[TR] Mount Fairweather - Carpe Ridge (5.0, AI 3) - 5/24/24

[eeelip]

“The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but victory rests with the Lord.” Proverbs‬ ‭21‬:‭31‬

After packing gear on Sunday and making final preparations, Ian and I left my house Monday afternoon 5/20 and drove over to Seattle for our flight to Juneau. We hired an Uber from the Juneau airport to the ferry terminal, and took the midnight boat arriving to Haines at 4:30am. From there, we caught a taxi to the Haines airport and organized/packed gear. The famous “Fly Drake” arrived around 7am and we took off around 8am with “Bad to The Bone” playing over the headsets. I had been coordinating with Drake for several months, and have found him to be very experienced, and a well-known figure in the climbing community. I tried to eek out what advice I could regarding weather, gear, and strategies without coming across as a completely inexperienced noob.

At one point I suggested going fast-and-light up the Carpe Ridge and down the other side to Grand Plateau Glacier, which Drake seemed to think was a reasonable idea although he did not know of anyone who had done it before. At the time I liked this approach. It has two huge advantages: much shorter non-technical descent, and potential better conditions for Drake to pick us up. Its disadvantages included not being able to set up a base camp with extra fuel, or any sort of luxury items. Even the bare essentials for a climb of this magnitude added up to 55lb packs each, and we are always trying to improve on that number. No base camp means less supplies, and less supplies puts Drake in a tough situation. I have heard several stories of Drake taking a risk to pick up climbers who are out of fuel, food, or just scared in a difficult situation (often due to their own unpreparedness) even though he shouldn’t be obligated to. The guy certainly takes a lot of personal responsibility for the people he flies into the range, and I’m sure that is mentally taxing considering the inexperience and risk involved with some of his client’s activities. I did not want to be one of those clients, and we took in enough food for 5+ fat days. That might seem on the very slim side, but I am very confident in Ian and I’s ability to climb fast when we need to, and also stretch food out if needed.

On Tuesday 5/21, weather was perfect for the glacier flight. That is a rarity in the Fairweather range. I had booked everything months in advance, but kept the door open to change flights at the last second if needed to take advantage of changing weather windows. Luckily, things worked out on the exact days we had planned them. The flight to Fairweather Glacier was spectacular. The surrounding peaks are huge, due to the fact that they rise from a very low base elevation. Our views from the air revealed the Carpe to be in excellent climbing condition. Mostly snow travel with a few easy looking rock steps. We landed at 4,700’ and evaluated snow conditions. We decided to leave skis in the plane to save weight. This turned out to be the right choice, as skis would add another 6lbs to our 55lb packs. We immediately started walking across the glacier to the base of the ridge, roping up and avoiding a few very large crevasses. We accessed the ridge via a snow ramp on the right. This lead up around 1,000’ until we reached a low 5th class rock gully. We climbed this (in ski boots, not our forte) for a few hundred feet until it dumped us onto the snowfield below the first of four sarac hazards.

It is important to mention that this route is massive. Over 11k' long, I found it helpful to mentally divide the route between 4,500’-11,000’ into four sections. Each section has a serac at the top that we would have to bypass. A lot of our route decisions were based on avoiding the fall line of these seracs as much as possible. Especially considering how clear and sunny it was on our way to camp 1. The first serac we bypassed on the right, then we continued up just outside the fall line of the second serac, passing it on the right as well. There was a rock band that was about even with the second serac that had some 4th class rock scrambling, which we solo’d. We then ascended another steep snow field to the base of the cliffs that make up the ridge crest between 9-10,000’. This takes you to a lower angle snowfield just on top of the 3rd serac wall.

We made our first camp at 10,500’ at the base of some formidable looking cliffs that blocked our route up the ridge. This was a flat and somewhat sheltered camp spot, but it was in between two shallow crevasses which made for limited space. We went to bed around 9pm just after it started snowing. It snowed/slushed all night and the next morning through very warm temps. While we were stuck in the tent, we studied some of Ian’s excellent arial photographs and determined our best chance of getting around the cliffs would be to traverse horizontally about 1/2 mile to the right, and climb a steep snow gully past the 4th and final serac wall. My brother Noah sent us a forecast showing a clear weather window for a few hours in the afternoon/evening, so we used that time to push up to another great camp site at 12,200’.

On day 3, it again snowed lightly all night and the next morning/afternoon. Around 4pm, the snowfall slowed and we decided to make another short push. We ascended the seemingly endless steep snow up toward the false summit, with Ian breaking trail much of the way. We were both starting to feel the altitude, and were moving much slower than we usually do. The combined vertical gain of the route over slushy snow conditions, high altitude, with heavy packs really had a cumulative effect and we felt very fatigued. Just before reaching the false summit, we started the long leftward traverse and descended down to the col at 13,600’. The ridge here was wide, but had massive cornices. Some of them starting to break away from the ridge leaving huge cracks for us to avoid. From the col we got our first glimpse of the “ice nose”, and realized it would certainly be the crux of the route. In the interest of saving time on Friday, we pushed up a bit further to 13,800’ and camped at the saddle just below the ice nose before that night’s high winds set in. The next morning, we were up at 3am and on our way towards steep ice at 5am. We went back and forth trying to decide whether the ice nose was better passed on the left or right, but eventually decided to follow the 50 Classics guidebook advice and go left. I would not say it was bypassed easily however. We swapped leads for 3 pitches of 70 degree blue ice, then popped out on the upper snow fields. Finally success was assured, and the summit was in sight. We weaved our way through the crevasse maze of the upper mountain and popped out on its rounded summit just before 10am. Unfortunately, there was an undercast around 3000’ hiding the iconic ocean views, but we could see Mount Logan and St. Elias to the North. Weather was windy, and I would estimate ambient was around -10 degrees. I was cold even in my big parka. After taking photos, we started back down the standard route towards the Grand Plateau. The descent route was less steep than the Carpe, but is also covered in crevasses forcing us to zig-zag quite a bit. We punched through a few crevasses up to our knees or waist, but they all seemed to be mostly filled with snow and ice still this early in the year.

Once we reached the col at 13k, I messaged drake via inReach and let him know we were only a couple hours from the landing zone. Unfortunately, the snow below the col was consistently shin to knee deep all the way down, and was slow going. By the time we reached 11k we were very tired. I sent drake some more conditions information and he said he was on his way. It was at this point I realized that we never set up coordinates for an exact pick up location. I messaged him asking if the flat area at 10,500’ was sufficient, but it was too late. We waited just below 10,500’ and as Drake was arriving, wind was picking up and the undercast clouds were quickly rising. Drake managed to land nearby, but he was not pleased with our pick-up location choice. Lesson learned, I should have been more thorough with my questions prior to getting on the glacier. We quickly threw everything in the plane, and Drake really seemed to put his pilot expertise to the test getting off the ground. It took a long time, especially with a direct tail wind, to get airborne. We finally lifted off just as we passed over a massive crevasse that could have easily swallowed the plane. Once we were back up in the air, we were incredibly relieved. We all agreed that is not a situation that we would like to repeat. We landed back in Haines around 2:15pm and quickly packed gear, called a taxi, and made it back to the dock for the 3:15 ferry. We then reversed the rest of our travel itinerary and arrived back in Wenatchee at 3pm on Saturday.

In summary, I think Carpe Ridge is a desirable climb due in most part to its sheer size and position. There are some other huge ridge climbs in the Fairweather range that look quite appealing, but none of them can compete with the Carpe for sheer size. I’m glad with the general ease with which this trip worked out, and thankful for the positive conditions we experienced. We learned a lot, and certainly affirmed a lot of our gear decisions and tactics that we can now put to the test on bigger objectives. On this climb even more than others, I had the persisting feeling that God provided for us a beautiful setting and orchestrated the weather for us to witness his creation. I am also starting to realize that God has given Ian and I a narrow skill-set that is uniquely applied to alpine climbing. There is just something about putting all the tools in my toolbox to use in a high consequence environment that leaves me with an incredible sense of accomplishment. Of course, in the end God will always have control over our successes and failures, but he has certainly granted Ian and I a great success on this trip.

AllTrails:

https://www.alltrails.com/explore/recording/afternoon-hike-a3ec6dd-353?u=i&sh=emzgdu

Pack Wizard

https://www.packwizard.com/s/7x5UAWS

 

Wondering if I should retro-actively post a few of our other trip reports here on CC? Or would that be bad form? I have been struggling to create an account for a while now and finally got it to work.

 

Edited June 7 by eeelip

[rat]

Way to (Allen) Carpe diem on a beautiful line.

[JasonG]

3 hours ago, eeelip said:

Wondering if I should retro-actively post a few of our other trip reports here on CC? Or would that be bad form?

Not in the least!  We love it all, past or present.

Well done on a major objective!

[olyclimber]

Not bad form to share old TRs at all!   This place is for sharing stories new and old.   Thank you, great pictures and everything. 

If you ever have issues with the site again, there is a  Contact Us form at the bottom of the page and I will help you.  Thanks for sharing!

[JBo6]

Keep them coming eeelip!  Thanks for the TR, it looked like quite the adventure.

[wfinley]

Wow - congrats that is a massive route! Way to nail the weather window!!

[Fairweather]

My dream climb! I wondered if it was even doable nowadays after The Smiley Project showed it deteriorating severely some ten or fifteen years ago. Thanks for sharing your trip with a now-62 year old guy who will likely miss this one in person. 🙂

[eeelip]

I also finished a video of this trip with talk at the end going over details of the climb: