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Avery
climber
New Zealand
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Topic Author's Original Post - Sep 10, 2016 - 09:09pm PT
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Mount Huntington-West Face (1965)
David S. Roberts
IT was darker than dusk. The two of us stood in the gloom of Alaskan midnight on the last day of July. Ed said, "How do you feel?”
"Pretty tired. I feel I’m getting overcautious. How about you?”
"No,” he answered. "I feel great, as if I could go all night.”
I handed him a carabiner and he set up the rappel. We unroped and threw down the ends of the rope. Ed clipped the rope in and got in rappel position.
"Just this pitch,” I said, "and it’s easy going down to camp.”
He leaned back and there was a scraping noise and he flew into space. Fifty feet below me he met the ice and, tangled in the rope, slid and bounced out of sight, though I could hear his body falling and knew he would not stop for 4000 feet.
I shouted Ed’s name, but there was no answer.
Thus Mount Huntington, one might say, avenged the profanation of our climbing it. How much simpler it would be to deal with death, to prepare for it, if it struck with even that trace of purpose! But our accident came, unexpected and freakish, near the end of a successful expedition, and we can blame it neither on the mountain, nor on ourselves, but perhaps only on the mindless whim of a carabiner.
Ed was killed the same day we had reached the top of Mount Huntington, after more than a month on its west face. Only a French party in 1964, by a different route, the northwest ridge, had climbed to its 12,240-foot summit before us. (See A.A.J., 1965, 14:2, pages 289-298.)
There are not many unclimbed prizes left in Alaska, or for that matter anywhere. But there are hundreds of new routes to be done, direct, challenging lines that thrill the mountaineer’s heart. Of all the peaks in that great land, only McKinley, with eleven routes climbed and another tried, has received proper attention. Three southwest ridges lie waiting route rising from white spur (the Stegosaur) at the center right.
on Foraker, two steep buttresses on Hunter beg to be climbed, and men have tried other ways up the Moose’s Tooth than that by which it was finally ascended — why not Huntington, then, the gem of the range, "the most beautiful mountain in Alaska?”
We chose the west face for several reasons. The route appeared as safe as any difficult route on a big mountain could be. It was not threatened by hanging glaciers or cornices, and it was not so long that retreat would be impossible. Furthermore, from all indications, the rock would be sound: the south face of McKinley and most of Hunter are of solid granite, and the French compared the rock they encountered to that of the Chamonix aiguilles. Our route was aesthetically perfect, an arrow splitting the face, pointing straight to the summit. We were aware that the upper Tokositna basin, from which the west face rose, and where no man had ever been, offered any number of challenging climbs we might try in the event that Huntington did not prove feasible.
We had hoped to walk in, but Don Sheldon had little trouble dissuading us. A seventy-mile hike, including an unknown icefall, would take too long; thanks to an overloaded microbus we were well behind schedule. Thus on June 29 Sheldon landed Ed Bernd, Matt Hale, Don Jensen, and me beneath the northeast face of Mount Hunter, high on the Tokositna Glacier and four miles west of our projected Base Camp. We were all members of the Harvard Mountaineering Club, climbing partners in the past and hence close friends, and because of that, a close- knit expedition. As compatible as we were, we differed fundamentally. Without doing too great a violence to the complexities of personality, it could be said that we were proof of medieval physiology, each epitomizing one of the four humours: Ed sanguine, Matt melancholy, Don phlegmatic, and I choleric.
Five uneventful days of packing — enlivened only by an abortive attempt at a sled — established us at the foot of our route. From here an icefall led to a col at 8900 feet, between Huntington and a small peak to the west. From the col, a steep, knife-edged ridge (the lower portion of which we named the "Stegosaur,” because of its sharp, jagged shape), rose to two snowfields of about 45°: the "Lower” and "Upper Parks,” separated by a snow chute we called the "Alley.” At 10,100 feet the Upper Park merged into the west face proper, and in the next 1400 feet lay the crux of the route — a steep rock and snow wall, a true face averaging just under 70°. Above that, a steep snow slope led to the summit ridge at 11,900 feet; from there a corniced quarter mile would take us to the summit.
The icefall to the col proved easy. We bypassed its gaping crevasses and spent several stormy days packing loads over it. The Stegosaur, however, did not yield so easily. Its north side was heavily corniced; its south side was bordered by vertical rock faces and near-vertical snow gullies that plunged to the floor of the Lower Tokositna, 3000 feet below.
On our first attempt on the ridge, I broke off a gigantic cornice. A little disheartened, we turned to the construction of a snow cave. However only two could work on the cave at one time, and Don began to eye the gap where the cornice had been. Soon, with him belaying, Matt led up a fifteen-foot wall of hard ice, tunnelled through the residual cornice, and emerged on the far side. A steep snow traverse brought him to the first rock of our route. It was all we had hoped for, clean, sharp-edged granite.
We progressed at a very slow and irregular rate. On July 6 Don and I put in two and a half pitches of steep snow and rock, which included some aid on a 60° verglased slab. The following day Ed and Matt could place only two more pitches, despite ten hours of climbing. On the fourth pitch Ed led a nearly vertical stretch of hard ice plastered with a few inches of snow.
Steep snow traverses were quite tedious to put in. The crust had first to be chopped or cut off, and hip-deep snow stamped flat. To keep from disappearing, the leader occasionally had to build up his steps with snow from above. Warm weather avalanched the steps off and new snow filled them. Several times we had to completely replace many of the pitches. To compound our problems, the temperature for a long while rarely dropped below freezing, and on many nights the saturated snow made climbing inadvisable. Snow structures that had grown all winter began to collapse in the warmest weather of the year. In the cave we waited, read, and played Monopoly. Ed and Don won all the first games, and just as Matt and I were about to file anti-trust suits he broke into the winners’ column. "I guess it’s a game of skill after all,” he said. I agreed after winning the next game.
Putting in only a few pitches on those rare nights when we could climb, we had by July 15 completed only fifteen pitches, all consistently difficult and exposed. Half our allotted time was up and we were not one third of the way up our route. We had not even reached the Alley, and the face above remained a mystery. Obviously, to succeed, we would have to place a camp as soon as possible. Finally on the 16th, the weather was a little colder and we could proceed. Don and I put in two pitches, cached a food box, and returned. Ed and Matt, carrying a minimum camp, passed us on our way down, and reached the Alley in two more rope lengths. They were disappointed but not surprised to find no natural campsites. In hopes of a better site they continued. Wind and blowing snow made communications difficult and chilled them, but they rapidly placed six pitches to the foot of the "Spiral,” a 200-foot rock and ice buttress, the first problem of the face. After twelve hours of climbing, they had found no good campsite, and resigned themselves to the laborious task of descending and chopping a platform at the Alley. It took them seven more hours to get a two-man tent pitched and anchored to rock pitons.
Three days of snow confined them in their spectacular camp. Late on the third day Don and I were able to reach them after a slow climb through the treacherous snow. Matt and I returned to the cave, leaving Don and Ed to work on the route.
On July 20 Don and Ed attacked the Spiral. Like the rock of the Stegosaur, it was beautiful, clean granite. Blocks which had no right to be there were frozen into the face, providing excellent holds. On the twenty-sixth pitch Don led an icy slab topped by twenty vertical feet, all free. What would have been a difficult lead under any circumstances became magnificent under these: iced-up cracks, snowy holds, and the necessity for crampons. Ed’s pitch was only slightly less difficult, but more exposed, as he climbed high-angle slabs and surmounted a final vertical bit with a stirrup. A short ice gully, and the route was in to the top of the Spiral.
We had finally made a dent in the face, but the weather refused to cooperate. Two days of snow intervened before Matt and I could move up to the Alley Camp on the 23rd and take over the lead from Don and Ed. A few days before, we had rappelled off the Stegosaur to reach the basin above the icefall. Now we could use the rappel rope for prusiking and thus short-cut past the first nine pitches. On the 25th Don and Ed were able to remove all the fixed ropes and pitons from those nine pitches, so that we could eventually use them above.
With time growing short, the weather underwent just the dramatic change we needed. Under a cloudless sky Matt and I packed loads up to Don’s and Ed’s high point. Even with stirrups and fixed ropes, we could not carry our loads over these pitches, but had to haul them.
On the 26th, again cloudless, Matt led the twenty-ninth pitch, a steep icy chimney at the top of which he hung a stirrup from a piton driven precariously between rock and ice. On the next pitch I crossed a prominent avalanche chute, down which rocks and ice, loosened by two days of sun, occasionally swept. Excited by the good rock and our progress, we put pitch after pitch behind us. Shortly we stood on steep snow beneath a fifty-foot ceiling, a feature we had called the "Nose” for its prominence on the face. We decided to attack the Nose head on. From our route pictures we knew that once above it we would be in very good position for the summit. The ceiling was made for climbing, and the weather held perfect. Matt, undeterred by dripping water, nailed up an expanding vertical crack. On the ceiling itself, he managed a series of long but not uncomfortable reaches, and soon hung from his stirrups at the lip. I saw him retable quickly, and knew he was on the snow above. We had passed the greatest obstacle.
The next day Don and Ed assumed the lead. They climbed the pitches Matt and I had placed, and late that night they got a tent pitched on a tiny ice platform, again anchored by rock pitons, just below the Nose. Two days later the weather was still fine. This was the break we needed. Getting an early start, Don and Ed reclimbed the Nose and started work on the top of the face. Although they could afford only one or two pitons per pitch and were short on fixed rope as well, they climbed superbly. Now they were on very steep ice and snow, shallowly coating the rock beneath. In the early afternoon Don led over the final rock barrier below the summit icefield. The pitch was outstanding; twice he took aid from shaky pitons far above his protection. They emerged on the sweeping expanse of the summit icefield. The exposure, especially after climbing on rock and in chimneys, was terrific. They started up the 45° slope, but the snow was in poor shape. Reaching the last rock outcrop at 11,700 feet, they set up the bivouac tent Don had made and waited for night. They were going for the summit.
Meanwhile, Matt and I had been bringing up the last of the hardware and fixed ropes to the Nose Camp. On a hunch, we’d brought our down jackets and extra lunches. When we reached the camp, it was still early, so we decided to continue. Above the Nose, we marvelled at the leads Don and Ed had done, and placed extra protection to safeguard the descent. By early evening, we had caught up with them. It was the happiest of reunions. We had suspected that only two of us, if any, might have a chance for the summit. Now all four of us could go for it, together.
We joined as a rope of four. We’d been going twelve hours already, but this was our chance; the air was calm and still cloudless. Don led. We climbed through the night, watching the sun fade from the long tongue of the Tokositna, the bulk of McKinley grow dark, and at last the stars come out. A little after midnight, we reached the summit ridge.
I took over the lead. We surmounted two short, vertical flutings made out of crumbling snow. We could climb the second one, our fifty-third pitch, only by using an ice-axe shaft and our longest picket as daggers.
We reached the summit at 3:30 A.M., in the pink glow of sunrise. At last, after thirty-two days of effort, this was our reward. Now we stood above the confining walls of the upper Tokositna that had bound our world for the last month. We were very tired. Ed wanted to set off a firecracker that he’d brought all the way, but we were afraid of knocking loose the cornices. Even the summit was a cornice.
We were alone in that privileged place. As far as we could see, over the miles of mountain, glacier, and tundra, we witnessed no human act but our own. In the vast stillness nothing spoke of the other world, the world of men and machines we usually lived in and sometimes found sufficient. But not always, not now; life is not enough without some moment of challenge, solitude, grandeur.
Our descent went slowly. The ropes got tangled easily, and we simply left a lot of the expensive hardware we’d intended to retrieve. We were near exhaustion. Finally, after twenty-five straight hours of climbing, we rappelled into the Nose Camp. We spent the rest of the day sleeping, eating, and laughing. We were quite crowded, all in a two-man tent pitched narrow.
At ten p.m. Ed and I started down to the Alley Camp, where our other tent waited. Don and Matt would follow at their leisure. Just before midnight the accident happened.
When I could no longer see or hear Ed falling, I shouted up into the gloom for Matt and Don, but I knew they couldn’t hear me.
What had happened? I looked at the piton; it was intact, but the carabiner and rope were gone with Ed. Apparently the ’biner had flipped, its gate opened against the rock, and come loose. Or the carabiner had broken. We shall never know, and it does not really matter.
I managed to climb down the seven pitches to camp without a rope, relying heavily on the fixed ropes. There I waited for two days, alone and nervous, until Matt and Don came on August 1. As Matt describes it, "From the top of the Alley I could see the tent, and Dave’s head sticking out. As I neared the tent, his silence seemed foreboding, and I sensed that something was wrong. Looking down I saw only one pack. Just as the implications were coming home, Dave finally spoke: 'Matt, I’m alone.’ ”
A day later we completed the descent. The snow conditions were terrible, and we could not find our steps. In places a quarter-inch of ice coated the fixed ropes. With three on the rope, the going was very awkward, and three times we stopped falls with the fixed ropes. At last we reached the rappel and got down to the cave.
We left some things there, like the Monopoly set. We left Ed, since there was no way to reach his body, no way even to look for it. Five days later we flew out with Sheldon. Already we were reaching an emotional balance. Ed’s death had ended his happiness and ours in knowing him, but it did not cancel, and does not now, the joy of sharing a great experience with him, of responding to a challenge we could not have met without him.
Summary of Statistics.
Area: Alaska Range.
Ascent: Mount Huntington, 12,240 feet, July 30, 1965 (Edward M. Bernd, Matthew Hale, Jr., Don C. Jensen, David S. Roberts) — Second ascent and a new route, the west face.
American Alpine Journal 1966
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Avery
climber
New Zealand
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 10, 2016 - 09:33pm PT
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The French Ridge (1964) on the right.
The East Ridge (1972) on the left.
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Avery
climber
New Zealand
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 10, 2016 - 10:27pm PT
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Thanks Steve. I don't think I'm familiar with 'Mountain World'
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Sierra Ledge Rat
Mountain climber
Old and Broken Down in Appalachia
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Sep 11, 2016 - 08:44am PT
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Sep 11, 2016 - 09:55am PT
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The Mountain World is a Swiss publicatiion that focuses on expedition climbing and scientific work in the mountains. It is an excellent source for well written accounts of consequential climbs internationally.
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Avery
climber
New Zealand
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 12, 2016 - 12:38am PT
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Mount Huntington— East Ridge and North Face (1972)
Niels-Henrik L. Andersen
SEEING the mass of Mount Huntington standing up from the glacier like a snow-covered, jagged knife, I thought, “That’s what a mountain should look like.” By the time our party had made the Catacomb-East Ridge ascent of McKinley, I had etched Huntington on my mind, had begun probing its defenses and had taken a lot of photographs from our vantage on the other side of the glacier. It was a challenge; not only a mountain that “looked like a mountain,” extremely well defended, with no “easy way” up, but one that through a combination of sub-arctic weather, continual avalanche dangers and difficult technical problems had kept all but the most stalwart of climbers away.
In 1964 a French team led by Lionel Terray had made the summit after an extremely grueling ascent up the northwest ridge.1 Their ascent had been stalled again and again by avalanche and weather conditions, was threatened when Terray’s arm was injured in a fall, had demanded everything the party had to give, and had rewarded them with a few minutes’ view of fog-like clouds from the summit. Huntington’s only other conquest was in 19652, when Dave Roberts led a Harvard team to the summit after forty-two days of effort up a beautifully conceived rock and ice route that intercepted the French ridge near the top. That climb, recorded in the book, Mountain of My Fear, was marred by the death of one party member in a rappelling accident.
In his book, Roberts dismissed the east ridge as a route that could “put a party in a perpetual state of nervousness.” He continued by saying that “the east ridge, though perhaps not more difficult than the French route, was bound to be more hazardous: huge hanging glaciers, the most dangerous formations imaginable, sprawled obscenely down the ridge.” The possibilities for a first ascent following this hazardous route of the east ridge did not seem remote from my vantage across the glacier. Roughly I sketched out a route than began with a landing on the south side of Huntington, leading to an easy access to the east ridge, then up the ridge and onto the north face to the summit. That was in 1969.
My slides of the mountain from McKinley generated interest for the 1971 Huntington expedition and I easily put together a party. The drive to Alaska from Seattle was little more than a gearing-up for the let-down. Six of us, packed in one car, made the long haul in four exhausting days. The pilot had written that he would land us on the south side of Huntington but once in the air said it would be impossible. He set us down on the north side, much steeper and avalanche prone. Base Camp was on the Ruth Glacier. After a couple of days of scouting, the route was fixed from the Ruth up the north face to a col that links the Rooster Comb to Huntington. We made a carry to the col before it began to snow heavily. Then, at Base Camp, we built igloos, read and waited. When the sun finally came out five days later, heavy avalanching began. That night, as we were preparing to climb, an avalanche roared into Base, ripping one tent to shreds, blowing the other two and their occupants across the glacier and into the latrine hole, scattering equipment over three-quarters of a mile, and covering everything with a layer of snow. One sewn-together tent had to serve for the entire party, none of them seriously injured. The next day we all finally made it to the col and established a camp with five days of food. After scouting the ridge, which had bad snow conditions, we got together on the col to discuss the route. Morale was low, and the majority voted to abandon the climb.
When I put out feelers for a 1972 Huntington expedition, I learned that Frank Zahar was putting a party together and we joined forces. He had already persuaded Rocky Keeler to come. Roger Derryberry went to film the climb and to test equipment designs. We found a fifth member in John Waterman.
After our arrival in Alaska, the weather was clear, but our pilot, Cliff Hudson, from Ta1keetna, was for twelve days unable to land despite several attempts. Clouds were piled up against the south side of McKinley, obscuring the glacier below Huntington’s north face.
The clouds finally lifted on June 25 and the expedition began. John and I were landed on the Ruth Glacier, near the previous year’s site at about 6000 feet. Frank and Roger arrived next and we spent the rest of the day carrying equipment two miles up the glacier to our Base Camp, away from the north face avalanche danger. Rocky flew in the next day, and Hudson solemnly shook each of our hands, saying, “I hope to see you guys again. Good luck!” He had a clear idea of what we were up against. It was perfect weather for sun tans, but the heat was playing hell with the snow; Huntington was avalanching continually. This, an echo of the previous year, was to be a problem throughout the climb.
On Monday John and Frank began the climb, moving up towards the col and fixing seven leads of 200 feet. On Tuesday Rocky and I extended the lead up to the col while the others carried to a cache at the previous day’s high point. Two vertical bulges in the icefall were free-climbed, using the Chouinard hammer and ice-axe method.
The following day John and I were carrying heavy loads on the lower slopes. While traversing not clipped into the fixed line, I slipped. We had been about fifteen feet apart with 200 feet of slack rope between us. Hard ice foiled my first two attempts at self-arrest. By the time my third self-arrest succeeded, the rope had almost completely paid out. I had stopped at the edge of a 120-foot vertical drop-off, over which I would obviously have pulled John.
With the route to the col completed and ropes fixed, Frank, Roger and Rocky spent the next two days carrying from Base to a cache halfway up to the col and established Col Camp at 8800 feet. They said that avalanches were falling so continuously that it sounded like a waterfall. Meanwhile John and I worked above the col, the most arduous section of the climb, a series of wind-molded ice and snow flutings extending up to the main east ridge. The slope varied mostly from 50° to 70° but occasionally reached the vertical, with soft, deep snow on the steeper slopes. The deep snow was tiresome. Front-pointing on other sections of extremely hard ice required strong ankles. We cached our loads on the top of a ten-foot double cornice that offered a good resting spot. While we rappelled down, the rising sun flashed on all the neighboring peaks while the glacier was blanketed by clouds.
Two nights later, when Roger, John and I carried the last loads to the col, we found four of our 200-foot fixed ropes wiped out. Avalanches, the continued warm weather and the difficult flutings above were narrowing our chances.
That night Rocky and Frank worked further up the flutings, finding similar conditions to what we had. Eventually they climbed a long couloir to a cornice at 9700 feet and returned to the col. They had carried the lead up to the most difficult obstacle, a series of cornices and couloirs which ended near a corniced wall which defended the east ridge proper. Despite the extreme difficulties, I felt encouraged. In my journal I remarked on the consistently high standard of climbing shown by everyone thus far.
John and I left on Sunday night for what we hoped would be the final push through the flutings and onto the easier slopes of the east ridge proper. We jümared the fixed rope pitches to reach the cornice where progress had ended the day before. For three hours I belayed, shivering with cold, while John moved around two cornices, using direct aid up a 40-foot hard blue ice wall and climbed onto more flutings. I took the lead, traversed around a fluting and into a gully which ended at a corniced fluting below the final corniced ridge. I shinnied up the 80° fluting and traversed to below a vertical wall blocked by a cornice mushroom. The soft, unstable snow on the wall made it awkward to pass or stand on while attempting to knock away at the cornice. After I had placed both pickets and ice screws for protection, John took the lead, placed even more points of protection and finally jammed one arm into a hole under the cornice so that he could balance and punch a hole in the cornice. He then wormed has way through the hole and out onto the main ridge. The hole through the defending cornice proved to be the crux of the climb. At first it was too small even to maneuver the pack through, and John had to enlarge it.
Although John and the pack were up, he wanted to hammer a rock piton in before bringing me up. He disappeared, leaving me on the edge of nowhere. When forty-five minutes later he had not returned, I began edging up without protection. Just then he came back and lowered me a fixed line to jümar up. He had traversed along the side of the ridge to a zigzagging couloir leading to a rock formation with piton cracks. I led up the couloir to a cornice and traversed under it along a shelf. I fixed a line for John, who dropped down under a rock formation and front-pointed up verglas to soft snow and another rock. I then led up some hard ice over a slight bulge to the top of a domed cornice at 10,400 feet, the site for High Camp.
The sun made the descent dangerously exciting. Most of the anchors had to be replaced before rappelling. On the aid section we had a tricky pendulum to the flutings. During our well-earned rest at the col, Frank, Roger and Rocky carried supplies to our new High Camp. On Monday we made a final carry to High Camp, settled in and rested in preparation for the push to the summit.
High Camp, two tents and a snow wall atop a huge cornice, was a good spot to spend a long day resting. The sunny, unobscured view gave Roger the opportunity to do a lot of filming. With the exception of the deteriorating snow conditions, everything was going for us. Above us lay the crossing onto the north face from the ridge, and the summit.
We made a staggered start for the top. Frank, Roger and Rocky left two hours ahead. They led up and around a series of up and down cornices that continued for five or six 200-foot pitches. The route then moved under a large cornice wall onto a lip between two crevasses. We jumped one and then traversed out onto the north face proper, 1000 feet from the summit. The slope angled steeply upward, and so we front-pointed, exchanging leads every 200 feet until we came to an overhanging wall. John traversed across its base to a notch. Rocky, with the use of aid, climbed a slightly overhanging snow and ice pitch out of the notch and onto a steep slope which continued to a large crevasse below the final summit pyramid. Frank led the final pitch up to a large flat cornice fifty feet below the highest summit cornice. After a fourteen-hour push and ten days of climbing we walked together the final yard to the summit.
The anticlimactic descent proved difficult, mainly because of the work of the sun and avalanches on our fixed ropes and anchors. We spent a night and a day at High Camp, beginning to realize that something grand in our lives was already an experience, a memory rather than imagination.
Much of the rope was anchored only at the top and bottom since all the middle anchors had melted out and could not be reset. The snow flowed all around us as we rappelled down.
We rested at the col, discussing whether or not to attempt the Rooster Comb on the other side of the col. Mistakenly thinking the French had done it the year before, we passed up a “grand finale.” The bottom section was in worse shape. The avalanching had been steady during the days of our ascent, obliterating most of the fixed line and forcing us to free climb down the final slopes. The rest at Base Camp lasted only a few hours before Cliff Hudson flew in with congratulations and a couple of six-packs.
Summary of Statistics:
Area: Alaska Range, South of Mount McKinley.
New Route: Mount Huntington, 12,240 feet, via the East Ridge and the North Face, July 5, 1972.
Technical Data: 7000 feet of fixed rope, 40 pickets, 4 rock pitons, 40 ice screws and ice pitons, 7 snow flukes.
Personnel: Niels-Henrik Andersen and Frank E. Zahar, co-leaders; Rockwell J. Keeler, Roger Derryberry, John M. Waterman.
American Alpine Journal 1973
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Avery
climber
New Zealand
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 12, 2016 - 03:51pm PT
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1st Ascent North Face, 1978. Jack Roberts and Simon McCartney
The Timeless Face:
The North Face of Mount Huntington
Jack Roberts, Buff Alpine Club
In ALASKA THERE are many challenges. Climbers bored with the mountains of the lower 48 states leave to check out the noise they hear rumbling down from the north. Most return, and countless magazines and books emerge from countless coffee shops to bring countless readers the fears and joys and beauties they have found in that savage land. The word is out, climbing in Alaska in and the gold rush for classy new north faces on.
Huntington is classy all right—especially the 6000-foot north face— rivaled by few other Alaskan mountains for size, majesty and hidden arrogance. Black satin bands of rock balance on a dazzling white pyramid of ice and snow which flashes without being vulgar: a tapered silhouette with imposing corniced ridges to excite photographers and climbers alike.
I was not prepared for what I would see or feel beneath this giant when suddently our pilot, Jim Sharp, was gone and the two of us, Simon McCartney and I were alone. Well, we weren’t exactly alone for we could see Charlie Porter’s tent thirty feet away and the scarecrow he had erected in anticipation of our arrival. Two days later he appeared with Peter Sennhauser from a ski trip. We were to spend the next three weeks with them, for in the Land of Ice and Snow that is how long bad weather spells last. Talking, joking, and eating meals together, we were able to forget about the goal of our trip except when a false break in the weather deluded us into preparation for the climb.
Finally however time came to say goodbye and, turning our backs on our friends, we set off upwards to the sky and gathering clouds. Hoping that the weather would continue to improve, we ascended the first 1500 feet in seven hours. Battling our way through iced rock, avalanching snow, vertical pitches of ice, we began to wonder about the wisdom of our decision. But we could not retreat; our small rack of hardware, eight screws, twelve nuts and pins, one deadman, would not allow us that privilege. And so, totally committed, we continued to climb, dodging blocks of ice and snow.
We lost the route numerous times and stopped occasionally to regroup, rest and brew tea, deriving extra inspiration from the philosophical quotations printed by Salada on the tea-bag labels. This particular time we read. We often discover what will do by finding out what will not do,” “When the situation becomes impossible, there is nothing to worry about,” and “The hardest tumble one can take is to fall over one’s own bluff. We were definitely bluffing our way up this mountain without a clue where we were going. The only thing that was certain was that the correct way off was up. Uninterested in anything except survival, Simon and I fled from one sheltered spot to another. Now on a steep pitch. I felt the mountain had a mind of its own. The ice would suddenly become extremely, soft only to harden higher up. Bulges materialized out of the mist where I expected none. Too far out beyond my protection, I was sweating, panting, tired. I had taken only two ice screws, these for the belay at the top of this never-ending pitch. About 110 feet up the corridor, I accepted the first opportunity to rest, burying for support my North Wall hammer in a small patch of snow. Below was Simon, further than the deception of height had led me to believe. Although I couldn't see the sun, I felt through clouds and snow that it was kneeling on the doorsill of the west and I sensed cold night whispering on my neck. On again and, moving higher, I was puzzled, a trifle alarmed. The belay stance was supposed to be here; it must have moved. Deciding not to sound panic-stricken, I yelled down to Simon. “No belay here. Move the belay 15 feet more.”
Simon didn’t understand. “Here I come. Got me on?”
For a while we climbed roped together without belays. Simon was climbing so close behind at times that I was practically prodded by his ice hammers.
However eventually we had to rope up for another steep section of ice. It was during one of Simon’s excursions into the vertical wilderness that a single thought worked into the murky depths of my mind. Climbers who choose to pioneer first ascents up difficult and dangerous faces on high mountains have chosen to be crazy—people such as Simon and I. For my part I have chosen to be crazy in order to cope with a crazy world and have adopted craziness as a lifestyle. Only on becoming convinced that the world I left behind in Los Angeles is sane, could I give up my craziness. And that cannot be done. A climber entering the subculture of a climbing community accepts his alienation from larger society and proclaims he is a full fledged “normal” person—that it is others who are abnormal.
Simon meanwhile is gripped speechless above me, unaware that his faithful belayer is spacing out on crystals of ice and snow. There is some comfort to know that I am tied onto somebody who is also crazy.
Following Simon’s pitch was no piece of cake. It had the texture of granola, honey and chopped nuts. I was glad to reach the sanctuary of belay. We were both tired.
“The next section doesn’t look too hard; not very steep either.” We both leaned back and strained our neck muscles to check out the next 100 feet of verglased ice. Though in no hurry to leave our sheltering rock overhang, I soon found myself climbing again—up a blue bulge that had reared its frozen head out of the smokey haze. Leaning out precariously on hammer blades, I scrutinized the polished, monolithic wall of seemingly unclimbable ice. An occasional jutting of irregular ice offered dizzy assistance. Hanging from wrist loops, I coaxed icy holds into the overhanging groove and, exchanging ice screw protection for courage, surmounted the obstacle.
By now my brain needed the easy life and began to ask me questions. “What are you doing to protect me?” Why should it wonder now, wasting its precious energy inside a climber’s head? Why, it could be inside the head of a poet or a porno king, lavishing in forbidden delights. “Simon, you’ve been down there so long you’re pale, pale as a ghost among lacy curtains, pale as the foam on a mad dog’s mouth.” Always a bad sign. … Energy crisis! Evening air is cooling the snow and the sun has finished the last of its infrequent appearances. We find a sheltered spot, dig a snow hole and put on a brew.
Simon has become quite understanding. So have I. We don’t interrupt each other’s thoughts any more. We speak some, but mostly we just clutch the hot mug of tea in frost-nipped hands, greedily gulping the warmth. I sit on the pack that holds my survival. It feels as if I will stay in this new life forever: forever climbing and dodging ice cliffs and walls, forever lost in the sizzling silence of our very own energy crisis. Too soon the hot liquid is finished and we clamber into sleeping bags before its warmth disappears. A final brew and I stretch minutes into hours to prolong my daily ration of two Tiger Milk bars. Tea finished, we both disappear into our own worlds.
In the morning powdered snow pricks my bearded face. Twenty feet into the next pitch, Simon yells down, “You’re convinced then that the future is bleak?”
I squint up at him. An amused smile wrinkles his face. He places a long ice screw into the ice. “Yep,” I say. “We’re in one helluva mess.” Time was moving slowly. I stared at my watch, seeing the minutes chase the hours around, but they seemed frozen; the minutes were crawling. In the blur of hours that followed we heard shouts rise up from the nameless depth below: climbers attempting an alpine-style ascent of the French ridge of Huntington. As it turned out, they were turned back 600 feet below the top by continuing storms, crumbling steep snow and a lack of food. On one of the clearer moments we could see their retreat through a hole in the surrounding storm.
Getting into motion was becoming harder. The time required to climb a given distance seemed longer. Einstein observed motion and learned that space and time are relative. I had committed myself to moving and learned that I could alter reality by my perception of it; it was this discovery that allowed me to smile away fatigue and doubt. Einstein must have been an ice climber.
Our pace was slow but consistent. One of us would lead when the other was too tired to make the life-saving decisions. Every morning we would awaken cold, the lichen on the rock and gear inside the cave frosted. Water froze on the ice hammers, hardware and packs outside, leaving a glaze of streaked glass. Silence arrived one morning. The avalanches stopped, and even though the storm continued, we had to leave.
“Do you want to lead?” I sheepishly inquired. My words were frosted and vaporous in the air.
“Well, ah, not really,” Simon replied thoughtfully. Neither of us had slept well the night before.
It was my turn to carry the torch and so, in a frosty haze, I left the pit and entered a narrow couloir. It became steeper and steeper, blue ice so compressed and cleaned by countless tons of avalanching snow that I could see my reflection in its texture, the vivid colors entombed within. Life was becoming rough, abusing; and I was getting punchy. We had been on the face for three-and-a-half or four days, moving steadily for 22 hours straight. Sneaky and invisible, the storm continued, never getting worse, never better, until we forgot that any better weather existed.
All this only reinforced our faith in each other and in our style of climbing. A sense of urgency had crept in. Whereas in the past we had kept up our pace out of sheer exhilaration at being free and unique, we now continued because we were afraid to stop. We had planned for only three bivouacs, two on the way up and one on the way down. Obviously we had been naive in our estimation of the difficulties. The first 1600 feet had F9 rock-climbing in an iced-up chimney and vertical Canadian-type waterfall climbing as well as fifty feet of gently overhanging ice. Every day had similar sections with incessant bad weather. Now we were down to our last four Tiger Milk bars. Four days of snow, weariness, regret, enchantment and frustration had eaten away our arrogance. Today thirty-two pitches had been climbed and now, possessed by the mist, I could hear the sirens singing. I wanted to dance with them, but I couldn’t; driven by hunger, I denied them all. The rope was coiled at my feet with one end still tied to my harness. With eyes closed, I listened as Simon enlarged the ledge that was to become our last bivouac. Patience dominated our way of life. Simon slept hard after we finished drinking the honeyed tea. Somewhere up above, the sound of an object fluttering through space could be heard but not seen. It was only a sound. The absence of sight made it easy to imagine as unreal, more like a fairy tale.
But the day came when the Timeless Face leaned back and easy- angled slopes replaced the vertical bulges and walls which had entombed us below and had become the only world we knew. Wading through thigh-deep snow, we reached the top. Our aching limbs collapsed from weariness. We had made the summit.
Still we had to get down, and it looked as if it was to be down the French ridge. For 600 feet the descent was uneventful. We walked cheerfully on the right side of the cornices, and all seemed well. Then, when the clouds momentarily parted, we saw the whole picture. Cornices overhung both sides, leering at us with the froth of a mad dog on their mouths. I would lower Simon down a cornice on tension and then he would dig in while I jumped, flew through the air and waited for him to catch me. Once. Twice. The third time Simon fell fifty feet through a cornice onto the north face. When he returned, many minutes later, he was a shadow of his former self, defeated, worn-out, his ankle badly twisted. Then, when I fell up to my waist through another cornice, we decided to find the west-face route.
Out of the gloom appeared a steep wide slope. Surely this had to be it, but we couldn’t be sure. The storm resumed and visibility again became a real problem. We used a single ice screw on each of six rappels, new Chouinards, too. Finally we hit rock outcrops and could conserve by chopping our slings in half and by using these got more mileage out of our meager gear selection. Rappel followed rappel. Then we came on the tell-tale sign of a fixed rope—and pitons pounded into cracks everywhere. We took out the pitons for use lower on the face and continued our escape.
Just above The Nose we lost both ropes. Simon led a rappel. Below me, out of sight, he slipped, ending up hanging upside down in space twenty feet out from the rock and thirty feet above the snow ledge with only twenty-five feet of rope left. But I did not know about that until two hours later. Right then I just waited, freezing my butt off. When finally I got down and Simon pulled me into his stance, the ropes wedged somewhere above and we couldn’t retrieve them. Maybe it was because we had gone non-stop for over 44 hours; maybe it was the lack of anything substantial to eat in three days; maybe we just didn’t have the energy. At any rate I couldn’t get them and so I chopped off forty feet and said goodbye to the rest. We had some warm water and tried to fall asleep. We couldn’t even warm our bodies enough to have the energy to shiver. Later we packed the remaining gear, all fifteen pounds of it, and began the retreat once again. Simon’s ankle was really bad by this time. He could not support his weight at all but he didn’t complain. We both knew it wouldn’t do any good.
The sun sank with a sob and Alaskan darkness waded in from all sides, dissolving all landmarks. The weather was good for a few minutes and then it clouded up again; at least it wasn’t snowing hard and the wind had died down. I had forgotten that there was any reality outside of what we had been doing and would have to continue doing until we made it back to the Ruth Glacier. Even achieving the summit was just a slur in the tide. We had given ourselves only fifteen minutes on top before the descent. I began to feel cheated. I hadn’t felt joy or relief on top, merely the acknowledgement that one obstacle was done with and another begun. The summit haunted me for months later.
We spent an uncomfortable, hungry, cold night. We didn’t sleep but waited instead for the sun magically to appear. It didn’t. We had a difficult time pulling on frozen boots and all our clothes and committing ourselves once again to the descent. It had been easy before when all we had to do was rappel on 300 feet of rope and then pull it down to begin another rappel. Now without any rope it was different. The snow conditions were bad. A full foot-and-a-half of snow covered the ice and rock everywhere. We tried to move continuously at first, but Simon’s foot and our fatigue dictated that we move slower than a snail until we reached the fixed ropes.
I would follow a fixed rope until it disappeared into the ice and then would have to chop it out. Sometimes it was just below the surface and it took little effort. At other times it was covered by two feet and the labor was horrendous. The saving grace was that I could concentrate on the task at hand. If Simon complained, it was because he didn’t have anything to do. He would have to wait for hours until I had liberated enough rope to enable us to rappel another forty feet or so. Thank God for 7mm Japanese plastic rope. On it went: twenty, thirty, fifty feet. Finally we had enough sections of rope to tie together to make a single 300-foot rope of polypropylene and 50 feet of old 9mm perlon.
Fifty-four hours after reaching the summit we began to sense that the glacier had to be near. Soon the clouds parted; miraculously the snow stopped and the sky turned blue. We could see the French ridge and what was in store for us. Leaving the last 300 feet of rope tied to our second to last ice screw, we turned to face yet another bivouac, foodless, but still alive and strong in determination. If I were going to die, it surely wasn’t going to be here. When the sun came out, the heat was almost more than either of us could stand—or understand for that matter. For two weeks we had not had any sun. Our clothes dried. We slept. We got warm. And we waited for the sun to set so that the snow would harden and let us cross the Tokositna Glacier, climb 1500 feet
up to the top of the French ridge and then descend back down to camp.
The worst was over, I thought, as I kicked steps across the glacier. We decided to try a couloir that Simon had spotted. Three hours later we were up it. It seemed easy, but after only three hours of climbing we were again exhausted and had to bivouac out of the wind in the shelter of rocks. We slept for an eternity. The tension and nervousness, held so long at bay, invaded my body. I was annoyed that after twelve hours of sleep we were still climbing so poorly, still so cold. We waded in the snow, unbelayed, seeming not to care, knowing we were almost down. When we found the rappel point that was to let us down onto the Ruth Glacier, we realized that there would be no more hard climbing, but not until we actually saw our camp just a couple of hours’ walk away on the glacier did I truly know we could make it. I began to appreciate the weather, not a cloud in a windless sky.
Nine days of struggle, exultation, triumph and pain suddenly overwhelmed me and I lay in the snow laughing at our good fortune, crying at a sense of loss. Here we could relax. There was no need to rope up. Another sea of images and feelings suppressed on the climb welled up uncontrolled and swept over me.
In our caved-in snow cave remained three weeks’ supply of food. We hadn’t eaten for four days. I tried to eat everything in sight and got sick. Soon we radioed for our pilot, Jim Sharp, who promised to fly us out in the morning. (It says a lot for Jim Sharp that he had been so concerned for our safety that he had flown over Huntington each day to check on us two loonies, risking his life and losing money.)
The flight out, like everything else we had encountered, was overwhelming. Yet nothing had changed except my point of view, myself. The face had not changed; it would be forever the same: timeless.
Summary of Statistics:
Area: Alaska Range.
New Route: Mount Huntington, 12,240 feet, via the north face; summit reached on July 6, 1978; whole climb from July 1 to 10.
Personnel: Simon McCartney, Jack Roberts.
American Alpine Journal 1979
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nah000
climber
no/w/here
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Sep 12, 2016 - 06:43pm PT
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thanks A!
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Avery
climber
New Zealand
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 13, 2016 - 04:16am PT
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Huntington's South-East Spur: 1st Ascent, 1978.
Huntington's Southeast Spur
Angus M. Thuermer, Jr.
WHEN KENT MENEGHIN, Glenn Randall, Joe Kaelin, and I planned a route on Mount Huntington (12,240 feet), we wanted to keep pace with the trend in Alaskan climbing towards fast, lightweight ascents. Few of the routes being pioneered today could be climbed safely in any other than an alpine-style.
On June 12 the blue and yellow Alaska Railroad cars left us sorting boxes with other expeditions on the Talkeetna platform. We were as pleased as our bush pilot, Jim Sharp, that our equipment packed into two loads each. Jim was going to have fun, too. Instead of flying the milk run to the Kahiltna, he was going to make his first landings on the “Backside Glacier,” a branch of the Ruth, three-and-a-half miles southwest of Mount Dickey and seven miles by skis from our Base Camp.
Grey clouds smothered Talkeetna. For eight days our small tents stayed pitched on the runway. As postponed flights made the town a bottleneck to the glaciers, international tent cities and their attendant softball leagues developed along the grassy fringes of the runways.
We flew out of limbo on June 20. I pointed to the Tokositna Glacier and shouted in Sharp’s ear, “That’s where we’ll be walking out.” He shouted back: “Have you ever seen that glacier?” and made a reconnaissance flight over the 100-foot-high mounds of boulders that snaked sixteen miles north to Huntington.
That day we skied our two loads two miles up the Backside Glacier from the landing site at 4500 feet to the base of a 300-foot snow couloir. This was our pass west into the Tokositna drainage. That night the light moved with us. First the sun glowed behind Huntington’s ridges. Later, its pale fire was beaming off the low moon. A yellow sunrise raked across the flutings on Hunter’s east side as we set up camp for a day’s rest.
On our fifth day we reached 4500 feet on the crest of a muddy icefall a mile south of the toe of Huntington’s south ridge. We climbed the right (east) border of the icefall on gravel-pitted ice and wet rock. On June 26 we dried our gear and built a Base-Camp igloo at 5000 feet, half a mile from the beginning of our route.
Skiing to Base Camp we had met a jovial group of thirteen Japanese from Sapporo who had been turned back on Huntington’s south ridge. Over ceremonial coffee we tried to communicate. Queries had to be rephrased before we drew their response: “Stone good, snow bad.”
The surrounding walls echoed their laughter when we told of our plan to climb the southeast spur in a couple of days. But the next evening there was no laughter and little talking as we scrambled, breathless with excitement, up a broad 1000-foot-high snow couloir—the beginning of our 8000-foot climb.
We had planned our intricate route using Bradford Washburn’s aerial photographs and his detailed McKinley map. The couloir we were climbing was on a face on the Rooster Comb, parallel to a dangerous icefall that separated the Comb from Mount Huntington. Climbing at night, we cramponed up the solid névé in five-foot-deep gutters scoured by daily avalanches. At the couloir’s top we traversed up and left on a long snow ramp that ended on the west ridge of the Rooster Comb’s south peak (P 9800). Descending 500 feet from the Comb into an amphitheater at 7000 feet, just above the dangerous icefall, was easy, but our route here was threatened by séracs and deep unconsolidated snow. Objective danger and concentration demanded by unbelayed climbing added tension to our ten-hour workout. I was tired—yet we had 1000 feet to climb to our campsite.
We crossed the amphitheater to the base of the southeast spur. On the spur’s south flank was a 1000-foot icefall; we climbed the first couloir to its north. This couloir, like the broad couloir below, averaged 45° to 50° but near its top was pinched by a band of rock, plastered by steep flow ice.
Glenn Randall jumped to the challenge of climbing through the spindrift and chunks of ice which occasionally fell down this monster icicle. He flashed up this pitch. A few hundred more feet of steep snow and we were on the crest on the southeast spur looking into our campsite in an 8000-foot basin embraced by a cirque of frosted granite towers. If snow accumulated, we thought retreat might be impossible down gutters obviously dug by large snow slides.
While a-foot-and-a-half of snow fell during two days, we endured a fast, waiting for a break in the weather. Finally we ate a dinner and prepared to bolt for the top but, out in the storm, we reconsidered. Just reaching Base Camp was going to be enough of an adventure. However, retreating wasn’t as difficult as we expected; we glissaded in deep snow down parts of our route.
For a week at Base the weather remained stable—daily precipitation— but the climate began to change. The summer melt zone had now moved up to 5000 feet and was rising as July progressed. The walls around began to avalanche regularly, each with its distinct sound. Our broad couloir hissed as its gutters overflowed with waves of snow and ice bowling balls. The sound from other faces was sharper as rocks whizzed and exploded. The collapsing icefall made its own distinct thunder. The thaw caved in our igloo and forced us back into the tents.
After a week at Base Camp, early on July 8, we left again and climbed to our 8000-foot campsite in 10 hours. The rope we left on Glenn’s icicle saved time. We were ready to continue that night if the weather stayed good. Not counting our landing day, we had seen two 12-hour clear spells in 19 days. We saw no reason to expect any more.
At nine that evening, as normal, we couldn’t see thirty feet through the clouds. By ten we were in the clear. We grabbed our light racks, spare sweaters, and lunches and took off.
Ignoring the crest of the southeast spur—we would have faced the tall rock towers which studded the ridge for 1500 feet—we chose a route farther west along the mountain’s south face. We wanted to climb mostly on snow and ice, weaving between cliffs to gain the ridge crest at a notch at 9500 feet.
Route-finding through the cliffs on this face was critical. After short rock steps, a mush-ice pitch, and a lot of good cramponing névé, we were stopped on a snow face by a thick cloud. Ice axe and Terrordactyl can overcome the steepest ice pitch but against fog they are useless. After grim minutes the cloud blew past and we saw our route to the notch above.
Glenn Randall raced the mist up the slope to attack the right-hand of three couloirs. This ice pitch started with an eight-foot bulge, then mellowed to some classic 55° water ice which snaked between cliffs to the notch.
There I could see the east side of Huntington, but that view wasn’t as exciting as the sight I had of Glenn leading the next mixed pitch. We had thought this might be the crux. Washburn’s photos showed a thin white line through the rock on the high side of the notch. This suggested a flaw—perhaps a chimney where snow could accumulate—a single pitch, but what a pitch!
“Desperate!” shouted Glenn from the top of his lead. Kent Meneghin led our rope up the crux open-book. Following, I stemmed and bridged for thirty feet on the steep rock to the beginning of an ice smear. First I hooked my hammer in the frozen veneer. Then I kicked in one set of frontpoints, swung my axe high into the thicker ice, and moved my other foot onto the fragile 70° surface.
The sunrise struck us as we ran farther up the ridge on firm snow. At 10,000 feet the ridge blended into a long slope we called the hanging glacier. We stopped when we reached the bottom of this. Just beneath us was the lip of the hanging glacier and 3000 feet below, the sun backlit the low clouds on the Ruth. It was a warm balcony to enjoy breakfast on.
Kent kicked steps to nearly 11,000 feet and I took over as we turned onto the sweeping snowfield at the top of the south face. Above us a 100-foot ice cliff bulged over the slope and a long sharp cornice fringed the apex like the barb of an arrow. We traversed on firm snow which deteriorated as we reached the south ridge, 500 feet below the summit. We belayed the last pitch on the ridge. The ever eager Joe Kaelin led, placing three screws in the hard ice, covered by eight inches of standard Alaskan snow. If the snow on the rest of the south ridge were as deep and unconsolidated as this, anyone attempting that route might find a grain shovel more appropriate than a nice axe. As it was, Joe had his own hybrid tool. He fitted his special deadboy snugly on his ice-axe pick—like an entrenching tool—and began to dig into the barbed cornice.
After 30 minutes Joe was on the summit plateau and we climbed his prepared route. Wind blew mist along as we crossed the hundred yards of nearly level snow, to the summit. It was eleven A.M.—34 hours after we had left Base Camp. I was amazed. We started at least 2000 feet below Huntington’s other four routes and had belayed only six pitches in 8000 feet.
We couldn’t rest. Our descent might be easy but we would still be climbing unbelayed down long slopes on the mountain. After a glimpse of the arctic panorama we started descending.
After down-climbing the top pitch and napping for three hours on the south ridge, we brewed hot chocolate as the sun moved off the face. At six P.M. we continued down-climbing and rappelled six times to reach our tents and sleeping bags at 8000 feet. After a day’s rest we continued down but our good luck began to change.
Glenn had the first encounter. While descending the narrow couloir just below the icicle, he slipped and fell 400 feet. Miraculously he stopped uninjured. The next day, when we were leaving an intermediate camp at 7000 feet, Kent dropped 30 feet into a bottomless crevasse. Joe’s forte was dodging snow slides; three times he had to scamper across the slopes. I came unglued lower down and toppled backwards 40 feet into a crevasse.
In the 7000-foot amphitheater we saw footprints leading from the crest of the dangerous icefall to the back of the amphitheater half a mile away. Who were our visitors? How dangerous was the icefall we had carefully avoided by climbing the broad couloir and ramp? Months before Bradford Washburn had said, pointing to one of his photos: “Anybody who goes up that thing deserves to get knocked on the head.”
Kent and Joe hiked north to meet Jeb Schenck and Dave Holsworth at their airdrop site beneath the Huntington-Rooster Comb. col. A block of ice had hit Dave on the arm and almost immobilized it. The two were not going to give Washburn’s prophecy a second chance. They asked us to wand our route up to the ramp for their descent.
Climbing back up to the ramp we crossed a snow slope with a two-foot slab fracture across our old steps. Lower, parts of the ramp were bare of snow and we rappelled three times to get to the top of the broad couloir. Four days after leaving the summit we ate our victory cheesecake in Base Camp.
On July 18, we began our journey home. From the bottom of the muddy icefall at 3800 feet, it took us four days to reach the Petersville road. We crossed country that must be some of the wildest in the world. We spent day one crossing ten miles of blue ice strewn with boulders and sand. Rivers cut deep channels in the glacier before plunging into bottomless caverns. On the second day, the surface began to buckle into moraine-covered hills five miles before the Tokositna Glacier’s terminus; we climbed onto the west bank to walk among grass and plants for the first time since Talkeetna. Large gorges in the bank forced us to detour farther west. Our most difficult obstacle was the half-mile of jungle just before the Tokositna River. For two hours we tripped and slipped down through dense, thorned plants and alder branches which grew sideways.
Camp on a gravel bar was as depressing as it was wet. Between the Petersville road and us were the 2000 vertical feet of the Dutch Hills. If the jungle ahead was thick, we could expect a whole day of uphill hand-to-branch combat. And so we followed the river downstream for a few miles, but we weren’t prepared for that route either. Thigh-deep swamps stretched over acres of rich beaver land, and like the beaver, we had to swim across parts of it. We turned into the trees and climbed through the 5.8 bushes. Our jungle camp was halfway up the hills.
The 34th and last dawn was brilliant with the Alaska Range jutting into the blue. It was our fourth day of clear weather. We climbed through the last trees and onto some alpine meadows on the hillcrest. Huntington was tucked beneath Denali but I immediately recognized its distinct symmetry. The four of us could see landmarks on our route, the southeast spur, the big rock in the center of the south face, and the curled summit cornice. I turned and took my memories with me. A tractor trail in the meadow led down to shacks—an abandoned gold mine. Re-entry began.
Summary of Statistics:
Area: Alaska Range.
New Route: Mount Huntington, 12,240 feet, via the Southeast Spur; summit reached on July 9, 1978 (whole party).
Personnel: Joseph Kaelin, Kent Meneghin, Glenn Randall, Angus M. Thuermer, Jr.
American Alpine Journal 1979
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Avery
climber
New Zealand
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 13, 2016 - 08:25pm PT
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Mt Huntington, 1st Ascent, South Ridge (1979)
South Ridge of Mount Huntington
Jeff Thomas
THE SOUTH RIDGE OF Mount Huntington is “not so much a ridge as five separate serrated peaks, each increasingly higher.” * To climb the entire ridge was enticing, but it would be terribly difficult. There were other solutions. Bradford Washburn’s pictures showed that the towers could be avoided by gaining a large cirque on the east side of the ridge and by sprinting up a couloir between the last tower and the main summit. However, getting to the cirque looked worse than climbing the entire south ridge. The Tokositna Glacier on the east side of Huntington forms two icefalls which guard the cirque like medieval dragons.
In 1978 two parties solved the riddle of the Tokositna icefalls. Jeb Schenk and Dave Holsworth climbed the lower icefall leading to the basin below the Rooster Comb-Huntington col but considered themselves “very lucky to have made it.” (A.A.J., 1979, p. 166.) Angus Thuermer and his party made end runs around the upper and lower icefalls by using couloirs to the right. (A.A.J., 1979, pp. 81-89.) I was elated. Thuermer’s party had obviously found the way. The south ridge could be climbed by following in their footsteps.…
Or was there another way? In 1972 a party had climbed the east ridge of Mount Huntington by gaining the Rooster Comb-Huntington col from the west fork of the Ruth Glacier. Others had recently repeated that feat to climb the Rooster Comb. It is only 1000 feet from the col down to the head of the Tokositna below Huntington’s east face. Dave Jay, Jay Kerr, Scott Woolums and I decided to gain the head of the Tokositna from the west fork of the Ruth Glacier.
The trip did not start out auspiciously. Just before we flew in, an individual had come from the Kahiltna with tales of the worst avalanche conditions he had ever seen. We panicked and cancelled an airdrop into the head of the Tokositna until we had had time to survey our icefall. We decided to do a warm-up climb on the southwest ridge of P 11,300. The joke was on us.
February and April had been extremely windy and so much ice was showing on the faces that the Ruth was a hall of mirrors. As for P 11,300, the handle of Jay Kerr’s brand new ice axe broke 800 feet below the summit. Disgusted, he hurled the useless shaft 3000 feet to the glacier. We soon followed en rappel. The situation went from bad to worse at Base Camp when the weather deteriorated and the pilot failed to return for our airdrop.
Tired of waiting, Scott Woolums and Dave Jay started up the icefall to the col on the night of May 15. They made it to the col in two days despite marginal weather and a wild 300-foot spill by Scott; he barely managed to self-arrest before yanking Dave off. Meanwhile, Jay Kerr and I benefited from patience, lighter loads and route finding and were able to gain the col in six hours. While we returned to Base Camp to make a second carry, Scott and Dave continued over to the Tokositna. After waiting for a day of bad weather, we returned, picked up parts of the first load and followed Dave and Scott’s route over to the Tokositna. We descended the southern portion of the col, closest to Mount Huntington, with two 165-foot rappels and 700 feet of down-climbing in an avalanche couloir. Future parties will find it easier and safer to traverse the col toward the Rooster Comb and descend.
We had a choice of how to gain the upper cirque. We could either follow the “Colorado Couloir” pioneered by Thuermer’s party or take the upper Tokositna icefall. Being Oregon volcano sloggers and not knowing better, we took the icefall.
First Dave Jay and Scott Woolums, then Jay Kerr and I treaded our respective ways on successive nights through a frozen horror. Wherever the slope was gradual enough to hold it, large collections of ice talus accumulated, letting us know how active the séracs which overhung us really were. In the upper section we went our separate ways, encountering equally terrifying pitches. Scott and Dave ended up crawling through a 70-foot tunnel created by a teetering sérac. Jay and I thrashed up a 90° wall stemming on large blobs of snow which at any second should have come off burying us both at the bottom. We decided that in retreat we would be wise to descend the Colorado Couloir.
By the time Jay and I reached the upper basin, Scott and Dave had climbed the 2000-foot couloir between the last tower and the summit and were bivouacking in a rock band at 10,500 feet. The weather did not look good, so Jay and I built an igloo and took a wait-and-see attitude. Scott and Dave pressed on, however, as they were short on food, dubious of the anchors which had secured that night’s bivouac and fired by a can-do attitude. At 11,600 feet they ran out of good weather but ran into the most beautiful bivy site imaginable. Not only was the sleeping area flat, sheltered and soft, but they had a separate space for the john. Six hundred feet from the summit, they crawled into the tiny bivouac tent to wait out the storm.
May 24 dawned fair. While Jay and I waited all day for the cold temperatures of night to make the couloir safe, Scott and Dave made quick work of the 70° to 80° ice pitches between the bivouac rock and the summit slopes. At noon they stood on the highest point of the summit cornice, well out over the 5000-foot north face. However, they were quickly on their way down as a storm was on the horizon.
At nine P.M., like ships in the night, Jay and I passed Scott and Dave as they rappelled and we fourth-classed up the couloir for our turn at the summit. I have forgotten the more painful aspects of the 31-hour round-trip to the top and back. Rather I remember Jay emerging from the rock band and the fog at 10,600 feet with the storm which had worried Dave and Scott rapidly disappearing in a glorious sunrise. I also remember Jay’s incredible smile framed against the 7000-foot drop to the Tokositna at the top of the last ice pitch. We knew we had it in the bag. Exulting in the perfect weather, we spent two hours kibitzing and soaking up the sun on the summit. After four Alaskan expeditions and four summit white-outs, it was about time.
Our luck should have ended there. But after descending the Colorado Couloir, Dave and Scott managed the second ascent of the Rooster Comb’s south summit (9800 feet) on the evening of the 27th. Meanwhile Jay and I climbed the west ridge of its middle summit on the morning of the 29th and gained one of the many high points. The ubiquitous Alaskan white-out prevented us from determining the true summit. (The “Guest Register” in Sheldon’s Mountain House shows that at least one other party, Bill Pilling, Roger Gocking and Dave Meyers, climbed the same route in 1978 and were unable to gain the true summit (10,170 feet), claiming to have reached an altitude of 10,100 feet.) Back in Base Camp, we toasted our good fortune with a fine concoction of tequila and peach drink christened “Pink Ruthie” in honor of the glacier.
On the evening of July 8 we began the ski out, up to the head of the Ruth Glacier, over Denali’s south buttress, down the Kahiltna Glacier and out through the Dutch and Peters Hills. If the peaks of the Ruth Glacier had not already persuaded us to return, the peaks on the way out confirmed it.
Summary of Statistics:
Area: Alaska Range.
Ascents: Mount Huntington, 12,240 feet, New Route via South Ridge,
May 24 (Jay, Woolums) and May 25, 1979 (Kerr, Thomas).
Rooster Comb, South Summit, 9800 feet, Second Ascent, May 27, 1979 (Jay, Woolums).
Rooster Comb, Attempt on West Ridge of Middle Summit to 10,100 feet, May 29, 1979 (Kerr, Thomas).
Personnel: David Jay, Jay Kerr, Jeff Thomas, Scott Woolums.
American Alpine Journal 1980
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Kalimon
Social climber
Ridgway, CO
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Sep 13, 2016 - 08:44pm PT
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Awesome post Avery!
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Avery
climber
New Zealand
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 13, 2016 - 11:34pm PT
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Thanks to MMCC and nah000
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Avery
climber
New Zealand
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 14, 2016 - 01:39am PT
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1st Ascent, Huntington's East Face (1980). Steve Bell and Roger Mear
Roger Mear, Alpine Climbing Group
ON MAY 3 Steve Bell and I waved goodbye to Hudson and his Cessna. We erected our mini box tent on the Ruth Glacier below the north face of Mount Huntington. For training we repeated the Japanese route on the southwest spur of P 11,300 with one bivouac, and descended via the snowfields and short rock buttress of the southeast ridge to complete a traverse of the mountain. Contrary to our information which described difficulties of F9, we were pleased to find, on perfect red granite, a beautiful classic 4000-foot route of about Scottish II with short sections of F6. A total of four rappels were made on the descent.
At midnight on May 12 after a week of continuous snowfall, we climbed the 1800-foot, sérac-threatened, ice wall which divides Mount Huntington from the Rooster Comb. After three hours of unbelayed climbing we emerged onto a shoulder a hundred feet below the col, only to sink into a morass of unconsolidated snow which required four hours of “swimming” to negotiate. An excellent bivouac site was found beneath a sérac at the base of Mount Huntington’s east ridge. Further storms kept us here until late the following day when a glimpse of blue sky to the south tempted us to descend to the basin below the east face.
The face is dominated by a 4000-foot pillar reminiscent of the Walker Spur and flanked by couloir systems with enormous ice cliffs. Our first intention was to attempt the pillar but the poor weather (only five of the 28 days we spent on the Ruth were without snowfall) persuaded us to attempt something less ambitious. We therefore turned our attention to the couloir system left of the pillar. To avoid the threat of sérac fall, we climbed a narrow 1000-foot gully on the side of the pillar that emerges into the main couloir just below the ice cliffs. More snowfall resulting in torrents of powder forced us to spend 14 hours in a snow cave dug a few hundred feet above the Tokositna basin.
On May 15 we climbed the couloir and traversed snow-covered slabs to emerge into the main couloir. The view above was not reassuring. We had left most of the equipment selected for the pillar at the col and had cut our supplies down to four rock pegs, four nuts and six ice screws. Above us loomed what appeared to be 3000 feet of granite wall. Fortunately at each apparent impasse little ice pitches and snow ramps miraculously presented themselves, enabling us to skirt most of the major rock difficulties.
At the end of the day we spent four hours forcing a pitch onto a steep snow-covered ramp which led into the upper couloir and out of the labyrinth.
After a few hours sleep we followed a broad snowfield which led up under the topmost rock wall. A series of ice ribs and arêtes took us to the cornice that guarded the summit plateau. It was now apparent that the fine weather that had allowed us to climb the face would soon be gone, so we abandoned our plan to descend the heavily corniced east ridge in favor of the Harvard route. We were granted fine views from the summit and Steve had a close look down the north face when a cornice broke at the top of the French Ridge. Visibility was down to a few feet by the time we had traversed the summit ice-fields and we were unable to locate the top of the west face.
Next morning the weather had deteriorated still further and we decided to descend even though we were unsure of the direction. Fortunately after a few hundred feet I unearthed a cluster of old pitons—Steve said it was luck but I have other ideas. We were soon racing down tangles of decrepit fixed ropes, periodically being engulfed by slides of powder pouring off the summit snowfields. At the Upper Park snowfield we were unable to find the continuation of the descent down to the Stegosaur. Early next morning the cloud allowed us a short glimpse of the Tokositna Glacier and the lower section of the west buttress.
Snow conditions on the ridge were very poor with our passage releasing large slabs. We were able to avoid half of the Stegosaur by a free rappel off a large cornice.
All that remained was for us to cross the Tokositna Glacier and the French Ridge to the Ruth. The east face gives a beautiful and tenuously linked classic ice climb: Scottish III/IV with one section of F9 mixed climbing. There was no stone-fall. The descent via the Harvard route, apart from enabling us to relive a piece of history, seemed much the safest proposition in bad weather, though it does mean a long walk home.
Summary of Statistics:
Area: Alaska Range.
Ascents: P 11,300, via Southwest Ridge, 4000 vertical feet, Scottish Grade II, F6, 13 hours of climbing, May 5, 1980.
Mount Huntington, 12,240 feet, via a new route on the East Face, 4500 vertical feet, Scottish Grade III/IV, F7, 24 hours on the face, six days total from the Ruth Glacier and back, May 13 to 19, 1980.
Personnel: Stephen Bell, Roger Mear, England.
American Alpine Journal 1981
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Avery
climber
New Zealand
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 14, 2016 - 01:56am PT
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1st Ascent, Huntington's East Face (1980). Steve Bell and Roger Mear
Special thanks to Steve Bell
Don't miss Steve's new book 'Virgin on Insanity' for an in depth account of this climb. Steve also takes a unique, blisteringly honest look at "growing up" both on and (perhaps more importantly) OFF the mountain.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Virgin-on-Insanity/1636720446568690?pnref=story
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Avery
climber
New Zealand
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 14, 2016 - 05:40am PT
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Huntington's East Face (1980) Roger Mear and Steve Bell cont...
Just had a look at your topic on Supertopo - what a trip down memory lane.
Though it was a while ago, the time Steve Bell and I spent on the Ruth remains vivid. The trip was in fact one of the best I've ever had. How easy it is to be adventurous when you are naive. Hudson dropped us below the north face of Huntington leaving us in our jeans and Hush Puppies with a months food and no skis or radio and then promptly forgot he had to pull us out at the end of the month. It snowed on most days - foot upon foot of the lightest powder, that floated down with the sun often visible through the cloud. It was a wild place to be, with airborne avalanches roaring down off Huntington, across the glacier and climbing up Pt11300 in a big curving wave.
Attached are a 3 photos
1 - Looking down the initial couloir
2 - Abseiling the Harvard route
3 - Starting up the initial couloir
Regards
Roger
Special thanks to Roger Mear
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Avery
climber
New Zealand
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 14, 2016 - 03:04pm PT
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Colton/Leach 1981 (West Face)
Huntington
Nicholas Colton, Alpine Club
With A HIMALAYAN expedition looming in the fall, we decided we must climb somewhere in the spring. Tim Leach suggested Alaska, not only for the fantastic potential for climbing but also because it would give us the chance to test out ideas and equipment for the autumn. We had to find an objective. Steve Bell had raved about a line he had seen on the Rooster Comb. Looking at pictures gave us many other ideas, the most appealing being the west face of Huntington, and of course the north buttress of Hunter.
Since we had heard horror tales of the weather, we hoped to get one route in and if we were lucky, a second. The idea was to climb alpine- style and with an alpine-style attitude. We would be flexible and shift our aims according to conditions and weather. We also decided to attempt the climbs with the lowest altitude first and then the next lowest.
We set up camp on the west fork of the Ruth Glacier on April 3. There were four climbers already at the camp. Two of them had ideas on the Rooster Comb. As we looked at the face from the glacier, the line was painfully obvious; such a line would be a classic in Europe. Because the weather seemed settled and good, we went for it the very next day.
We left camp in the darkness, snow shoed to the foot of the route and put on crampons. One of my new, unworn crampon straps snapped, probably due to the cold. One person would lead all day and then we would switch the next day. Tim had used this system on Gaurishankar.
Tim took the first day’s lead. The climbing was Scottish in character, usually about Grade III to IV (Scottish ice grades). However the gully ran with spindrift all day making things unpleasant at times. That night we hacked a ledge out of the ice to have a reasonable night’s sleep; but the spindrift ran all night and try as we might, we could not stop it from getting into our sleeping bags.
Having had my other crampon strap snap, we thought it would be safer for Tim to continue leading. After a poor night, the first pitch on the second day was purgatory. Everything was cold, especially the hands. The climbing became harder, usually grade IV to V, the last pitch of the day being the crux. It started with four nuts for direct aid, continued for a short while with slings on axes and then finished with poorly protected free-climbing to a good belay.
During the first day and the early part of the second, we found evidences of other attempts, usually rappel points. The third day we continued up the same line except for a small detour which gained us fifty feet for some five hours’ toil. Tim fell off a rotten bulge but managed it on his second attempt. We bivouacked at the obvious snow ramp under a protective overhang. Our sleeping bags were now practically useless after that first night, but we were happy because we knew that all the difficulties had passed.
We gained the summit at noon the next day. The weather seemed to be deteriorating. We traversed the twin summit of the Rooster Comb until the wind forced us to dig in for the night. The next morning the wind abated slightly, but it was snowing lightly and visibility was almost nonexistent. We spent all day picking our way back to the glacier, the worst part being the descent from the col between the Rooster Comb and Huntington.
Jay Kerr and Keith Roysters repeated the route later that week and confirmed its quality. They moved quicker than we and took four days for the round-trip as opposed to our five days.
We spent the next four days resting and gathering our wits. Being successful so early on was unexpected. The west face of Huntington was next on the agenda. We had heard that a party had been over on that side but we were unsure about what they had done.
On April 13 we crossed over to the Tokositna Glacier via the French Icefall. We dug a new hole and stocked it with several days’ supplies in case we were stranded on that side. There were tracks all over the glacier from the previous party which had now departed. We could not tell which route they had done, if any. Even if they had done our route, it looked such a good line that we proposed to do it anyhow.
The line is well left of the Harvard and the west-couloir routes. Tucked in on the left side of a prominent spur is a steep ice runnel ending in snow ramps. These snow ramps lead to a junction with the Harvard Ridge just before that route joins the French Ridge.
We crossed the bergschrund just before dawn on April 14. It was my lead day. After a tricky bergschrund, a steep snow slope led to the beginning of the ice which rose steeply for four pitches at 70° to 75° and then dropped back to 60° to 65° for most of its length with a short section of 80° to 85°. The couloir was wide and open, unlike the Rooster Comb. We followed the couloir until it forced left under the cornice onto the snow ramps. During the day I once again had trouble with a snapping crampon strap but continued to lead because the other stayed secure.
Once on the ramp we dug a spacious ledge in the snow. It was not quite deep enough for a snow cave.
Next morning we moved together, with Tim in the lead, up easy rightwards-slanting snow. We kept on for half a day like that until we were below an obvious snow arête, which was difficult to gain. The route passed just below the arête and became difficult, perhaps grade IV, to the junction with the Harvard route. A pitch up the Harvard route took us to a protected bivouac below an overhanging block.
To protect the bivouac, we rigged a rail with one rope. This rope twice knocked the stove over. Eventually we got to sleep at midnight after a good meal. Next morning we woke up late with swirling clouds all around. Should we go for the summit and risk being caught in a storm? We decided that the route had been completed and that even though we wanted to stand on the summit of Huntington, it was not necessary. With clear consciences we abseiled down the Harvard route. Soon we came across fixed ropes and used their anchor points in our descent. It took six hours to descend from our high point to the glacier, during which time the clouds lifted and the sun came out. If we had waited a little longer, we would have made the summit, but if the weather had got worse, we would have been in a tight spot.
We met a party, Jack Lewis and Dave Hough, who had just flown onto the Tokositna Glacier. (See Climbs and Expeditions.—Editor.) They gave us water and antibiotics for an infected wrist where my watch strap had been cutting in. Back in the snow hole, we ate like kings so as not to carry the food back over the col. Next day in poor visibility we crossed back to the west fork of the Ruth in a fraction of the time it had taken us to get over to the Tokositna.
With all the front-pointing on these two climbs, our toes had become bruised and tender. The cold obviously had not helped; possibly we also had a bit of frost-nip. We couldn’t climb for a week or two. We changed camps and flew our gear out to the Kahiltna airstrip. We were elated with our two new routes and yet we could still fit in another as soon as our feet healed. We were longing to go to Hunter, but a spell of bad weather was predicted.
Every day people came in who wanted to do McKinley, giving us the idea to do it too. The summit was not that important but the altitude experience was. As it turned out, we had a most enjoyable time on the West Buttress. We made the summit and learned just how big McKinley is. Thus ended our Alaskan climbing holiday. We can dream of the many great lines we saw which still have to be climbed.
Summary of Statistics:
Area : Alaska Range.
Ascents: Rooster Comb, 10,180 feet, via a new route, the North Buttress, April 4 to 8, 1981.
Mount Huntington, 12,240 feet, to just below the summit via a new route on the West Buttress, April 14 to 16, 1981.
Mount McKinley, 20,320 feet, via West Buttress, April 26 to May 6, 1981.
Personnel: Nicholas Colton, Timothy Leach.
American Alpine Journal 1982
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Anguish
Mountain climber
Jackson Hole Wyo.
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Sep 14, 2016 - 07:21pm PT
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Another translation of the first ascent article about the 1964 climb can be found in the 1965 issue of the AAJ, 14 vol 2.
Mount Huntington
By Lionel Terray, Club Alpin Français. Translated by H. Adams Carter
http://publications.americanalpineclub.org/articles/12196528900/Mount-Huntington
HAC:
it is one of the tests one must undergo to deserve the joy of rising for an instant above the state of crawling grubs.
The Mountain World:
it is one of the experiences that have to be endured in order to deserve the pleasure of raising oneself for an instant above the state of ‘crawling larvae’.
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Avery
climber
New Zealand
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 16, 2016 - 01:15am PT
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The East Face: Robb Kimbrough, John Tuckey, 1983
East Face of Mount Huntington
Robb Kimbrough, Colorado
EVEN THE BAD WEATHER doesn’t dampen our enthusiasm as John Tuckey and I arrive in Talkeetna on April 13. After all, we are here to make our bid for the big time. Throughout our climbing careers we had always been content to do the established classics, such as the previous year when a month of very enjoyable climbing had seen us up the southeast ridge of Foraker and the Cassin Ridge of Denali. Our success and style on these routes convinced us that we were now ready for a noteworthy first ascent. Our goal this year was the central pillar on the east face on Mount Huntington.
Bad weather keeps us in Talkeetna for a few more days and we begin to worry that someone might climb the route before us. After dreams of the route all winter we are anxious to give it a try. At last the weather clears and off we fly. My steely resolve turns to mush with our first view of the Ruth Gorge. Nothing but huge granite walls plastered with snow and ice. Doubts creep into my head, but I push them away after deciding that I had been climbing other people’s routes long enough.
We land at the base of Mount Huntington’s north face and set up shop. After several days of bad weather, it finally clears and we head off with all of our gear and ten days of food. The climb up to the Rooster Comb-Huntington Col, which we thought would take about six hours, turns out to be a twenty-hour ordeal of “swimming” up through waist-deep, steep-to-vertical, unconsolidated snow. After a night on the col, we head down towards the Tokositna Glacier in a white-out. We spend nine hours groping through rock bands before arriving at the bottom, exhausted, wet, and thinking that this was a bit much for just the approach.
After three more days of unsettled weather, it finally comes: a morning so clear that we have no choice but to start climbing. We leave our tent and one day’s food behind as we plan to return to the Tokositna via Huntington’s southeast ridge. The end of the first day finds us bivied on a tiny ledge chopped out of the ice at the top end of the initial left-leaning ramp. Much of the climbing was through unprotectable soft, deep snow and we are both exhausted and disheartened.
The morning comes and I discover the glory of climbing on an east face. The sun is bright and beautiful and my spirits rise with the temperature. If you could figure out how to bottle the feeling the sun gives you after an open bivouac, they would probably make it illegal. The day is spent climbing through difficult mixed ground as we head up and right towards the ridge. After another night on a tiny, hacked-out ledge, we finally gain the ridge crest. It is great to be on the ridge at last but we again encounter endless deep snow. John’s route along the side of the ridge looks like a tunnel in an ant farm.
Progress is slow but by late morning the next day we are at the base of the 800-foot buttress that is two-thirds of the way up the pillar. We set about trying to find a line up the buttress, but after several pitches we have had no luck. From the glacier it looked as if there were snow and ice runnels that we could connect together, but all we find now are pitches of steep rock with hanging belays. The “runnels” are nothing more than a thin plastering of snow. We have brought a substantial amount of rock gear, but it seems as if it would take a full big-wall rack to climb this in a reasonable amount of time.
With darkness and snow both falling, we rappel down and chop out a cramped ledge under an overhanging rock. The weather, route, ledge and dwindling food supplies all lead to really low morale. It stops snowing during the night but even the sun cannot work its magic this time. We spend another half day searching for a route on the other side of the buttress, but still no luck. There might be a line, but we can’t find it.
We decide to give it up and start the long traverse back around the base of the buttress. We join the 1980 British route and climb the couloir that leads past the buttress, ending in a bivouac at the top of the couloir that takes our last meal. All that is left now are a few odds and ends.
The next day we traverse around to the south ridge and follow it to the summit, arriving in an almost total white-out. It somehow seems appropriate that we won’t even get a view from the top. To reach the summit of Huntington is a definite triumph, but it is somehow anti-climatic because of my hopes and dreams for the route we had tried. In my quest for the route I have forgotten the mountain and what should be a moment of joy becomes just a time to turn around and start down.
We wait out a stormy night a short way below the summit before continuing down. Very poor visibility makes route-finding through the hanging glacier a hit-and-miss proposition; night finds us still on the glacier. We are finally able to dig a cave and use the last of our fuel to melt snow. The weather improves the next day and by mid afternoon we reach the basin on Huntington’s southwest side. From here a moderate 1000-foot couloir will take us to the Tokositna. It finally seems over.
Over is just what I want it to be. I have always really enjoyed climbing, but not this time. The constant pressures of difficult climbing, exposed bivouacs, dealing with the unknown and generally feeling strung out had taken the fun out of this. To top it all off we hadn’t totally succeeded. I guess I am just not cut out for this extreme of climbing.
We cross the glacier in the basin and head down the couloir, with John going first. A couple of hundred feet down the couloir is a 100-foot headwall and when John reaches the lip of it he begins to set up a rappel. As he searches for anchors, I continue down in his steps.
Suddenly I hear a yell and turn around to see John disappear. The snow he was on had caved off and carried him over the headwall. I brace for the shock but the rope just picks me off my feet. I feel myself tumbling down to the headwall and launching out, but then I black out.
I awake to the sound of John calling my name as he scrambles up the snow to me. I know who I am, but not where I am or what has happened. It takes several minutes of my asking questions and John’s giving answers before I become coherent. My first realization is that my right ankle is badly broken. My second is that help is a long way away.
John seems mostly unhurt, so after splinting my ankle and getting me into my sleeping bag, he heads the mile up glacier to the base of the Rooster Comb-Huntington Col to retrieve our tent and food. When he returns he sets up the tent, moves us in, and fixes our first real meal in a couple of days.
The next day John first moves camp and me a couple of hundred feet to an area less exposed to avalanches and then we take stock. There are people on the other side of the col, but they don’t know where we are. We lost three of our four ice axes in the fall and we have about two and a half days of food and some fuel.
Since John feels he can cross the col alone to get help, the next morning he heads off and I settle down to wait for a few days. I while away the day until late afternoon when I hear someone outside the tent. I open the door to see John coming slowly towards me. His first words are “I couldn’t do it.”
As he collapses into the tent, John tells me of the attempt. He had found an easy way to the top, but when traversing along the crest he again found treacherous soft snow. When attempting to get below some very bad snow, everything came loose and he tumbled 1000 feet back to the Tokositna. He lay unconscious at the bottom for several hours and awoke disoriented, suffering from a concussion. After some time he took stock of his situation and came back the mile to the tent. Looking at the rock bands he had tumbled through, I am amazed he is alive.
John is still moving slowly the next day, but wants to give it another try. The last ice axe was lost in his fall but he feels he can still climb up our side of the col and use flares and a whistle to catch someone’s attention below. He sets off again but at the end of the day returns with more bad news. He had made it to the base of the col, but when he sat down to rest he had passed out and slept the entire day. Neither of us had realized how much he was still suffering from his fall.
As John tells his story, things look really bleak. It is very hard to be passive and just sit around and wait to be found, but all we have done so far by taking an active approach is make things worse. As the evening rolls on, John seems to recover from his concussion. His speech returns to normal and his usual spark is showing. We decide to move camp to the base of the col to save John the extra two miles a day of travel. We are basically out of food and don’t know how many times he will have to climb the col before he gets someone’s attention.
We are blessed with continuing good weather, so the next day John packs up his personal gear and heads up to the base of the col. There he stamps messages in the snow, clears a tent site, and drops off his gear before starting the climb, using a snow shovel for an axe. Meanwhile, I pack up the rest of our gear and spend the rest of the morning crawling up the glacier.
After setting up camp, I collapse into the tent. Once I hear lots of yelling but can’t tell what is going on. John returns that evening feeling that he might have been noticed by someone, though he couldn’t tell for sure because it is so far down the other side to the glacier. Nonetheless we celebrate with a cup of tea, a real luxury since we don’t feel we can waste fuel to boil water.
John heads to the col again the next day. I am going through my daily routine of melting snow on the rainfly when I hear the sound I have been waiting for: a plane! I look up to see Doug Geeting’s plane come over the col and I begin to wave the rainfly in the air. As Doug circles in acknowledgement, I laugh and yell hysterically. What a relief! Doug circles long enough to see that John gets down from the col safely and then flies off. When John gets to the tent, this time we are both all smiles. A helicopter arrives a few hours later and we are off to Anchorage. It is the first time in my life that I have looked forward to hospital food.
Since my return from Alaska I have had time to think about the climb. Even before the accident I had pretty much decided that climbs like that were not for me. I don’t really feel that the accident was related to doing a difficult new route, since it happened on easy ground on an established route. There is no doubt that being a party of two in an isolated area made the situation worse after the accident, but a party of two is probably the only way to do the route.
When I am able, I hope to climb again. But when I do go back into the mountains, I doubt if it will be to climb isolated, difficult new routes. Climbs like that should be left to those who enjoy them. I will return to the mountains to find the beauty, challenge, and close friendships that I have always enjoyed in the past.
Summary of Statistics:
Area: Alaska Range.
New Route: Mount Huntington, 3731 meters, 12,240 feet, via a new route on the East Face; summit reached on May 1, 1983 (Robb Kimbrough, John Tuckey).
American Alpine Journal 1984
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