I'm back from a climbing trip to the Alaska Range, from May 8-May 24.
I went with several people from Vancouver. The purpose of this trip were climb some minor peaks in the Alaska Range and scope out routes and options for trips there in the future. The party was a group of 5 consisting of me, my friend Maurice, his wife Angela, a friend Terry and his friend Jason who had spend 4 weeks on the East Ridge of Logan a few years back. A pretty well-rounded group.
Flying In, Day 1
We flew in with Talkeetna Air Taxi to Kahiltna Base after waiting one day for the weather. We landed directly underneath the awesome Moonflower Butress of Mount Hunter's North Face. Unloaded the planes and immediately loaded up slome sleds and left base camp for our first objective, the 12,800 high Mt Crosson. Crosson is the first third of the Sultana Ridge on Foraker, and we thought we'd get a good look at Foraker and also bag the 6th highest peak in the Alaska Range in one shot. We skiied accross the Kahiltna, a glacier about 4 times as wide as the Carbon, and set up an advanced base camp. There was one other party of 2 on the mountain, trying the Sultana Ridge with 9 days of food. The next day, in actually pretty terrible weather, Jason and I broke trail 1600 feet up the ridge for a high camp. Part of this was going 500 vertical up a hairtrigger avalanche slope, it was just AWEFUL. We got to a place that previous climbers have named the Dark Tower, and dug snow caves. By the time the other three got to high camp, we were almost done. The next day was iffy party-cloudy weather. Jason and I bolted while we could and broke trail for 5 and a half hours, sometimes following the steps of the other party of 2 ahead. We caught up with them 1000 feet below the summit. It got extremely windy, about -30C with wind chill. We summitted, took 4 photos, and started down. Crevasses on the ridge, everywhere. Pretty odd and unnerving. the other three had fallen behind, Terry had AMS. They turned around 2 hours below the summit and we all headed down to high camp. The next morning it was colder but calm. Angela and Maurice went for the top again, Terry went down with us. The av slope had not gone, so we unroped to cross it one at a time. The deep, unconsolidated snow on the 40 dgree slope was actually pretty bad. But we made it down to ABC OK. Late that evening, we saw angela and Maurice descending from the summit with the two guys on the Sultana retreating too. They all came down the next day, and none too soon, because a storm rolled in and pinned us down for 36 hours. High winds and 4 feet of snow made our 4 foot walls around the tents barely capable of keeping it all out.
After the first storm we sledded back to Kahiltna Base. While Angela and Maurice had gone to the summit, Jason and I had skiied across the Kahiltna and up underneath the Moonflower to look at the next objective -- Peak 12,380. This is a very steep satellite peak off the NE Ridge of Hunter. It's been climbed only a few times in the last 30 years. It looked very hard, very technical. The central rib looked doable, but the last 1000 vertical, the upper third of the peak, was extremely steep and hard-looking mixed. Maybe for a team of 2, but not climbable for a team of 5.
With everyone back at Kahiltna Base, we rode out another 3 day storm. We heard news that no one had been summitting anything -- 6 parties on the North side of Hunter had only gotten 3 pitches up the Moonflower/Wall of Shadows, some guys waiting for Infinite Spur had not even left camp. No one has summitted Denali by any route as of May 22, except for the 3 winter ascents the mountain saw this year. People were getting hammered at 17,200 by 80 mph winds. Some groups nevcer even got past 11000 on the West Butt before getting mangled. So people were happy to get out at all....the Infinite Spur group (4) climbed Frances, while Mike, a solo powerhouse, soloed Crosson in 8 hours. A plane crashed trying to fly in a group, but no one was hurt. Mike scavenged the plane for avgas so he wouldnt have to pay the flight services for more stove fuel. Ah, Basecamp!
We tried several times to climb Frances, but the approach is serac threatened and the entrance slope to the East Ridge is a 600 foot avalanche slope (which hadnt slid) The storms kept dumping more snow and we kept getting more timid at anything likely to slide. In the end, we went ski touring during the "sucker-holes" in the storm, and spent alot of time in the tents, trying to stay dry and warm. Maurice and I agreed that the Kennedy-Lowe up the North Face of Hunter looked very doable, as well as the West Ridge of Hunter. The Sultana Ridge looked very very long, and not appealing. There are several other routesd that caught our attention: the Southeast ridge on Kahiltna Done looks great! As well, the West Ridge on Frances offers a moderate, 3000 foot technical ridge route. There was a really nice route up 12,200, north and east of base camp. On the bigger peaks, the SE Ridge of Foraker looks really good, much better than the Sultana. The Cassin looks nice too. The West Butt looks OK, but its about the least interesting thing imn In short, alot to do!
Alaska is just really awesome! The scale is unreal. We saw an enormous avalanche fall 8000 feet down the East Face of Foraker, and come half way across the Kahiltna.