plumbbob

Dave Stutzman and I did the second assent of this route in 1977 as a training climb before we went to Alaska and climbed the North Face of Devils Thumb. We did it in a day and I remember it being realy loose with some 5.10. Bob Plumb

How about posting one of the pictures to see af anyone is recognized?

Here is a link to a report on another forum for a good effort on the Mendenhall Towers. http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1553487&msg=1554874#msg1554874 Enjoy

1974 on Remorse, Snow Creek Wall. In Petersburg 1977.

Looks like Ptarmigan Peak outside of Anchorage.

Nightmare Needles - Cruel Finger?

When are you going to be in Juneau? And, what type of trip are you loking for, day trips or multi day traverse of ice field? There is a lot of snow and the sking is great right now and should be realy good into July,depending on how far you are willing to hike. If you use a heli you can probably ski all summer.

Thanks for the pictures. PP is where I started climbing (a long time ago) and the skills learned there have been with me ever since. I wil have to stop in and boulder ofr climb something next time I am in Wenatchee.

Recently read "The Boys of Everest" and would recomend it!

Take a look at the Vokle Gotama. Big but light. Quick Turning yet stiff enought to hold an edge. These are sweet.

You should not use the F-2 as a safety item any more. The new beacon technology will spead up anyones search time. But don't throw out them out just yet. They work fine as an aid for practice. Take em out and have your partner hide them. You can do multiple beacon searches without having to by more than one new beacon.

This is something I started to write in the early 90's. The climbing took place in the summer of 1977. Bob Plumb North Face - Liberty Bell Mount Slesse Experience We had been climbing together since spring. Dave was to go to Alaska Range with Becky and party. Trip bombed and I was picking cherries. Finished and suggested Devils Thumb. So we planned a series of training climbs. Leavenworth - Home, plan, background. Travel to "Lady Of The Lake" to Lucerne. Rode a bus with a load of little kids to Holden Village. Left em' all behind. Hike to pass between North Star mountain and South West Buttress of Bonanza. Goats. Beautiful camp. Russian route: not what we expected. Much third class with a rotten difficult section. (Scared shitless!) Made the top at sun set. Decended talus to camp. Horrible hike out to Agness creek. Saw a "wild" black bear. Out Agness creek to shuttle to Stehekin. Daves' feet were in bad shape, so we passed up the hike to Goode. Took "Lady of the Lake" to Chelan, then hitch hiked to Washington Pass. Arrive late next day. Hike up and do a blitz on North Face. Started up as the sun was about to set in the west. Sun on the north face. Solo bottom half. Did two pitches to top. (5.8) Rappels on regular decent and back to camp before dark. Next morning we started for Belingham and Daves' friends from Stevens Pass. Dave left ice ax at Washington Pass. A couple days in Bellingham, then ? (Art?) drove us to Mount Slesse. Met (? Steinbock?). Camp below the east face after a thrash through logging slash. Across pocket glacier to ridge. Very warm. The crux was face Dave burnt out on and I finished the pitch. Dave seconded to major ledge and collapsed. Spent a warm night there. Party from Vancouver on North West Ridge. All met on summit next noon. We down climbed as they rapelled. Then a rap together. They continued down the regular route down the west side. We headed off along the high west slopes, looking for the gully that decended to camp. My boots were old. Shanks broken. We were decending steep hard snow in the first gully and my toes were killing me. So instead of facing in I decided to plunge step. Made two and blew out. Cartwheeled 300 feet down into moat on side. All I did was bite my tongue. Pretty shook up. Climbed down a short rock step and bent over for a drink from a pool. Pelvic bone shocked me. Started looking around. Bones and bits of metal everywhere. Not thirsty anymore. Wandered down a little further and gully ends and east face begins. Wrong gully. Back up, calling to Dave. Plane still hanging above the gully. I kicked steps. Got over the pain in my toes. Fear factor. Decended the right gully. Snow all the way. Camp infested with three bears. Drove em' off with ice axes. A lazy rest day. Hiking around. Memorial below east face. Pocket glacier. Smooth, polished slabs. Next day we took the food out to the middle of the slab, cached it, and continued around towards the North Face Lowe Route. Dash under North East Buttress Pocket Glacier between ice falls to toe of N. E. But.. Crampons on and mine broke just above. Gold Chouinard rigid. Back off. Spent time eating and watching avalanches from pocket glacier. Then headed to food cache. We were sitting there and both just got up and headed for camp. Just off the slab and up on the moraine. The entire glacier below the east face suicided. Huge blocks avalanched over our route. Shook up, we packed and headed home. A long walk out logging roads and hitch hiking back to Bellingham. Then Leavenworth. Sold my car and Dave and I headed to Devils Thumb.

I'm not sure when you will be here but the weather is great today (friday) and is suposed to be sunny and warm tommorow also. Sunday it is suposed to get back to a 40% chance of rain. If you have a vehicle you should take a look at False Outer Point near the end of the North Douglas Road. There is a beach access trail at the pull out where the road leaves the shore. Good sites about 100 yards from the car and great sunsets.

This took place last week. The folowing article is from the Petersburg Pilot. BP Historic climb and heroic rescue on Devil's Thumb Klas Stolpe March 16 , 2006. "Not so good,” came the last words at 10 am Tuesday morning from Zac Hoyt’s satellite radio phone on the frozen ice under the towering mountain known as Devil’s Thumb in southeast Alaska. He was responding to a question by his close friend Dieter Klose asking how things were going. Hoyt, 30, had just completed the first winter ascent of Devil’s Thumb. In the world of mountaineering that is one of the greatest feats, and he had done it solo. “Top of the world,” were the words Hoyt said to his dear friend Dieter Klose as he called from the summit of 9,500-foot tall Devil’s Thumb, a rock and ice encrusted mountain across Frederick Sound from Petersburg. The northwest face of the mountain has never been successfully summitted. Over 39 climbing parties have gone to Devil’s Thumb, 15 have summitted on routes other than the northwest face. There have been three fatalities on the northwest face and one on another route. Although he had pulled the climb off without a hitch, his words spoken before the sat-phone lost reception worried his best friend. “With that, knowing Zac as he’s one of my very best friends,” Klose stated. “He’s the master of understatement. I knew ‘not so good,’ meant ‘pretty darn bad.” Hoyt had eaten breakfast Saturday in Petersburg where he is employed by the Alaska Department of Fish & Game as a fisheries biologist and diver. His climb started at 7:00 AM and by noon Saturday he was on the summit of Devil’s Thumb where he made his first phone call to Klose. “He just called to check in, to just say, ‘hey, I’ve done it,” Klose stated. “We agreed he would call, that it would be pretty cool.” Hoyt followed what is known as the Krakauer Route, named after Jon Krakauer who climbed that path in 1977, the mountain’s first solo ascent. It’s a straightforward snow face followed by a traversing climb and lots of exposure, 2700 hundred feet of technical climbing without a rope, meaning a climber could look down a long ways. Hoyt did four rappels and the rest was down climbing on this southeast face of Devil’s Thumb. Hoyt called again from a ‘high camp’ at 4:00 PM where he spent the night on the upper ice cap above the Baird Glacier. Mid-day Monday he fell 100 feet into a crevasse, injuring his shoulder. He had minimal but essential gear, including just one ice axe to climb out. He spent the night in the crevasse, which was just wide enough for his one-man tent. This was when he made his last contact to Klose, stating he was in the middle of the icefall and things were not going well. At the time of the last phone contact, Klose took action. He called Foggy Mountain climbing shop in Juneau and reached Ryan Johnson and two friends, who had climbed Mt. McKinley. They were packed and ready in two hours and on the afternoon jet. “In the end I can’t say it was a life and death situation if we wouldn’t have gotten him,” Klose stated. “I suspected it may have been the case, seeing the conditions we had in town and knowing he was in a spot with harsh weather. Zac was totally prepared, completely experienced, the kind of person to be doing this with the knowledge and the equipment to pull this off. Zac Hoyt is an incredible athlete, this feat would be heralded in Europe, and will be in the climbing community. He wasn’t some bozo up there, he’s a really sharp climber… but the scales tipped.” Klose was on the Coast Guard helicopter to rescue Hoyt on Tuesday and first spotted his tent below. “It was a completely terrifying experience for me,” Klose said with misty eyes. “I was at the open door, strapped in and looking out because the window kept frosting. It was an incredibly heroic performance by those pilots. The next thing I knew he (Hoyt) was in and next to me.” “This is a one shot deal, if you can’t get your boots on forget them,” United States Coast Guard LCDR Bill Timmons said via VHF to Hoyt in the tent below the hovering H60 Coast Guard helicopter. “Get in the basket if you can, we only have one shot at this.” Winds were sustained at 40 knots and gusted to over 60 with reduced visibility and blowing snow. Moderate to severe turbulence was over Burkett Glacier. Temperatures outside the helicopter were minus 30 degrees Celsius. At 100 feet above the stranded climber and 5,400 feet above sea level, the hoist would be a daunting task. “We’ve never encountered anything like this before,” Timmons commented Wednesday by phone interview. “We were trying to maintain a stable hover… we had very little visual cues… our power required to stay safely in flight was right at our margins. From a pilot perspective, from an aircrew perspective, we pushed ourselves to our maximum limits… with respect to our training standardization. We operated at the edge of the operating envelope of our H60’s capabilities. There was very little margin of error, if any at all.” The chopper pulled away for better visibility and then radioed their final request. It was too risky even to lower the rescue team onto the ice. The chopper again hovered into position. After clambering into the basket, Hoyt was safe in the chopper in 30 seconds. “Dieter was instrumental in the rescue,” Timmons said. “His knowledge of the area was crucial… he was right on within a half-mile. It was the smartest thing we did taking him on the chopper. Trying to find a tiny tent in those conditions at that altitude was like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. We would have been jeopardizing the safety of anyone lowered onto that location… there was no guarantee the weather would improve.” Added Timmons, “I’ve never been any more proud, in my twelve years of flying, than at the end of yesterday’s rescue. Our crew and our helicopter operated to its maximum capabilities… we were at the edge of our envelope but we were able to get the mission done and save someone’s life. There was a lot of relief and a lot of joy when we got back to Petersburg. As Coast Guardsmen we craft our skills for rescue off the water… I’d never envisioned this type of rescue, on a high mountain, when I enlisted.” “I spent 45 minutes on the summit, enjoying everything,” Hoyt stated Wednesday from his hospital room at Petersburg Medical Center. With 15 years of experience and climbs in the Alaskan Range, New Zealand, Patagonia, and many mountains in the western United States, Hoyt is considered one of mountaineering’s better alpinists. “You could see town… Fairweather, Glacier Bay, the big mountains in Canada, Baranof… and to see everything in winter white was truly magical. It’s my life, it’s my passion, it’s what drives me forward… it’s what I love… it’s what I waste all my money on.” His hands bandaged because of frostbite, Hoyt spoke of the particulars of his ordeal. Leaving his base-camp at Devil’s Thumb, heading northeast toward Burkett Glacier, Hoyt was on an icefall that loses elevation between the two. Wearing skis and pulling a sled carrying his pack he fell through a snow bridge 100-feet into the ice crevasse. “Uh oh,” Hoyt said his first thoughts were as he lay amidst the ice and snow. The following hours would be incredibly daunting as he struggled against fatigue and falling snow. “I felt like I wasn’t going to make it through the night… I thought I was going to drown in snow. It was pouring in nearly as fast as I could shovel… my hands have paid for that.” In the morning he began to climb out of the crevasse using his single ice tool, trailing a rope, he made his last sat-phonecall, rappelled back in to retrieve some gear, climbed back out, each trip taking 45 minutes. “It was one of my most technical and toughest climbs,” he said. “Basically just two hands on one axe, heaving up, getting your feet locked… trying to grab onto something to reset the axe and then doing it all over again…” He pulled his gear to the surface and tried to reestablish himself, and began making plans of attempting to ski on. Weather conditions forced him into the tent. “When I first heard that helicopter I didn’t think there was any way I was actually leaving on that helicopter,” Hoyt said. “The conditions were too poor, a complete blizzard…” Unable to get his boots on and told of the final attempt by the chopper, Hoyt abandoned the tent and jumped into the basket, holding on as hard as he could. The struggle would not end just by getting into the basket. The winds slammed Hoyt into a serac once the hoist began. “I was pretty overwhelmed having Dieter, my best friend, right there,” Hoyt said of being inside the chopper. “The comfort of him and the helicopter and knowing I was safe.” Hoyt’s injuries include a possible torn rotator cuff and frostbite on his fingers and thumbs. “I just want people to know how thankful I am to everybody that was involved,” Hoyt stated.

Back to 1980. Dave and I traversed the ridge over Wildfire, Fire Spire, Ostrich Head, Nocturne Tower(this one had a nice OW pitch on the south side), Three Feathers(Dave basicly soloed these up and down), Windjamer Tower, Twins, Leaning Mares, and finished at Fantasia Tower. We had tried to do this the day before, but ran out of time. So got an earlyier start from our camp in Crystal Creek and did it in a long day. Sorry it took so long to get back, had to find the guide book for the tower names. BP