For the Love of Mountains

May 7, 2018May 12, 2020

Iditarod 2018

Anna Berington, 22nd finisher, approaches Nome. Photo: John Richards.

by John P. Richards

We finally saw some movement on frozen white landscape and sky. From a distance, it appeared to be a team of reindeer hauling an abominable snowman. As they came closer, it was clear that Nicolas Petit and his team of dogs had arrived at the White Mountain checkpoint. Petit was the second musher into the checkpoint, just behind leader, Norwegian, Joar Leifseth Ulsom, who slept soundly while waiting out the mandatory eight-hour rest stop. Petit looked dejected as he settled in and fed his dogs. His dogs looked dejected too. Dog teams sense their musher’s emotions. Highly trained and intelligent athletes, they know where they stand. A day earlier Petit was cruising through the race, in the lead with a nice margin ahead of Ulsom. He lost the trail marker in a storm and fell four hours behind, arriving now in second place.

Jessie Holmes, Rookie of the Year, thanks
his team at the finish in Nome.
Photo: John Richards.

My wife turned 60 years old in March, and it’s been her dream to see the Iditarod. That made choosing a special gift very easy—a trip to Nome, Alaska, to the finish of the 2018 Iditarod. We connected with Laurent Dick, a local guide and photojournalist, to help us get deep into the race, festivities, and provide an insider view.

The Iditarod is a dog sled race from Anchorage to Nome, spanning 1,049 miles, and held annually in March since 1973. The race was inspired by the 1925 Serum Run, a dog sled relay that delivered much needed serum to Nome, to help stop a deadly diphtheria outbreak in the winter of 1925. No other means of transport could deliver the serum to the isolated town fighting extremely low temperatures and blizzard conditions. On February 1, 1925, musher Gunnar Kaasen and his dog team arrived with the lifesaving medicine. Many lives were saved that winter. Kaasen and his lead dog, Balto, became instant celebrities.

We had taken a small plane from Nome to White Mountain, a tiny village on the Seward Peninsula with about 200 inhabitants and 77 miles from the finish in Nome. This checkpoint is an ideal location to catch a glimpse of the mushers and their teams as they move toward Nome. A large percentage of the residents were out in the cold air and light snow to see the leaders arrive. That large percentage is still a relatively small number of spectators making the race a very intimate, accessible, and transparent sporting event. It was very easy to get up close, talk with the mushers, and interact with the sled dogs. The checkpoint is entirely managed by volunteers as is much of the race logistics and activities. Most of these volunteers are veterans, returning year after year, not able to resist the annual call of the Iditarod Trail.

We headed back to Nome after the arrival of Mitch Seavey, pre-race favorite and, between he and his son, Dallas, had won the Iditarod every year from 2012. Last year, 2017, several of the Dallas Seavey dog team tested positive for the banned substance, tramadol. The musher was not penalized as proof could not be found that Seavey intentionally had given the dogs the substance. Dallas Seavey has strongly denied the incident and boycotted this year’s race in protest. The 2018 Iditarod was not to be a Seavey win, as Mitch sat it third place at White Mountain, too far back to be a serious contender.

Anna Berington sled dog at finish in Nome.
Photo: John Richards.

It was bitterly cold in Nome at 3 a.m., March 14, as the red and blue lights of the Alaskan Trooper announced an approaching team from the far end of Front Street. A police escort guided Ulsom and his team over the last mile, arriving to victory under the Iditarod Burled Arch. Spectators had come out from a short night’s sleep or staggered out of the many local dive bars lining the final stretch. As Ulsom kicked in the sled brake, he looked exhausted, but his dog team looked fresh. The bright lights of cameras and chaotic set of dog handlers, race officials, and media surrounded the winner. Heavy breath hitting the extreme cold rose above our heads, a mystical vapor framing the scene. This is not a rich event. The winner takes home $50,000 and a new truck. That doesn’t cover the typical investment needed to race. The mushers are not here for the money. They race for passion, pride, love of the sport.

The crowd called out to the winner, congratulating he and his dog team. The dogs, who many know by name, receive as many accolades as the mushers. These dogs are the engine that drives the musher to the finish. The lead dog, tactically finding the trail, motivating the others, piercing wind, snow, and cold, dutifully finding the finish line. Another group lined along the finish were holding signs in protest, PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. A few shouting matches could be heard among the crowd, two opposing opinions, fans and locals in full support of the race and its athletes, mushers, and dogs, the other in protest. Whether it was the dead of night, the freezing cold temperature, or the unfinished beer left in the bar, the exchange ended quickly and never surfaced again. Ulsom exited the finish line quickly, tired and cold, and was ushered to the press conference at the Nome race headquarters, then to sleep. Within the day, Nicolas Petit finished in second place and Mitch Seavey placed third.

Mitch Seavey arrives with his team at
White Mountain check point.
Photo: John Richards.

Our vision of the sled teams was a procession of well-matched Siberian huskies with a malamute or two for strength in the back. This is not so. While Siberian huskies and malamutes still pull a fair number of sleds, it’s the unofficial breed of Alaskan huskies that is the racing dog of choice among the elite teams of the Iditarod. Strength, speed, agility, and endurance are the characteristics that prove successful. Breeders have combined German shorthaired pointers, salukis, Anatolian shepherds and, in some cases, wolf, with the traditional malamute and Siberian husky to arrive at the ultimate racing machine.

A day after Ulsom finished in victory, we woke up to a clear sky. We had planned to jump on some snow machines and head to Safety, some 22 miles up the Iditarod Trail and the last checkpoint before the finish line. Without delay, our group of ten boarded the machines in pairs and headed out on the tundra. Within a few minutes we realized that the -40 Fahrenheit we spoke about at REI while choosing our boots is not the same -40 Fahrenheit we experienced in Alaska. With the wind chill it was brutally cold. Needless to say, our boots will be showing up at the REI Garage Sale, and if we ever go back we will get the odd and awkward “bunny” boot engineered by the Army and sold as surplus.

Our guide Laurent, just before departure, heard that two mushers were missing in an area called the blow hole, a treacherous area of sudden high winds and snow storms, fierce and unpredictable. The blow hole was half-way between White Mountain and Safety. As we barreled our way over ice and snow to Safety, we intersected two sled teams guided from behind by a single snow machine. There were no mushers. It didn’t register immediately, but the mushers had been found.

The checkpoint at Safety is just one building, the Safety Roadhouse. After an hour on our machines, we just wanted a warm place to hang out. We got that. A large black wood-burning stove filled the roadhouse with heat, and much of it. It was a quaint bar, its walls papered with dollar bills, signed and left by visitors. We grabbed our wallets and pulled out ten dollars, nine for the Bud Light, and one to staple on the wall. We relaxed with a beer, and with questionable judgment we decided to head in the direction of White Mountain, up the Iditarod Trail, into the blow hole.

It started with smooth riding, hard packed snow and ice, easy for the snow machines to navigate. The sky was clear blue, a nice respite from the otherwise subtle difference in shades of white between ground and sky. Then, with little warning, the snow machines began to hop on accumulated snow drifts. The sky turned light blue, then white, then gray, in minutes. We found ourselves in a storm and entering the blow hole. We wisely retreated. And, back to Nome.

As we parked our snow machines, safely back in Nome, our guide noticed two fat tire cyclists. They had finished the Iditaride, the fat tire bike ride that follows the Iditarod Trail. Cyclists Jay Cale, Phil Hofstetter, and Kevin Breitenbach had found the missing mushers, Jim Lanier and Scott Janssen. Lanier’s sled had been lodged in driftwood in the blow hole and Janssen, passing by, heard his calls for help. Both men had become hypothermic, unable to move, freezing and huddling with one another. Neither musher had the ability to push the help button on the GPS tracker. The cyclists found the tracker and pushed the button. With race officials notified and search and rescue deployed, Lanier and Janssen survived with little injury. The dog teams were recovered and doing fine. A close call and a clear reminder of the risk and danger of the Iditarod Trail.

It would be three days after Ulsom finished that the final team would arrive to collect the coveted red lantern, as Magnus Kaltenborn completed the race on March 14. The red lantern is a symbolic prize for last place. Every finisher is considered a hero. Other notable finishes: fourth place was Jesse Holmes, highest finishing rookie and Aliy Zirkle, the top female, finished 15th.

There are challenges ahead for the Iditarod. Sponsors are beginning to pull out, perhaps due to controversies of dog care, doping, or just waning interest. Prize money is shrinking as sponsors fade away and a few mushers made note of that at the closing banquet. Climate change is encroaching. Arctic winter air temperatures have risen by 8 degrees Fahrenheit since 1979 and winter ice volume has dropped 42 percent in the same period (Scientific American, April 2018). With no arctic, there is no Iditarod. The excitement and pride that is the Iditarod had a melancholy undertone, as concerns lingered in many conversations.

We had a discussion with Howard Farley, now 86, a founder of the Iditarod and also a musher from the original race in 1973. He told us to go back home and tell 1,000 people of the Iditarod experience. He professed that news media, social media, and big sponsorship money was not needed—in his view it’s word of mouth that will keep the race going. I wanted to believe him, that it might work. In the world of big money sponsorship deals, big brands with logos plastered on apparel, endless advertising, huge deals for athletes, and constant stream of social media, it seemed like an impossible dream that word of mouth could solely sustain this event.

As we, and throngs of visitors, bottlenecked the tiny Nome airport, swamping the few bag handlers with big duffels full of warm clothing, I thought that Howard might be right. The passion of the mushers is pure. They are not in it for the money, but for the love of it. The sled dogs, at each rest stop, anxious to get moving again, to run, the few spectators, enthusiastically delivering praise as racers pass by, enough to prompt a wave of thanks and a wag of a tail. Maybe this is the Iditarod, the past, the present and the future, the race itself a test of survival.

November 1, 2017May 13, 2020

PAFlete: Katie Mills—Inquisition of the Arrigetch

This article was originally printed in the 2016 Mazama Annual. Katie Mills, along with Rebecca Madore, will be presenting during the Portland Alpine Fest about their recent experience climbing the Moose’s Tooth in Alaska. Come out for Ham & Eggs on Tuesday, Nov. 14. Get tickets today!

by Katie Mills

Katie Mills, feeling right at home in
vertical terrain.

I thought I had picked an easy expedition. I laughed with glee at how easy it was going to be, feeling smug and smart at how clever I was, for we were going rock climbing. Alpine mixed/ice climbing is more a test of how tough you are, to endure the cold, to endure the exhaustion, to keep moving regardless because to stop is to die. Rock climbing? Well, you can’t do it if the temperature is too extreme, and you can’t carry all that much weight on your back, so you are guaranteed a mellower, pleasant time. The approach was a mere 12 miles or so, which, according to most American Alpine Journal (AAJ) reports, took parties a total of four days to do two carries of food and gear. Easy. We’ll suffer for four days, enjoy 16 days of Type I rock climbing glee, then suffer four more days of hiking out. I couldn’t believe how smart I was. I was soon to find out I was wrong.

The Executive Director of the Mazamas, Lee Davis, was the first person to tell me about the Arrigetch, because he had traveled there to backpack as a young man. I read AAJ reports and was astounded by the number of moderate 5.8 climbs, and a Google search revealed breathtakingly beautiful peaks. Why didn’t more people go here?! During the ascents of the 1960s and 1970s, climbers were allowed to airdrop their gear. When the area became a national park, airdrops were outlawed, making climbing there a much more back breaking task.

I also admit I picked a rock climbing expedition because rock is what my boyfriend Todd excels at. While happy to leave him to go climbing for a week at a time (since alpine wasn’t really his thing), three weeks seemed too long to be without his company. However, we had learned that when he and I climb together our motivation is less than when climbing with friends, so we would each need our own teammates. Together, but apart. The Alaska bush is an intimidating, remote, bear-filled place where one must be self-reliant, so a team of four seemed to be the safest way to manage it.
Nick Pappas walked into my office three years ago and said, “Hi. I’m Nick. I like your photos. I’m a climber too.” “That’s cool. You should come to my party,” I replied. And we have been friends ever since. It was a very fortuitous meeting, as both Todd and I fight over who gets to climb with Nick. I want him for my alpine multipitch adventures, whereas Nick is equally at home sport climbing, crack climbing, bouldering, or on big walls with Todd. Nick was, of course, a shoe-in for our trip and we decided he would choose a big wall objective with Todd.

On the Ham & Eggs route.

So who was I going to climb with?! None of my usual climbing partners wanted to blow all of their vacation on a random week Alaskan trip into the unknown, surely involving great suffering, so I sent out emails to a few climbers I hoped might be interested. None of them really wanted to blow all their vacation either, except one girl, who displayed just the excitement I knew was necessary to stay psyched for the expedition ahead. I had met Cigdem Milobinski four years earlier in an ‘alpine fitness class’ but we didn’t really talk much. Fast forward to present day and suddenly I noticed she had gone from a barely experienced rock climber to crushing hard routes at Trout Creek that I certainly didn’t have the guts to get on. I am really grateful Cigdem was interested in my trip, because we quickly became very good friends, and with her being so much better than me at cracks, I hustled up my game to improve at climbing because I did not want to be the weak link letting her down! I made a new dear friend and got better at climbing. With three hot-shot rock climbers and me, the lone alpinist I had finally formed my team and submitted my application for the Bob Wilson grant in July. Happily, we were notified in September that we had won the entire $10,000 grant!

Over the winter I spent hours comparing photos to AAJ reports and found the unclimbed faces which I thought would make good climbs. I wanted to do day climbs with Cigdem, whereas Todd and Nick settled on a big wall. Nobody has ever hauled big wall gear into the Arrigetch. For good reason.
We went to work Friday, July 1 and then it was off to the airport that evening. The trip wasted no time in becoming surreal. During our first flight to Fairbanks we watched in awe as the evening got later but the sun grew brighter. Goodbye, darkness. Goodbye, night. We then took a small plane from Fairbanks to Bettles because there are no roads. The plane allowed 40 lbs. of luggage per person, with $1.80 for every extra pound. I almost passed out at the $560 overweight baggage fee. And we think we are carrying 470 lbs. on our backs?! Next time I will know to do a weight check of everyone’s gear before the trip.

Bettles isn’t much of a town. Just an airstrip with a handful of lodges and bush plane outfitters. I immediately tell Todd and Nick to start dumping gear due to the weight limit. Out go the extra pitons. Out go the bolts. Out goes the 10 lb. bag of extraneous trail mix.

Rebecca & Katie on Ham & Eggs.

We make our way to the ranger station for back country orientation. Really, they just want to tell you about the bears by alleviating your fears while preparing you for an attack. We each rent a can of bear spray. Nick and Cigdem have pistols. Then comes the part I had been dreading, when we have to fit all of our food for 24 days into bear canisters. The ranger gives us each one bear canister, sets us and our giant bags of food up at a picnic table and tells us to “see what happens.” “I need another one,“ I proclaim within 30 seconds. He begrudgingly produces a second canister. And then a third. And then a fourth. I see he is quite saddened that our team is hogging 16 of his bear canisters that are meant for all park visitors, but there is nothing we can do. The canisters are huge and guarantee two carries, since they are so bulky you can only fit two in your pack at a time.

We weigh all of our gear and our bodies. The weight limit for the bush plane is 1,100 lbs. and we are at 1,118 lbs. The pilot lets it slide. WHEW! Good thing I picked Cigdem for a partner instead of some large man. We pile into a plane that looks like it’s from the 1960s and held together with duct tape. I do not enjoy this plane ride. I am still getting over food poisoning from a couple days before and the plane dropping several feet at a time makes me motion sick. We fly over wide swaths of forest fires. We see the Arrigetch Peaks in the distance and it’s amazing. The pilot lands us in a scummy lake and bumps onto shore. The only sign of humans is a rusty old gas can which I assume they leave there on purpose so you know you are in the right spot for pickup.

Nick administering backcountry medicine
to Katie’s gaping leg wound.

The plane takes off and the mosquitoes and reality set in. It’s 5 p.m. But it doesn’t get dark. So let’s get moving! The internet said there were two ways to go: up and then down a ridge or up the river and up the creek. One webpage says up the ridge is the way to go so up we charge. It’s two miles to the top of the hill. I figure will get up there in two hours. An hour in we’ve barely made any headway.

The mountain Nick and Todd dubbed “The Shiv.”

The brush is thick, the packs are soul crushingly heavy, the ground is spongy, and we sink back half a step for every step we take. The bugs have descended. It’s hot. I feel sick. The motion sickness on top of the food poisoning is making me feel really ill. I’m out of water. I’m gonna die if I don’t get water. I look longingly back at the stagnant lake. Unfortunately, I can’t just drop my pack, get water and come back because I fear I will never find my pack again in this intense brush. This 90 lb. pack and I are together for life! Nick points out what looks like a drainage to us on the map, to the north. We traverse towards it for 45 minutes, desperately hoping, but not really expecting, to find water. A sludgy trickle of water appears and we rejoice and guzzle, never so happy to have found such an unappetizing, ugly stream! First adversity conquered!

We continue our struggle up the hill. Finally, we break out into a beautiful, open, flat area. We will camp here tonight. We’ll have to conserve water, but thank god we found flat. I look at my watch. 1 a.m.?! It took us seven hours to hike two miles. I have so underestimated this trip already. We happily take photos of our magnificent hilltop campsite, but they are obstructed by big ugly mosquitoes that look like birds due to their proximity to the lens.

The second day isn’t any easier. Although we are going downhill, the skies open and drench us, forcing us to slowly pick our way down a heavily-forested ridge with many dangerous drop-offs. It takes us six hours to hike two miles and we rejoice upon finding a trail at the bottom of the Arrigetch creek drainage. We set up camp.

Notes about route by Nick & Katie.

The third day is the worst. We set off back to our cache at Circle Lake around 1 p.m. We follow the trail this time, having sworn off the ridge as horrible. The trail is hardly a trail, being overgrown with plants and very faint, but it is better than nothing and we are excited to have it. We are in high spirits until we reach the main river valley and the skies open and pour mercilessly upon us. We learn that when it rains the mosquitoes swarm. We are trying to hike in bug nets, but the branches spray our faces with water so we can’t see, and the mosquitoes swarming around us make it even worse. I don’t know where the best place to hike is: down near the river where it is marshy or up higher on the ridge where it is brushier. They seem to equally suck. Many times we end up in a cursed tussock bog. Tussocks are plants that have grown on top of themselves so that they form a pedestal up to about 2 feet high, which doesn’t sound too bad, until you fall off into the space between two tussocks and break your ankle. For me, navigating through the bogs with my short legs and heavy packs is near impossible. At the cache the boys are still unable to carry everything and will require a third carry. It seems we choose an even worse way to return to camp, getting lost several times. We arrive back by 6 a.m., an exhausting 15 hours later.

Next is a rest day. We are too wrecked to do anything. It’s strange that all the reports claim it only takes four days to do two carries into base camp. What’s wrong with us?! The next day we carry our gear forward for a change of scenery, dumping it when we get too cold and miserable to continue on. That night at camp, Cigdem slips on a rock and twists her ankle. We wait a day to see what happens, but she chooses to hike out rather than risk further injury. She offers up all her food she has ferried in and we tear into it like hyenas. In hindsight, without her extra food we probably all would’ve starved.

Katie on route.

The boys have to do a third carry from the lake, so they hike Cigdem out at midnight where a bush plane will pick her up at 10 a.m. I opt not to go because I am little and not in as good shape as they are, and I need my rest. As they get ready to leave, everyone hugs me like we’re never going to see each other again. Everyone thinks I’m going to get eaten by a bear. They leave and I am alone. My only job is to stay alive. Funny how the simplest tasks are hard out here in the Alaskan bush.
We pack up camp and finally set up base camp in the Arrigetch Valley below the peak Caliban. Eight days! It was supposed to have taken us four! Now that I have lost my partner, I am resigned to fully supporting Nick and Todd’s big wall goals. Maybe someone will have time to peak bag with me.

A solo backpacker named Josh hikes into our valley. He is really happy to see us. He tells us his first night lost in the bush he was so scared he cried. We all understood where he was coming from. It is scary out here, walking everywhere with your bear spray in hand, yelling at the bears to leave you alone. It takes some time to get used to. I read him the beta I had for climbing Ariel (the nearby “walk up” peak) and told him we’d keep an eye out for him. We saw eight people during our 24 days out here. Josh, a party of three across a river we never talked to, and an adventurous family of four and their dog.

Todd and Nick finally get a look at their big wall objective and decide it is too big for the time we have and the short number of sunny days we have between rain storms. So, as a consolation prize, we are going to climb Albatross! We have spotted a king line: 400 feet of beautiful crack to a lower angle shoulder leading to the striking dihedral on the north buttress. We decide to climb in a group of two for speed, leaving someone in base camp for safety. Todd and I climb better with other people than with each other, and since I had been eyeballing the climb this whole time, Nick and I choose to give it a go.

Katie & Todd enjoying their rest day.

Finally, on day 11, it is CLIMB DAY! When we wake up this morning there is not a single cloud in the sky, the first time that has happened the entire trip. I take it as a good omen. The mountain seems so close but it still takes us two and a half hours to reach the base, and we begin climbing at about 1 p.m. Nick wants to bring a ton of water and we have many layers because we know it will get cold up there, so the packs are heavy.

And we’re off! I can’t believe the beautiful 400 foot crack above us is unclimbed and we’re not waiting for it behind four other parties, like in Yosemite. Nick stomps across the snow and changes into his rock shoes. He attacks the finger crack’s bouldery start mercilessly, utilizing some face holds. It widens to a nice hand crack for another rope length. Thankfully I had put in my crack homework the year before, else I wouldn’t have been able to follow it competently.

The crack widens into a scary off width a size larger than the biggest cam we have but Nick bravely pulls some gnarly unprotected butterfly jams to get through it. I’m stoked I don’t have to climb with a giant pack on, as off widths are not my forte. Finally, the angle eases and the climbing gets easier.

The third pitch is a giant jumble of blocks we have to climb through. The fun subsides and terror sets in. Doing a FA means no one has ever been there and you don’t know what’s loose and what isn’t! I belay Nick with horrible dread in the pit of my stomach, waiting for one of the giant, car-sized blocks to crush me. We shouldn’t be here. Who was I to think I could pull off a first ascent. This was a bad idea. But we survive without incident, and come to a ledge I think of as a “nest” on the shoulder of the buttress where we can rest and feel safe for a bit. The next pitch looks chill so I get to lead! It gets hard again so Nick is back on the sharp end. He reaches the base of the dihedral and we are perplexed. The bottom of the dihedral is completely blank with no crack, and we don’t know how to get into it. Nick climbs up a nearby crack that peters out, bails, tries to the right and gives up, then walks all the way around the corner to the left to no avail. Our attempt at a first ascent may fail here. Todd texts me with the Gotenna, a device that allows us to text each other on our cellphones without signal, as if they are walkie talkies. He is worried we haven’t moved in so long. I assure him we are trying our hardest to unlock a secret passageway.

Nick then pulls off the most amazing climbing I have ever seen. He bravely climbs the face to the right of the dihedral on unpredictable tiny crimps that just keep appearing wherever he needs them until he reaches an S-shaped crack that also requires pumpy technical moves, but at least takes pro, then pulls onto the ledge. We are dihedral! If it were on the ground it would be a 4-star 5.10c at Smith. It goes! I text Todd of our movement and let him know that Nick is an American Hero.

The great dihedral never sees sunlight. It is wet, full of flora and fauna, and crumbly. The undulating cracks appear and disappear and make the climbing still quite difficult. I see a black inchworm with a blue diamond on its back and I wonder if I should take a photo, for perhaps it is a rare species only found in this dihedral. We pop out of the dihedral and rejoice! We did it! We have summited the unclimbed north buttress of The Albatross. There is also another safe nest to rest in. It’s probably 3 a.m. so we decide to curl up and take a nap. The mosquitoes are still merciless, even up here, but at least we are protected from the wind. We are low on food, so I start rationing. Only one bite of granola bar and a peanut every hour!

We run the gnarly summit ridge to a low point and then begin to rappel. “How do we do this, Ms. Experienced Alpinist?” Nick asks me. “I’ve never done this part before!” I cry. No, I have never made my own 1,200 foot rappel route into the unknown abyss. After our first rappel we pull the rope and a big rock comes with it, heading straight for us. Nick shelters me with his body (yes I noticed this … what a saint he is) but the rock ricochets and misses us at the last second. I assume we are going to die on the rappel and spend the entire time shivering with terror. Nick doesn’t mind leading all the rappels and I demand to leave behind two point anchors even if they’re both cams. “I’M RICH!” I proclaim, then start naming off the dumb stuff I have bought that cost more than this rappel route will. After what seems like an eternity, and 5 lost cams later, we hit the glacier and celebrate with my last two bites of sausage. We’re ALIVE! We saunter through the boulder field feeling surprisingly good and Todd meets us halfway up the last hill with a very welcome trekking pole for each of us. We get to camp and our minds and bodies give in to exhaustion. Thirty hours tent to tent. The next day is spent lounging in the shade of boulders reading and wading in the river. It feels so wonderful.

We then move base camp to the beautiful Aquarius Valley. On July 18, Nick and Todd climb the northwest ridge of an unnamed peak attempted in 2002. Classic 5.6–5.8 on the first few pitches leads them to a knife-edge sidewalk and a wild face, devoid of crack systems. It is clear that the 2002 attempt had ended here—Todd uses the previous party’s bail nut as part of the belay. Nick manages to free the next pitch on sight, calling it the culmination of 10 years of climbing and the best pitch of his life. Tricky ridge climbing takes them to the summit, from which they continue down the ridgeline to a notch, and then rappel the west side of the peak. Since it is our last day to climb before hiking out, they name the route Go Big or Go Home (5.10d R, ca 800 ft. vertical but considerably longer climbing distance) and dub the formerly unclimbed mountain The Shiv.

The Arrigetch Peaks may not have the best quality of rock and may be incredibly inaccessible, but I will say they are the most awe-inspiring mountains I have encountered. Never before have I seen a range with such incredible mystical spires and magnificent overhanging gendarmes soaring like the wings of some giant gargoyle. The peaks don’t look like mountains, but instead sculptures designed by an almighty Gothic architect. I feel incredibly fortunate to have been given the opportunity to spend time amongst these spectacular Alaskan behemoths of peaks.

March 1, 2016May 15, 2020

Emotional Atrophy Amid the Revelations

The Revelation Mountains are a small, rugged subrange of the Alaska Range located about 140 miles northwest of Anchorage and about 130 miles southwest of Denali. The principal peaks are granite spires that rise out of relatively low-elevation glacial valleys. The high vertical relief of the Revelations creates a dramatic backdrop for some very challenging climbing conditions. They remain mostly unexplored because the weather is notoriously heinous and the flight to get there is long and expensive.

None of this has deterred alpinist Clint Helander, who made his eighth trip to the Revelations with help of a $1,000 grant from the Mazama Expedition Committee.

The objective for his eighth trip? The tallest unnamed peak in the range, known simply as “9,304.”

“Words cannot describe the beauty of this peak,” Helander said in his grant application. Helander planned to climb the Southwest Buttress of Peak 9304, a 3,500-foot route, in a single push of 24 hours.

What follows is his account of the ascent.

by Clint Helander (all photos are courtesy of the author)

There would be no sleeping on this night. Last evening’s -25 degrees Fahrenheit freeze had given way to warmer temperatures, blown in with a ferocious storm. I knew my climbing partner, Tad McCrea, was also awake, but we said nothing. We just laid there in silent fear and listened. The wind moaned a slow, agonizing cry among the summits and lenticular clouds. Then, like an army of charging demons, it screamed down the valley, gaining momentum and strength as the surrounding walls tightened.

Like counting the growing waves on a shoreline, we began to determine when the biggest of the gusts would hit. Despite our snow walls, they seemed to blow right through us. Our four-season tent would flatten, the fabric stretching and poles creaking. “We’re not going to make it through the night,” I thought. Like a captain talking to his battered ship amidst a tempest, I begged the tent to survive. “Hold strong,” I quietly pleaded.

This wasn’t what Tad and I had planned on when we landed under perfect skies the previous day. But now, in the northern heart of Alaska’s Revelation Mountains, we felt alone and adrift. I braced my side of the tent through the most terrifying of the gusts and began stuffing all of my loose belongings in bags. “Should I put my boots on,” I wondered? “She’s going to break at any moment.”

March’s early morning twilight began to eek through the sagging tent walls. So far, she had weathered the storm. The winds began to ebb, now gusting to perhaps only 80 miles per hour. Our snow walls were gone, the glacier scoured into a shadowy white and gray wasteland. I emerged from the vestibule in full war regalia. We dug all day, excavating a snow cave under the flat glacier. We couldn’t survive another night of wind like that without it.

The brunt of the storm passed, but ceaseless wind followed for another five days. We resigned ourselves to passing the hours in our tent and snow cave, emerging now and then to snatch a few glimpses of our distant prize: the unclimbed monolith labeled “Peak 9,304” on our Lime Hills USGS topographic maps.

Tad was running out of time–the pilot would be there to pick him up in less than 24 hours–and the wind had yet to subside. We called for a weather update. It would be calm the next day. We awoke at 4 a.m., but the incessant wind persisted. We rolled over and tried to sleep, but the sound of our enemy outside refused to let us kill more hours in slumber.

At 11 a.m. the wind finally blew away. We skied out of camp in rapid procession. The south face of Peak 9,304, a mountain I had long referred to as “the Obelisk,” held its triangular form as we approached.

A snow-filled chimney held my picks, but threatened to spit me out. My protection far below felt suspect. Sixty meters above, a grainy crack offered a decent spot to anchor in. Tad led a long block of simul-climbing to the base of an ice-streaked headwall. A prow reared out past vertical and the hanging daggers looked almost impossible to climb. The summit was many thousands of feet above us still. We retreated.

Tad reluctantly flew out the next day, and in his place John Giraldo arrived, fresh and unbeaten by the storms. We quickly reached our highpoint on the Obelisk. I searched for courage as I confronted the looming ice above. A bad screw penetrated snow and aerated ice, then a few feet higher a good, small cam. “Watch me, John. This is really hard and scary,” I muttered. My tool shuddered and reverberated as it penetrated nominal ice and struck the granite slab underneath. A deep breath and I trusted myself to it. Another swing and a wide stem and I was still moving upward. I swung again, only this time the tool broke through the ice and into air. A two inch crack! Hanging there, teetering on my loose pick, I excavated the crack and placed a dreamy cam. The crack continued for another fifteen feet of salvation. Seventy meters of difficult climbing continued and I searched for an anchor as the rope came tight. Small cams shifted in odd-shaped cracks, and pins bottomed out in seems. John followed and I studied the anchor while I thought about him on the crux moves.

We continued upward for hours in long blocks of simul-climbing. The absent wind seemed strange on our sunburned faces. We approached the summit in the afternoon, high above most of the surrounding Revelation peaks. At the top, I thought back to the stress of the previous week of fighting the endless winds. I pushed the pain of a failing relationship from my mind. Two words came silently to the front of my mind: emotional atrophy.

On the summit though, it was a brief moment of long desired tranquility.

Clint Helander started climbing in 2003 and has climbed a variety of alpine routes in Alaska, including an integral ascent of the Moonflower on Mt. Hunter and the third ascent of Mt. Huntington’s Phantom Wall. Yet, he returns to the less explored Revelations every year to seek solitude and adventure. It is those experiences in the true wild that mean the most to him.

Over the years, Helander’s trips have culminated in six first ascents and two first ascent routes on mountains that had only seen one prior ascent:

2008: First ascent of Exodus Peak (8,380 feet)
2009: First ascent of Ice Pyramid (9,250 feet)
2011: First ascent of Mt. Mausolus via Mausoleum (4,400 feet, WI5)
2012: First ascent of Golgotha (8,940 feet)
2012: First ascent on the South Ridge of the Angel (9,265 feet)
2013: First ascent of Apocalypse via 4,200-foot West Face (WI5 M5)
2014: First ascent of West Face of Titanic (3,800 feet, M6 5.8)
2015: First ascent of the Obelisk (Peak 9,304’) via Emotional Atrophy (Grade 4 M6 WI5 A0 3,280’) on the South Face. Clint Helander and John Giraldo, March 22, 2015.