as a Sea Wildlife tour and holy cow was it. Species that have been pushed to the brink of extinction in the lower 48 came swimming straight up or flew straight past the boat. Within the first hour I'd lost track of how many Bald Eagles we'd seen, on top of seeing Dall's Porpoises, Sea Otters, Sea Lions and puffins as well. And the scenery was like wandering into the Lord of The Rings. Glaciers came spilling straight down to the ocean, curved spires of jagged peaks poured upward into the fog and cloud filled sky while tendrils of clouds wrapped themselves towards the ocean. Truely, a phenomenal experience. I'll shut up for a moment and let the pictures speak for themselves(unfortunatly most of the wildlife photos did not come out as I don't have a good enough lens-must buy telephoto).














So after spending a night in Seward and eating some surprisingly disapointing salmon (my one major complaint about Alaska; the fish bought in restaurants was really not that fresh tasting, the best salmon we had by far was caught by Mel's Dad and Grandfather-other than that in restaurants the Fish and Chips were better than the Salmon), we woke up the next morning to head out to go sea kayaking with Sunny Cove Sea Kayaking. True to its name the sun came out while we were out in the boats as well. This was super fun, great to get some exercise and an awesome opportunity to see the geology of the peninsula up close. Unfortunatly, I forgot the disposable camera we'd bought for this part of the trip in my life jacket so it got left in Seward and then promptly got opened and stolen while it was being mailed back to us in Colorado (people...). So thus there are no pictures of this part of the trip. The best part of this was that while we were here, the salmon run was in full swing (early run) and during part of the kayaking we went up a river where there were literally hundreds of salmon directly below us in the clear blue water spawning and thrashing about. The guide told us a detailed description of the physiology of the salmon and I found it fascinating, I'll try to recount it here.

Salmon actually have mercury in their heads so essentially they act like living compasses, they also have an intense memory of what their exact river stream that they were spawned in and even though in their lifetime will have traveled all the way around the world, the second their spawning instinct kicks in they head directly for that river bed. Now the moment salmon start to spawn, they start to die as well, physiologically they lose all motivation to eat or rest and the only instinct that survives is that to spawn and to eat other salmon's spawn or eggs. We literally saw salmon that had almost all but fallen apart (no eyes, emaciated, losing fins) but were still swimming around spawning. Incredible.

So after viewing the salmon and heading back to port, Mel, Robin and I got in the car and headed toward Talkeetna. On the way we stopped at the Palmer Glacier (I think..) and Girdwood, home to Alaska's only ski resort Alyeska. This glacier had some of the best views of crevasses and the infamous blue color that the compressed ice adapts.




To get to the prime vantage point we ended up scrambling through a tight grove of Alders that provide an awesome idea of exactly what the brush in Alaska during summer time is like. While one may think of Alaska and think of a frozen wasteland covered in snow, this opinion is totally wrong. During the summer time Alaska has one of the best growing seasons around (it's light all the time!) and is absolutly loaded with moisture. Plants that seem like they've been dead for months grow to exponential sizes. We ended up bushwacking through about 200 yards of alder to see the vantage points of the glaciers above.


Having grown up spending time in Denmark at the northern parts of the world, I've always known the beauty of the lighting as you get towards the poles. I don't think I've ever seen as good an example as when we were leaving Girdwood and heading along the Seward highway towards Beluga Bay and Anchorage. The shots below simply don't do the golden color that highlighted the ocean and the mountains justice.





Next up, Talkeetna and Denali State Park and some very typical Alaskan weather!