June 27, 2010 - Yosemite Valley and Cathedral Peak (Sunday)

Watch for links to video below, and click on pics for larger versions.

After a kooky night that included Dan bolting out of the tent and barfing his guts out at 3am for no reason whatsoever (!!), we cooked up a hearty breakfast -- where I realized just how excellent my choice of breakfast food for this trip had been.

This was my first time trying it out, but as I was assembling it in my kitchen before the trip, I knew it was gonna be good: warm flour tortillas stuffed to the gills with cooked diced potatoes, onions, and green peppers, plus crisped up spicy mini pepperoni slices and a couple chunks of bacon, all doused in sriracha, rolled up tight and crammed down my hungry pie hole. OMG IT WAS GOOD!!!!

Of course, the requisite teasing of Peter about his "issue" with his sunglasses the day before was in order, after which we (ARRG! AGAIN...!) put on packs, left the backpacker's campground and started walking the long path down to the shuttle stop to catch the 10:55am bus the dispatcher last night had said would come and take us to Tuolumne Meadows.

About halfway there, it finally hit me (like an idiot!) after nearly two days of hoofing it around under heavy packs with all kinds of winter gear attached to them in 85 degree Yosemite Valley temps: why the HELL have we been walking these paths back and forth and back and forth with heavy packs on??? There's a free shuttle system that runs the whole loop of the Yosemite Valley!!! GRRRR... HAHA Oh well... too late now.

As we were walking, I noticed a strange squishy wetness running down my back, into my pants, and down my legs. ACK! My Cambelbak bladder had split, and it was slowly leaking its 100 oz of water into the world. Dammit.

Anyway... we reached the shuttle stop a little early, and had time to do a quick doublecheck of the dispatcher's information with what was posted at the stop. The doublecheck revealed that the information we'd been given was completely wrong (no surprise at this point), and if we wanted to stick to our original plan of shuttling up there, we would have to wait til 5pm tonight to do it!!!!

At this point, having been completely frustrated and hosed by the dispatcher the night before, we were faced with a couple of options:

1. Leave the car here and shuttle to Tuolumne at 5pm--late--summit like we were supposed to, and end back in the valley after cutting short our time by a day.

2.Drive ourselves to Tuolumne, do the original route, end back in the valley carless, and then send Dan or Peter hitchhiking back up to the Meadows to get the car (which would have resulted in a VERY long wait for the people left behind in the valley, OR...

3. We could just drive ourselves there, fart around in the Tuolomne area, and instead pack in and out to and from our car there. Not the original plan, but #3 ended up being the best, smartest, and fastest way for us to finally leave civilzation behind and get out into the wild.

Soooo... back on with the heavy packs, and still more trudging, this time back to the car once more to drive ourselves to Tuolumne so we could at last kick this thing off. The drive to Tuolumne Meadows was uneventful, but about two thirds of the way there, all three of us began to notice the alleged "4 feet of snow" from the dire warnings of the rangers in the last few week just didn't seem to be materializig as we drove higher and higher.

When we at last reached our destination, parked the car near the trailhead, got out and looked around, every one of us realized that we'd never SEEN so much snow. The level of retardedness of the information on conditions we were given was quite mind-boggling.

As it turns out, it was lucky we DID suffer all the shuttle drama and difficulty down in the Yosemite valley that forced us to drive ourselves here. If we hadn't, we'd have taken a shuttle here carrying every piece of gear the rangers said we needed , and been forced to carry a lot of extra weight we just didn't need.

We hastily stripped down our packs to just the stuff we needed and left the rest behind in my car, and (at long painful last) managed to get on the trail upward and inward--toward Cathedral Peak.

As we hiked, we ran into a bunch of people coming out toward the road. Bizarrely, every party gave us dire warnings about getting lost in the snow up ahead, and freaking out about how they'd gotten lost themselves and wasted many hours trying to find their way back.

To us, it just looked like they were ill equipped--or they just weren't thinking when they headed in in the first place. I had difficulty imagining ANYONE getting lost in such an approach area... seems a little ridiculous to me if looked at a map, you're following your landmarks and have any kind of basic idea how to navigate in the wilderness. We even ran into a few parties of bigtime backpackers who you'd think would have that skill... but apparently not. LOL

Anyway, we encountered our first significant snowfield on the trail about an hour and a half up the trail, but we stuck to our original plan--to traverse around the base of the back of Cathedral and continue toward our destination.

Dan and Peter were lots of fun, and Dan is a great navigator who did a great job of keeping us on course and heading up to where we needed to be. Having never been in the area before, I was glad he knew where he was going. :-)

And then, just cresting a ridge, we happened upon one of the most startlingly beautiful places I've ever had the privilege of witnessing in the wild--so we decided to set our camp there (but later... there's still climbing to do today).

We dropped our heavy packs and stripped the weight down to a couple liters, a length of 6mm rope in case we needed it, and generally went a lot lighter. We started up the Mountaineer's Route on Cathedral Pe and akmade really good time, and soon enough, we were halfway up the mountain with about 800 vertical feet to go.

The higher we went, the terrain got rougher, and we had to pick our way up the shoulder of the mountain more carefully. Eventually, it changed to class 3/4 scrambling over huge boulders and talus, grown through with tough scrub, and the terrain got tougher still.

Eventually, it became apparent that the stiff mountaineering boots I brought with me on the errant "OMG, SNOW!" advice of the park rangers might actually be more problematic than helpful the closer I got to the summit, and as the terrain became increasingly more fragmented.

The problem, I found, was that although they're quite flexible in the ankle **for mountaineering boots**, they weren't flexible ENOUGH, and forced my knee outward involuntarily during climbing moves, which threatened to roll my toe off whatever foothold it had purchase on in the rock--Mostly fine, but kind of dangerous in spots with more exposure.

Also, we'd left our crampons and ice axes behind at our campsite (thinking we wouldn't need them), and although not super exposed, ahead was a large snowfield with significant enough exposure from a slip with no way to arrest that you could easily fall down the huge trough at the base of the Eichorn Pinnacle on your way the valley floor 1,500 feet below.

I wasn't comfortable with that, given the gear I had with me (and that which I lacked), so I pretty much decided a couple hundred vertical feet below the summit that it would be unwise for me to continue farther up the mountain. Dan and Peter thought it over and decided to press on toward the summit.

Our designated turnaround time was 6:45pm, but they made slower progress than expected over that snowfield and upward toward the summit since they'd left me, carefully picking their way across to find a reasonably safe route, and they shouted back to ask for a few more minutes.

I wasn't too concerned, given the fine weather and the fact that there was plenty of daylight left, and that we had no significant soft snow or rockfall hazard to deal with on the descent.

As I waited, I had a chance to observe my surroundings, and I was just blown away, especially knowing that around the ridgeline across the snow was a sharp nearly vertical cliffdrop straight to the valley floor.

Dan, an experienced rock climber, and Peter both reached the highest point on the mountain below the unique spire of rock that marked the path to the true summit 20 feet overhead before deciding that their lack of rope and some minimum protection made ascent of the final summit block unsafe. Bummer... they had to settle for stopping just below summit. Smart choice, however.

It was a spectacular, safe ascent with no incidents, and it was an unbelievably beautiful day, and as we descended back to our campsite, the vistas we just staggering. Hard to believe this is just a few short hours from my front door, really.

After descending the high boulder fields and steep, rough rock, we walked back onto stable snow and rock along the dazzling shoulder of the alpine lake cirque, at the base of which the rest of our gear was parked.

The sun began dropping lower into the sky, and slight tinges of orange started to come out, and as we cruised back into our chosen camp spot for the night, we looked up and saw the cirque bathed in reddish orange hues that just took my breath away. The peaceful silence, broken only byt the sound of the snowmelt rushing out fron under the snowfield across the lake, was powerful, cleansing, and utterly sublime. Just an unbelievably beautiful place to camp. (We theorized that camping here might not actually be allowed, but we weren't entirely sure -- so we went for it.) P.S. Bear canisters SUUUCK.

We pitched the tent, filtered some water to refill our bottles, cooked up some stupendous hot meals, it got dark... listened to the bats... and crashed. a completely awesome day.

June 26, 2010 - Yosemite Valley (Saturday)

Watch for links to video below, and click on pics for larger versions.

11:40pm

Today was a pretty wacky piece of adventure comedy.

A while back, a new friend of mine, Dan--knowing I was training for a guided climb of the northeast side of Shasta in a month or so--kindly invited me to go with him and two buddies on a 3-day, 3-summit weekend excursion into the high country of Yosemite. He thought it might be a good training ground for building on my skills from Alaska--and he was right.

Being that this was to be an "early season" climb starting in the Tuolumne area, though, we needed to know how to prepare. Snow? Dirt? Ice axes and crampons? How cold was it? In the weeks and days leading up to our departure, we all made a few calls to the park ranger station to stay in touch with the changing conditions so we didn't overpack, or worse, show up on the mountain without something we really needed.

By all accounts from every ranger we talked to, the entire Tuolomne area was still under 4 feet of snow, and required snowshoes for backcountry travel, though there was little to no avalanche danger in the areas we were headed, as the snow was all pretty well consolidated by this time of year.

OK... no problem. After a bunch of back and forth on whether we were going, snow or not, Dan's second buddy bailed, we packed accordingly and Dan, his buddy Peter and I set out from the Bay area for our weekend excursion. We made pretty good time (except for the part where Peter... uhh... "lost" his sunglasses... HAHA), and we arrived in the Yosemite Valley around 3:30pm.

The original plan was to park the car in the Valley and take a shuttle up to Tuolumne Meadows and pretty much hike and climb our way back. The idea was that we'd hit 3 summits along the way: Cathedral Peak (10,700 feet), Clouds Rest (9,926 feet), and Half Dome (8,842 feet), ending back in Yosemite Valley near the car in early afternoon of day three. Pretty straightforward.

Upon arrival in the Yosemite Valley, the first task was to go pick up our permits at the ranger station's permit office. Peter and I waited in the parking lot for Dan to run in and back out with a permit in hand--and we waited--and waited. Eventually, Dan came back, frustrated but anxious to get going. Apparently there were a zillion stupid people in the permit line who had no idea what they wanted to do when they arrived, and were using the window personnel as tour guides to help them decide. Ugh.

The wait killed nearly all the time we'd planned to park, pack up, and hoof it back to the shuttle pickup area to catch the last ride of the day to Tuolumne at 5pm.

By the time we got parked (after parking once, getting out of the car, saddling up with packs, getting a ways on foot and then realizing we should be parked in another lot across the valley), we had about 15 minutes to make the run, so we hastily saddled up our packs (again) and headed out (again) on the run across the valley.

We took a long footbridge across a swampy meadow and headed straight across the middle of the valley, thinking we'd just meet the loop road on the other side and cut off some time. (We realized later we should have turned left and headed down the road instead... but that's a whole other thread to this story.)

Almost immediately (but invisibly from our takeoff point) we found ourselves blocked by the Merced river, and try as we might, we just couldn't find a suitable crossing.

With just 5 minutes remaining to catch the last shuttle of the day and all of us sweating like hell from running with heavy packs, we spotted a logfall across the river. In desperation, we went for it.

And like a lot of things out here, it turned out to be tougher than  it looked. The river was only about 30 feet wide at t his point, but the connecting log network was less than stable, and not completely accessible all the way across.

I was looking down, focused on making sure my own feet landed on the right logs, but up ahead, I heard a loud crack. I looked up from my own precarious crossing just in time to watch Dan teeter under the weeight of his pack--and fall into the river.

The spot he went into happened to be a deep trough under a huge uprooted tree on its side, so he was able to keep himself from going in completely by scrambling, flailing and struggling to grab hold of the roots. He went in up to about his chest, pack, boots, and all.

Pretty alarming... the current was strong here, and I was too far away to be able to reach him in any sort of rapid fashion, but I called out to him to make sure he was ok. Peter, who had crossed first and was already on the far bank, heard the same loud CRRRACK! I did, alertly spotted the problem, dropped his own pack on the shore, and bounded back out the fallen logs to help. He grabbed Dan's pack and helped haul him out of the water, and then grabbed one of my Nalgene bottles that was floating away. (Like an idiot, I'd dropped it while fumbling to get it onto a gear loop so I could go help Dan.)

Finally, we all reached the far side, wet, out of breath, and still far from our destination shuttle stop.... FOILED! We threw or packs back on (complete with snow shovels, crampons, and other cold weather gear strapped to the back) and trudged down the valley a ways, and then realized our best alternative for staying the night would be to go pitch camp at the backpacker's campground. It was quite far out of the way, presumably so that paying park tourists (a.k.a. the revenue stream) don't have to see the smelly, dirty, tired backpackers that are a constant in Yosemite.

So we walked back to the car and drove to the backpackers campground. Ugh. After we got camp set up, it was starting to get dark, and we began to consider our food options for the night: get the stoves out, or walk back down to the village and get pizza and beers at the lodge. Hardly a choice, so we zipped up the tent and hoofed it once again BACK toward the village. Along the way, we walked past the spot where Dan and the Merced river got to know each other. It was a long way to the lodge in gathering dark, but the payoff was awesome. A good pepperoni, olive, mushroom, and bacon pizza can cure many ills, and we were soon laughing and chatting again.

After dinner, we decided as long as we were in the area, we should track someone down who could help us figure out when the earliest shuttle to Tuolumne departed the valley, and we found what we thought was the best POSSIBLE person: the head shuttle dispatcher herself! We told her of our troubles, and after much hunting and radioing of other people to double-confirm, she informed us that the earliest shutle in the morning left at 10:55am. Perfect... no early rising necessary to break camp!

It was about this time that I spotted a sign on the dispatcher's building that my buddy Todd would reallllly appreciate. Armed with this new information and now confident of our plan, we then marched back to camp--in pitch black, mind you, because none of us had thought to bring a headlamp to dinner--at dusk---stupid haha)

When we got there, we pulled out the headlamps and gathered around the maps we had of our original proposed route to see we could still pull off the route we intended with the new shuttle schedule. We decided it was still possible, as long as we got ON the shuttle in the morning... guess we'll just have to see! :-)

Epilogue: Talkeetna, AK - May 22, 2010

Watch for links to video below, and click on pics for larger versions.

I woke this morning with a pretty good headache, and I look (and sorta feel) like death haha. Too much partying last night, I guess haha. I didn't get to bed until deeeeeeep into the morning hours... people kept buying round after round and slamming 6-ers on the table! What's a boy supposed to do? Sheesh. I think Denis and I were some of the last few people left in the Fairview Inn at closing time.

Luckily, some extra special anti-hangover medicine was made available at the table, and actual food included another pair of those mindblowing cinnamon rolls from the Talkeetna Roadhouse. After that, we all went back to the TeePee to get our crap and met in a back alleyway behind Denali Overland Transport--a weird combination of gift shop and shuttle service--to load up the van for the drive back to Anchorage. And already I longed for just one more look at the terrifying ridges of Mt. Hunter that I'd been staring at all week long.

It was a long drive. Or so it seemed to me, anyway. Reason is, I've had to PEEEE all morning, and I keep forgetting (this entry seens to be generally rather bathroom heavy hahaha).

Along the way, we stopped for coffee at a great little roadside stand in Wasilla for some excellent espresso, and then, like an idiot, I managed to get back in the van, sit down, and enjoy my espresso long enough to oops... realize I hadn't take a leak as the van started to move again for the next leg of our journey. Doh!

Aside from that, however, one of the things I learned on the drive back -- once again from Tyler -- was that the first big mountain range we'd driven through on the way in from the Anchorage airport to Talkeetna 10 days ago was the Chugach Range. He also informed me that it was visible from the Anchorage airport. I didn't even realize I was taking pictures of 10 days ago... (!) AWESOME!

But why is this really cool? Because the Chugach Range is very high on my list of places under consideration for my first heli-ski trip. Tyler mentioned an especially interesting fact about the Chugach that actually explains why it's such a good place to heli-ski: although the summit elevations of most of the mountains in it are rather unimpressive with numbers around 8,000 and 9,000 feet, the lowest points of the range pretty much dip into the sea, which means almost ALL of their 8,000 or 9,000 feet height is prominence--meaning exposed and skiable (or climbable).

On another mountain, your base camp might sit at, say, 5,000 feet above sea level, and you might climb from there to an 8k or 9k summit--only 4,000 vertical feet of prominence. A 9,000 foot Chugach peak, by contrast, is almost two vertical miles to its summit from where you start climbing (or skiing down, as the case may be). Many of the biggest mountains in the world have far less prominence than most of the peaks in the Chugach Range--an incredible fact, but such is the scale of things in Alaska.

Arriving at the Anchorage airport was uneventful (other than I finally BOLTED to the bathroom hahahaha) but then, after we all rescheduled our plane tickets, we were left with many many MANY hours of a whole lot of nothing to do--with my fellow climbers (Denis, Jeff, and Paul shown here).

I think I had something like 13 hours to sit in the airport and do nothing but think about how much I wanted to just sleeeeeeeep. Once again, I spent a lot of time hanging out at the same bar I sat at on the way IN (but this time with my climbing compadres).

The pizza at that place truly suuuuuucked... especially after such a good one at Mountain High Pizza Pie in Talkeetna the day before. Also, the  garlic knots suuuuucked big balls. Actually, so did the salads--and now that I think about it, pretty  much everything else, too, except the beers. The cheese sticks weren't bad, I guess. Hard to screw up deep fried cheese.

We spent some time wandering the hallways, shopping, goofing off, eating, and eventually, I became extremely bored and apparently rather easily entertained by... the floor...? Hours later, it got no better, and I became STUPENDOUSLY bored.

But the time passed, and as I watched each of my climbing compatriots peel off one by one, each headed back to their own worlds, the lives they left behind, I couldn't help but feel a little sad that it was coming to an end. All I trained for, all I worked for now behind me, and nothing but incredible memories now. And as they left, I became the last remaining RMI AK Seminar 2010 team member in Alaska, left to wander the marble hallways of the concourse for hours on end, a sunburnt ghost of an experience past.

Absolutely, completely, utterly, amazingly, mind-bendingly, incredibly, and ultimately magnificent... and here endeth my first Alaskan saga. Glad to be home safe and sound.

May 21, 2010, Kahiltna Glacier and Talkeetna, AK

Watch for links to video below, and click on pics for larger versions.

On a glistening, crystalline morning as beautiful as today, it's sort of a shame that an unfortunate misinterpretation of our plane's arrival time on the glacier turned into another full-on hurry up and wait kind of day again. Also a bit comical... you shoulda seen us move. HAHA

Still tucked in our fluffy warm down bags at around 6am, we all heard Tyler head noisily down toward Kahiltna Base Camp to have a chat with Lisa, the Kahiltna Base Camp manager--and then heard him running back into camp shouting a rabble rousing call to wake us all up. "Get up! Get your stuff together! Pack up! Let's GOOOO!!!!"

Obligingly, we all bolted out of our tents, and now, having moved camp three times, we were able to  pack up camp, get loaded and moving all our packs and bags on sleds out of camp down the snowy trail to "Kahiltna International Airport" in short order, and in a surprisingly organized fashion--only to find once we reached the runway, out of breath and breakfastless, that the misinterpretation had itself been misinterpreted, and that we ACTUALLY had another hour before our plane was set to touch down on the glacier. Doh!

So here we were, standing around in the snow next to the NPS tent, wishing we were all back in our poofy down bags for another hour--or having breakfast--or something. Sooo funny how these crazy things go down out here. :-)

Anyway, NOW there's time to stand around the airstrip, and enjoy the serenely and strikingly beautiful sunrise coming up behind the Radio Control Tower peak we'd climbed several days before, pick our noses, put on  more sunscreen, and... wait a minute... is that Jason about to make coffee on the runway? HAHAHA Awesome!

But then... wouldn't ya know it... just as our heartrates came down and we'd all relaxed, and I'd unpacked the remaining food from one of my stuffsacks into a messy pile of Ziploc bags in the snow to rummage for a tasty morsel or two for "breakfast", sat down on my pack in the snow to snarf while enjoying a leisurely wait for a plane that was still an hour hence--wait... uhhh... what's that soun... omg, THERE'S THE PLANE NOW! Quick, put the food and coffee away! Repack your crap! HAHA

Turns out that the misinterpretation of the misinterpretation that had rousted us from toasty, fluffy slumber in the first place--was misinterpreted! (Ever hear of radios, people? Sheesh lol)

Total goofiness ensued as we split up teams to decide who would fly out first. The weather was certainly good for flying today, but having already jumped all over the front seat position for the flight in, I decided to sit in the middle of the plane this time to let someone else have a shot at it. As it turned out, my decision would have been overridden anyway, because there was some dude riding shotgun that, by all appearances, was from K2 Air's HQ. He seemed to be here to inteview pilots and ground personnel on the status of various operational and performance aspects of the company itself. Weirrrrd...

Whoever he was, he and the pilot proceeded to have a spectacularly boring conversation over the plane headphones for everyone in the cabin to suffer through the entire journey back to Talkeetna, so naturally, I took my cans off for most of it and focused on taking some fresh photos and video of the Range as we departed.

And with delight, I found I could now identify all the mysterious peaks, jagged crags, wicked outcrops, and crevasse-riddled slopes that, on the flight here, I had no hope of deciphering. I took great pleasure in doing so for as long as I could glimpse its staggering beauty.

Watching the snow and ice give way to black, rich, and wet glacial moraine and earth with rivers of crystal-pure glacial runoff snaking its way in giant rivulets in all directions, ultimately coalescing into what would eventually become the Susitna river (and other  major tributaries and waterways) was a reluctant joy.

On the one hand, I was sad to see mighty Denali and the Range fade into the distance behind us, but at the same time, I began to notice my own involuntary amazement at the new-again experience of the flash-flooding of vivid color that seemed to be rushing back into the world around me.

Having spent the last 9 days in a staggeringly beautiful but nevertheless austere world of pretty much just white, black, and glacier blue, seeing the deep and variously green-shaded forests, black earth, blue waters materialize around us below sent my brain into a pleasureable state of information overload.

Speaking of overload, it seemed like the plane was a bit overloaded, and the pilot for this leg of our journey, though clearly more "experienced" (read: old) wasn't nearly as much fun as the other guy. Lots of air miles on this guy.

But what do I care? All that matters at this point is a shower (and a second shower and a third one just for good measure, just to get 10 days of stink off haha), along with a nap and some good food back in Talkeetna, and he did just fine getting us back on the ground.

Once back in Talkeetna, we set to the mundane work of pitching the tents to dry, sorting out group gear, throwing away all the garbage we generated on the glacier (since it has to be packed out) and unpacking and repacking all the other crap we had left behind 9 days ago.

We all also took the time to divest ourselves of all the extra food we'd brought along, so we didn't have to pay the airlines to ship it back home with us. And since the food would all go into the food stores of an RMI Denali expedition two weeks hence that would be led by Tyler, assisted by Jason and Mike, it would not go wasted.

In fact, Jason and Tyler had told stories a few days earlier about how it was possible for a knowlegeable climber to come to the Alaska Range with almost no food at all and eat for free every day indefinitely, because there are so many climbers on the glacier eager to shed the weight of their extra food to any willing takers. I was astonished to learn that there's something of a minitaure grey market here for valuable items like salami, cheese, peanut butter, crackers, extra fuel, and all manner of other desireable, non-perishables.

Anyway, that all took us a few hours, and in the process, Tyler asked Denis and I to pitch the huge Mountain Hardwear Dome tent to dry it out along wit the others--the monster space station shaped canopy that was used to protect our hidden cache from enterprising ravens as we moved up the glacier to climb Mt. Frances on the 18th.

The comedy of this exercise was that neither he nor I had any idea how to pitch this one, but since it was just a drying out situation, we figured getting it perfect wasn't THAT important, as long as ventialtion was able to flow through it.

The lumpy, not-at-all-huge-or-correct tent-like travesty we erected resembled nothing of what a properly pitched MH Dome should look like... this was bumpy, small, lopsided, and totally hilarious--and once again, we cracked up laughing and shot a few goofy photos of us "expert mountain climbers" posing with our misshapen handiwork.

Once done, Denis and I headed back to the Teepee (our motel) for some much needed hygeine. (Lemme tell ya, a single pair or two of underwear just never seemed like enough for 10 sweaty days in the Range. LOL)

Anyway, after cleaning up, we decided to go for a wander through town to see what we could see, picked up Jerry somewhere along the way ("AWESOME!" haha)--love that guy--and maybe find some food and gifts. For food, we decided to go to Mountain High Pizza Pie... where we found Jason, Mike, and Tyler already sitting on the patio with beers and waiting for their pizza to arrive.

They'd ordered a Meat Lover's pizza, which is what we had ordered too, so it was decided that the 6 of us would all split both pizzas, thereby ensuring a constant stream of HOT pizza. It worked out great, and we all got drinking and reflecting and talking more about next plans and such. Good times.

I picked up the bill for the guides and the guys, and now fully satisfied, we set about finding some goodies to take home with us. I found an excellent SuperTopo book on climbing in the Alaska Range, some interesting antique glass fishnet floats that were used by Japanese fisherman in the Bering sea long ago, and are still washing up on shore to this day, and a bunch of other crap to take home... it was raddddd. (I even went for a much-needed espresso, as all the coffee we had on the glacier was dreadful.) Haha

There was some lazy time--chillout in the Teepee, hang out around town, whatever--and then we all reconvened for dinner at Denali Brewing Company's new restaurant, Twister Creek.

Everyone was all tidy now (thank god haha), and we shared a few well-earned toasts, talked more about the future for each climber, and started laying the foundations for our various AK enterprises next May. Sounds like Ben, Paul, and Jerry are pretty serious about going to Denali next year, while Denis and I will hopefully end up on Foraker.

After that came the obligatory partying at the Fairview--and parrrtyyyy we did. It's very strange, seeing pretty girls and nice civilized things after a while out in the wilderness. They smell good, they look good, and it's all brand new again. Odd. Sorta like the whole colors thing I mentioned earlier.

I felt like that old stereotypical image of a dusty, weatherbeaten, interaction-deprived prospector coming in from months in the desert with his mule and seeing civilization again. HAHA At any rate, the band, The Denali Cooks, was awesome. They had a nice, casual, easygoing bluesy-influenced and well-rehearsed, polished sound to just chill out to with lughs and friends, and this night was just what Dr. Ben ordered. (Dr. Ben is on the right... Jeff's on the left, Paul's in the middle of that pic. :-)

On my first bathroom break of the night, I noticed that nearly one whole wall of the Fairview's men's room was a chalkboard, and I was face to face with a huge chalk scrawl for the RMI party, presumably put up by Tyler and Jason (but they denied it). ;-)

I had some cool conversations outside with Jason and Tyler, and shared another cigar. One odd aspect of this whole guiding thing, I've decided,  is gratuities for the guides themselves. Maybe I'm unique in this opinion, but by the time we get off the mountain, we've already paid a shitload of money for the expedition and everything associated with it, and although it's nice for them, they ARE getting paid by RMI to take their teams out and bring them back safely... it's their JOB--and gratuities just aren't that necessary. It would be like me asking for a tip from any customer that uses my company's web site to do something. Silly.

Thing is, it's not like they're getting paid on commission based on the number of climbers they bring back alive, and RMI doesn't give them a reduced salary with the expectation that they'll make up the rest of their living expenses in tips like a waitress might, either.

That said, I don't mind giving them $40 or $50 each as an extra thank you for the experience and knowledge, but more than that seems excessive to me... especially when it's $50 x 3 guides. And I'd already bought a big meal and beers for all three of them earlier. Still... it seemed like they weren't all that happy with that. Maybe it's just me, though. I dunno.

Regardless, with our first AK expedition now behind us, a massive amount of fantastically interesting and critical information packed into our brains by direct experience and hands-on training, and the bonds of friendship growing amongst various people on the team, it was time to pack up and say goodbye--for now.

Denis has had an interesting fascination with Denali since we got here, but since he and I have been chatting more and more about the possibility of coming back to AK next year--after spending a lot more time on mountains like Shasta and Rainier--his attentions have turned more and more toward Foraker. I can't tell you how much that would please me... Denis and I get along great, and we seem to share similar levels of acceptable risk, as well as climbing values.

As I write this, I'd say he's probably the stronger climber of the two of us, in part attributable to the fact that he's just had more experience doing it, where I came here brand new. BUT I'm a quick learner, and a highly motivated one. A chance to climb something as formidable as Foraker with Denis is something I'm very interested in.

As such, my drive to reach new heights, improve my knowledge, build on my experience and to put in plenty of time between now and next May on big mountains, ever-more-challenging terrain, and higher elevations is very stong. Foraker is definitely in my sights... it's just a question of whether those more expert than me think I'm up to it. I am absolutely confident that I am, but whether it happens in 2011 or beyond, I will definitely be back  to AK to climb Mt. Foraker's magnificent Sultana Ridge.

One more AK entry to go...

May 20, 2010 - Kahiltna Base Camp, Alaska Range, AK

Watch for links to video below, and click on pics for larger versions.

 8:32am
We got about a foot of snow last night, so Denis and I have spent the last 40 minutes or so digging out our tent and tightening all the guy lines that anchor it to the snow. Today, I think, is real-life crevasse rescue training, if the guides think it's suitably safe weather for it, and mostly hanging out if not. In that case, it would be maybe some more in-camp discussion of other skills.

If the snow doesn't let up by tomorrow morning, we may have to wait, and even stomp out the glacier runway with other teams here to clear a path for planes to land.

6:04pm

The weather cleared to bright blue skies by about 10am, so as promised, we all suited up and took a walk up the glacier to find a crack to throw ourselves into, so we could all practice the crevasse rescue skills we were taught on our weather day earlier this week.

Before we headed up the glacier today, though, we spent a couple hours on some education in the basics of high altitude medical--made especially interesting by the fact that Ben is a doctor. He was able to illuminate some of the physiological mechanics of conditions like cerebral and pulmonary edemas... interesting stuff.

Anyway, the guides found a good crevasse that wasn't too overhung but was nevertheless huge--60 or more feet across--and we set up 3 stations, where we were all able to rotate efficiently through the training taking place at each. I started by getting down and dirty over the edge, hanging for a few minutes in midair by my harness as I set up for the real task at hand.

My job was to attach two prusiks to the climbing rope in a reasonable amount of time, prusik up the rope, and climb out of the hole--which I did. Prusiks make for hard physical work shimmying up the rope, but it sure beats having to do it with just hands and feet.

Still, getting out was some seeeerious work! I can see now why this is such an important skill to have. I imagined myself exhausted after a long day's climb, falling into a crevasse, and having to do this.... HARD!. Anyway, I climbed out of the hole totally steaming in the cold air from sweat, but I had a great time doing it :-)

Down over the edge when I started, I needed a little extra time getting the prusik setup right--took me a minute to figure out what I was doing wrong, but eventually nailed it, clipped in, and up I went.

Everyone else was rotating through different positions on a mock 4-man rope team. One guy was in the crevasse as the fallen climber, one was the primary anchor position, and two uprope to help anchor, transfer the load, to assist, or to help set up the pulley system that would get our buddy out of the crack.

I rotated to the belay station, and then worked my way through every other position on that rope in the remanining time. Getting through every station has taken most of the day--and what an educational day it's been! WOW!

Now that I know it, I feel like I just now need a lot more practice with these techniques before I have them totally nailed and second nature, but the books I have at home are now suddenly FAR more useful to me, having now had hands-on instruction in 3-dimensions, and interactively. I read a lot in them before I got to AK, but the crevasse rescue portions only kinda made sense to me at the time. Now they REALLY do :-)

10:31pm

We finished up the crevasse rescue earlier in the day and headed back to camp, where Tyler busted out the BBQ grill once again(!)--bacon cheeseburgers and one other incredibly awesome surprise: adult beverages! They've apparently been saving it for the end of the trip. (As this is a Rainier Mountaineering, Inc. trip, what other brand could it be but Rainier haha)

After dinner, we did some avalanche beacon training in camp, which was kinda wacky. Jason was leading the discussion, but Tyler, who seemed to be in a rather stern mood tonight, would bust in with long, passionate additional commentary. He was most aggro about the way to get to a person in an avalanche, and pointed out that the beacon is not your primary search tool initially... your brain is. Jason and Tyler crack me up. They're such good friends, they're like an old married couple

Tyler's philosophy is pretty simple and straightforward: don't walk... SPRINT to where you last saw people go down and visually scan rapidly for lost items or exposed things still on (or off) the climbers. Follow the breadcumbs. Lost gloves, hands, arms poking out of the snow, can lead you right wehere you need to go... but do it FAST.  He went on to say that our shovels and probes are the most immediate things that can potentially save their lives, followed by beacons--and while the beacon is a great tool, the point of it is is not a slow methodical search, because if you spend all this time on getting it just right, people might be dying under the snow. His point was learn to us it, and to do it quickly.

I do agree with much of this... and one of the recurring topics of this seminar came out yet again loudly and clearly through this discussion: be smart, be efficient, and above all, use smarts and efficiency to be safe, and to help keep your friends safe, too--and then that stay way. Common sense and being smart and THINKING about what you're doing and why while you're in the mountains has been talked about and talked about, and it's something I definitely believe in.

I'd characterize myself as a conservative climber anwyay--much of my inspiration has come from pragmatic climbers like Ed Viesturs--and I came here to learn the art of listening to and following your instincts based on what the conditions tell you, even if it means disappointment, turning back or waiting out a long storm. I've learned a great deal about just how to execute on that in my own climbing from the training here in AK, too.

AAAANYway, after beacon training, many group photos of our last night on the glacier together as a team, lots of sunset pics, and general camp jokeyness, I took off my boots for the last time, and we all headed off to sleep for our last night in the breathtaking shadow of Mt Crosson, and Foraker's Sultana Ridge, deep in the Alaska Range... with perfect weather.

Fingers crossed once again that we get off the glacier tomorrow as planned. If we do, tomorrow night will be dinner with certificates, and a lot of partying at the Fairview Inn! Raddddd...

May 19, 2010, Mt Frances basin camp, Alaska Range, AK

Don't forget to click on pics for larger versions, and watch for links to video.

8:40 am
Camp is just stirring this bitterly cold morning. Just went outside the tent for a minute, and realized that we were still shaded by the mountains around us, and a light breeze is blowing. It's a deep, bitter, penetrating cold, probably something like 0 degrees out there.

I can hear the stoves running, and some voices in the posh house, so the guides are probably melting snow for water to be used in our morning ritual of hot drinks and tasty breakfast fixins... good deal, cuz I'm starrrving, and trying to warm up my hands and feet is altogether easier with a hot cider in hand. :-) The plan so far today is to break camp and move back down the glacier for what will probably be some ice climbing training or real-life crevasse rescue training. We'll see.

10:33 am
Just came back from breakfast in the posh house with everyone, and the decision is made: it's to be ice climbing and and fixed line trainings today... cool! I've gotta get a move on, as I'm a little behind on breaking my parts of camp for the move down the glacier.

5:50 pm - Kahiltna base camp

We packed up earlier and headed down the glacier as promised, but stopped about halfway down to Kahiltna base camp with sleds in tow. On break we were instructed to drop our packs, untether from sleds, and grab your crampons, ice axes, an extra layer and a snack or two with some water. Everything else got left there in the m iddle of the glacier, and we struck out from there back across the glacier, up and left toward some glaciated hills and made straight for a cluster of exposed vertical ice walls at the top of a steep slope.

After Tyler and the guides set up the anchor/rope system and tested it, we started into  instruction in the proper use of ice screws as anchors, basic ice climbing techniques, wall scaling, rappelling, belaying, and much more. After that, it was fixed lines--the kind one might find on Denali in the distance, or on Everest--and how to travel safely on them. All super SUPER interesting stuff, and I learned a lot. Around 2pm or so, we headed back to the gear we abandoned ont he glacier earlier, hitched up the sleds, and cruised back down to our previous campsite overlooking the south fork of the Kahiltna... it remained unoccupied, so we dug in once again.

We set up camp, and once again, having had a long day in the sun, we were advised to hole up in our tents, hide out from the sun, eat and drink a LOT to rehydrate and recover, which I did with gusto. We didn't have that many opportunities today to eat or drink, and I felt a bit out of gas and dehydrated from the blistering UV exposure on the glacier with we rolled in and set up around 4:30. I sweated buckets today, so it's good to chill out for a while and see how quickly my energy comes back.

It's been a couple of hours now, and I've downed a lot of food and water. I can hear the XGK stoves from here, and if they're running again, it means the guides are melting snow... as always. It's a constant 4-5 hour ritual each day to keep everyone hydrated. Rumor has it that we're going to be treated to another BBQ night with cheeseburgers, and the staple condiment for practically everything we eat at any meal of the day: sriracha! The spicy hot Thai/Vietnamese chili sauce with the green squeezey lid thing. I don't think scrambled eggs with hash browns, bacon and cheddar in a tortilla are never going to be the same after this without it!

As I'm writing, Denis (shown in our tent here) mentioned it's been near 70 degrees out for the last while, but he and I quite literally fellt the temperatur plummet just now--within a span of just a few minutes as we come into a little shade. 10 minutes ago, we were boiling and sweating, but now I'm heading for my down gear... BRRR!! Like Tyler says: "Welcome to the Range... freeze or fry, baby."

I can hear Jason's music--today it's reggae--drifting lazily and almost inaudibly through camp as we all chill out... it's been quite a nice afternoon here.

10:42 pm
Having all had a huge meal--complete with an exotic (for glacier food) blueberry crumble made by Jason for dessert--we sat around in the posh house and talked into the evening. Well, Tyler, as usual, did most of the talking (haha) but over the course of this trip, the topic of friends the guides have lost to climbing came up frequently. It came up again tonight when Jason mentioned one of his friends who had died attempting to climb a mountain somewhere. I was really curious how these guys, who seem to have so many friends they've lost are able to deal with it, and how (if at all) it changes the way they climb.

We all had a long and interesting chat, and Tyler filled in a lot of gaps and told may other stories about other people. Seems odd for a 30 year old like Jason to have lost over 10 friends to a sport they're all passionate about. I tried to imagine myself at 30, counting up not just friends but ANYONE I knew that had died at when I was that age, and I could only come up with two or three, tops.

I think it's that way for most people--except elite climbers, I guess. But in the end, I do understand why they do what they do... just not sure what all of it means, really. First ascent of this peak, first winter ascent of that peak on a route of Alaska Grade VI, first descent of this, this, and that route... it all seems so mastubatory, somehow. I mean, who cares, really? If you're the person doing all those (admittedly amazing) things, and you're talking about all those successes, all it gives you is bragging rights with your climbing buddies over beers, because nobody outside the climbing community even knows what that means ("how was your hike?" is something I get a lot... ugh). Perilous business, this.

But on the other hand, if you're doing it for purely personal reasons, there would be no NEED to talk about it in the first place, thus making each climb a personal journey into oneself--and nobody would ever hear about it--right? So every time I think about this, it brings me back to "who cares, REALLY?"

Anyway, all that aside, Denis and I have been laughing our asses off all night long, joking around and such. We landscaped our new tent surroundings in the snow... a curb, moveable blocks in vestibule footwell to block spindrift, cut steps in the back hill, and even cut a roundabout pathway for others to skirt our tent more easily. Circular driveway? You bet! :-)

I love Denis... he's an awesome dude.