Gran Paradiso

Last week I was climbing peaks and rocks around Chamonix and Courmayeur with Amanda and Mike Smith. The Smiths come from Seattle Washington, where they have three kids and climb mountains without cable cars. This was our schedule: 

• Day 0: Met in Chamonix for trip overview and gear check.
• Day 1: Cosmiques Arete, traverse of the Vallee Blanche to the Tornino Hut in Italy. 
• Day 2: Entreves Traverse, Helbronner lift to the Midi and down to Chamonix. 
• Day 3: Southeast Arete of the Index.
• Day 4: Cragging and skills at the Brevent.
• Day 5: Hiked into the Emanuele Hut on the Gran Paradiso. 
• Day 6: Climbed the Gran Paradiso (4,061 meters).
• Day 7: Hiked out from the Emanuele Hut, pizza in Courmayeur, return to Chamonix.  

Amanda sorting kit before the Traverse of the Entreves, an exposed fifth-class traverse of a 3,600-meter peak by the Torino Hut. Above her is the Matterhorn. To the right is the Monte Rosa massif. 

Amanda on the knife-edge blocks of the Entreves Traverse. Way down in that valley is the Grivel factory. 

Instead of walking five kilometers back across the Mont Blanc massif we took the Helbronner cable car from the Tornino hut to the Midi station.

Riding the Helbronner cable car is like an alpine amusement park. This photo from the cable car was probably just an Imax movie playing on the wall. 

Mike and Amanda climbing the classic Southeast Arete on the Index in the Aiguilles Rouges above Chamonix. 

On the summit of the Index. It looks a bit froggy on the summit of the Blanc. 

For the final instalment we chose the Gran Paradiso, the highest summit entirely in Italy at 4,061 meters (13,323'). We stayed two nights at the very comfortable Emanuele Hut. This place is PRIME ski touring country: four huts to link together, a ski descent of Italy's highest summit...

This 25-foot tall boulder rolled down beside the Emanuele hut last year. Dylan Taylor was there and has a great photo series of the destruction. 

Global mountain extraordinaire Andrew Wexler came along. Andrew and I have been on many Alaska adventures together including the 185-mile Chugach Crusher, full-length tours of the Tordrillo and Neacola Mountains and a day hike of the Ptarmigan Traverse in Washington. We hadn't seen each other in four years. In those four years Wex has stayed pretty much the same, except now he enjoys the reapings of his IFMGA-jobs, he looks younger and has taken to that troubling sport of paragliding. 

Amanda and Mike and a crow near the summit of the Gran Paradiso.

Amanda, Mike and I on the summit with a Buddhist Virgin Mary. Andrew took the easy way down and paraglided down 2,000 meters to the trailhead in 20 minutes. 

Then Andrew hiked back up to the Emanuele Hut and washed off in my cappuccino. Visit Andrew's blog from this trip for more photos of his cappuccino bath. 

Thanks for a great week Amanda, Mike and Wex! Enjoy the rest of your vacation in Amsterdam and Paris!

Lover's Leap

"I really like it here," Cathy says as we lounge in the warm California sunshine, drinking Mexican beer, by a clear mountain brook, after a day of climbing perfect granite. "What if we look for a place here?"

To dedicated Alaskans, hearing this kind of statement creates panic attacks, but I've learned to take these bucks in stride during each visit to California. They're due to irrational thinking from sun poisoning. 

Cathy and I recently visited South Lake Tahoe for a Flanagan family reunion and climbing at Lover's Leap. Before meeting the Flanagan mob, we climbed a day at Donner Pass near Truckee. Here is Cathy sticking the rope up there for me, in real sun and wearing shorts and no sleeves. What she's not thinking about, is that after a long stint in Alaska, where she's mostly dressed in a Ski-Do suit, is that my belay technique decreases as my perving level increases. 

 

During the reunion we took our nephews climbing near Eagle Lake. This is Sean Kirk. He is psyched. On the approach hike to his first rock climb he said, "I'm a weally good wok cwimber."

Flynn Kirk blasted up the rock, like a regular granite cowboy. 

After the reunion we went to Lover's Leap for several days. Lover's is one of the many unique crags that make the western US the best rock climbing zone in the world. Lover's has solid granite lined with horizontal intrusions of harder rock that have eroded into a perfect ladder of incut holds every two to four feet. 

 

The quintessential Lover's route that climbs endless edges is Corrugated Corner. This route is more popular than the nearby Fifty Classic Climbs of North America route Traveler's Buttress. On this day, Cathy and I started at very base of Lover's Leap formation and linked up several routes and finished with the four-pitch Corrugated Corner. Although the sun felt great, it was too much to climb in. We climbed in the morning shade, while the Californians were still sleeping.

The ancient pins at Lover's are either so manky that nobody uses them. Or they've been whipped on and that seems to make them worth clipping.

The mega-corrugated third pitch of Corrugated Corner. 

Walking down from the top through colossal Jefferies Pine, Cedar and Sugar Pine. 

Back to a stash of Mexico's finest export at the campsite, before heading to the creek for sunning and a soak. 

Another super-classic at Lover's Leap is The Line, a three-pitch 5.9. Here is Cathy calmly placing a micro cam just below the route's crux. Andrew Burr calls this the “Direttissima from your dreams" in his Classic Climbs article in Climbing magazine. This is the Comici line of Lover's Leap. A route that follows the line of a falling drop of water. 

Second pitch of The Line. Cathy looks happy. Like I should be really concerned about getting her back to Alaska. 

Cathy leading the summit overlaps on the third pitch of The Line. 

On our last day we climbed the Fifty Classic Climbs of North America route Traveler's Buttress. Despite being the most famous route a Lover's Leap, we didn't see anyone else climb it. On the second pitch we found out why. It was old-school 5.9 off-width, ie. almost impossible. We somehow scratched up the OW and loved the route.

Twenty three years ago I climbed Traveler's Buttress on a stopover during a Yosemite roady, but I have no memory of the 5.9 OW. Back then we didn't have a #6 Camalot, which makes a nice handhold in 5.9 OW. That means the route should have been harder back then. Perhaps my memory lapsed because 5.9 OW with rigid Friends was normal in 1989, or maybe because I was 17 and my memory was clouded by teenage things.

On the summit with my lover, but I don't think we'll leap. We plan on more California rock roadies to climb solid rock in the warm sun, but that of course, hinges upon Cathy signing the I'll-Never-Move-Away-From-Alaska contract. 

Indianhouse Circuit

Indianhouse Mountain is 4,300 feet. It's not the tallest peak in the Chugach Front Range, but it is the craggiest. It even has some solid rock. That's why it's my favorite backyard peak.

Over the past couple summers I've been piecing together the complete Falls Creek ridgeline, which includes the summit of Indianhouse. 

This project began several years ago as running jaunts, with some scrambling. One October, Dave Bass showed me his super-sneaky routes to the ridge above Falls Creek. It has been said that Dave can't climb his way out of a wet paper bag. This photo proves that wrong and that Dave can dangle his ass out there.  

Dana-D and D-Bass running 3,000 feet back down to Turnagain Arm from Indianhouse. Mid-October means winter is coming. 

Falls Creek often has over 50 Dall sheep milling about on the tundra slopes. The sheep trails make easy routes through the mountains

On another Indianhouse excursion I joined a large entourage of Maddog's friends and family. On this trip we did two short rappels, similar to Billy Finley's trip, but we didn't make it all the way around the cirque ridge. Here is Maddog's Kid Brother thinking a smoke would ease the stress on his first rappel. Kid Brother didn't have any smokes, though. When we returned to Anchorage, Kid Brother embarked on a two-hour bicycle mission after smokes. 

"Joe! Again? Why always on the trail?" This summer I was so excited about finally ticking the entire Indianhouse circuit that I had an accident on the trail, right in front of Cathy. A year earlier I came up to this spot to collect lowbush cranberries for Cathy to make liquor. While busy filling my bucket, I ran into two massive grizz who were eating my berries. I fumbled to draw my Deep Woods Bear Off and hose down those jerks, but I just ended up loosing my bear spray holster while retreating down the mountain. It turns out the berries I collected were kinnikinnick bearberry, not lowbush cranberries. Kinnikinnick are not very tasty, unless you're a grizz. 

Jeff Conaway and Cathy on the final Indianhouse grand slam. Lots of foggy ridgeline. 

We brought 200 feet of 5.5mm rope for a single 95-foot rappel into the Indianhouse notch.

We scrambled the rest of the gendarmes.

Some of the gendarmes had exposed sheep trails around their sides.

 Do you see some fun things to ski? Falls Creek is an amazing playground. 

Cathy on a sheep trail high above Turnagain Arm just before dropping down to the car. 

Devils clubbing back to the Seward Highway.

We B-lined to BBQ at the Turnagain Armpit in Indian. Eight hours and 7,000 vertical feet of playing get the appetite going. 

Spring Chutes

Most skiers search for amazing snow. Others seek unique mountain features to ski. It's a quest for the line. Like the great Italian alpinist Emilio Comici said, "I wish some day to make a route, and from the summit let fall a drop of water, and this is where my route will have gone.” Paraphrasing Comici, the American ski alpinist Lou Dawson said, "As a single ball of snow would roll, that is the line I would ski."

Chutes that fall through rocky mountain faces are obvious lines. 

When teaching avalanche classes at Hatcher Pass I ogle over a massive cleft on a north-facing wall. You could call it is the Comici Line of Gold Cord. As Jeff Conaway and I skied this chute, we noticed the Pinnacle had a thin smear of snow covering one its faces. We headed across the valley for a crack at skiing the Pinnacle.  

We had no climbing gear. That was our excuse for stopping 40 feet from the Pinnacle's summit. Basically, we chickened out from exposure. But the chute skiing back into valley was great fun. 

The next day I came back with Paddy Sullivan. We brought a full arsenal of climbing gear, but only made it another five feet closer to the summit. Paddy and I settled for skiing a steep chute into the Archangel Valley. For future attempts on the Pinnacle I will bring a climbing rack complete with a rocket-propelled grappling hook, a Dana Maddog Drummod and a Ryan Hokanson. 

Roger Strong test-driving Black Diamond Carbon Megawatt skis in the Ram Valley. A year earlier Roger had no ligaments in either knee. After exiting the chute, he whooped down the entire 1,000-foot apron, his joyful yells echoing back up the rock-walled chute to me. Roger said it was the best day of his season. If you know Roger, that's quite a complement. 

Cortney Kitchen peering into The Bear's Crack, an eight-foot-wide chute dropping from the summit of Bear Point down to Chugiak. Finding recruits for this excursion was tricky. Luckily Cortney is always keen. We found prickery bushwacking to the base. Then unskiable avalanche chunder. Then a black bear climbing the chute. And then some breakable crust. This chute was all about the feature. Everyone else missed out. 

A few years ago Dave Bass and I skied one of the X-Couloirs on Peeking. To exit Peters Creek, we booted and climbed a monster chute on the north side of Peeking. This monster appeared to be the line on Peeking. Cathy, Cortney and I went back for The Peking King. This was my run of the year. The middle 1,000 feet of this line had impeccable 50-degree duff. A rare combination of the perfect feature and the perfect snow. 

Cortney and Cathy looking down to the 20-foot-wide sluicebox at the base of The Peking King. The day was 12 hours of climbing and skiing. 

One evening Cathy, Dave Bass and I went skiing along Turnagain Arm. We found this gully that dropped 3,300 vertical feet straight to the highway. The Seward Highway is lined with them. Dave said, "Last year I was way into skiing Turnagain Arm after work. This year I was waaaaaay, waaaaaay into it." The week after a hospital visit he sessioned it five times. 

Winslow Passey rapping into a chute on East Twin. We skied three chutes on East Twin that day. Although we had a great day playing in the hills, these chutes weren't the objective. We were after the most obvious pinner in the Anchorage area, the West Twin Pencil Thin, the line that every climber and skier returning from Talkeetna peers up at through their car window and says "Look at those walls. I wonder if those chutes get climbed."

I came back the next week for West Twin Pencil Thin, armed with Canucks Dani Loewenstein and Eric Ostopkevich. After climbing a bunch of Alaska Range routes and skiing the West Twin Pencil Thin, they reckoned their Alaska trip was like hitting Costco when all the samples were out. They visited and pigged out.

Dave Bass topping out on 1,850 vertical feet of tight chute in Falls Creek on July 1. I've learned that if people say, "That's too skinny to ski," then I know it's perfect. Well, maybe this one was too skinny for me: I side-slipped this 45-degree, 20-inch-wide section with tips and tails dangling over the moat. Dave straight-lined it, making turns farther down. Our goal was four hours home to home. We clocked in at 4:20. 

Maddog continues the quest for the feature of all features. The Dawson Line of Southcentral Alaska.