More summer!!

Just got done spending a few days in Ashford at the house Alpine has for guides to use. Went biking - on the Elbe Hills ATV paths, Osborne Mountain, and today up to Paradise and back. Since the India ride isn't a hardcore mountain bike course, I'm calling it good with road, logging road, and some trail riding.

Hiked up to a lookout near Osborne Mountain, High Rock Lookout (very imaginative naming), at the high point of my ride for a beautiful view and the first ripe blueberries and huckleberries of the season! (It has been such a cold wet summer that flowers and berries are very late this season, hence the bears still actively looking for food.)

Today's ride from Ashford to Paradise and back was long, but not as hard as I expected for 50 miles. The 12 miles from Longmire visitor center (2700' elevation) to Paradise (5400') took 2 hours to ride up and 30 minutes to ride down!! It's a good ride when you've got bugs in your teeth from grinning all the way down...

Summer redemption

Wait, it's back! Summer has taken pity on us poor Northwesterners after months of being coy (ie non-existent) and given us a redemptive week of beautiful weather.

Not without working for it however. Our 6-day hike of the Northern Loop trail started with a hike out of Sunrise in the sideways-blowing snow. Welcome to Washington! Ten folks from around the country joined Kim and I for a week of deep forest and alpine meadows and generalized mountain appreciation. Unlike many groups, this one had no decompression time, no day or two of wondering where their Blackberry was or learning to look around. And (coincidentally or not) many of them had never been backpacking before, ever! But also unlike many groups, this didn't seem to make a difference - those who were new dived right in and came up looking like they'd been doing it for years.

After that first day, the weather was cold at night but otherwise nearly perfect. The summer was so cold and wet that wildflowers are still in full bloom and we even had to cross a patch of snow! This also meant that the blueberries were late in arriving, so we not only got to see amazing flowers, but lots of bears! Presumably they're still looking for food as autumn approaches and their berry supply has yet to materialize, keeping them searching closer to trails. Everyone in the group saw at least 6 bears, and one near Mystic Lake put in several appearances. Marmots, a deer, and the occasional pika - a good week.

On the last evening we hiked up to Skyscraper Peak for sunset, which has been an amazing after-dinner adventure every time I've led this trip. True to form, the mountain drew clouds around her to accent color and contour, obscuring and revealing for the hour or more that we watched the light change and fade. It's nice to see the mountain from below occasionally - sitting in a field or on a lower peak, looking at the snow slopes of camp and crevasse. A nice change, and beautiful end to a beautiful trip.

Summer going, going...

Back on Rainier for a few climbs, and the weather is less than cooperative. I stayed up at Muir for two trips in a row, and our first had great summit weather. A bit of new snow gave the mountain a fresh dusting of white to show off features and cover up some of the dirt that blows off the ridges. It made for a bit of work - high camp had been taken down because of the storm and had to be re-set up, and two of our guides went and shoveled out a path on a steep section the afternoon before our climb. My next trip had good weather until summit night, when freezing rain was followed by high winds and a couple inches of snow. Potentially hazardous climbing conditions and likely avalanche danger kept us in camp - no summit this time around. We got off easy though - two days later they got another 2 1/2 feet of snow at high camp! Happy August...

I stayed in nearby Ashford (where there is a company guide house for us) for a few days after my climbs, just reading and trail running and making good food. There's a chill in the air even though all the snow hasn't melted from the lower elevations yet, and that sense that the flowers are about to be covered up again. A few more trips up the mountain for me, then time to think about plans for upcoming seasons.

Bugaboos

I'd been up once before and wanted to go back, so Mary and I headed up to the Bugaboos, an alpine rock climbing playground on the eastern edge of BC in Canada. A relatively short drive and relatively short (though steep!) hike in with lots of gear, so off we went for a week.

It was spitting rain as we hiked up, then full-on sleet and wind as we arrived at the Cain Hut. This is no kind of weather for a tent, so we forked over the $25 per person to stay in a nice warm hut half-full of friendly climbers instead of hiking another hour to set up camp in freezing rain. This is what we call a "no brainer" - the day before, marble-sized hail had destroyed several tents camped above! The next day was similarly crappy, so there was lots of playing cards and napping and being social, wondering if we'd aver be able to climb.

When the sun finally came out, several parties set out ahead of us for the West Ridge of Pigeon Spire, an uber-classic 5.4 that's a great orientation climb for the area. Alas, the preceeding days had coated it in ice! Rather than make a very enjoyable climb epic, the 15 of us stared at it for a while, unwilling to turn back right away, then wandered off to scope out the conditions on other rock. Mary built a scary little snowman, then we wandered around the glacier for a while and took the long way back. Maybe tomorrow...

Went up the Cain route on Bugaboo the next day - I'd descended the route last time I was here, but that meant we skipped all the fun climbing. An interesting pitch or two made it much more fun than I remembered coming down. The next day, back to Pigeon Spire for a lovely day of ridge scrambling. Both days, we took far more time than most people do, and met (waylaid, harrassed, chatted up) pretty much everyone coming or going on the Snowpatch-Bugaboo col that accesses most climbs. Far more entertaining than actually climbing!

On our last day, we decided not to go for the big alpine traverse that we had gotten excited for and spent the day mostly wandering around again, traipsing around glaciers and sunning by a lake. We met some cool folks from Seattle, Boston, Mexico, France, Australia... While I don't support huts in the Cascades or most areas in the US, it is fun to have areas where they exist. Even without big objectives, this is a beautiful place - 'til next time...

Cascades

Six-day courses, a backpacking catch-up trip, and a climb for fun - time flies when you're running around like the proverbial headless chicken.

Nice to come back from Denali to some nice days - the first weather-cooperative glacier course of my season was a great distraction from Alaska.

Then to the Enchantments with Lin. Neither of us had been to this limited-access, quota-governed, much-talked-about area, so off we went, no climbing due to my wrenched shoulder from a bike mishap. It's beautiful, it's true, but there are a lot of beautiful places in the world, and I've been to many of them. It is amazing for its access and proximity to I-90, but similar to other high alpine zones. We spent a valuable couple of days catching up from winters spent elsewhere, enjoying the lake and quiet.

On to Rainier with Rob and Erin and her friend Wolf. Despite working on the mountain quite often, it was nice to climb with friends, people who I'd trained with before and looked forward to hanging out with. Erin's friend's knee took him down early, but we had a beautiful summit day with few others around - nice to have the mountain largely to ourselves.

Now off for a little more work before some play time...

Denali

Whew! That is a big hill, and a lot of time to spend in the snow and ice. For a first trip, it was almost too nice as far as conditions are concerned - we didn't have any major storms, no weather delays, and the lower glacier was still very closed up, unusually so for this late in the season. A late trip often trades warmer temperatures for worse weather and open crevasses, but this year seems to have provided the best of both worlds for our team; a couple of earlier trips ran out of time waiting for the weather.

I'd been to Alaska seven years ago, so knew what to expect generally, but hadn't gotten into the mountains, just looked at them. The Alaska Range is amazing. What struck me most was not its size, in area or height, but it's steepness. I'm used to smaller mountains here in the Cascades, and the sheerness of the rock and ice that surround the glaciers you stand on is intense. Not only is the place huge, but even once you understand that things are on a whole different scale, everything still towers over you, making you wonder if you would ever get used to it. For one thing, you don't have to fly onto many other glaciers - the flight gives you just a taste of how big it is going to be...

A three-week expedition requires enough food and gear that you can't carry it all at once, so sleds are used to get everything where it is going. Sounds fun, but is really a pain to deal with! Contrary to what one of our climbers (who left on the third day) thought, 50 pounds in your sled does not feel like 15 - it feels like 60. It still takes two trips most of the time, so except for summit day, you're really climbing the mountain twice!

We flew in on summer solstice, the longest day of the northern year, so the darkest it got was kind of a dusk, between about 1am and 3am. On the lower mountain, we moved during this time so the snow wouldn't be too soft to walk on.

Working our way steadily up the mountain, we moved first to 7800', then to 11,200' where we could get back on a day schedule, being high and cold enough for the snow to be good throughout the day. A rest day or two, then up to 14,200' camp, where the park service has a medical tent and rangers, and where most teams rest and wait for good weather for going up high.

From here, the terrain gets quite a bit steeper - a section with ropes pinned to the snow to use as a hand line and backup, and a beautiful ridge up to 17,200' camp.

High camp is cold and windy, and really just a staging ground for going up to the summit. We carried loads up, went back down, moved our camp up, and took a day to rest in the half-pressure oxygen of the high atmosphere, acclimatizing and gaining strength for our summit bid.

Winds were blowing a bit too hard when we first got up on summit day, but after an hour lessened enough for us to go for it. Not too cold, about 10 degrees, and we and another team left camp about 11am. We moved steadily up to Denali Pass, up to the long ridge, and eventually to the broad field below the summit ridge. A little slower, we climbed to the ridge crest and along it to the summit, stopped a few feet short, literally, by the tragedy described below. Not too many pictures that day...

We made it safely back down to 17,200', spent a might recovering physically and mentally, and made a long push down the rest of the mountain. Guide friends of Mike's made us water and dinner at 14,200' and we kept going to 11,200' for a couple hours of sleep before taking advantage of the colder nighttime hours to keep the lower glacier firm. We got back to the base camp airstrip 24 hours from when we left high camp - 2 vertical miles in that time. Wow.

Our climbers were amazing, staying strong and pushing all the way back down to beat a weather system we knew was coming that could keep us from flying off the mountain for several days. At base camp, we packed up all of our things and waited for the small plane to return for us.

Because it's not over 'til it's over, however, one of the gauges forced our pilot to make an emergency landing on the glacier below camp just after takeoff, and we piled everything out, prepared to camp where we were or climb back up to base camp. He did a test flight and decided the gauge was faulty, and after a second takeoff we made it back to Talkeetna. That's a lonely place to be standing on a glacier all by yourselves.

Many personal thanks to my lead guide, Mike, and everyone else I had the opportunity to work with, both on and off the mountain. Many, many thanks, as well, to everyone who believes and understands that this is what I do, what I love and, hopefully, am good at.

Summit note

One tragedy marred an otherwise great expedition: on summit day, at the top of the highest mountain in North America, Jim, one of our climbers, suddenly and simply collapsed. We gave CPR for over 35 minutes in an effort to revive him, but he never regained a pulse. Due to the steepness of the terrain, our quickly-chilling group did not have the resources to conduct a complicated recovery to bring him down; we simply had to say our goodbyes and bury him as best we could at the request of the Park Service. Two other Alpine Ascents teams summited a few days later, and were able to rebury his body in a more secluded spot, where it will likely remain.

Here's the Park Service's press release: http://www.climbing.com/news/hotflashes/fatality_on_mt_mckinley_july_4_2008/

As much as accidents and deaths in the mountains are often subject to endless debate and scrutiny, this is a rare case when there's really not much to rehash, fortunately for those of us involved. We may never know what caused his collapse, particularly if he remains buried on the mountain; he was climbing as strongly as anyone else, and had shown no previous signs of anything out of the ordinary, no trouble with altitude. He was climbing with a friend who was also on our trip, and as traumatic as it must be for him, hopefully some small measure of closure and comfort can come to his family through this friend's presence at his death.

We were able to get the rest of our team safely off the mountain with the generous help of many other guides and people both on and off the hill. Everyone we worked with has been incredibly helpful and supportive, particularly the NPS staff. They have to deal with this sort of thing regularly on a professional basis, but manage to do so while being incredibly human and caring on a personal level as well. Huge thanks for everyone's help, and many condolences to those who will feel Jim's loss.