The Siege of Peak Grand Union

Nick Treinen chilling at summit of Peak Grand Union (Pk. 4500+), March 31, 2019.

Scroll down for a reproduction of an article that appeared in Scree, the monthly publication of the Mountaineering Club of Alaska.              

  Never in Kigsblog history have so many bails been registered, nor resources squandered,for so nebulous a quarry as Peak Grand Union. Here are links that provide evidence of the drawn-out siege:

Zero For Seven on Peak Grand Union Pt. 1 

Zero For Seven on Peak Grand Union Pt. 2 

Zero For Nine on Peak Grand Union

Attempt Twelve on Grand Union

Nick, with skis stashed at col, heads for the long-awaited triumph

         The Kigs remained formless, an undifferentiated mass of bumps and ridges, until one summer when bean-counting, list-keeping, peakbaggers from Washington  came to the Seward Peninsula and showed the locals the way of the Marilyn. Now armed with a rudimentary knowledge of the laws of prominence, the Kigs could be devolved into a series of definable summits. Down the Vin Hoeman rabbit-hole I fell, doomed to take the easy walk-ups from the south instead of north walls and real routes.

Central Kigluait from North with Grand Union River drainages

          Peak 4500+, formerly a mere northwest shoulder of Mt. Osborn, emerged under the spotlight of prominence as the second highest summit in the range, a veritable “K2 of the Kigs,” except that it’s an easy walk-up from the south. It suddenly seemed desirable, and worthy of a grand name, “Peak Grand Union” because it’s the high point of the six-forked Grand Union River drainage to the north. The formula for climbing Grand Union would be: make many failed attempts over several years until a high snow year comes, snow-machine north 35 miles over Mosquito Pass, hang an east off the Cobblestone flats, and take advantage of the big snowpack to access the five-mile long “West Cwm of Osborn” from where Grand Union looked to be an easy, blue-square run from the the south.

Westernmost glacier in North America? Remnant? This is the Grand Union Glacier below Peak Grand Union in July of 2018.

Years of ridiculous shenanigans were eventually required for what should have been a simple bag. Twelve attempts spanned four years before Nick Treinan and I finally motored up the West Cwm of Osborn on April 2, 2018, and made the ascent of Grand Union. The reason for so many bails? Not difficulty, nor remoteness, nor weather— “GLUE of TOWN” was the reason. GLUE may be defined as a force which attracts a climber back toward town, tent, addiction, car, or relationship. GLUE costs an expedition time, energy, gear, and personnel by creating friction in every phase of its execution. Eventually a bail is precipitated, a bail founded not upon exigencies of the climb itself (weather, difficulty, fortitude,) but rather, to actions made before the climb ever started, the bumbling and dithering that took place under influence of GLUE.

Drew Maurer up the wrong cwm
on a Grand Union attempt

In Nome, partners phase in and out. Drew was a true GLUE Master, entangled in webs of Front Street chaos, his entropy and dissolution exceeding even mine, but he had an old snow-machine, and had skied the steeps on St. Lawrence Island. Drew was to form the first phase of Peak Grand Union expeditions. We were rumpled and disorganized. Nome retracted us time and again like the big GLUE POT it is. Expeditions never departed before 2 pm.  On our first attempt, we went up the wrong cwm of Osborn. On the second attempt, Drew became obsessed with penetration of the West Cwm proper by snow-machine, a feat he finally achieved through hideous effort in the bushes that I witnessed from the opposite wall of the valley, having been wise enough to leave my snow-machine below on the Cobblestone. We climbed the wrong mountain (Pt. 3800+) that day. A ground blizzard came on. We tried to leave, but the West Cwm had already closed around Drew’s machine like a phagocyte around a foreign particle. We abandoned the sorry thing in its sub-nivean pit and rode double all the way back home through raging sketch-weather on my trusty Bearcat. Third trip was a rescue mission wherein any Grand Union attempt was eclipsed by the Fitzcarraldian epic of digging Drew’s machine out of the Cwm. Fourth trip, we never made it out of Nome, languishing instead in the fleshpots of Nome, the mountain far away, with GLUE Index Levels at maximum.

David Panepinto in the West Cwm of Osborn

David formed the next phase of Grand Union attempts. A less entropic partner than Drew, it still wasn’t enough to overcome the friction of impedimenta. Our strategy was to camp on the Cobblestone and ski (David skiing on a splitboard) the five miles up the Cwm, obviating the need for snow-machine penetration. But a subtle interface of HOUSE GLUE and JOB GLUE retarded initial velocity on Friday night of our first attempt. On the second attempt, we stayed too long in the tent discussing Princess Bride which chain-reactioned a bail from near the summit later in the day, like Wiessner and Gombu high on K2. There were other bails. Never could the GLUE be cut. Peak Grand Union took on white whale status even though it had started out as a mere shoulder of Osborn.

Nick stops to scavenge

Known center of Kigs universe may lie down this drainage,
the West Fork of Grand Union

 

Finally, the Nick phase brought success on Grand Union. Nick had found a line in William Oquilluk’s People of the Kauwerak that seemed to indicate the known center of the Kigs universe was located on the flanks of Peak Grand Union at some kind of giant eagle feather, and so agreed to go on a snow-machine mountaineering trip in April, 2019. Something about Nick’s free spirit, unfettered by peak bagging epistemology and nomenclature, caused the GLUE to lift like clouds over Kigs, plus the huge winter snowpack that permitted snow-machine access to the West Cwm sans Drewlike epics. The last few hundred feet were a little too icy for skiing off the top. Nick tellied from near the top, and I lower down. On the summit, Nick asked me if I felt elation at our eventual success after so many attempts, but I had to explain that the whole Peak Grand Union thing was really just kind of a grim joke to ameliorate the giant carbon footprint I made over an insignificant bump on a ridge, though the peak does look nice from the north, and we did have a ton of fun, justification enough. Nick and I motored back to Nome, where the GLUE of TOWN drew us back in with its subtle but persistent gravity. 

Success came in 2018 because it was a high snow year. Unlike previous attempts, we were easily able
to access the West Cwm of Osborn by snow-machine, which made reaching Grand Union a snap.
The red arrow in this picture shows the high shoulder on the right that allowed us to creep into
the valley on machines. 

Looking along towards Osborn.  A lot of last great kigs-problems given away here. North Ridge of Osborn, plus look at that hourglass shaped ski run.. but it's an avalanche trap.