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ivan

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jesus, what a place! might just have to move again...just back from spending 26 days on denali, 7 days at 17k with trips up to the north and south summits...incredible storms and massive avalanches...endless supply of interesting international human folk...now off for ice climbs off the road!

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Congrats Ivan! Heck of a big mountain huh? Amazing you spent a week at 17k...I was happy to be heading back to 14k camp after two nights up high, but it woulda been cool to check out the north summit as you did...doubt many folks have the energy for a side trip like that while they're up there.

Any chance you recall seeing an igloo at 14 camp? just wondering if the one my team built and I slept in is still standing.

Ryland....come on now, we didn't have freshies every time we skiied...the god awful sastrugai and breakable crust we had for our final ski down towards basecamp threw me to the ground plenty and broke my sled cantfocus.gif

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now i'm back in portland, i'm feeling bad spoiled...these mountains have no snow (rainier=50 square miles of snow, denali= 5000) guess i'm gonna have to find some way to readjust

 

post-babylon reintro stress at maximum

 

excellent trip...17k wasn't so bad at all, once i got used to the idea that EVERY time i stood up i'd feel like toppling over...the second trip up to denali pass was much easier than the first...i'd have loved to stay another few more days up there and explore all those couliors on the black spire north of the pass (anybody climbed any of them?) but my partner was beyond weary ("dude, what can i say to you to convince you to go down?") and bad weather was definetly on the move (the 3 days of intense rain&snow at a ghost-town base camp we experienced was enough to cause bad flooding in talkeetna, they said the winds were back over 100 mph again (and once was enough for that)...luckily i meet strangers and stayed stoned the entire time...made the 9000 ft avalanches roaring off mt. hunter, just a few hundred yards away it seems, all the more yummy)

 

there's 2 guys all alone on the mountain now...didn't appear to have much of a clue what they were getting into...bizarre team dynamic...nps and tat washed their hands of him, telling him to call the army if they lose hope, and dumped them off as they were picking us up...they plan on walking out...the flight out, all i saw was 2 mile wide crevasse after 3 mile wide one, guming up the lower glacier...the upper glacier had so many mammoth cracks that required crossing i became massivilly religious for several hours. i'm sure they'll have fun.

 

6 days slumming it after returning to talkeetna....random spontaneos smoke-outs in the downtown park...planes landing 10 feet over the roof of the bar...bizarre hairy hippies masquerading as famous climbers (saw a bunch, and passed out next to one in an opiatic stupor in the aforementioned park) you could spend just about forever in that state...commandeered a u-haul van and toured the chugachs...climbed ice on the matanuska glacier, about 100 yards from the parking lot, shoulder to shoulder w/ fat tourists...tourist nightmare but the local "guides" are children of the corn and goddamn hilarious (smoked out refuge for 19.95$ a day in the midst of a driving rain)...walked up into the hills north of girdwood and got insanely drunk before passing out in a pile of dogs in the parking lot of the bar)

 

can't recommend the experience enough...go yourself...don't go w/ the guides, but smoke w/ them as often as possible (scored 25 lbs of snickers bars at 17K as a result)...take a partner who doesn't break easily (or one you can beat too easily in chess...think it's good fate lead me away from bowe, think i'd squeezed that sponge just about dry) take tons of herb...i sat in a tent for endless hours, doing nothing but staring at squares, eating like a horse, drinking like a fish, and constantly laughing my ass off at it all...think i saw more than a few folks who went home greatly diminished though...the 2 guide groups running away w/ faces like pancakes after the night of the Big Wind was fantastic

 

saw several igloos at 14k...the one w/ the all decked out inside blocks was sweetest (each block had artwork etched in, w/ an "exit" sign by the door) saw a snowboarder living in it early on i think

 

now time to do some real climbing, eh?

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Ursa_Eagle said:

so did you manage Thunder Ridge? (I think that's what it's called), or did you do the Butt? Congrats on both summits! bigdrink.gif

after taking a day to cache technical gear at the base of the ridge, plot out a good route (don't think the actual thunder ridge route was in, but it's hard to tell w/ a huge fucking face like the west butt direct, going off a cartoon drawing...we saw a sweet way up regardless) and generally get psyched for doing the route, we decided it would be most enjoyable to do the technical climb after having been up to the north and south summits and getting monster acclimated. regretably, my partner was so beat after a week at 17 that his enthusiasm for the climb was non-existent, especially w/ a 3 day storm predicted. my feeble attempts to persuade him failed, and i hoped to get him to do mt. frances back at the airstrip, so i shut up about it. i ended up getting the shaft on both routes. the climb looks fantastic though, as you can basically pick any line you want up the face and probably claim the first ascent. careful caching your stuff down low though...we heard afterwards avys frequently bury the entire trail below the face, which might piss you off if you're wands end up under 5 feet of snow.

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so i'm sure everyone's seen a gazillion denali pix, so i've cut the bunch i have down to 3, as they capture the upper part of the mountain pretty well.

 

1. west butt ridge...taken around 16,5k. most aesthetic part of the trip probably, looking down the long ridge, above the clouds. wanted to climb thunder ridge, which would have brought us up at the beginning of the ridge for a long traverse over to the fixed ropes.

 

2. north summit. taken on our south summit day, it looks back at the black spire north of denali pass, as well as the north summit. 3 days later we tried to go up to the north summit. we reached the top of the rock bands on the black spire before my partner began thinking he was coming down w/ hape. before that bullshit happened, this was my favorite day of the trip, as climbing through the steep ice and rock bands finally felt like real climbing after all that slogging. the thumbprint ont he photo gives you that "real" feeling...

 

3. south summit. taken from our high point on the north summit day, you can see the huge bowl that is the upper mountain, w/ the large, flat harper glacier at the bottom. across the way is the south summit, with the archdeacon's tower just out of view on the right. the route goes up to the right, out of view too.

219843-denalinorthsummit.jpg.a2d8894f50c8500e892c81238a1d0c72.jpg

Edited by ivan
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ivan said:

so i'm a fucking moron (obviously)...how the hell do i

a) post images directly into the message or

b) link to the images (i put them in the cc.com photo gallery)? or

c) put more than 1 attachment in?

d) keep my finger out from in front of the camera lens? wazzup.gif
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  • 3 weeks later...

 

 

I'M HOME SICK, ivan! I have to get out of here and move north again. All my friends live there.

When at the Mat-Su Glacier, were saying the local kids were people of the corn??? Those kids are very capable of surviving where many on this board would simply die.

 

By the way, I've seen terrible accidents happen with "tourists" on the glacier. Little side note. We were there one fall getting set for the up coming winter ice season. Had been climbing all day in this one particular over hanging section. We were all unroped fucking around and joking. We decided to move about 5 feet out away from where we were standing to take pictures of a buddy up on the wall. As soon as we moved(belayer was off to side to avoid dinner plates)the standing area cracked and opened up into a small lake. It engulfed an ice tool left there. We heard it slide, and slide, and slide, and slide... Never relly heard it bottom out!!! It scared us. We all took off to terra firma and smoked up some local Matanuska Thunder Fuck. click on this and scroll down http://www.hempqc.com/en-us/dept_22.html

http://www.hempdepot.ca/sagarmatha_matanuskatundra.htm

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sisu_suomi said:

 

 

When at the Mat-Su Glacier, were saying the local kids were people of the corn??? Those kids are very capable of surviving where many on this board would simply die. Those kids are very capable of surviving where many on this board would simply die.

 

 

 

naw, i'm saying they were southern boys (late teens, early 20s), like meself...from georgia and north carolina, still country as fuck, and in god's great icebox teaching a skill i couldn't grasp how they'd aquired in Dixie....tickled my heart to smoke down w/ a fellow victim of the War of Northern Aggression...think we were all a bit homesick for grits and oppressive heat

 

i'm 8 feet tall and bullet proof...i ain't dying till i run out of whiskey

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