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EB, Chris Ferro, Jason Elliot, and
myself on our way to Talkeetna. Pedro Espina and Vik Gowda arrived
a day later.
At Talkeetna we'll pick up a bush plane to take
us to the glacier. |
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Flying up the Ruth Glacier.
Mt. Dickey is on the left, Mt. Barille is behind it to its right.
The Moose's Tooth is to the right opposite Mt. Barille, but out of view
in this picture. |
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From the window of the plane I got my first view
of the Ham and Eggs route. It is the snow and ice couloir going up
the left side of the hump in the center of the picture. That hump
is the summit of the Moose's Tooth. The West summit of the Moose's Tooth
is far left, out of the picture. |
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Coming in for a landing at Mountain
House. The snow capped rock ridge to the left is Mt. Dickey. The snow slope
to the far left is Mt. Barille. We camped near the Mountain House, a hut
on top of the small rock mound to the right of the propeller, level with
the base of Mt. Dickey's buttress. |
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The plane, a Beaver, just dropped
me off at the Mountain House air strip. There were 4 passengers and one
pilot, who was flying 3 Denali guides to Kahiltna Base. He had room
for one more body and gear, so I jumped in. The rest of our team
would arrive in an hour on another plane. Kahiltna Base, the starting point
for Denali's west buttress, is a few miles to the east. |
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After landing, we decided to camp
on the Mountain House hill for a better view and to be out of the way of
airplanes and flightseers. Here is Chris (yellow) and Jason, I think,
dragging camp up the hill. Dickey's buttress is in the background.
The summit of Dickey is a couple thousand feet above the top of this buttress. |
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Moon over Mt. Dickey. Can you find
the moon?
Later in the trip, Pedro, Vik, EB, and Jason attempted
to climb the slope to the right and proceed to the summit of Mt. Dickey,
but were turned back at the top of the slope. It took many hours to climb
the crappy snow slope and when they got to the top they had difficulty
surmounting the hanging glacier, so they bailed. |
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Jason and EB heading out to Mt. Dickey
on the first day. Up above is the latrine for the Mountain House.
The Mountain House is a hut beyond the ridge which people rent for shelter
and to cook in. We carved seats out of the snow and cooked outside.
Chris, in the red, is in our 'kitchen'. |
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A view behind us of the long slog
back home.
Chris and I are heading over to the Moose's Tooth
to Ham & Eggs. First we must cross the Ruth Glacier, shown here,
then climb halfway up the Moose's Tooth through snow covered valleys to
reach the base of our climb. |
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Me on the Ruth Glacier, Mt. Dickey
is on the left, Mt. Barille on the right. The Japanese Couloir is
on the left side of Barille. We thought we might climb that until
we experienced the horrible climbing conditions.
The Ruth Glacier may be one of the thickest glaciers
in the world. The ice is supposedly 5000 feet deep. The Gorge is
named the Great Gorge because from the bottom of the ice to the top of
the peaks surrounding it is around 9000 feet, one of the deepest in the
world. It was originally surveyed and mapped by Bradford Washburn. |
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Chris below the gargoyle - that chunk
of rock. The West summit of the Moose's Tooth is the high point in
the picture. The snow covered ridge projecting out at us is the West
ridge. EB, Jason, Pedro, and Vik attempted this route to the West summit
of the Mooses Tooth. They were turned back by crappy snow - unprotectable
and poor traction. |
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Cool patterns in the rock. The
black is where the water drips. |
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Here is a slush avalanche sliding
down the rock face. The West summit of the Moose's Tooth is at the
top of the picture.
The route Chris and I took was up this valley
below the slope where the avalanche is. We then hooked a right up a narrow
gully. |
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Chris learns how much synthetic tuna
fish NOT to eat. |
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Here's the gully we took. It
was long and steep, about 900 feet high at about 60 degrees. It is
an avalanche chute - see the avalanche debris? Snow comes off the
rocks above, hits this gully, and slides down. We went through in
the early morning so the snow would be frozen and not prone to avalanche. |
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Here is the top of that gully. |
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After the gully we topped out in soft
deep snow. We were postholing, but at least we were out of the avalanche
chute. Had it been cooler or had we been climbing during night the
snow would have been more frozen and harder. |
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Moose's Tooth massif on the left.
We had to follow along the base of this wall to get to the start of the
Ham and Eggs route. |
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Shaken not Stirred, another (harder)
route on the Moose's Tooth. |
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After 5 hours of postholing, we decided
to camp here. Ham & Eggs is a few hundred feet away (behind us
to the right). The approach took much longer than we expected, due
to the soft snow. We decided to rest a full day before beginning
the climb. We pooled our food and had just enough for another day
before climbing. Then we'd have to make it back to base camp
to eat again. |
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Me - that's Denali in the background
covered by clouds.
The next day we awoke to snow falling - a disaster
for our hopes of climbing. With the avalanche zone below us, we could
only descend a minimum of 1 full day after any snow accumulation stopped.
The last snow storm lasted 4 days and dropped over 3 feet of snow.
With one day of food we didn't have enough time to wait out the storm.
Plus our showshoes were at the bottom of the gully - we cached them there.
We had to get down immediately. |
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Here is Chris setting up a rappel
down the avalanche gully. The snow has slowed down. We had to get
down before any snow accumulated in that chute or on the rocks above. |
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Down out of danger. There is
no snow falling down here, only up higher in the clouds. |
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Myself at the bottom with Chris in
the back. |
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Here's why we really rushed home --
cheesecake and cards.
EB has just returned with Vik, Pedro, and Jason
from attempting the West ridge of the Moose's Tooth. |
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Mt. Dan Beard on the right, Denali
in the background. |
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Around midnight, packing for the Mt.
Dan Beard climb.
EB, Pedro, Jason, and Vik are preparing to climb
Mt. Dickey. |
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The snow ramp on Dan Beard.
Our plan was to climb the snow ramp and sleep
at the snow covered saddle, or col you see here. The next day we'd
go to the summit. This turned out to be another adventure. The ramp
was a 1200 feet high avalanche slope, swept clean by numerous avalanches.
At 1100 feet it steepened to about 70 degrees and became a deep layer of
airy ice crystals frozen together. Each step slid up to the thigh, each
ice axe went all the way in with no resistance. Step on any foot and it
just went deeper instead of you goiing up. Pull on an ice axe and
it just pulled out of the snow. The only way to go up was to pull
on both axes and push gently on both feet simultaneously. It was
dangerous - our snow pickets were useless so we had no pro.
While doing this the sun came out and the slope
started melting. It went to 50 degrees in about 20 minutes.
The slope started melting, and dripping, and clicking. We were waiting
for the avalanches to start raining down on us
Chris was able to climb around to the left side
of the slope and get to a rock overhang. He put in a piton and set
up a belay. I descended down and over to where he was and we set
up a day camp there. We were safe under the overhang from avalanches,
and we were anchored from falling. |
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Here's Chris and our overhang.
The piton is to the right with Chris' daisy chain and my slings attached
to it. We decided to wait all day until the sun went down and the
slopes refroze.
The platform we rested on was all snow. We wondered
if it too might slide, especially with us on top of it now and having carved
a lot of it away (We first carved a snow sofa, which we converted into
a bed later). So we clipped all our gear into the piton and said prayers
to the piton spirit.
We figured in about 12 hours we could go down. |
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Only 11.5 hours left!! |
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Here's the view from our cave.
|
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Glad we didn't have to climb that! |
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Since the climbing doesn't work, Chris
decided to try burrowing! |
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Vik the Ram demonstrating how to organise. |
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Jason and Chris. Since the climbing
was so lousy, we decided to abandon the trip. We called for a flyout
on Saturday, on week after arriving. Original plans were to climb
for 2 weeks. |
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On the flight out. . |
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EB about to airlift an Eagle down
to Seward. |
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Seward marina. |
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Something easy and safe - Sea Kayaking!! |
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Our sea kayaking guides. |
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EB learning how to sea kayak.
He later figured out it was 'feet first'. |
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A Hunch Back Whale from Notre Dame. |
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EB found some Sea Lions. |
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EB shows how drunks are supposed to
sing Jimmy Buffett. |
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Two Alaskan Sea Kayaking Studs.
The End! |