wfinley Posted June 14, 2005 Share Posted June 14, 2005 (edited) Everyone's postin' so I guess I will too... This is how I spent my late spring. I brought an esoteric novel (V. by Thomas Pynchon) and spent my tent days reading postmodern fiction and thus never really escaping as I should have. Next time I will take a cheesy detective novel and veg out. N. Ridge of Mt. Blackburn (16,390') On May 6th, Wayne Todd, Carrie Wang, Ben May and I flew from Chitna into Mt. Blackburn's 9,500' camp with Paul Clause. At first we had five days of stellar weather for the Wrangells, and successfully moved camp up through a teetering serac field to Camp 1 (11,000'). We carried one load up and then moved camp the following day. Climbing was up 40 degree knee deep sownfields, followed by a pitch of 60+ ice, a traverse through a maze of seracs and finally 300' of 60+ ice to a corniced ridge camp. At Camp 1 we enjoyed two days of stellar weather and used one of those days to forge ahead to 13,000' to scope the route. However, come summit day the clouds rolled in to create questionable weather. Ben did not feel like a summit bid so Wayne, Carrie and I opted to go as a three person team -- leaving our 11,000 camp at 6 am to initially climb 2,000' of 40-60 degree ice and snow slopes to a football field sized plain with a large crevasse in the middle where we cached a stove and extra food. This was followed by a knife-blade ridge for 1 mile and finally a mile long summit plateau from 14,500-16,390. We reached the summit around 5pm. Near the top the weather rolled in and high winds scoured my face and nose giving me minor frostbite. We summated, snapped a couple pics and then literally ran back down the route we ascended. On the ridge the winds were howling a steady 60+ mph and the snow was disintegrating around us. We moved fast, but safe - protecting every pitch with pickets for fear of being blown off the route. At the crevasse we regrouped and continued down. It was 10pm and the winds were still howling. We down-climbed about 400' then realized we were tired and that further descent could be dangerous - so we turned around and climbed up to our crevasse. Back once again at the crevasse we decided to bivy so Wayne began to melt water while Carrie belayed me over to a gaping crevasse that I hollowed out for a bivy ledge. We then each drank a water bottle of hot soup, put on all our insulated layers, zipped up in our bivy sacks, spooned together for warmth and had a fitful sleep from 1am - 4am. At 4am we packed up and began the descent. Luckily the weather held and avalanche conditions we good and we made good time - reaching our high camp at 7:30am. Ben greeted us with food and water and we passed out sleeping all day and night. The next morning we hoped to descend to base camp but a huge storm rolled through. We had to take turns on shovel duty - one person would stay outside for a full hour while the other three tried to rest. You would pick up a shovel full of snow and where you dug would instantly fill again with spindrift and snow. We battled this from 6am - 6pm when the storm finally broke. Instantly we were up and packed but then looked out at our descent route to see huge avalanches scour the route. Above us the slopes sagged and when they finally broke we dove for our campsite wall and held onto ice axes for safety. Luckily a crevasse above us diverted all snow and the avalanches poured off the ridge a mere 200' above us. After a discussion we decided to let the slopes settle for a night and descend to base camp in the early morning. At 4am we were up and packed and by 5:30 we rigged the first rappel to escape our camp. A 200' rappel followed by 400' of chest deep wallowing in collapsing hollow snow brought us to a huge overhanging serac that we drove ice screws into and rappelled down to another serac. A final rappel brought us to safer slopes that we jogged down. At the bottom we had a mile of knee to thigh deep snow back to our camp. Back at camp we collapsed happy to be down and safe. Two more days of snow delayed our pilot but finally around 1pm on May 17th he broke through a hole in the clouds and drifted in lazily, finally parking his Twin Otter right next to camp. We loaded up, and off we drifted down glacier, over rock and finally green trees, muddy water and flat level warm ground. Edited June 14, 2005 by wfinley Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alpinfox Posted June 14, 2005 Share Posted June 14, 2005 a huge overhanging serac that we drove ice screws into and rappelled down to another serac. BOOTY!!! Nice TR. That pic is great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wfinley Posted June 14, 2005 Author Share Posted June 14, 2005 Actually - The serac has a single titanium screw; the booty is in the crevasse we slept in. I stuck 2 (nice and shiny new) BD screws above my head and clipped stuff to them. Next morning I was groggy and the wind was insane... I walked off with them still there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomtom Posted June 14, 2005 Share Posted June 14, 2005 Two more days of snow delayed our pilot but finally around 1pm on May 17th he broke through a hole in the clouds and drifted in lazily, finally parking his Twin Otter right next to camp. Twin Otter!?! Oh My God! Oh My God! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wfinley Posted June 14, 2005 Author Share Posted June 14, 2005 My bad... it's not a twin - it's a "Turbine Otter:" Here are some aviation pix: http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.se...inct_entry=true Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheOtter Posted June 14, 2005 Share Posted June 14, 2005 Twin Otter!?! Oh My God! Oh My God! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wfinley Posted March 8, 2006 Author Share Posted March 8, 2006 A few people have emailed me asking for more beta so I put some pix online of the mountain / route taken from the plane: http://www.couloirgraphics.com/images/misc/wse-blackburn/index.htm As for route descriptions... not much to say - choose either the N ridge proper or NW ridge and go up. Try to avoid getting crushed by serac fall, watch for crevasses and go fast to avoid the inevitable storms. 2 high camps would make for a kind summit day but realistically it's doubtful that you'll get a weather window that will alllow this. Likewise choose your camps with caution - at least one team has been flushed off the N. Ridge by avalanches and we came very close. A fast acclimatized team could go from 9500 to the summit and back in a day. If the weather had cooperated we could probably have gone from our 11 camp to the summit and back in around 14 hours. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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