Baird Glacier

Last week my friend Lance Breeding was working some shifts at the hospital in Petersburg, AK, and had a few days off. He came up with the idea to fly in to the Devil's Thumb area for a few days, just to hike around and check it out. Though my finger is healing well, my whole hand is still very weak and so hiking sounded like a perfect trip. These first photos illustrate why it's always important to sit on the left side of any southbound flight out of Anchorage. Below is the Agassiz Glacier from 35,000 feet.

Next was an awesome view up the Malaspina Glacier, which abuts the Agasiz. Together they're about 40 miles across at the toe, at the bottom of this photo. Mount Logan is the sun lit peak in the distance, and Mount St. Elias is cut off on the left.
Next we flew with Wally from Temsco across Thomas Bay and about 10 miles up the Baird Glacier, shown below.
Wally flying, and a view up the North Baird...
Our best view of the Devil's Thumb was right when we were dropped off. The NW face...
Mount Oasis. Zac Hoyt from Petersburg was super nice and gave us lots of information, and helped lots with logistics. He's put up a route on this side of Oasis and reports excellent granite.
One day we hiked over the the Witches Cauldron, but didn't get a good view of the Thumb. In all we covered about 20 miles of terrain like this. The many hours of ice bouldering was good rehab for me...

Dieter Klose volunteered to pick us up at the ocean. He and his friend Ann arrived right on time at high tide. You can see the toe of the Baird Glacier in the distance. Dieter and Ann gave us a great tour of Scenery Cove, Thomas Bay and the Sukoi Islands on the way back across Frederic sound. Their boat, The Fang, seemed perfect for such an area.
Sea Lions on a buoy as we motored in to Petersburg.

We stayed in an old hut built just off the Baird around 2000'.

Fishing 2009

 I had a brief window and went to Whisky Gulch to fish with Barry.  Great trip, lots of Halibut and a beautiful day out on the water.

Bagley Icefield

Tory Dugan, Jason Kwiatkowski and I departed Anchorage on April 13, for a month of skiing and kiting on the Bagley Icefield...a huge icecap in the Wrangell St. Elias National Park.  We flew to Yakutat, and then via a Cessna 185 on skis to about 2000' on the Hubbard Glacier.  
We had amazing weather, pretty much sunny the whole time!
We managed to travel many miles with kites, and got a hand full of great ski descents as well...
We traveled up the Hubbard, through a pass to the Seward Glacier then due east to the Columbus.  
We had mostly light winds, although one very strong session ended up working me over pretty good. Below is my kite control bar after a 20 minute battle with my kite. Fortunately I won.
We found mostly very poor snow stability, though we managed to ski one of the couloirs below...
Tory thinking it looks a little rocky...
Below is Tory getting ready to drop in...

We also skied a great peak about 14 miles west of Mount Saint Elias...called peak 9365. It featured 55 degree angles, many large crevasses and very firm snow conditions. Amazingly, it was sunny and calm on the summit, providing awesome views in every direction. Below is Jason on the down...

 

Skiing over bridges on 9365, maybe one of the more dangerous things I've done
Below is Peak 9365. We skied the line just left of the rocks below the summit, the one just barely catching the sun. A classic steep ski mountaineering objective...
Kites in the air...

Kiting in to the setting sun...
Tory booting up another couloir...



Below is Jason, slogging with a smile as usual...

And Tory being Tory, of course...

Unfortunately, 15 days in to the trip I accidentally cut my right index finger with a pocket knife while modifying a water bottle. The cut was only 1cm long, but managed to cut my radial digital nerve and artery, as well as my flexor pollicus longus tendon. At first it was so swollen, I couldn't assess it properly. 5 days later, after the swelling went down, it was obviously not working. I called Paul Claus for a pickup near Juniper Island, which I got 2 days later. I ended up having surgery in Anchorage 48 hours later.

In 20 days, we had traveled 100 miles and made 3 likely first descents, and perhaps the first ascent of Peak 9365. We'll probably never know for sure, and hardly matters. Jason and Tory carried on, got some better wind, making it another 80 miles to the lower Miles Glacier. My right hand is useless for 3 months, so I'm studying for the GRE exam and doing lots of trail running. Thanks to the Mugs Stump Award committee for postponing me and Sam Johnson's award to climb Mt. Logan until next year. Below is my finger, post-op.

Marcus Baker

Chris Flowers and I both had last Sunday free, and decided to go skiing. It was clear that morning, so we took off in his Super Cub. Looking around the Chugach, we noticed Marcus Baker was clear so we had a look. It's hard to pass up the highest peak in the Chugach on a nice day, so we ended up landing around 9000' on a side glacier.
Above is pictured our route. We cramponed up hard old blue ice on the summit pyramid following the sun/shade line in the above photo...left of the prominent rib facing the camera.
Very firm neve transitioned to old, cold, hard blue ice. We were wishing we had brought some ice axes.
Below is Chris on top...we were in the Chugach Mountains, but could see peaks in the Wrangells, Alaska Range, and Aleutians
We've recently had some significant wind events, so not surprisingly the top few hundred feet was like concrete, but low enough angle to ski. Below that came the steep blue ice so we belayed each other skiing for 2 pitches, then did 2 rappels on our skis.
We got back to the plane after dark, but Chris didn't hesitate to launch. It was my first time flying off a glacier through the mountains in the dark, but everything worked out great as Chris had a good plan to turn off all the outside lights and fly above all the mountains straight back to Anchorage. Here we are, encroaching on Merril Field's airspace...back in the ANC.