Singatook- Gregg Stoddard Memorial Springtime Yahoo Field Trip to 3870, year 2010

(below) View from top of Solar sidewalk at 3200 level, looking south down the upper part of Singtook.  Woolley Lagoon indiscernible in distance. Keith Conger about to drop off the edge in search of dropped gear.   

MAY 09, 2010:  GREG STODDARD MEMORIAL SPRINGTIME YAHOO FIELD TRIP TO 3870 was a great success!  Keith and Ian summited the Singtook once again to commemorate the man who brought us together as friends so many years ago, the arch telly fiend, Stoddard.  Though he left Nome for the big city, the spirit of our original trip propagates forward, compelling us each spring to make the pilgrimmage to the sacred mountain.    

 (below) Singatook from the Teller Road, 17 miles distant.  Singtuq?  Sinughaiq? Sinaillaq? Somebody help me!  How do you say it?  Leave comments...  Francis Alvanna says "Sing-took!" kind of like that, so that's what I'm going with.  It is almost universally referred to by the people of Nome as "3870".  

The Singtook... the Mt. Washington of the Seward Peninsula... possibly the most climbed peak in the Kigluaiks...  receives the full brunt of any weather coming in from southwest...  like any mountain invested with mental process by interaction with humans, the Singtook is a type of psychic private property..  people have lived at Woolley Lagoon for a long time, climbers must choose their spiritual windows with care, or otherwise are required to show their asshole license...  hence, our permit for the Greg Stoddard SpringtimeYahoo Field trip to 3870...

(below)  Keith Conger at the start of the Solar Sidewalk, the classic ski tour up and down the Singatook, usually of four or five hours duration.  A fine Greg Stoddard lies ahead.

(above)  Keith skinning up the via media part of the Solar Sidewalk...this is the fun part on the way down, a black diamond due to the potential for smashbody on the perfect Cretaceous granite.

(below) Via alta part of Sidewalk, summit hump of 3870 in background.  On other Greg Stoddards, Keith, who can be a mighty sick huckster,  has hucked the center of that face in the background.  On the 2010 Stoddard trip he launched from the saddle to the right of summit, while I crept to a blue square lower down. 

(above)  LOVE these hills!...   'v lost count of how many times i been (sic) on this summit...  probably equal to the number of times 'v failed to reach this summit!


(below) Apres ski...    we didn't get any good pictures of the descent because of it was ALL ACTION!  Like any good Greg Stoddard, we skied right up to the car.

    If you go to the Singtook, it's good to sort of ask permission of the mountain, and maybe the locals too, if you can park your car on the Teller Road.  I'm not really sure what I'm talking about, but it seems like wise advice for anywhere you go.

   Farewell, GREG STODDARD MEMORIAL YAHOO FIELD TRIP TO 3870, year 2010.  So this was our yearly pilgrimmage to a sacred mountain. It's always nice to bag the summit. Have you ever seen it wreathed in lenticulars?  Monsters!   Greg Stoddard is probably batting about 50% when it comes to reaching the summit.  I believe this year makes two or three in a row.

     Skiing is so louche, so hedonistic—  I mean, anyone can go WITH gravity.  That is why I state, Stoddard is a fiend, the arch demon of telemarks.

   It is time to return to the fight UPWARDS against earth's gravity.