Eklutna Glacier

My friend Ivan and I went in to the Eklutna Glacier area to climb for a couple days, but experienced very warm temps, freezing rain and several inches of new snow. We were unable to climb most of the routes but were able to do the route just left of Serinity Falls, several pitches of fun WI 4. I took this photo on the way in, about13 miles via 4-wheeler. We're headed for the deep valley near the center of the picture, this is about 1pm.

The route left of the glacier is Miter Mite, a classic

We found an old rusty crampon that would make a good coat hook.

Seattle Creek

Here's a couple photos of the couloir Torry and I skied the other day. It was a beautiful sunny day, but this particular run was north facing and shady. It was a great line with minimal avalanche danger and about 20' wide in spots. Definetly the best run of the year so far.

Snow!

I returned to Alaska and found blue sky, negative temps and several feet of new snow. Five of us went to Hatcher Pass skiing yesterday, and it was excellent. The avalanche conditions are very bad right now, with many slabs running to the ground. The photo below shows a slide probably triggered by skiers on the ridge above. The snow was collapsing everywhere we went with much noise and shooting cracks. A good time to stay out of the gullies! Fortunately there are some good, safe, low angle runs to do. The six of us tracked this ridge up (in the photo below). The photo shows the top half of the run, which was about 2200' total. It's still early season and I did hit a few rocks, but fortunately since it's mostly tundra, it's not too bad. Hope for more snow soon!

Ptarmagain Peak

I climbed the N. Face of Ptarmagain Peak yesterday to look for ice. There are just a few thin smears on the N. Face, but nothing big yet. My route followed the thin gulley to the left...mostly easy WI3 steps with an exciting 100' exit consisting of snow covered slabs, maybe M5...then on to the top via snow covered choss hiking. The view from the top was awesome, although I couldn't get the panoramic stitch I took to load on this site. This peak is about 4 miles from my house, and you can see in the bottom photo (taken from the summit) mountians stretching without a single road or town for 300 miles. This is why I love Alaska.

Moose Hunting

Last week my friend Kirby Spangler and I did a raft trip down the Matanuska River, to hunt for moose. We saw lots of cows but no bulls, and so didn't get a moose. We had a great time camping on the river, rafting, and sneaking around the woods with guns. Below is the Mat river and the main area we were hunting to the left of the river. I hiked to the top of the canyon wall to take this photo. For perspective, the river bed (the part with no trees) is about 3/4 mile wide. This is another photo of where we hunted the most. You can see it's pretty stormy up the valley.
Here's Kirby rowing the raft. It was pretty much a one person job, so I just kicked back and took photos.

Brooks Range

I had some time off with no plans and decided to make the drive to the Arctic.  Drove to Atigun Pass on the Haul Road and did a solo hiking trip, mostly looking for ridges to walk.  Feels lonely out there, but it's important to do solo trips.  A couple smoky days from fires somewhere.

My Friend Chad

My long time friend Chad Brown came to visit. We ran around the mountains in the rain, then we went and slayed halibut on a charter out of Homer. 77lbs in the freezer.

AK range 2005

This was my only trip to the AK range this year. I took Lodewijk DeVink on a 6 day mountaineering course for Alaska Mountaineering School (www.climbalaska.org). It was a great trip, and Lodewijk went on to have a great Denail climb including a summit. Here are some photos from our trip, including AMS intern Jared Brooks wacthing Lodewijk try to get himself out of a crevasse.


Here's a middle school band that flew on to the glacier and played some songs for everyone hanging out in basecamp.

Eklutna Canyon Ice

These are some routes we did in Eklutna Canyon this past winter. I think the one on the top, and two of the pitches in the bottom photo were FAs. I'm posting them here to see if anyone else out there knows if they've been climbed.