Jed Brown and I just returned to Fairbanks after making the first ascent of Mt. Moffit's North Wall on July 10-13th.

The Entropy Wall (VI, 5.9, A2, WI4+), approximately 1,500m and 33 pitches, is followed by approximately 900 meters of snow and ice slopes leading to Moffit's summit.

It was the most serious and commiting climb I've ever done. Some rock was poor, but some was excellent and splitter. Highlights included a perfect snow-mushroom bivy, a 3m horizontal roof, steep water-ice pillars, and lots of free climbing and aid climbing up steep cracks. More pictures to come eventually!

Picture of the face:
http://59A2.org/hayes/200607/route.jpg

Nice work Colin

looks good

Sweet looking face! Nice pics, looking forward to seeing more pictures

Damn!!

That's a tremendous line

Oh, yum. Inspirational

Congrats!!! That line looks awesome. Waiting for more details and pics.

Back in Seattle, now.

I'm sure that Jed will post some photos on his website (59a2.org) when he gets a chance. In the meantime, here's a couple of his digital photos:
http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showphoto.php?photo=19625&sort=1&cat=500
http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showphoto.php?photo=19624&sort=1&cat=500

Cool.

How long did it take?

When I was a kid I lived near Delta Junction for a couple of years. We always called Mt. Hayes, "Ghost Mountain" due to its high central peak and two flanking shoulder peaks.





Is "Mt. Moffit" the name of one of the shoulder peaks?

wow Colin, that is fantastic. The Eiger of Fairbanks

You can check out some pretty good pictures of the face they climbed here (from a previous attempt by jed):

http://59a2.org/hayes/200605/

We flew in from Delta Junction, Pax, and walked out to the Delta River afterwards. Moffit is not one of the shoulders on Mt. Hayes, but a seperate peak. Colby Coombs and Mike Woods guidebook describes the peak and our descent route a little.

The climb took us four days roundtrip from our camp. The first two nights we had decent bivies, and the third night we simply stopped to brew and rest a bit.

Funny that you say the Eiger of Fairbanks, Dave, because I couldn't stop making that comparison in my mind. Bigger, steeper, and a lot more remote though.

There are some more photos and the web page has been created.

http://59A2.org/hayes/200607/

Wow....you guys should be in Alpinist Magazine or something!

Nice work guys, looks like an amazing climb, thanks for sharing the photos!!

Here is another picture of their climb:



a TR
I mean, except for bigger.....

Huge guys... HUGE! Very impressive! Awesome pics!

questions:

Pack weight? Did you do lighter leader pack and heavier follower pack? Food for how many days? Rope system (single + tag line)? Tent or siltarp or bivy sack or ...? What else?

Yes, we did a lighter leader pack, and a heavier follower's pack, but on the harder pitches we hauled the leader's pack and the follower jugged. We had a 9.9mm lead line, and a 8.0 mm rap/haul line.

We took 1 breakfast, 2 dinners, and 4 days of energy food.

We didn't take any tarp or tent or bivysacks, but we did both take synthetic sleeping bags, which turned out to be really important. Jed had a 20 degree bag, and I had a 35 degree bag, so I slept with our one belay jacket.

The most interesting gear of the trip must've been the snowshovel, attached to an icetool, used as a rafting paddle...

Shit colin; Very, very, very friggin' cool! My first thought was mega-Eiger for sure. Second thought was North Twin! Looks like some interesting route-finding involved.

Damn good job!

Slide show?

Thanks, duderino.

There should be a slideshow August 23rd at Feathered Friends. Although I would prefer otherwise, I think it will cost a few dollars to cover the beer.

Funny, North Twin was the other thing we were comparing it to. Before Jed ever showed me a picture, he said "It's a granite and grano-diorite version of N Twin, with snow and ice above..." I of course politely replied, "Send me a fucking picture!"

nice line, nice tick.

A few dollars on the keg? Sounds worthwhile. Way to send.

Fuckin' awesome guys!

Sweet, I'm looking forward to the show!

Kick axe. Will be there.