Arriving at the summit of Big Chief
Hugh on the way up, with Seattle Creek and Turnagain Arm (the ocean) behind.
Kellie on the way up Seattle Ridge. Our car is below at the pull out, and all the sunlit slopes behind are excellent skiing.
Hugh on Seattle Ridge, getting ready to drop in.
In the fall of 2007 I built a cabin in Chicaloon. I had no idea what I was doing, and had help from Glen Deal, Jed Workman, Jon Cobb, Jason Kwiatkowski and probably some others.
This is your standard Pakistani truck, used for transporting anything and everything. Almost all of them are decorated like this.
Here's our basecamp at 4500m, or almost 15,000' elevation. Nice to have grass and running water when you're surrounded by glaciers!
Sammy taking a break on Latok attempt #2. We enjoyed great ice conditions on the way up, and were able to quickly solo up 3000' of this stuff.
Sam up high somewhere. To his left you can see where two glaciers come together, and our basecamp is located right where they merge, right up against the rock butress.
The west face of Latok II.
Cruising around the glaciers on a hot sunny day.
Here's Ken just below our mixed climbing crux on attempt #1. It was pretty spicy, but with good gear. Unfortunately we found a large amount of old fixed static rope and poly cord left by the Huber brothers on their previous trips to the W. Face. Bummer.
Sam at the bottom of our last rappell, after bailing from our 3 days at 5900m. You can see the bad weather, and seracs above! Yikes!
The weather was bad enough we ended up leaving basecamp a couple days early, to make time to visit Husche, the home of our awesome guide Little Karim. Here's Sammy having fun with some school kids.
Here's our legendary guide Little Karim, in front of the peak Jer and Ken named after him. Luckily, those guys actually climbed something while Sam and I were suffering on LII. They ended up climbing the ridge on the right, leading to the highest summit. A link to a write up of that to come soon.
A random friendly guy we met in Husche.
A village near Husche, and the home of Abaas, another friend we made. We had lunch here at his house with the Canadian women't expedition we were traveling with, as Abaas was their guide on the Choktoi.
Chris Gibisch and I just spent 3 weeks on the Buckskin Glacier, climbing various things. Above is the S. Face of 8010, where we climbed the right-leaning chimney system that leads directly to the summit. We did 10 pitches of fairly difficult climbing, and got to the top in a raging snow storm. We saw no signs of previous parties, and rapelled the route.
Above is Chris standing at the base of the Couloir between the Mooses Tooth and Bear's Tooth. We climbed this gulley to the ridge at night, then spend the next day trying (unsuccessfully) to summit the Bear's Tooth. We slept and ate in the sun, waiting for it to get cold again so we could begin our descent safely. It looks short, but the route is over 3000' tall!
Above is Chirs leading a pitch on 8010.
This is the Bear's Tooth (left) and the Mooses Tooth (right). We climbed part of a route on the Mooses Tooth that consists of a right-trending chimney system above the biggest snowfield at the bottom. We went up about 3500' before being turned around about 400' below the skyline ridge by warm temps.
Me and Chris after realizing that we had gone through half our whisky supply only 5 days in to the trip. Ooops!
Chris having fun on one of our stormy attempts.
