Introduction

Quick Version: Three of us made a 6 day traverse of the Picket Range, blessed by good weather in mid-August. We hiked in via Big Beaver Creek, then bushwhacked up Wiley Ridge to reach a camp at the Challenger Glacier. We climbed Challenger via the standard route, then descended to a camp in Luna Circ. The next day we climbed Mt. Fury via the North Buttress, camping on the summit snow ridge. Time to sleep in! A longer-than-expected day saw us reaching Picket Pass in early evening. We dropped into the circ, then climbed the North Face of Terror, reaching a camp on slabs below the glacier on the south side of the peak in early evening. On the last day, we hiked out via Terror Creek to a car we'd stashed at the trailhead 6 days before. Theron wrote about the trip here.

Saturday, August 7th (top)

Flashback to 2003. Theron and I gorging ourselves on pizza, still covered in dirt from the Ptarmigan Traverse, painful sips of Coke on my sunburned lips. "Let's go to the Pickets next year and climb Challenger, Fury, and Terror, all via the north faces!" "Yeah right!"

And yet somehow it happened. A year later, along with surprise guest star Aidan Haley, we were standing at the boat dock waiting for our water taxi to the Big Beaver trailhead. What am I doing here, I'm too flabby and timid, I thought! I had been the chief harranger to Travel Light, the Modern Way, and now I felt dubious looking at our too-small packs. A few days before, in the attic of Pro Mountain Sports, I convinced no one but myself that all three of us could fit under the new lightweight Betamid in a rainstorm. "Yes, it'll work," I beamed, happy to have shaved a pound from our collective load.

To read the rest of this story, download the PDF version (4.3 MB) here.