Mt. Alberta

Chris Gibish and I climbed the NE ridge of Alberta last week. Climbing the route and decending took 17 hours from the Mt. Alberta hut and back. The route was fairly icy, since it had snowed 20cm 5 days earlier. An excellent route with a wide variety of climbing. Some people who came by on the way to the Japanese route (which we descended) said that we were the first people to reach the summit this year. Fun!Below is Chris starting up the water ice section.

The Alpine Club of Canada hut.  Very nice!

Howse Peak

Chris Gibbish and I climbed the NE Buttress of Howse Peak last weekend, located in the Canadian Rockies. We spent one night on the route, about 2/3 of the way up, a second night on the decent, and arrived back at the car the morning of the third day. The route covers about 4000 vertical feet and follows the prominent buttress directly below the summit.

 Our bivouac on the route.

Chris and I huddled at 2am about 200' below the summit of White Pyramid, on the descent.  A thunderstorm rolled in with lightning but luckily we found a nice protected spot

Ski Kite Invitational

Last week a group of us spent a few days ski kiting on the Harding Icefield, outside Seward. My friend Jason put it together, the first annual Ski Kite Invitational. Below is Jason cruising back to camp after a day cruising around the icefield. We skied 2 very steep lines on the nunatak just above his kite, which is about 3 miles away...but easily accessible with some wind. Below is looking out across the icefield. It's just flat snow to the horizon, and past. The whole Harding is about 30 x 50 miles of snow and ice. HUGE!
Heather flying a 5 meter Ozone Frenzy in high winds
Mountain Anarchy

High Sierra Skiing

Here are a few photos from my recent trip to the Eastern Sierra. My friend Kellie and I spent about 5 days skiing steep couloirs in the Palisades area. Below are the Underhill Couloirs...short but steep. Below are U-Notch and V-Notch couloirs, both had good firm but carvable snow...

Below is Kellie skiing thunderbolt couloir...A bergschrund with the left Underhill couloir in the backround...
Mount Agassiz...we skied the line from the snowy shoulder left of the summit.
Kellie entering the right Underhill couloir...pretty steep!
Hiking up V-Notch couloir...

Mt. Ascension

Mt. Ascension...skied the couloir left of the summit.

Kitchatna Spires

 Glen Deal flew to Post Lake where his family has a cabin, equipped with snow machines.  After spending a night there we launched down to the Kuskokwim, then up the Tatina River to the head of the Tatina Glacier.  

Glen on the porch

Post Lake Cabin

In the river

Camp on the Tatina

The clouds parted just enough to head up on the glacier

Me and Glen

We attempted this line on the West side of the glacier

Glen got up in to some tough and unprotectable terrain, here he is just after he came off.  I didn't have the guts to give it a try so we bailed.  

On the way home, the Kuskokwim was getting pretty open

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...