Skookum Glacier

 Ivan Ramirez and I explored on snowmachines up the Skookum Glacier.  This was my first time ever snow machining on a glacier, and my mind was blown.  It was a life changing experience.

Valdez Skiing

Just got back from an awesome bunch of days skiing in Valdez. I met a bunch of great people and enjoyed day after day of clear weather. Above is Kellie skiing a run with Mt. Diamond in the backround. Below is the E. face of Staircase...we skied a bunch of the couloirs shown.






The photo to the left here shows us approaching staircase, and at the bottom is us approaching Promise Land, another awesome area. We skied a bunch of lines on the shady face. Not visible in any of these photos is the 2000' approach from the road, which gets you to the base of the runs. It makes for a big last run of the day. Fun!

Alpenglow

Here are some photos from the top of Alpenglow the other day. It was the last 12 hours of our 9 day high pressure spell.  It was nice to stand on top after always looking at it across the inlet while driving the Seward Highway.   

A solo outing, I traveled up the obvious sun/shade ridge in the photo below, then skied the shady face below the summit. This photo was taken from a point about half way between the car and top.

Valdez Ice

I've been slacking on posting lately, but in the beginning of March I went to Valdez with Jon, Tanya and Lynn for some ice climbing. We had great conditions, sunny days and cold temps. To the left is Jon and Tanya on Big Brother, and just below is me on How to Make a Monster. At the very bottom is Wowie Zowie, which was in awesome shape at WI5+...it's usually a 6 I guess. Hopefully Jon will send me his photos of me leading Twisted Sister and I'll post them here.

Jon and I did Wowie Zowie...

Twin Peak

Tory and I skied Twin Peak yesterday, near Turnagain pass.

Chickaloon River

Here's a few photos from our climbing trip up the Chickaloon River the other day. Fortunately, Jon knows how to ride a snomachine!

Hunter Creek Ice

Here's a route we did up the L fork of Hunter Creek today. Glen Deal took these photos of me leading. We did the middle line in the photo showing 3 ice formations. We thought it was maybe WI5+, but who knows...only about 100' long.

Salty Nuts

Here's a couple photos of a route Jon Cobb and I put up the other day, down by the We Need wall in Portage. Below you can see me leading a great (previously climbed) route to the left of our route. The other photo is of me drilling one of the 3 bolts we installed on our route, which goes up pretty much straight above the drill I'm holding above my head. We called it "Salty Nuts" and it's probably somewhere in the M7 range. It's about 80' and we placed a new 2 bolt anchor at the top which can be easily used for the route to the left. Excellent!

Great Beard

Here's a photo of Great Beard, just outside Seward, which Jon Cobb and I climbed the other day. As you can see, the ice isn't fully fomed up so I led up the rock to the climber's left of the hanging pillar. After tediously installing numerous pieces of protection in the rock, I climbed out on the ice which was very steep and technical. At that point I was wishing I had been using my leashes since I got very pumped and was unable to hang on to my tools. I ended up falling about 20' while my tools stayed where I left them. We climbed an easy route nearby and rapelled in to get my stranded gear, and of couse climbed it without too much trouble on TR. This is probably the best piece of WI in South Central AK that I've seen this year.  This marks my first lead fall ever on water ice.  It's my first day ever out with Jon...hope he doesn't get the wrong idea about me.

The gear that held.  I can't believe it.  

Also of note is the outstanding conditions of the road cut climbing area on the Seward highway, just a few miles outside Anchorage.  I had a couple good leads there...

Caribou Creek

Here's a couple photos of a route I did today with my friend Britta. It's about half way between the parking lot and West End Creek (kids corner or whatever) up Caribou Ck, on the right side as you go up. I've never seen it form before, and there were no signs of cleaning or slings at the top. I'd call it hard M6 or maybe easy M7, about 90'. Super sweet...and leashless, which is new for me!

Crow Pass Skiing

Just today I got back from a couple days of skiing near Crow Pass. My friend Tory and I slept up there on the pass for a couple nights, and had a great time skiing. The first day we skied up there, dropped off our sleeping gear, then skied a 3000' line off of Magpie Peak, the top portion of which is pictured below.

The photo below is of Tory skinning up near the top of Magpie. If you zoom in you can see the Crow Pass Hut in the sun, straight right of his head. The leftmost peak on the skyline is Rook Peak, which we skied yesterday along with South Raven Pk, just to the right of it. More photos below of that. Below is a photo taken yesterday am, on our way from the pass over to ski Rook ( on the left) and S. Raven (on the right). We boot packed up a couloir on the rocky face visible in the photo, then skied it. Then we skied across the Raven Glacier and up the back side (out of view) of S. Raven, then skied a couloir on the visble rocky side of S. Raven. Got back to the pass just as it was getting dark at around 5pm. Two awesome peaks in one day!!Below is Tory skiing the very top our line on Rook Pk. It's a beautiful couloir that starts right at the summit and splits the whole face and is visible from Turnagain pass, about 15 miles away. The bottom photo is him a little lower, in the couloir proper. Our approach tracks are visible on the glacier below.

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.