Alaska

The following post was submitted by Jago.

During May Andy Saxby and myself returned to Alaska. After the now familiar flight to Anchorage, followed by half a day buying our food supplies in REI and Carrs supermarket, flew into the Central Range using Talkeetna Air Taxis (TAT).
Our arrival at Denali base camp (DBC) on the Kahiltna glacier coincided with a high pressure system being in place. So we spent a day ensuring our base camp tent would be well protected in our absence and then prepared ourselves for another attempt on Mt Hunter’s west ridge (Alaska grade IV, 8000ft of ascent and 5 miles long).

Denali Base Camp

Setting out for Mount Hunter

During the first night we skied to the route and climbed up through the initial icefall before eventually pitching our bivi tent just below the rock feature know as the Cats Ears. We’d achieved in one night a journey that had taken us two on our first attempt. However the snow and ice conditions had been horrendously unconsolidated throughout. The next evening we set out once again, but Andy upset to discover that he felt a bit freaked by the route. The problem seemed to be due to a combination of recalling the challenging storm descent we’d experienced during our first attempt , jet lag, and the fact that we’d chosen not to do any warm up climbs because of the good weather that greeted our arrival to the area. We decided to let the icefall consolidate for another 24hrs and then retreated in good order to DBC.
At one point during the cloudless night of our retreat I was seated in the snow belaying Andy down and particularly unstable area of crevasses when I observed a red flare rise up from the direction of the Infinite Spur on Mt. Foraker. Unfortunately we were now on the wrong side of Hunter for radio reception, but once off the mountain we skied straight back to DBC and reported my sighting.
Although we were briefly deflated by our failure on Hunter it was an easy decision to begin the series of warm up climbs we’d neglected to do originally. We therefore enjoyed ascents of the ‘Radio Tower’ and Mt Francis’s East Ridge from DBC.

Andy Saxby high on Mount Francis

We then used TAT again to transfer us into the Ruth Gorge, where we set up another base camp near the Mountain House. Here we experienced a period of heavy snowfall until we were blessed with another high pressure system. As a result we were able to ski down the Ruth and then climb up to the col on the 747 Pass (because you could fly a Jumbo through it) to bivi. The next day we enjoyed a wonderful day climbing Mt. Dickie(Alaskan grade II), and then the following day we made our way back to our Mountain House camp and caught a flight back to Talkeetna.

Bivi on the 747 pass.



Andy on the summit of Mount Dickie.

 Jago