Back from the Ruth...

[daylward]

Had a short but sweet trip to Alaska. Mark Westman and I flew into Kahiltna Base on the 30th of April and helped Lisa set up base camp, then we shuttled over to the west fork of the Ruth on the 2nd of May. Paul picked up Jedi and his climbing partner when he dropped us off, so we got to nab their fab tent platform. Congrats Jedi for finally succeeding on 11,300!

 

The Rooster's Comb (Colton-Leach route) was not in good shape; we got about 10 pitches up and it was all just loose unconsolidated snow at about 80 deg., with spindrift swirling down on us the whole time. The rock protection was sparse, and we were only able to get three screws in. After 7 hours we decided we were going too slow for our style and beat a retreat. We probably would have had slightly better luck if we'd tried it later in the trip, but I'm not sure if it ever gets in much better condition... To do it in a single push, you definitely have to be able to simul all the lower "easy" pitches, and we weren't quite comfortable enough in the conditions to do that the whole way. It's a sweet line though, I think I'd like to go back and try it again someday!

 

Peak 11,300 was a piece of cake by comparison. Joe Puryear and Dave Gottlieb were on the route when we flew in, so we pumped them for beta when they got back. They brought 3 days of food and bivi gear and had to break trail, and they still made it to the summit in 13 hours - they just bivied on the summit and came down in the morning. Mark and I decided to single-push it... so we simuled the whole thing (except for one pitch where rope drag was too great) in 4 swaps, summited in 7 1/2 hours, got buzzed on the summit by a TAT plane, and descended in another 5 hours... in time for a leisurely and social dinner at the big tent! WAY smaller than I expected. But it was a super fun climb, nothing scary, nothing very difficult, just snow, rock, snow, rock, on and on. The descent was all fixed, easy to find the rap stations, they even had biners on them. The only scary part was running under the hanging glacier on the way down. It didn't seem very active, but it was definitely looming. But it's only a half hour from the base of the rappells to base camp, so you're not exposed for long.

 

It was hot & sloppy when we left. Rather disturbing to see that this early in the season.

 

Oh, and we saw one of those blackhawks land on the summit of Huntington. That's sketchier than Foraker if you ask me!

[ivan]

pictures?

 

i'm solid green...

[daylward]

I should have them developed and hopefully some of them scanned by Thursday...

[specialed]

Werd. Nice job. Wuts up with all these helicopters landing on all these summits? Kind of destroys one's wilderness experience and shit. We should just build a telepherique to the summit and save everyone the trouble. Fawk.

[wayne]

The more practice our prospective rescuers get the better. Its only a matter of time before these fast-light ascents produce one

[Jedi]

And congrats to you guys on flying up the route!! Geeze, I have done the bottom half of that route 3 times now. The summit bivy was beautiful with alpinglow at night and in the morning. We came down in whiteout conditions once we got to the rock rapels, so it was a little slow going. Fun route!!

 

That huge serac cut loose as we were summiting. We walked across the concrete like debis the next afternoon. Beautiful blue rocks everywhere. 36 hours later, it let loose again sending a cloud up that sattelite peak at the end of the ridge.

Were you guys there when Karen, Matt and Carl tried it and Karen got hit with that falling piece of ice just before the notch? I saw her arm in a cast but they could not really tell if it was broken or just badly bruised.

One cut loose in the Root Canal from the Bear's Tooth. Kevin Mahoney (sp?) and his wife were sleeping only to find themselves airborne (in their tent) from the windblast. Some of the tent eyelets were even torn out.

Ham & Eggs was bacon. Definitely doable but it was warm. We didn't make it up far since my partner pulled a rock off on the 1st pitch.

I teamed up with a couple of Pacific NorthWest locals and we tried the regular route on the Bears Tooth. Avy condition before the col sent us back down.

That last week there was hot.

Talked to many people who had put up new routes. Those Scots really put up a nice ice line up Dickey. Already been repeated by Ben Gilmore.

 

Met many great people from the PNW. Nice guys to hang out with a climb with. Man, you guys were EVERYWHERE.

 

Kudos to TAT. Great folks there.

 

Another warm spring.

 

The Harvard is still in my sites.

Jedi

[daylward]

Holy crap, you guys heard/saw the serac go twice? That's more active than I thought. As far as I was aware, it didn't make a single noise the whole time we were there... but Mark told me last time he was in there it had strewn huge debris all the way down to the Ruth, so there's really no safe spot 'til you get almost to base camp! Scary.

 

Yep, we were there when Matt, Karen, and Carl tried it. They started the same morning we went down to the Rooster's Comb, and retreated the following day (which was a rest day for us). They rappelled the gully from the first notch - we could see them from time to time from base camp. It took them all day to get down that way, and from our vantage point it looked like snow waterfalls were scouring them constantly. That is a sketch way to come down if you ask me, especially in the heat of the day! We were already in the sack by the time they rolled back into camp trying to get some sleep before our alpine start, so we never actually talked to them.

 

By chance were the NW locals you teamed up with Eric Murphy and Kevin Kanning? I saw them in Talkeetna before we flew in... they were going to try to fly into the root canal, but I haven't talked to them since I got back so I don't know what they did...

 

Dan

[Dru]

The more practice our prospective rescuers get the better. Its only a matter of time before these fast-light ascents produce one

 

but think how easy a rescue would be with a telepherique

[thelawgoddess]

sweet tr.

[iain]

The more practice our prospective rescuers get the better. Its only a matter of time before these fast-light ascents produce one

 

but think how easy a rescue would be with a telepherique

 

I was asking when the 1042 down here in Oregon would start putting ski baskets on their blackhawks. Looks like they are behind the curve

[Jedi]

Dan, I never met Kevin & Eric. I climbed with Tom & Greg. I met Marcus & Chris, Wayne & Lance, Dave & Jeff & Sarah in the Root Canal. Joe & David, Mark & Dan on the West Fork and then more in Talkeetna & Anchorage.

 

Odd thing is, Matt, Karen & Carl rapped before the "notch". The "traverse" before the notch is where Karen told me she got hit. You can rap the ridge proper from before rapping into the notch. It is only 2 pitches back to the Grey Rock bivy. From there it only takes 7 hours to rap to the base and get back to base camp(at a modest pace). Odd they would pick to rap that gully. We watched MANY avalanches pour down the gully. I can only figure they did it because a guide and his client bailed down that gully before we flew in but they bailed 750 below the summit.

 

Jedi

[Jedi]

picture on 11,300 (see attachment).

 

Now how do you include the picture in the body of the post?

Jedi

[Jedi]

Here's a photo for ya Dan. You can see it working its way up the right side of the glacier.

[Alpinfox]

Badass!

 

Jedi, to put a picture in the body of the post:

 

Find your picture in the gallery and right click on the image and click on "Properties"

At the bottom of the little window that pops up you will see the URL address of the image, something like "http://www.somewebsite.com/images/blah123.jpg". Select that address and copy it (Cntrl + C). Now make a post and select "image". A little window will pop up. Paste the image's URL into that window and hit return.

 

Here is one of your images:

 

Nice TR! Thanks for sharing both of you!

 

p.s. Anybody know what Kevin K. is planning on doing in there?

Edited May 23, 2004 by Alpinfox

[kazz]

Hey Hey. Yes, I think all of the northwest was in the Gorge this season. This is how things worked out for Eric and I:

It had just dumped 4 feet of snow before we landed on the Ruth. We were unable to fly into the root canal because of the new snow, and we were anxious to get out, so we flew in below Dickey. We thought it better to let the snow settle before getting on anything anyway. And then It was beautiful, but HOT jesus too HOT. We climbed the backside of Dickey via 747 as an acclimatization climb, and that turned out to be really scenic and nice. Awesome views from the summit. After that we packed up and planned on heading up to the root canal for 5 days, humping it up the hidden coulior approach. I can testify that taking a heavy pack up that route is about the dumbest thing you could do, but we did it anyway. There is a really short WI3, almost mixed move in the gully, no fun with 60 pounds on your back.

We camped below shaken, lower down, so we didn't really meet everyone camped out at the landing strip until later.

We decided to go up Ham and Eggs, and if the route was in good shape, try Shaken not Stirred afterwards. Ham and Eggs was complete warm slop. In cold conditions it would have been awesome, but unless you fire the whole thing before 8am, it was melting. And the fresh snow compounded the slop factor. All of this would have been tolerable, but everyone in the root canal had been waiting for a cold spell, and so while it wasn't cold, it was "colder" the night we started the climb. We ended up behind 2 parties (Tom and Greg, and Wayne and Partner), and also Ben Gilmore was rapping down with a client from a bivy the night before. This made for epic amounts of spindrift and ice debris coming down the gully on us, and most at all of the ice pitches the gully hourglasses and funnels this shit onto your head. Climbing up through it, literally we would close our eyes and just swing, cause you could not look up without filling your face with blizzard. We were in the wrong to get on the route behind other parties, but when you are there, it is really hard to wait it out because you cannot count on the weather. We stuck it out and were in the final snow ramp to the top of the couliour when we decided the snow conditions were too miserable to warrant continuing the final 400 ft of snow to the col, so we rapped down at that point. The ice was so rotten in Ham and Eggs that we wrote off any ideas about Shaken not Stirred, whose bottom pitches looked like they had been broiled, nuked, and deep fried. It was just too warm. So we headed back down to the Ruth Glacier, and then it started snowing again. We skied up to Don Sheldon and met up with most of the other parties flying out, and then it was many many many beers at the West Rib back in Talkeet. The sunny days, it was so hot, all I wanted to do was go rock climbing. So many possibilities. Definitely want to go back for a rock trip. Dan- nice job on 11.3. I talked to Westman about your time on the Rooster comb- sounds nasty. And nasty in Alaska is REALLY nasty.

Lemme know if you wanna get together for slides, I got some good ones. Not scanned though.

 

kevin

[fourteenfour]

looks rad. I have some photos I need to get to Mark...