Whale Tail Ski

Mid-April is the week of Cathy's birthday and our wedding anniversary. During this week I'm either scoring mega-points, or in the dog house. In past years I've been sharing a micro-tent with fermenting dudes in some god-forsaken mountain range in Alaska. Those were the dog house years. Since then I've focused my uxorious nature. I've learned that micro-tents are best with my wife. Last year I scored huge points with Cathy on the Haute Route Grand Lui. This year I also scored huge points with her on Denali's Whale Tail.

On a mid-April Friday morning the forecast tipped to the good side of marginal. Annie at Talkeetna Air Taxi told us to be ready at 2pm. We loaded our rucksacks, drove two hours to Talkeetna and jumped into Paul Roderick's turbo bird. 

We stopped at Little Switzerland to pick up some pro dog skiers. The pro dogs said, "We skied everything." I saw their tracks. They did ski every big feature in Little Switzerland. Then Paul dropped us off at the Mountain House on the Ruth Glacier. 

At 7pm Cathy and I started skiing down the Gorge. The chubby seasonal snowpack let us ski unroped. Being able to ski unroped makes the Alaska Range way more cool. 

An hour down the Gorge we stopped for cocoa and a catch-up with our friends Silas and Peter. They were having a great trip, scratching up ice-encrusted corners on Mount Bradley.

Peter Doucette's photo of Cathy and I heading toward 747 Pass between Mount Bradley on the left and Mount Dickey on the right.

We camped our first night below 747 Pass. In the morning we looked up Dikey's 5,000-foot wall. Eeep!

Skinning up 747 Pass. In a few places we used the rope with stopper knots. Here Cathy has unclipped and I'm dragging the rope since the avi danger was more eminent than the cracks. 

Second camp, up on the Tail with Denali and the Backside Glacier behind. My favorite part of the trip was sharing this small tent with Cathy. Even better, she didn't like her book. She's more amuzing without a book. 

Skinning above the Tokositna Glacier. Last summer I hiked Denali's Whale Tail with Nik and Dmitry. The fun and views were world-class. Thank you Nik and Dmitry! But if you cover the Whale's Tail with snow, and don't have to hike, then the funness levels goes into the next category. 

Cathy heading toward Tokosha Gap. Tucker Chenowith cooked up the Whale's Tail ski trip four years ago. Tuck said it was the best ski trip he's ever done. Since Tucker is THE MAN, skiing the Whale's Tail went to the top of my list.

On our tour, Cathy and I had one powder run, some beautiful corn and lots of bullet-proof crust skiing. 

My trophy wife of 11 years at our fourth and last camp, just below Tokosha Gap, 4,000 feet above the Susitna Valley.

Cathy skating toward Porcupine Butte at 5am to beat the isothermal slopfest. Tokosha Gap behind. From Porcupine Butte we skied 12 miles of snowmachine highway to the Chulitna bridge. 

A slow hitch on the Parks Highway. Eventually The Prospector took us to the Talkeetna spur road. Then the Baptist minister's wife - a recent transplant from Arkansas - gave us a ride to TAT. She'd just been on a scenic flight with K2 Aviation. "We landed on the summit," she said. "On the Ruth Glacier?" I said, referring to their usual scenic landing site. "No, they landed us right on the summit of Mount McKinley." I went into the TAT office and told Annie to upgrade their scenic options. 

Denali's Whale Tail

I'd never guided backpacking. And I've never been on a real backpacking trip in Alaska. Last week I learned it can be serious fun. It was partly due to the crazy beauty of our location - a Whale's Tail-shaped landform between the Ruth and Tokositna Glaciers. But probably more so from my great partners: Nik Koblov from Dmitry Maskoff from New York. 

Climber Bruce of Rust's Flying Service flew us from Lake Hood in Anchorage to Denali National Park. Lake Hood is the largest float plane airport in the world. We landed at Backside Lake, next to the Ruth Glacier, in the retreating path of the Backside Glacier.  

On our first day we hiked down along the Ruth Glacier, following the lateral moraine and camping on a perched lake. Then under blistering sunshine, we day hiked on the spine of the Whale's Tail. Here Nik and Dmitry look down the Ruth Glacier to the Tokosha Mountains. The Whale's Tail is pristine country: no trails, cairns or any sign of humans. 

The presence of Denali will do this to you. Nik (left) is a longtime friend of Dan Oberlatz, owner of Alaska Alpine Adventures. I've been on two previous trips with Nik and Dan: skiing in the Neacola Mountains in 2008 and skiing in Valdez last year. Dmitry is Nik's buddy from New York. These two are the definition of sooooooper nice guys: always fun, enthusiastic and perhaps since they're Russian, they never complain. 

Nik breaking into the Tokosha Mountains on day four with the Whale's Tail behind. We spent a full day in the western Tokoshas, hiking ridgelines and bagging peaks. This trip was hardcore backpacking. We had many days of 10 miles and 5,000 vertical feet over scree, talus, boulder fields and streams. My kind of backpacking!

Dmitry cutting loose after containing himself in the city. 

We spent our seventh and eighth day following a GPS along the ridgeline in fog, rain and snow - a pleasant change from the perfect weather. We'd stashed a canister of food on a 5,000-foot summit to pick up later in the trip. Bear canisters are required in these lowlands of Denali National Park. These cans are heavy and awkward to pack, but I guess it would be more awkward if a bear chows your food.   

Nik doling out the brown juice: cowboy coffee. I've been hearing discrepancies about real Turkish coffee, which is probably the origins of cowboy coffee. Boil it once or three times? Bring it to a boil or let it really boil? Only one solution: "Cathy! We have to go to Turkey so I can research coffee and do a better job guiding."

Our third day hike: up the Backside Glacier behind Mount Church, Johnson and Bradley. 

Whoa guys! Awesome trip. Thank you so much! And Dan, thanks for scoping the terrain and setting me up with these suave dudes. For me it was quite the incredible introduction to backpacking in Alaska. Nik and Dmitry, you're borderline converting me. But be prepared, I'll be trying to convert you. Next time we're stepping it up with some mountaineering. Or maybe the Whale's Tail on skis...

Cheers!

East Fork Chulitna River

Summer in Alaska is about packrafting - if you can negotiate rivers then Alaska is at your disposal. Packrafts are six-pound backcountry boats. Think Kmart raft with $1000 worth of durability.

 

Last weekend Cathy, Gretchen Roffler and I packrafted a portion of the East Fork of the Chulitna River, an hour north of Talkeetna. We started where the Parks Highway crosses the East Fork, hiked Hardage Creek to a pass and over to the East Fork to float back to our cars. Dreamy. 

A guidebook for packrafting isn't out yet, but it's coming. Our info for the East Fork of the Chulitna River came from packrafting.org. Brad Meiklejohn's description had typical Alaskan class. He provides the necessary route info, but leaves extraneous details out. Brad mentions nothing of the bushes in Hardage Creek. We found some bushes where moose live. Then we camped at bushline. 

 

 

Cathy and Gretchen at treeline camp in Hardage Creek. For this trip we eschewed stove and tent. Instead we roasted franks over a fire, slept under a tarp, and drank cowboy coffee for breakfast. A hole dug by a grizzly after a ground squirrel made an ideal fire pit.  

 

 

Real coffee. Dylan Taylor told me to never boil cowboy coffee. We boiled the coffee. I'll never listen to Dylan again. 

  

 

At the 4,600-foot pass between Hardage Creek and our descent to the East Fork. 

 

 

Down in those bushes that Alaskans don't notice is where we jumped in our boats. Rob Whitney and Corey Smith (two fit boys) did an extended version of our trip. Read Corey's story. 

 

 

Yum! Low bush blueberries. 

 

 

Gretchen in first canyon. 

 

 

Scoping the class III+ crux entrance to second canyon.  

  

 

Back on the Parks Highway at 7:30 PM. The weekend I've lusted after for three years. Oh Alaska!

Kahiltna 12-day Course

For sure I said "yes!" when Garrett Madison offered me a 12-day course on Denali's Kahiltna Glacier. It had been three years since my last stint with Alpine Ascents International. That was also my last visit to the Kahiltna. The 40-mile long Kahiltna Glacier is a dramatic setting for mountaineering skills and has an unbeatable social scene.

My crew on the course was fired up and super fun: Ian Davies from Brisbane, Australia; Daniel Krebs from Hattiesburg, Mississippi; and two Army Rangers, Clint Holladay and Trevor Tow from Savannah, Georgia.

   

Talkeetna Air Taxi flew us from Talkeetna to the 7,000-foot Kahiltna Base Camp in a DeHavilland Turbo Otter. We schlepped our kit up glacier and camped for five days to cover mountaineering skills and climb Control Tower.

Ian and Clint hauling Trevor from the hole during crevasse rescue practice on day four. 

The dramatic ridge of Control Tower.

The Triangle Face of the Kennedy-Lowe route on Mount Hunter as seen from Control Tower. The serrated ridge at the top of the face is a famous and fearsome, Alaskan double-corniced ridge. See High Alaska for a close up of the first ascent.

Denali attracts guides and like-minded people from around the US. Tim Remick, a friend who I haven't seen in years, was spending a week at Kahiltna Base Camp photographing haggared Denali climbers.

On day seven we moved camp up the Kahiltna Glacier to 8,000 on the West Buttress route of Denali. Despite an ominous start, low clouds and snow kept the temperatures down and the snow firm letting us move during the mid-day rather than the typical night schedule.

We moved camp again to 9,600 feet below Kahiltna Pass. Our goal was climbing 12,525-foot Kahiltna Dome, but constant clouds and snow killed that plan. Instead we climbed a 13,350-foot peak next to Windy Corner. In this photo Daniel is standing near the summit of Peak 13,350 below the 16,030-foot end of the West Buttress.

The posse: Daniel, Ian, Clint, Trevor and Joe on the summit of Peak 13,350.

Trevor leading down the West Buttress to the 11,000-foot West Buttress camp. Below lurks fog and our camp at 9,600.

Murk...

We couldn't resist having a crack at Kahiltna Dome. Instead of summiting we found a blizzard and rowdy alpine climbing. As the storm intensified, Daniel led us across the bergschrund without falling in, and found a patch of ice. We set up a semi-hanging, EARNEST ice anchor, climbed the 55-degree ice using American technique to a picket anchor. We then climbed 10,790-foot Mount Capps (we thought) and then returned to the picket anchor. I belayed them back down to the ice anchor and I joined them by counterbalance rappelling off an ice bollard.

These southern boys love storms! The orange rope from Daniel leads up to the bollard that I'm counter-balance rappelling on. The next morning, when clouds lifted, we saw we'd been far from Mount Capps summit. Everything is exciting in a summer solstice storm! Thanks for a great trip guys!