Alpinfox

After five days of solitary confinement in the tent, Fred emerges to say, "Hey, have you guys seen my napkins?"

Now that Sizzy has sold his, I've got one for sale and will co-opt his thread. Mine is a Garuda ("By Dana Designs") Kusala and I'll sell it for $200. It's been used for one two-day trip (Glacier Peak) and has been setup in my backyard once or twice. PM or email Alpinfox(at)Yahoo(the usual punctuation)com I don't check that email address very often, so PMing is better if you are a registered user here.

Dru, Not as many as he brought on our recent trip to Juneau. We stopped at every McDonalds between here and Prince Rupert so he could resupply.

Summary: Brook Alongi, Fred Beckey, and I recently climbed a previously unclimbed 7530ft peak in the Neacola Range via a 3000ft, 40-50 degree snow coulior on the south side of the peak. Details: Fred and two others attempted to climb this peak two years ago. The two guys started climbing the coulior starting at midday on a warm day against Fred's advice. They made it about halfway up the coulior and were then washed down to the base of the coulior by an avalanche! No injuries, but that was the end of that attempt. While the peak is only ~70 miles SW of Anchorage, and is visible from the southern end of Anchorage, getting there is no easy task. We took a wheeled plane from Anchorage to a small gravel strip on the west side of Cook Inslet which is primarily used as a service station for the offshore oil rigs. We were then picked up by a helicopter and deposited on the glacier at the base of the route. We set up our tents, and started climbing. The route was straightforward and we stayed to the climber's left side of the coulior. The weather began to deteriorate as we approached the top of the coulior and a moderate snowfall with some wind greeted us when we reached the col. Fred was very tired at this point and decided to sit at the col and wait while Brook and I continued on toward the summit (we estimated about 200' vertical away at that point). I led up through some granite blocks and put in a piece of rock pro or two. We were trying to move very fast at this point because Fred was cold and nervous about being left alone, tired, on an untraveled peak, with 3000' of steep snow separating him from our camp. Brook soon joined me and we looked over a slight rise and saw the summit about 100 yards away and less than 100' above us. The snow was falling more heavily at this point and it was getting pretty blustery, so we decided to turn around and start getting Fred, and ourselves, back down. There were really no technical difficulties between ourselves and the "true" summit, so I consider our effort a "summit". If you don't, that's fine. We reversed our steps down the coulior with LOTS of face-in downclimbing and putting in pickets as running belay anchors since we were pretty tired at this point. A few pics of us descending: We got back to the tents after 15 hours on the go. Fred was pretty beat, but Brook and I hoped to do some more climbing in the next few days (unclimbed rocks/peaks everywhere!), so we went to sleep looking forward to some faster-paced activity in the future. This was not to be the case however as a storm rolled in and we spent 5 days huddled in our tents being pummeled by rain, wind, and snow without much pause. I think we had a total of about 3hrs of time over the course of those 5 days that were pleasant enough to get out of the tent for more than a pee-break. We did lots of reading, playing cards, sleeping, and listening to the rain patter against the tent. FUN! Finally the weather broke! Note whiskey: We used the satelite telephone to contact the chopper and initiate our retreival/rescue. We were so elated about the nice weather that we started drinking whiskey and inventing "glacier games". Here are the results as I remember them from my whiskey-affected state Event/Winner Ski Pole Javelin/Me Propane Canister Shot-put/Brook Ice-axe tomahawk throw/Me Half-eaten Horescock Hammer Throw/Brook Fred was not interested in participating in our silliness, but if he had, I think he would be a natural for the horsecock toss. In any case, we finally got out of there and flew home. We considered many potential names for the peak including "Horsecock Peak", "Mount GeorgeBushSucks", "Mount Snugtop", and several others, but settled on the more-likely-to-be-accepted-by-the-USGS "Mount Chakachamna" in reference to the large lake with that name just north of the peak. Chakachamna Lake is visible at the top of the picture. Our mountain, "Mount Chakachamna" is the point labeled 7530 at the bottom right of the picture. Our coulior is on the south side of the peak. There are lots more unclimbed peaks/rocks in the area like these cool-looking buttresses: although the rock quality did not look very good with a few exceptions. Thanks to Fred for planning the trip and making it happen. Thanks to Brook for the great partnership, patience, and calm demeanor. Thanks to Jim Sweeney and Art Davidson for their hospitality and for sharing their stories.

It is worth noting that with canister stoves the price of the stove is pretty insignificant compared to the amount you will pay for the canisters over the life of the stove (~$40 stove vs. $4/canister). They sure are lightweight/small/convenient though. I like my SnowPeak gigapower stove. I use a coleman propane stove ( camping) more than any other stove though.

Nice! Thanks for the TR. Pictures? Especially of Sentinel?

"climb your sixty meters and STFU!!!"

Whatever you choose, please let us know how it went.

Yeah, I saw another thread where you and PP both mentioned you thought that route was sandbagged. I concur. Anybody know anything about the "Pillars of the Earth" thing that MattP mentioned above?

After asking about this area over a year ago, I finally climbed there today. We started on "Million Dollar Footbridge" (5.9) which was fun and a good introduction/warmup for the other climbs there. I then tried to lead "Sub-Aqeuous Tractor Retrieval (10b) and gave up just past the 5th or 6th bolt. Fortunately Mr. McMurray was up to the challenge and finished off the lead for me and did a brilliant job keeping his head together through the crux and a bit of wetness around the last two bolts. Thanks! That route is hard! We then toproped "Wonderful World of Wreckreation" (10d) which McMurray found "straightforward and easier than the 10b", but still felt hard to me. I slipped a couple of times. We scored a leaver biner on this route. I then tried to lead "Smokey Bent Me Over" (11-), but couldn't get past the fourth bolt. Bye-bye leaver biner. The rock quality is very high and the climbing is good if you are into that slabby sort of thing. Thanks to the FAs and developers. Damn I am a suck slab climber!

Mount Olympus is another one you might consider. Nice (long) hike starting at sea-level ( ), going through some old-growth temperate rainforest ( ), plenty of opportunities for bear and elk sightings, easy glacier travel, and a low-5th class rock scramble to a nearly 8000ft tall summit. Most people do it as a three day trip. Beautiful place.

Of the two bags you are interested in, it seems to me that the Lithium is clearly the better bag. A 1lb difference! Seems obvious to me. I would also check out Feathered Friends bags and Western Mountaineering bags. While I think Marmot has the best bags of the major companies, I think FF and WM and some of the other smaller companies (Nunatak) make better stuff. Good luck and let us know what you decide.

Here's another item no self-respecting, cultured backpacker can honorably live without: More info

No, actually it's not. I think that camping at the head of Mountaineer's creek is pretty sweet and I don't have anything to prove.

Mr. White, I enjoy your writing.

Dude!

Fine! I'm taking my young virgins and heading for the hills!

I know of three parties heading there this weekend.

"You may choose only one"

Almost a year in prison! Ridiculous and sad. It's a sick society we live in... Fuck you Ashcroft.

Tease!

Mount Challenger, Challenger Glacier Only Grade II, but the approach will make you think it's more. Snow/ice to 30deg, glacier travel and 5.7. It will take you up to 5 days. Remote alpine adventure. NE ridge of Triumph has about four moves of 5.6 on mediocre rock and doesn't really have any glacier travel. It looks aesthetic as hell from far away, but loses some of its appeal when you get on it. Really good views of the southern pickets though. Another option would be to go to Washington Pass and do one or two awesome multipitch rock climbs on beautiful granite each day. If I only had five days in WA and wanted to primarily ROCK CLIMB as opposed to walk on snow, that's what I'd do. It's sort of "alpine". edit: What the hell is the KTK?

the foot is grosser.

I've never tried to do it on one that has been exposed to the elements for a winter. It's good to know that it's not as easy as I thought. Thanks.