Zero For Nine on Peak Grand Union

David and Osborn West Face.

Enter ADJUTANT. He is composed of a basal ganglia, with a few small lobes of cerebral cortex attached, two halves of a thalamus, and a brain stem.

ADJUTANT: "Kigscourt is now in session! All rise for the entrance of the Honorable Judge Adjudicator."

Audience stands.

Enter JUDGE. He consists of a very large forebrain, essentially a telencephalon minus the diencephalon, with a noticeably bulging cerebral cortex.

JUDGE: "You may be seated. (gavels)  Kigscourt is now in session! Adjutant, read the first case."

ADJUTANT: "Designation of Blame, KigsCourt v. Allapa and David P."

JUDGE: "Read the determination."

ADJUTANT: "It is the responsibility of Kigscourt to place blame upon an individual for FAILURE TO CLIMB Peak Grand Union on April 4, 2017. Co-defendants David P. and Allapa started out for the summit of Peak Grand Union upon this date, but failed to attain their goal of snow-boarding and skiing off stated summit. The dispensation of guilt to one or the other of stated individuals for not reaching the summit falls within purview of Kigscourt, sole jury, executioner, and adjudicator of blame in this matter."

Judge gavels.

Peak Grand Union, looking east up Osborn's Western Cwm, taken by badass Kevin Ahl.

JUDGE: "Prosecution, you may present your opening statements."

Enter PROSECUTION, a thalamus hitched to an imposing frontolimbic network. The superior anterior temporal lobe, the medial prefrontal cortex, and a septal region of the the subgenual cingulate cortex's are all brightly lit. 

PROSECUTION: "Viewed from the south, Peak Grand Union barely qualifies as a mountain at all. The only reason it qualifies as the second highest peak in the Kigs is because a key col with barely 500 ft. of prominence exists between it and Mt. Osborn. Without that col,  Peak Grand Union would be a just a point on the long northwest shoulder of Osborn.  Peak Grand Union viewed from the north, now that is a different matter. However, FAILURE TO CLIMB the mountain from the north is not what's on trial here. Rather, FAILURE TO CLIMB from the south, the easy side, is on trial.
     The two gentlemen you see here, David P. and Allapa, started out with everything in their favor: a basecamp at the bottom of the valley in the Cobblestone flats, excellent April snow conditions, a reasonably early start... well, when I say 'reasonably early', I should say 'relatively early'— they made it out of camp before 2 pm, which for this crew counts as an early start. Yet, eight hours later, the evening shadows found them turning around just short of the high point, just short of success.
        Organs and thought concepts of the jury... Hands of the Executioner... I intend to prove today that Allapa—  (points) —is solely to blame for the bail off Peak 4500+. I can show you that, beyond all reasonable doubt, Allapa undermined the success of the 2017 Peak Grand Union Expedition, through sloth, lack of discipline, over-medication, and dehydration. I am confident David P. will be exonerated for the bail once you are able to view the extent of the screw-ups perpetrated in series by Mr. Allapa." (rests)

JUDGE:  "Defense may present its opening arguments."

Enter DEFENSE, of a similar construction to the Prosecution, but with a souped-up amygdala, and a stripped-down hippocampus. 

DEFENSE: "Organs and thought manifestations of the jury, Hands of the Executioner, the law in this matter is very plain: Whoever first vocalizes the need for the bail gets the credit for the bail. And all parties are in agreement that it was David P. who first spoke up that it was time to turn around short of the summit. You, jury and executioner, have a responsibility to place the blame upon David P.  No other verdict can be reached." (rests)

JUDGE:  "Prosecution— you may call your witness!"  (gavels)

Peak Grand Union from north, July 2018, on subsequent fail to attain highpoint. Westernmost glacier in North America right there?

PROSECUTION: "Prosecution calls to the stand— the defendant."

Enter Defendant #1, ALLAPA, a gangly assemblage of posterior cingulate cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, and insular cortex, all of it underpowered due to a compromised fornix.

ADJUTANT:  "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help yourself?"

ALLAPA: "As Narcissus to his reflection, I do."

PROSECUTION: "Mr. Allapa, would you like to tell the jury and the executioner what happened on the day of April 4, 2018, in the Kigluaik Mountains?"

ALLAPA: "Yeah man, well, it's like, we've been trying to bag this one little peak west of Osborn, you know. I call it Peak Grand Union, cause it doesn't really have a name, you know, but if you're viewing the range from the north, it kind of rears up over the Grand Union drainage. Much more spectacular from the North, by the way. Dr. Hopkins, the Last Great Giant of Beringia guy, or no, maybe it was that guy Kauffman, said the Grand Union drainage held one of only three bona fide glaciers in the Kigs. It's the westernmost glacier in North America. I don't really know what the criteria for a bona fide glacier—"

PROSECUTION: "Mr. Allapa... perhaps you can stick to the matter of the climb itself. We're trying to pin BLAME after all."

ALLAPA: "Uh...  yes, of course. Well, so, David and I did everything right this time. We motored in our snow-machines on a Friday night and made a good camp down on the Cobblestone flats, at the base of the 5-mile long valley that runs due west from Mt. Osborn. I call that valley the Western Cwm of Osborn, which is, like, Welsh for a glacial cirque. Leonard and Lupe were there, which was really nice, cause those guys are a lot of fun.
     "We got kind of a late start the next morning. Leonard and Lupe didn't join us for the climb. They packed up and head back to Nome, sucked away by the GLUE of TOWN.  David and I melted snow for water. I took about a quart, plus one of those little mini-Nalgene bottles. We slogged and slogged. That valley is long man. I felt sorry for David, slogging on his big fat splitboard skis. I mean the split-board is great, don't get me wrong. It's just that if your snowboard is split, then it's no longer a snowboard, right? It's SKIS! I mean, just get a real pair of skis and learn to ski. Fine, so you got a split board, but now you're snowboarding about 10 percent of the time, and the other 90 percent you're ski—"

PROSECUTION:  "Mr. Allapa..."

ALLAPA: "Uh, yes, sorry. So we slogged and slogged, and then it got little bit steep. I didn't make the same mistake as last time by starting up too soon. This time we went all the way up the 5-mile valley before heading up. It wasn't hard climbing or nothing. We were totally expecting to just ski off the top, no problem. But it's kind of a big mountain, you know. I mean, it's just about as big as Osborn. 4500 ft. versus Osborn's 4714 ft. It's Osborn's conjoined twin, really.
       "So the sky started getting dark, and we were still about 300 feet below the summit. So we decided to bail, even though we were close. I had been moving like a zombie all day, so I didn't mind bailing. We took our skins off. David assembled his board, which, admittedly, he gets done very quickly these days. We turned around and skied down. All I could say was: 'Zero For Eleven on Peak Grand Union'. The thing I remember most clearly is the sweet taste of the water when we finally got down to the little place where water was burbling up from the creek.
       "The Western Cwm is rather flat, really, so it took us a while to reach this one little bit of open water we had passed on the way up. David and I were so dehydrated. Water never tasted so good. We skied on back to our basecamp and had a good time, and motored back to Nome Sunday morning. I felt kind of lame, because it turns out we could have snow-machined all the way up the Cwm. How could I have known? We would have bagged that peak for sure if we could have just zoomed right up the valley. We should have turned around after a mile, gone back to camp and got the machines, and just blasted up to the base of the mountain."

Lupe, Leonard, David, basecamp, Friday night.

 JUDGE: "Does the defense wish to cross-examine?"

DEFENSE:  "Mr. Allapa. Please tell the court what you said to David P. when the two of you decided to bail."

ALLAPA: "Well, I was feeling heavy as an accidental dump in your snow-pants, but I told David I would be willing to continue on into the darkness, and probably have a total painful epic for half the night, just for the sake of reaching the summit of this rather obscure and nebulous highpoint."

DEFENSE: "So you stated that you did want to continue to the summit?"

ALLAPA: "Well...yes, I suppose... well, kind of. What I really wanted was some water, but neither of us had any."

DEFENSE:  "Mr. Allapa, at any time during the climb did David P. state his wish to descend?"

ALLAPA: "Well, yeah, where we turned around. He said something like, 'Well then, I'd rather take Option B," and Option B was, you know, going down. I was only to happy to acquiesce. Did I mention it was cold? Well, yes, it was, very."

DEFENSE: "Let it be noted in Kigscourt that David P. was the one to suggest going down. No further questions, your Honor."

David split-boarding up Western Cwm. Looking west toward Oro Grande.

Enter AUDIENCE, an unwieldy assemblage of medial pre-frontal cortex, medial posterior parietal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, and raveled insular cortex as well. The whole thing keeps lurching from one side to the other, along an axis parallel to the corpus collosum.

AUDIENCE: "Frankly, I don't see why blame has to be placed in the first place. What's the point?"

"I heard it was his eleventh try on this peak (link). And it's nothing but another nameless bump on a ridge. It's not like it's Fitzroy, or something. Peak Grand Union... makes it sound like a real mountain. Why the hell is it taking him eleven tries?"

"My sympathies are entirely with David P.  I'm married to a scatter-brain myself so I know what it's like to put up with one."

"It's a silly game he plays. It's supposed to be a type of bail filter he runs in his brain to make sure the bail is justified. It's supposed to help him get up the mountain, but he never gets up the mountain anymore."

"Ridiculous."

"Strange.

"Talk about guilt and shame. You know, neither has any place in the mountains. Decisions have to be made."

"I get thirsty just thinking about it."

After the bail, back where the water burbles up. Shadows of the Oro Grande against Osborn.

DEFENSE: "Defense calls... David P."

AUDIENCE murmurs.

Enter DAVID P. a developing network of neurons spread across a variety of domains in the cerebral cortex.

PROSECUTION: "Objection! Since this trial takes place solely in non-corporeal mental space, any representation of David P. is a figment. Any testimony would be conjecture."

JUDGE: "Sustained. Defense, really? You want to drag David into this weird head trip?"

DAVID P.: "I assure you that if it were possible for me to be objectively represented, I would declare this trial a mockery of what amounted to a very good day in the you—"

JUDGE: "Sustained." (gavels)

Exit DAVID P.

Photo taken from small stance climbing central buttress Mt. Brynteson, Iditarod time, 2018. Fantastic rime soloable with no fear.

PROSECUTION: "Prosecution calls ALLAPA to the stand"

 PROSECUTION: "Mr. Allapa, how many years would you say you have been practicing winter mountaineering? Winter camping, specifically."

ALLAPA: "Ugh... more days and nights than I care to think about it. The thought of it brings some pretty wicked smells to mind."

PROSECUTION: "Look, I have called you in to be our expert witness. You know-- the guy that knows everything about his field. So it's safe to say you're an expert on winter camping."

ALLAPA: "No, a complete goofer. But I did apprentice with Randy Waitman, master climbing guide, now a grizzled ascetic living in the middle of the Northern Boreal Forest with birds nesting in his ancient beard."

PROSECUTION:  "Good enough. So, in your experience, what is the importance of hydration in winter mountaineering?"

ALLAPA: "Oh yeah, You have to remember to drink water. Like, one reason I flamed out so bad on that trip with David was I sort of forgot the rule that you have to drink water obsessively. You have to drink so hard you're filling a pee bottle a night. You have to drink until it's uncomfortable to drink more, and then keep drinking. Like on the West Buttress of McKinley where everybody is just peeing all the time, mega-hydration culture you know. Melting snow creates distilled water, and it's harder to hydrate with distilled water because of osmosis and stuff. It had been a while since I had been winter camping, and I just kind of forgot pee culture. I think that's why I was moving so slowly the next day when we finally got out of camp."

PROSECUTION: "No further questions."

JUDGE: "Get him out of my sight."

ADJUTANT: "I wish I could. But he is all-pervasive in this courtroom."

King Mountain M-Bouldering circuit leading to top of hill, go-to climbing destinations of 2018 mixed climbing season.

PROSECUTION: "Prosecution calls David P. to the stand."

JUDGE: "Now, really. Haven't we been through this?"

PROSECUTION: "I had a thought, sir."

JUDGE: "A thought. I see. Very well. I'll allow it. We miss David a lot, anyway. Conjure a figment."

Enter David P.

PROSECUTION: "Nice to see you, sir. It would be lovely to get caught up, but I'm afraid we find ourselves occupied with the matter at hand, the placing of blame. Now... on April 4, 2018, did you ever have to wait for Allapa?"

DAVID P.: "What do you mean by 'wait'?"

PROSECUTION: "Come now, Mr. Panepinto, you know exactly where I'm going with this. There's no need to protect your friend. Did you, or did you not, wait in the trail for an interval of five minutes or more, a series of five or more times, for Allapa to catch up with you during the five-mile approach ski to the southern slopes of Peak Grand Union on April 4, 2018."

DAVID P.: "Yes, by these terms, I did wait."

PROSECUTION: "In your estimation, could the reason for your having to wait be due to Allapa's obvious dehydration and failure to hydrate in the tent the night before?"

DEFENSE: "Objection!  The night before is immaterial. Blame is to placed for April 4. That means April 4 only."

JUDGE: "Overruled. A pattern seems to be emerging."

DAVID P.: "The actual problem may have been he was hungover from the night before."

ALLAPA: "Guys, I'm uncomfortable with this. It's not right to be representing a nice guy with a figment of my imagination."

JUDGE: "I quite agree. (Turns to face the jury, and then remembers there is no jury in cases of blame) The witness may vanish back into the field potentiality from which you emerged."

Exit David P.

Looking northwest from the top of Newton Peak on a weekday evening. If there is a scene in Nome, this must be it. Plenty enough snow for a SHREDFUL 2018 season. Lots of good runs on Newton. So many of them in thick whiteout! Friends emerge out of the mist, and for a moment, are more than just a dull shape again.

PROSECUTION: "Prosecution calls Leonard to the stand."

JUDGE: "Well, now that you've let the dogs in, why not? Conjure a figment."

Enter LEONARD, a dentate gyrus, parts of a hippocampus, a subiculum, with the parahippocampal gyrus strangely wired to the basolateral amygdala.

ADJUTANT: "Do you swear to filter your nervous electromagnetic fields so as to reproduce as close a facsimile to the the actual qualia and flow patterns that occurred on April 4, 2018 in the vicinity of Mt. Osborn in the Kigluaik Mountains, from as close a viewpoint to Leonard and Lupe's as can be reproduced by this narcissistic human mind, so help you God?"

LEONARD: "If you say so."

PROSECUTION: "Good morning, Mr. L. Thank you for taking the time to appear in Kigscourt today. You and Lupe were present on the snow-machine expedition to the Cobblestone River last April 4th?"

LEONARD: "That is correct, sir. We did a little camping for a night. Lupe and I took off in the morning cause we hadda be back in Nome. Those guys went for a trek up by Osborn. They stayed an extra night. We were long gone by the time they got down from the mountain."

PROSECUTION: "So you saw them off on their climb of the mountain?"

LEONARD: "Well, no. We took off on our machines before they made it out of camp. Genius there was having a hard time finding his mittens, and such. The usual."

PROSECUTION: "So the defendant has a reputation for dithering about?"

LEONARD: "Safe to say."

PROSECUTION: "How long do you estimate it took them to leave basecamp?"

LEONARD: "Hours. We had a long chat about school, as I recall."

PROSECUTION: "You and Mr. Allapa."

LEONARD: "Correct."

PROSECUTION: "No further questions. We have more than enough already.

JUDGE: "Defense, cross-examine?"

DEFENSE: "No need. This witness was not present the day of the ascent, and offers no credible testimony with which to place blame."

JUDGE: "Witness may step down."

Exit LEONARD.

Time for one more run from the top of Newton.

Enter JUDGE, PROSECUTION, DEFENSE, DEFENDANTS, AUDIENCE

JUDGE:  "Final statements!" (gavels)

PROSECUTION: "We are gathered here today to place blame upon one or both of two individuals who, on April 4, 2018, perpetrated a UNSUBSTANTIATED BAIL before reaching the high-point of their stated objective. This constitutes a CHICKEN-OUT under Kigsblog law. One stipulation of a CHICKEN-OUT requires blame to be placed for the bail. In the case of kigscourt vs David P. and Allapa, only one decision is possible. Allapa is to be blamed for the failure to summit. Allapa is to blamed for not bringing enough water. Allapa is to be blamed for not hydrating enough in the tent the night before. Allapa is to be blamed for BONKING and slowing down the climbing party the next day."

AUDIENCE: (whispering) "I heard it took him hours just to go to the bathroom."

PROSECUTION: "Blame rests squarely on Allapa's shoulders for taking too long to leave camp in the morning. This is a no-brainer. Kigscourt must find Allapa TO BLAME for the bail off Peak Grand Union on April 4."

DEFENSE: "Organs and thought manifestations of the jury, Hands of the Executioner-- The Prosecution is correct that this is a no-brainer. Kigslaw precedent clearly states that 'blame rests upon the individual who first suggests the bail by voice or gesture.'  All lobes are in agreement that David P. first suggested the bail. BLAME is to be placed on David P.  There can be no other decision."

DAVID P.: "I was manipulated! He was ready to go down as I!"

JUDGE: "Order! Does the defendant wish to make a statement? After all, this is all inside your head."

ALLAPA: "Yes, your Honor.
     "Minions of my own brain, guilt-ridden thought processes, Hand of the Executioner— I would like to take this occasion to point out that all this is farce. Originally I meant to just send a text to David telling him he doesn't have to feel guilty about us turning back short of the high point, but the message turned into this blogpost instead.
        "I hereby banish these ridiculous thoughts of BLAME to the Deleted Folder of our mind. All that matters is the beauty of the present moment, light glinting off tiny facets of snow crystals, the taste of cold Kigswater, blue sky.
       "Peak Grand Union is not peak enough to make such a fuss over. The climb was not climb enough to merit a trial. The whole endeavor was motivated in the first place by a kind of boredom, a structure of climbing maintained from earlier days of climbing when the achievements were more real and the consequences more dire. It gets me out into the country, you know? We will certainly return to Peak Grand Union for a twelfth attempt. But here is logic for you: if the climb was not badass enough to be called a climb, then the CHICKEN-OUT cannot be called a CHICKEN-OUT.
        "The verdict of the trial must be handed over to readers of Kigsblog."

DEFENSE: "Move to absolve all parties of blame!"

JUDGE: "So be it! Kigscourt is adjourned."

Shadows of Mosquito Pass moving up Tigaraha. On the way back from Peak Grand Union, April 2018.

Ring of Ayasayuk

Fourth Tier ice, November 2016

BLOG-LAG tremendous. The Kigsblog-year is in danger of lapping itself. It's almost time to return to Ayasayuk for the new ice climbing year. This is an update for the last two.

Quarry face, November 2016

       The idea was to blog the iterations of the quarry as it develops over the years, adding to the layers of information like successive tree rings each December when the rivulets freeze into ice, when all the ice climbers in town drive 15 miles out to the point of land with their ice tools brandished, intent on grappling the ice and frozen stone dust that glues the hanging rubble to the quarry face. Each new year brings a subtle deviation in the layout of the cliff. Or sometimes a not so subtle deviation— during the years of the Shishmareff seawall project, the entire cliff was blasted away into infinity several times, hence the iterations, but there is always a path of least resistance for water to find its way down, and so there is always some kind of thin, wandering ribbon of ice to climb, even a pillar or two, if the gods of the quarry have been kind to ice climbers that year. For the hardcore Valdez climber it would all be weak sauce, but this is roadside ice climbing in Nome, let us be thankful for any helping of that.

Quarry face, 2017

      With only minor variations in the last three or four years, the iteration has remained the same. This tree ring represents climbing adventures from the last two years, as I did not manage an Ayasayuk post last year. Each year, the game is to follow a Direct route up the entire cliff, bottom to top, incorporating as much ice as possible. Lamefully, I haven't successfully completed a Direct since three years ago with James.

Third Tier ice, 2016

    The First Tier presents only steep hiking, a chance to test the bite of your crampons in the frozen stone dust of a new day. The crux is crossing the road, the boundary of trespassing, trying not to be glimpsed by cars as you leave the road and launch directly up the quarry face— this is uncool, to climb here, and I will be cited for this blogpost. You soon come to the wide access road at the top of the First Tier. Solariums have been installed at the top from which to view the surrounding amphitheater. If you think about it, the cliff at Ayasayuk represents a 430 feet tall void left by the earthly removal of the bluff once known as Ayasayuq. But what does not remain remains a place of power to this day.

Third Tier, 2016

     More fields of hanging stone dust lead up the Second Tier. The motions involved with climbing the dust mimic those of true alpine climbing. Sometimes blobs of real water ice seep from the Second Tier, but not for the last two years, so you just kick your way up great buttresses of steep, hard dirt. The consequences of a wee slip from the dust slabs are not just a mimic of alpine climbing, however, but the real thing: possible enmanglement.

David on his first ice climb, 2017

       The Third Tier is the main business, the highest of the tiers, a pitch and a half of climbing up to the next access road. The weeps and seeps have followed variable patterns the last few years, but the usual Direct route has gone up a not-very-steep mud runnel with a ribbon of water ice at the back. The runnel pools out at the top and vanishes right into the stone dust. To complete the Third Tier the climber is forced out onto the hanging dirt fields, easy terrain, but palpably creepy, and studded with rip-raps of gneiss that look like they were arrested in motion mid-roll. Typically, I solo up to the frozen pool halfway up, where I file  for a petition of chicken-out, and downclimb. Three years ago, James and I made it up the Third Tier: we draped the rope across fins of frozen stone dust, pretending it was pro.

Random Access Flow, 2017

     They shaved away the Third Tier until the face of the quarry was about level with the the top of the bluff. However, a few more little rises remained in the bluff profile, unshaved, so a few more access roads went in, creating the Fourth Tier, a 50-foot cliff situated in a little network of roads at the  top of the quarry. This road network pools up with Fall rain in unpredictable ways to create a head-dispatching system for all the frozen flow below. With a minimum of treachery, tope ropes can be set up for practice on Grade 2-ish and 3-ish water ice, and there's often"childrens ice climbing area" with perfect soft landings in billows of drifted snow.

From the archives: 2003

     It's all coming down on you

    There's nothing you can do

   And it was me that triggered

    The death cascade.

 Cracking, shouts, thundering,

   Let your destiny ring!

 Ship is going down 

 Just jump the whole thing,

While I stand to the side

Watching you drown. 

  I'm sorry we never danced around

   Or stopped at the Safety Saloon

 The lights of town

  Were always dragging us in.

   Now the climb is gravity's child,

Groaning half ton blocks

Right down on your timeline.

  Now the climb is coming down

    Right into our face

   If ever we get back to town,

    Never go back with you to this place.

Quarry face, 2003. This iteration of the cliff was blasted
away in subsequent years.

      Peemarking, in a 2-year tree ring such as this post, presents a technical challenge due to my complete lack of recall. I do remember soloing around. I whacked tool into every chunk of ice that was present. I do remember air under the crampon points, and punch-card holes spent on objective danger. I remember chickening-out of every climb I started up. I remember David chunking his way up some wet flow on his first day ice climbing. But I do not remember enough details to lift a leg and make a confident peemark (a claim of real climbing using locations, grades, nomenclature). Any peemarking claims I might try to make would only spray, dispersing message. Too bad there so few ice climbers come to Nome. David went south. Lack of climbing partner creates such a weight of nothing. No partner creates psychological rope drag holding you back from a partner that's not there. Chicken-out is reduced 75% when there is another climber present. If only there were another climber besides the great lone ME hanging in the sky, blocking the sun.

Map showing Norton Sound Coast inupiaq place names, found in a random drawer at Nome Elementary School

      
       Earth energy streams eastward off the Pacific, into the bottleneck of the Norton Sound, and gets channeled up against the Norton Sound coast between Cape Rodney and here, bathing the bluff in PHI waves. The other key ingredient for sentience is present: a rich archaeological history of the area. There may no longer be a kasGi every seven miles, no more L.A. coastline glittering with lights, nor even a big encampment of families a fathom down where the water is now off the beach at Nook, but stone memory is slow to dissipate. Ishigait, little people, still roam the place, manifestations of morphogenetic eddies, like dust devils of PHI, potential nodes of mental process. Does an ishigak climb ice?
      Quyana, BSNC...  

Fall Fell

Bouldering on the way up the south ridge of Peak 3260, "East Singtook"

Peak 3260  
     Blog-lag considerably swollen. Writing of Fall adventures from late Spring. In this post, more sacred secrets will be given away, this time the location of one of the best roadside fell runs on the Seward Peninsula: four miles of gradually ascending ridge to the summit of the East Singtook (Pk. 3260), with a surprise set of gneiss pinnacles in the middle section allowing the rare mineral of actual climbing. Also in this post: the mysteries of the Little Singtook's (Pk. 3653) North Face will be probed, as well as little turd-clumps of climbing so small and unstable they are destined not to stand into the next Millennium. 

Grand Singtook (Pk. 3870) and Little Singtook (Pk. 3653 - "Sintauyuq?") from East Singtook. This pair form a prominent landmark, which is probably why a name was bestowed upon them from days of yore.

Marianne in glue

        No doubt the GLUE of TOWN ran high that September weekend as two teachers drove west. No doubt the tack was high due to the responsibility of a new school year in session. With each unit of distance away from town, the GLUE retracted us backwards toward town an equal number of units. The extending filaments of GLUE did not start peeling off us until Nick and I had travelled twenty miles west on the Teller Road and crossed the Sinuk River. We began to forget about town, and about school, and the GLUE no longer asserted its influence upon our thoughts. We continued another ten miles west from the Sinuk and parked at Crete Creek to start our fell run up East Singtook.

A lightfoot lad raised in the Chugach

       A sentient but somnolent mist dissolved everything in and out, like a bad transporter beam. Nick could have lapped me several times, but kindly waited on the benches in the shivering wind. For me this was a mere peak bagging expedition, a statistical quest to stand on top of Pk. 3260, the "East Singtook." From the road, the ridge had always looked boring, a hike for tourists, with no climbing at all, which is why I had  skipped it all these long years, until-- the silly conceit of climbing every peak in the Kigs overtook my motivations like a disease and rendered me a mere hiker, not a climber. Now Pk. 3260 seemed desirable. But a surprise awaited in the crook of the south ridge that you can't see from the road.

Routes taken this Fall, 2017

Too cold to switch to rock shoes

      The pinnacles of Pt. 2875 suddenly popped up in the middle of the ridge! A hiker can easily side-hill around these outcrops, none of which really exceed six meters, but Nick began to navigate a little tightrope game through the pinnacles where you have to follow the exact crest of the ridge over the mini-Stegosaur's back of rock, and it was so fun to follow his heels doing all kinds of little boulder problems, both highball and low. Geologically, the rock had been granite before it was gneiss; cracks, knobs, and slabs emerged from the palimpsest of metamorphism. The ridge took us across 400 horizontal meters of cool little boulder problems, and out into the "you're going to be mangled" zone more than once. So our fell run contained this cool simulation of a real alpine rock climb. 

Fell running action

         Did I mention it was cold? Well, duh. There was to be no pleasant picnic in the sun that day. Vapors off Woolley Lagoon slapped into the Singtauyit slap after slap. The view kept pixellating into zones of grey before reloading the details between cloudbursts. A few of the most badass survivor mosquitoes tried to fly up between eddies of wind, then realized they were useless and activated their rescue beacons. Fall is the coldest season. Gloves, hats, and long johns are still buried under summer's gear, and cannot be found on a GLUE-stricken morning. Perhaps one lacks fatty tissues. The settings on one's bio-thermostat have not been recalibrated. Cold? Yes it was, alaapah.  

Evidence of uplift. In the background is the Singtook, adorned with its usual raiments of gale-force wind.

     Not only was the summit of Pk. 3260 another Marilyn notched in the silly, statistically-fabricated belt of a peak bagger, you could see lots more pointy Marilyns ripping clouds all up and down the range. Down the west ridge with airplane wing arms I followed Nick for an excellent downhill-running session. This led down to the saddle between the Grand Singtook and Little Singtook at the top of Crete Creek, the East Col, a place about which I had always been curious: would this pass go, or was it the usual Kigsian precipice to the north? Back in the two-thousand aughts, as a prelude to Nil's and my ascent of Grand Singtook's north face in 2003, I had invested significant amounts of time and energy to researching the question of this East Col, on several occasions hiking all the way around the Singtook from the west and getting terrifyingly lost in fog and furious wind. Back in the day, it took me forever to form a mental map of the confusing topography around the Singtauyit and I would wander like a dreamer in Wonderland, coming upon lost cirques full of ice and stone, with no real concept of how the hills and drainages fit together. 

Big league trundling action, looking down the north side of the Singtook South Col

    The pass looked like it would go to the north with some hideous Class 4 down-scrambling. I was happy that Nils and I had accessed the north face from several hundred feet higher and not gone down this unsavory chute. "Hello, is anyone down there?" I yelled, as if. We commenced trundling. Nick pried at enormous blocks with his runner's body like a shovel about to snap. We got on our backs and pushed with our legs, then popped upright, ran to the edge, and watched the explosions with the same sick fascination one watches crashes on youtube.

       There you have it. What value in all this verbiage? What right have I to chronicle a mere hike in the annals of a blog which is supposed to be about real climbing? Well, now you know the location of one of the finest roadside fell runs on the Seward Peninsula, that is something.

Singtooyit from the North. Grand Singtook in the center, Little Singtook to the right, and the East Singtook on the left barely poking up over a foreground peak. 

Granite Creek
      A splendid little fell-running community emerged out of the new school year. Nick bought a used Ford Bronco which served as an effective GLUE-cutting escape-mobile.  David joined us and we headed west on the Teller Road with GLUE filaments popping and peeling as we shed our psychological attachments on yet another freezing-ass, glorious weekend.

North Face of Little Singtook. Some of those white patches are ice. I went up partway and bouldered around.

      A movement was afoot to explore Granite Creek, around the corner to the northwest of the Singtook. For the fell runners, the fell run itself was a means to an end, but for this malnourished ice climber, the trip would be a chance to check out a new, north-facing cirque in the hope of finding Fall ice. Eighteen years in Nome has taught me not to get my hopes up, but Granite Creek seemed promising. With all my plotting and map-gazing to find north-facing cirques in the Kigs which are accessible in less than a day from the road, why had I never noticed Granite Creek before? The fell run would lead right up the drainage to the northwest face of Pk. 3260, which I have variously referred to elsewhere in this blog as the Little Singtook. Surely this cirque would yield a cornucopia of thick, blue, frozen waterfalls ripe for high-angle ice climbing.

Did I mention it was cold?

      In fact, it turned out I would be able to sink picks into ice, but there would be no satisfying "chunk," only an annoying metallic scraping and sparking as the pick penetrated through a thin shell of ice and sparked the rock beneath. There would be no runouts, no screws, no terror, no deep self-realization that comes with real ice climbing, only a few hurried moves over anemic verglas that had been disguised from below as real ice. But I could now check the box that said I had ice climbed that day. I could now return to town and tell them what a big-shot ice climber I was.  This was a few hundred feet above the tarn at the head of Granite Creek where a barely visible trickle of ice could be seen meandering its way across cliffs and talus. The ice did look as if it might grow with more autumnal freeze/thaw action, and I vowed to return the following weekend, but the GLUE was destined to rise up like a phagocyte and envelop my intention, thereby obviating it.

Da

Da

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Penny River Crags
          The next Fall weekend featured a trip out to a nameless blob of rock near the Penny River, with David. Only an aficionado of obscure bouldering could see any value in such a desiccated turd pile of twice-morphed schist, but I managed to talk David into the proposition that obscure bouldering was a type of DaDaist art form, which appealed to his avant-garde, culturally-refined nature, and he began to discern the emperors clothes that transformed a schist-pile into a jungle gym of fun. Besides, he was eager to play with his new crampons and ice axe, and quickly learned what a solid, reliable handhold was to be found in an axe sunken in frozen turf. We put up multiple major first ascents of numerous dry-tool problems including Taiguaq (Read It), Ayauppiak (Sun Dog), Suama (Fortitude), all of them so far into the V0— range of difficulty that their identity will soon fade, and their geologic structure erode.

Location of purported caldera

The Fox Creek Caldera Hoax
          Several years back, Mr. Collins and his cross-country team were developing the mountain running course destined to be the standard unit for all Kigluaik mountain runs in the future: Fox Creek. There he discovered a caldera, up at the very head of the west fork of Fox Creek. Our next, featured, Fall fell run chronicles an expedition to investigate this improbable geological feature. On a freezing-ass windy Saturday, a mass of fell runners consisting of doctors, lawyers, teachers, and dogs, headed up Fox, and hung a left at the sentient boulders, which are really donkeys that have been turned to stone through bad luck. A short series of moraines led to the caldera.

The fell running community of Nome

         A small tarn, a kettle lake, perhaps, lay at the center of a perfectly-round, glacial cirque. Any geologist will already know that our quest was absurd, a continuation of the DaDaist ethic that drove these Fall adventures. The point was all the fell running we did. I had heard theories of another caldera in the Kigluaik, this one located in the round cirque under Mosquito Pass Peak, as if the Kigs were a burbling bed of magma drizzled like salad dressing on top of a twice-subducted gneiss dome, with all the attendant glacial processes taking place on top of it.   

I had visited the caldera two summers before, when Lucy and I climbed up the hill above it.  This picture looks straight down into it, with Lucy napping on the edge of a fairly steep cliff.