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

Everything Sierra

There are at least 20 cars at the pullout for Fairview Dome. So we decide to wait until afternoon assuming anyone low on the route will have their act together... We were wrong. Four parties are in front of us and moving oh so slowly. Gabe is getting antsy, but I have a smile ear to ear. Sun, granite, hippies I could not be farther away from the dark hole of a mine that I work at on Prince of Whales Island. I love the Sierras. I love Yosemite. I love being smack dab in the middle of a climb. I love taking off my shoes at belays and wiggling my toes. I love the bright/bold colors of the adonized camalots hanging from harness. God I love climbing.

The next day we had our eyes on the 3rd pillar of the Dana Plateau. It is beautiful. I can't believe that we were even considering going to the soggy Stikine instead of coming here. Juneau, and all of Southeast, is experiencing one of the wettest Augusts in history and we are missing it! The Pillar is crowded, but that is to be expected. Gabe has never been to this part of the world before so we are out to tick classics. The final pitch excedes to our expectations as most of the true classics tend to.

After Dana headed out to Conness. Clouds were building all day. In the end we decided to bail. Neither of us are crazy about the idea of being stuck on a Grade V in a thunderstorm that far out. So we bail for Bishop. Everyone had made it sound like it was impossible to get a permit into the Whitney Cirque. It isn't... at all.

We took a rest day in Bishop. Gabe got some work done, after all he told his office simply that he was going to be unavaible for three weeks. Not that he wouldn't even be in the state. Our hope is to get a route on Russell and climb the Harding route on Keeler. We got an early start and hiked with all of our whole kit. After setting up camp we ran over and took a shot at Western Front on Russell.

Finally, we had a climb to ourselves. Both of us are feeling the altitude as we start up the route. It turns out 5.10 at nearly 14,000ft is actually pretty hard. The corner on Western Front is one of the best rock features I have climbed in the mountains. We topped out in the dark and hiked back to camp making it a 16 hour day. Keeler is out of the question, Gabe and I are totally worked. My next trip in I am going for several days and getting properly acclimated.

We head back to Tuolumne to tag Oz on Drug Dome before heading down to the Valley. The third pitch of Oz might very well be the best pitch of 5.10 in the park. It was oh so good.

We had originally wanted to climb the Steck/Salathe and Regular NW Face of Half Dome, but after a night around the campfire we decided to say screw it and jump on the Nose! Gabe had never aid climbed before so what could be better than a 30 pitch C1 to learn? How about a North facing 30 pitch C1? At the top of pitch 6 we had to bail. Temps were just shy of 100 degrees and that was just too much for the boys from Alaska. It was time to get back out the mountains.

Incredible does not even come close to describing the Hulk. I am in love. We ju,ped on Positive Vibrations and got our money's worth. It really is better than Astroman. I cannot imagine a better rock climb. I wasn't up to the challenge sadly. Gabe had to lead the upper crux. We fell, we rested, but we got up it. It seemed like we were going to have a smooth rap off then things went a bit haywire. At the bottom of the first rap the wind cracked the rope as I was taking out of my belay device and I got to watch as it shot out of my hands. Our rope had been chopped on and you need every inch of that 70m to rap Venturi effect it turns out. We ended up rapping most of the wall in the dark running around looking for rap anchors. It was a great adventure and a great climb. I will be back up there as soon as I can. That has to be one of the best pieces of granite on earth!

Well, I am waiting to get laid off and head down to the desert! 2-3 maybe three weeks! Hello Red Rock, Zion, and yeah you too Indian Creek I'll be seeing you shortly!

Good to the last drop. Up high on the Hulk.

The goodness never ends on the Hulk

Still positive on Positive Vibrations

1st crux on Positive Vibrations

Pitch 4 of Oz... I love the Sierras

Gabe getting the last bit of awesomeness on the 3rd pitch of Oz

Enjoyable climbing on the 1st pitch of Oz

Super fun climbing on Positive Vibrations

Sending the 3rd Pitch of Oz on Drug Dome, probably one of the best 5.10 pitches in the park

Resting on "the Wart" on Western Front, Mt. Russell

Hiking into Mt. Russell

Sending dreamy granite on top pitch of the 3rd pillar of Dana

Relaxing behind several other parties on the 3rd Pillar

FFA South Pillar of Main Tower, Mendenhall Towers

Lets see, it's August right? So let's catch up. Last April Gabe Hayden and I made a trip to the Ruth Gorge to have a whack at the North buttress of the Rooster Comb. It was an extremely boney year. The Rooster Comb was in pretty bad shape so we went looking for other options. Fortunately we ran into Mark Westman who suggested having a look at the South face of Mt. Bradley, which ended up being our best option. We put a good try on the some variation of Season in the Sun, but were stopped by a series of afternoon slush avalanches. We bivied hoping to cross the couple of exposed pitches in the dark when it would be set up. We awoke to clouds, bailed and sat out 5 days of storm with half a bottle of tequila and one copy of "The Brothers Karamanov."

Southeast has had a strange summer. Lots of snow in the mountains. In June Gabe and I took advantage of a small weather window, that miraculously coincided with one of breaks, and blitzed a FFA of an old aid line on the South Buttress of Main tower in the Mendenhall Towers. It is the best alpine granite I have ever climbed on; a must do for anyone visiting the Towers. We began at first light returning to camp just before dark. It was Gabe's first real summit in Alaska. We were stoked!

Pitch1 5.8 70m cross the bergschrund onto a small ramp, climb slabs in the direction of the large left facing corner.
Pitch 2 5.8 70m continue up slabs to the start of the corner

Pitch 3 5.9 70m climb left facing corner then traverse left to the pillar. Dirtiest pitch on climb

Pitch 4 5.11 35m climb the groove on the outside of the pillar.

Pitch 5 5.10 45m the money pitch! Climb obvious crack that splits the headwall. Belay in small roof right of crack.

Pitch 6 5.10 35m climb through the roof continuing up the gradually widening crack, then break left to large left facing corner.

Pitch 7 5.10 70m Oh so good. Climb the corner to top of main buttress. Continue up mellow ridge.

Pitch 8 4th 55m scramble up and left to a gorgeous crack system.

Pitch 9 5.9 30m climb fun twin cracks up to mellower summit pitches.

At this point we really started hitting snow

Pitch 10 5.7 65m climb last really technical pitch trending out and right.

Pitches 11-12 85m Scramble up snow slopes and some 4th-5th class to summit.

Descend West Ridge, Rap one of the couloirs. There is a lot of tat and fixed gear.

South Buttress Main Tower Mendenhall Towers: FA Svenson/Clark 73', FFA Hayden/Johnson 630m 5.11 11'

Top of Pitch 9, putting away the haul line

In the crux getting my ass handed to me

Gabe on the money 5th pitch

Gabe on Pitch 3

Towers, Caves, Sunsets

What is it about a sunset?

Jason and I spent a couple days in town recovering from Bart Lake. We did spend an afternoon on the downtown classic "Green Weanie" 200m WI5-. We bailed after I got smoked in the knee by a falling rock, the third time I've been hit on Mt. Juneau this year. Anyway, we decided to pack up and head out the Mendenhall Towers to see if we couldn't scratch up a new line on the South Side.

Upon arriving we ran off looking for an objective for the next day. We decided on a line and scurried back to set up camp only to find we had forgotten our tent poles. So we dug a cave as clouds rolled in and filled in the valley below. The next morning was pretty white, cloudy and several inches of new snow had accumulated. Around 10 we decided to say fuckit and go anyway and just go until we saw a reason to turn back.

The weather broke an hour or so later and we were bathed in sunlight on a beautiful new route. We covered nearly 1000ft of new ground before we pulled the plug. The more I climb in these mountains the more I want to return. The granite is immaculate, and I have found some sick enjoyment in climbing it when it is covered in rime. Just funky, or "fucking terrifying" to quote Jason, climbing.

We made it back to camp just as the sun set. Over the years I've been treated to some unreal sunsets in mountain ranges around the world. This is one that I will probably never forget. With a helicopter coming in the morning it was the perfect ending for a spectacular trip.

Just before we bailed. On belay after the first technical pitch "game on!"

Jason gettin a piece.

And of course the booty shot.

Bart Lake

On March 5th Jason Nelson and I hopped a helicopter to Bart Lake. Bart Lake is a massive void in the earth located just above the boundary waters of the Taku River just South of Juneau Alaska. We were drawn by rumors of massive unclimbed lines of water ice. Bart Lake surpassed all expectations. We landed around noon set up camp and trotted off to have a run at a 700ft large flow of pretty mellow ice.

At this point Jason and I had never shared a rope. He had been up in 2009 and visited the Mendenhall Towers with Blake Herrington whom I'd encouraged to come up the year prior while in Indian Creek. Are you still with me? If not return to Bart Lake. As I said the climbing was very moderate, WI4-. On the second pitch Jason climbed past the end of the ropes and I had to begin simuling behind him. We topped out well before dark and had a smooth series of rappels back to the lake. A great start, we communicated and climbed well together dubbing our line Large Marge 700ft WI4-

Our objective the second day was a much steeper mega classic waterfall line some 5oft right of Large Marge. Having found our comfort level and developed some trust we decided to solo the first two pitches and get on with the business of the upper headwall. Smiling laughing and joking we soloed the first 400ish feet in something like 15 or 20 minutes even with my crampon falling off near the first roped pitch. We led the upper headwall in two fantastic pitches of dead vertical plastic water ice. Again, we finished before dark calling this thinner far more sexy line Pin Up Girl 800ft WI5. Our descent did not go off as smoothly as we rappelled through the Southeast Alaskan Jungle. We agreed the next line would be descended via a smooth line of v-threads....

Right behind camp there was a magnificent thin line of ice. Our first estimate had the line somewhere around the 5000ft mark... thats right 5000ft... it was that badass. On the third day we trudged up the hill to give it a go having decided it was much shorter something like 600ft. Jason was up from Arizona and I had just spent 29 days and nights underground at work on Prince of Whales Island. The sun hit the wall later in the afternoon so we both decided that it would be a good idea to start much later in the day given the shorter height of the climb. If you haven't noticed from the excess periods things didn't quite go as planned.

The first two pitches consisted of vertical extremely difficult insecure snice and got us to what we had guessed to be our first belay from below. The ice turned to plastic but the wall did not relent at all for 2 more pitches up to the headwall where the "steep" ice began. 2 more 70m rope stretching pitches took us to the top of the wall just in time for a beautiful Alaskan sunset and a suprisingly smooth 1000ft v-thread rappel in the dark. This was the by far the best piece of ice I have ever been on. I have never seen or even heard of anything so big and sustained. It was a fantastic experience. We named our climb Milagro De Plata 1000ft WI6 after our smooth sipping tequila back in camp.

I've added a few pictures, but most of the media from this climb is in video and I'll have that up whenever I learn how to edit video, download music and figure out how to put it on the internet. Jason and I have one more week of climbing to do first. I just wanted to put up some stoke. Later!

Jason posing down after getting off Milagro De Plata much later than anticipated

Pin Up Girl 800ft WI5 FA

Jason following pitch 1 on Milagro de Plata

Line furthest right, Milagro de Plata 1000ft WI6 FA