First Ascent of "The Fall Line" 1110m M5 65 Degrees

This October, during a rare high pressure system, Gabe Hayden and I managed an interesting new line on the West Face of West Tower in the Mendenhall Towers outside Juneau.  In an attempt to further promote the "hike in, hike out" approach ethic, we opted to hike in from Montana Creek over Grandchild Peak.  This is not a recommended approach route for this time of year.  We were slowed by extremely high winds and insufficient snow pack for skiing.

We had no idea what to expect.  October is generally not a good climbing month in Southeast Alaska.  It is uncommon to see even a single day without precipitation.  We packed for bear; a big wall rack, 12 screws and all the munge pro we could gather.  The North Faces were out of condition so we opted for the West Ridge.  This line has been climbed several times.  Scott Fischer and friends made the first ascent I know of during their traverse attempt, The second was made by the fine fellows who's names I cannot recall, and the only other ascent was made by Mike Miller and Partner.

Gabe and I made our camp in the moraine on the South side of the towers in the moraine to escape the wind.  Leaving from there we skied to the Western Toe and began our ascent.  The first few thousand feet are simple steep snow slopes with some crevasse navigation.  The meat of the climb begins as you gain the saddle between the Rabbit Ears and the West Tower.  From there a fun pitch of M5 dumps you onto the West Face.

Our line probably only makes sense in the conditions we had.  A wind crust covered the rock adding some stability to many of the difficult sections.  We simul-climbed the face in 3 pitches.  Wind in the knife edge summit ridge made for some very precarious climbing.  It was Gabe's first time up the West Tower and again we had perfect blue skies on the summit.

After an uneventful descent we skied/hiked out the Mendenhall glacier to the West Glacier trail (a.k.a. the trail of tears).  We dubbed our route "The Fall Line" 1110m M5 65 degrees in reference to both time of year we climbed and the general interest in the possibility of a spring ski descent.  I'll try to get a composite of our line up sometime.  For some reason this site doesn't load pdfs.

 Gabe starting up the crux pitch

 Gabe Traversing high on the route

Another summit shot!

Western Kokshaal-Too, Ochre Walls and Kyzyl Asker

September 4th, we miss our flight from LA to Istanbul.  September 5th we miss our flight from Istanbul to Bishkek.  September 6th both of our gear bags fail to arrive in Bishkek.  September 8th a sewage pipe bursts in the kitchen of our b&b spewing feces all over.  Sometimes trips begin smooth, sometimes trips begin poorly, sometimes trips begin with frustration, anxiety and poop soaked socks.

English is not commonly spoken in Kyrgyzstan.  Correction, English is not spoken in Kyrgyzstan.  To further complicate matters all of the signs and script are in Cyrillic so there is no hope of understanding pronunciation.  Shopping is a blur.  The street Bazaar has been feeling like I am wading through a salad.  Our bags arrive.  We're in a van all day.  We arrive in Naryn.

Let's go! Our driver Sasha's English catch phrase.  Dirt roads in the hippie van lead to creek beds and a nasty bog.  Bogs don't bother Sasha one bit, he drives directly into one and gets the van stuck.  We stop for the night and I have the single worst bout of altitude related illness I have ever had.  We have gained over 2000m in a single day and are at nearly 4000m.  My head is exploding, our van is stuck and Sasha is trying to use two jacks that look like the we part of a stock kit from a VW beetle to lift us out.

Basecamp is awesome.  The sun is out we are wearing jeans and relaxing in the grass.  The the terminal moraine from the Komorova glacier begins just a few feet away.  We spend a couple of days acclimating and decide to go and climb a new line on the Ochre Walls near Sean Issac and Scott Decapio's "Beefcake."  We leave and night get totally lost in the moonless blackness and end up having an open bivy waiting for a the extra lazy fall sunrise.  We head back to basecamp and sleep resolved to hike in the next morning and hike back in the dark.

We cruise to the base of the wall and begin the lung busting lower slopes.  Heavy breathing and thin ice will be the theme today.  We move well and top out with plenty of daylight to descend.  As has been an on going theme with Sam and my partnership we suffer on the approaches but everything else goes extremely smooth once on route.  We dub our line "Mr. Casual" 600m AI5.

Excited to get on our main objective we pack up what we hope will be 12 days of food and start walking toward the pass that will take us into China and the South side of Kyzyl Asker.  The weather had other ideas.  A storm rolled in blanketing the region with several feet of snow and whiting out the glacier.  Two days spent stewing in the tent and we can't take it any longer.  We head out into the white hoping to make some progress.

Some map problems have us running for Kyzyl with light packs, a few days food, a tarp and a couple of canisters of fuel.  Thinking we would have two days of approach, we arrive at the base in just a few hours.  Another horrible bivy, more storm, no tent and we are running back over the pass to gather basecamp provisions.  Finally we are in position.  We have a few days to spare, but we have a full day of perfect weather and decide to launch.

We put nearly 900m of air between us and the ground the first day, the climbing is spectacular.  We spend a couple of hours chopping a ledge at 5300m and settle in for the night.  Sometime after midnight the snow began to fall.  Spindrift instantly consumed the line.  We hid under our tarp for nearly 24 hours hoping the snow would stop so we could move.  With the constant spindrift and frequent larger powder avalanches we were pinned unable to safely move up or down.

It cleared for a few hours that night and we made our escape.  The rappel was plagued by small freezing avalanches. Sam would yell from above, I would duck, the world would go white then we would continue down.  Near the middle of the rappel we heard the sound we both feared.  A loud crack and crashing noise from high on the mountain.  We tucked in, nothing happened but the sound got louder.  I looked at Sam a few feet below me and through myself on top of him and the anchor as the avalanche hit.  This was not just powder, heavy blocks of snow and ice pummeled us.  Unable to move we just tried to stay as close to the face and anchor as possible and both of us could only hope that no bigger blocks of material were on the way to wipe us off the mountain.

We got away unscathed, more or less, and continued to the base.  This is the best line I have tried in the mountains and will return.  I feel fortunate to have gotten off in one piece but I can wait to go back.  We are in Bishkek now waiting to go home.  I am excited to see friends and family.  I'm excited for ice season.

 Shopping in the bazaar is hard because everything is fresh and delicious looking

Lunch time with Sasha

 Sam following a spicy little pitch of ice on the f.a. of Mr. Casual

 Celebrating on top of the Ochre Walls

 Sam leading into the fun on the SW Face of Kyzyl Asker

 Sam taking off into the steeper ice on Mr. Casual

Soul destroying 60 ice to our bivy on the SW Face of Kyzyl Asker

TIme to recap!

I am trying to get better at dealing with the bloggo-sphere!  Facebook is the lazy mans blog and I think I have even been slackin on that so here we go!

Had an awesome albeit unproductive trip in March around the Juneau area.  Some friends and I put up some monsters. http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web12w/newswire-ak-ice

March I linked up with my good friend Tyler Gress in Red Rocks.  Tyler had a negative experience in Red Rocks on his last trip and I wanted to show him that it is, in fact, badass and totally wild.  We kicked things off on the Brownstone Wall climbing a fun .10c I can't remember the name of but it was super fun.  Next day we headed to the Black Velvet Canyon to climb "Fiddler on the Roof."  I think it is like .10d, but again super fun and exposed!  By far the best climb on that wall in my opinion.

We decided to go for a hike up to the Cactus Flower Tower and have a whack at the Warrior.  Well somebody beat us to the punch and they were having and "enjoyable climb."  Opting out of the epic we dropped our packs and came back the next day only to get slaughtered.  That climb is awesome!  Wrecked as we were we decided to take a rest day.

Adventure Punks!  If you haven't done it go and do it! Seriously! It is so good.  If getting on that climb wasn't enough Bon Iver was playing at the Hard Rock.  Again, HUGE surprise.  Before this show I may have listened to Bon Iver if I wanted to fall asleep at a party at the Playboy mansion.  They came on stage with a 9 person band and rocked the house!  Top 10 days of my life!  Did I mention Taco Bell drive through taco fest?

Fast forward to May and Clint Helander and my blind date off the couch attempt on the North buttress of Mt. Hunter.  Some heavy drinking led to some festering in a tent waiting for weather... wondering what the hell I was doing wearing Baturas on the Moonflower.  Someone had just bailed because their "brash" partner wore Baturas and got frostbite.  Well my feet were toasty the whole time! (that they were in Baturas).

The weather broke and with 2 other parties getting on the wall and our slow, fat and hopefully successful climbing style we opted for the 8am start.  Better to sleep when it is cold and climb when it is sunny and awesome!  As always in the Alaska Range we found the Bibler/Klewin to be better than advertised.  We were right on schedule.  The only hiccup of the day was a core shot rope we suffered on the Prow...

My friend Justin was on the Wall of Shadows with his buddy Kyle when his crampon broke.  We learned this just as we finished Tamaras Traverse and were a few easy pitches to our bivy.  20ft from the belay Clint's crampon broke behind his secondary points... so much for the North buttess.  We rapped through the night getting to our packs sufficiently pooped, frustrated, and I had a pair of rock hard frozen ski boots to force my feet into.  My feet were totaled.  We gave it one more half hearted attempt and heade back to Talkeetna for a 36 hour bender of legendary proportions.

We will return next year conditioned, hungry, and familiar. It is one month until I head out to Kyrgyzstan with my brother from another mother Sam.  The psych is high!

 Clint in the Twin Runnels lovin life!

 Clint on the Prow! "holy shit dude I just climbed the Prow!" yes you did bud, nice job!

 Looking back across Tamara's Traverse

 Clint following up the McNerthy Ice Dagger

 Headed up to drop off a pack full of toys!

 Yep I put a butt shot of myself up on my blog... what!?

 Heading out on Tamara's aka the "glory pitch."

 Want some more glory? Sure do.  Want start rappelling in about 30minute? Sure don't.

Somethings you do out of necessity.  My toenails will grow back eventually.

Climbs With Cullen

Figured it was time to do a little blog update. Last fall the Niblack project shut down and I was shipped off to Carlin, Nevada (hell). It afforded me several opportunities to get to Indian Creek and remember what it feels like to get totally shamed! Got to climb with my good friend Jason's wife Lisa Nelson for the first time which was a real treat. After she left I linked up with Hunter Brown from Juneau and introduced him to the world of crack climbing. A few days of climbing with Hunter and one night of debauchery in Moab with some familiar Juneau faces and it was back to NV for two weeks.

Caught a bus to SLC, a ride with Lisa's Brother to Moab, a ride with Gabe's sister to the Creek. I'm back round two. I haven't seen Cullen since Zodiac. We head out for a day or two of cragging then a route on the backside of the Bridger Jack Mesa (on which my performance was less than awesome). We had discussed going up to Zion for some brown underwear aid climbing, but opted to go to some obscure cliffs in Northern Arizona Instead.The dreaded American Death Triangle!Thats better!Cullen on the Summit

When you are fat and out of shape you'd better be good at carrying heavy loads on top rope

Cullen had been climbing around these Kaibab cliff bands a bit over the last few years and had a line that had been giving him some grief on a formation called the Tooth. This large desert monolith had the most striking lines I had seen in the area and it's East Buttress definitely had that "come hither" appeal. We hiked to the base packed for bear and worked our way up several hundred feet of extremely loose rock to a decent bivy beneath the first two pitches of technical climbing. It was a lovely night looking out over the Grand CanyonThe next morning found us jumaring up the first aid pitch of the headwall and launching into 3 more engaging aid pitches followed by another few hundred feet of 5th class to a beautiful summit. It was a wonderful 2nd ascent of an asthetic adventerous route on a lonely piece of stone in an overlooked part of the American West.
Cullen and I met up two weeks later for three weeks in Ouray. We decided to rent a condo for our stay and after having done that, I will never do it any other way. We had cable so we were able to watch a college bowl game almost every night of the trip. We got a ton of climbing in. The Ribbon, Ames, Birdbrain, Whorehoses, Goldline, Hoser's Hwy, Stairway, a day at Skylight, a bunch of time in the park, an attempt on Bridal Veil (the ice was in miserable shape). Cullen took off and I had the place to myself for a few days. I linked up with Mike O'Donnell for a couple short days of climbing. Hung out with Jason and just enjoyed the party that is the Ouray Ice Festival.

Can't have a blog post without a butt shot. This is near the top of Birdbrain.

Following the second pitch of Ames.

I think we are all caught up. I am waiting for my flight out of Elko right now. I have three weeks back in Juneau hope to get some ice in. Peace