Thirty-Fifty-Four

      This started as a post about a minor peak in the vicinity of Mt. Osborn which Max Vockner and I climbed five weeks ago, but in the process of researching the article, a can of worms became opened: INDICTMENT!  It was discovered that Kigsblog is once again guilty of crimes of misappropriation. If you have arrived at this post seeking information about the GLACIERS OF THE KIGLUAIKS controversy, scroll down to the lower half of the post. 

       First, in accordance with Kigsblog's "Action Only" Posting Clause, it is necessary to report on Max's and my awesome day-climb of Pk. 3054 (Thirty-Fifty-Four) on April 6, 2014.

(left) Max on 45° ice, east face of Pk. 3054. We never really used the rope, though it hung there suggestively for a few lengths. At bottom is the pass that leads to the north heading left out of the picture.

   Max is one of these new-generation, grew-up-in Alaskans who can do anything, fly Super Cubs, fashion skis out of wood, high-ski his snow-machine, and climb ice, too— he passed the crucial "Litmus Test #1" which is, "Did you arrive in Nome packing crampons and ice ax?" Kigs-readers might remember Max from "Pk. 3147 Expedition On Trial" a year ago— he was the unclimberly influence that swayed Nate and me from our holy climbing purpose with his totally cool and laid-back ways. As a long-time, grew-up-in-California Alaskan, I have never quite lost my veneer of Lower 48 "bumbly-hood"--  what if my snow-machine should stop working, what then?--  so I was more than overjoyed to be riding with Max.

(above) Mt. Osborn and vicinity. The two glaciers are of interest due to the "misappropriation" suit currently being brought against the author of Kigsblog (by Kigsblog itself!)

      The GLUE of TOWN was running thick, around 8 or 9 kiloGlue, hampering our escape from Nome. An early crux came when the tire went flat on the trailer, which we solved by abandoning the concept of the trailer altogether and just making the ass-slapping ride over the bare countryside all the way from town. 

      Snow-machine conditions during the strange Spring of 2014 had been difficult to predict:  several freezing rains had created changeable crusts in the climate-changingly low snowpack. Once off the main trails into virgin territory, the machine tended to trench down alarmingly, and the willows seemed mutantly tall and thick above the anemic snow.  

       But I had a secret weapon for getting through the willows of Grand Central Valley:  my ski-tracks from the previous week. I had already tried to make it in to Osborn solo the weekend before, chickened out because of primal fear of solo snow-machine, then skied several miles ahead, carefully designing a path through the Salicacean jungle to be used as a guide for later machining. Having the tracks to follow a week later definitely infused mojo into our Pk. 3054 expedition a week later. 

(above) Looking up North Fork of Grand Central.  Pk. 3054 is above Max in this picture. We climbed the slopes visible on its right flank. The saddle to the right of Pk. 3054 is sometimes used as a pass to the north by snow-machiners, but steepness and iciness on the north side caused us to chicken out on northward passage the day we were there.

       We parked machines at the top of the pass. Crampons went on at dismount. The climb of Pk. 3054 from the pass amounted to 1400 feet of 45° hardened snow, perfect crab-walking on daggers and front points. You wouldn't want to snag your pantlegs, though; a fall would find you instantly accelerating to a high downward velocity, your ears filled with the irreversible whistle of nylon against ice. Super frisky extreme skiers might have been able to ski our climb, but for me the thing felt like a climb, not a ski. 

(above) Northeast Face Osborn, April 6, 2014. In each yearly ring of the Kigsblog tree, there must be embedded a photo of the Northeast Face. Officially, that is the Grand Central Glacier in the cirque there, not the Grand Union. The Grand Union Glacier, if there is, in fact, anything remaining of it, lies to the other side of the big wall in this picture.

      Interesting rock formations protrude from the summit ridge of Thirty Fifty-four.  Looked at from below, they promised mandatory fifth class moves on airy rock towers, in case of which is why we carried a rope and a few pitons.  But as per usual in the Kigs, the summit tower proved an easy walk-up from the south.  
      The rock on Thirty Fifty-four proved to be choss of the worse order. North of Osborn is an area of uplift where the three types of metamorphic rock in the Kigs are competing for attention, marble, schist, and gneiss, where the sedimentary bolus of Osborn has displaced the usual interfolding of schist and gneiss, creating unique "chevron" shapes of color on my "Amato-Miller Bedrock Geologic Map of the Kigulaik Mountains, 2004." I had been hoping for a chevron of good orthogneiss on Thirty-Fifty-Four, but all we found  was ghastly "coarse-grained pelitic paragneiss and schist... locally pervasively migmatized!"

(left) Looking northeast over the Kuzitrin flats.

     As for the climbing: you're dealing with a white tilted plane like a big tilted roof, down which you're looking through the V slot of your legs which is filled with dangling junk as you make the same crablike movements across the plane over and over for a very long time, and ice particles are tink, tink, tinkling slowly down the surface of the white plane making a sound somewhere between wind chimes and white noise, you're gripping your tool around the shaft just under the head, stabbing the whole pick forward into the styrofoam snow with your fists knuckle-forward so that you appear to be boxing the mountain as you stinkbug upward, copping a duck step wherever needed, yelling to your friend across the wall, "If Tyler were here he'd already be carvin' it down!"

(above) Descent from Pk. 3054

      From the top of Thirty-Fifty-Four, at last I caught a glimpse down into the fabled northern cirques of Osborn. If one has the gas, and conditions permit, it is possible for a Nomen to drive a snow-machine north on the Kougarak Road, round the Kigluaiks at their eastern tip around Mile 60, and then beeline it back to the west towards Mosquito Pass, enabling visits to the canyons north of Osborn along the way.  Alternately, one could visit the cirques by hiking over the pass from Grand Central, and then crossing some more passes.  Better yet, or perhaps not, hitch a ride on a helicopter that's going to that area anyway due to Graphite One.   
        Because I have always chickened out of making this trip, the northern cirques of Osborn have remained a mystery to me, a terra incognita of the Kigs.  Where lies terra incognita, there follows curiosity.  In April, I applied for and received a small Kigsblog Research Grant.  One of the stipulations was to find out more about the myterious NORTH SIDE of the Kigluaiks, beginning with the trip Max and I made to Pk. 3054.

 (above) I am trying not to drop my iPhone.

          The "Chevrons" north of Osborn were a deep, cold, fathomless nether-region. They were a breathing subconscious realm where dragons lay coiled.  Phil Westcott (of Slimedog Millionaire fame) had sent me some of the northside shots (seen below) he had taken with his super Dropabilly camera, and they revealed lurking giants with ice-coated, 2000 ft. north walls. But how does a road-system dirtbag penetrate all the way back in there to these cirques?
       Well, he doesn't. He starts researching it on the internet, right?

(left) North face of Pk. 4500+. A recent rewriting of Kigsblog Law regarding topographic prominence has changed the listing of this peak from a sub-peak of Osborn to its own independent Marilyn. This effectively renders it the second highest peak in the Kigs, a veritable K2 of the Seward Peninsula. My geologic map reveals it to be cut from the same medi-sedimentary choss as Osborn. One can only expect we are looking at death-marble of the most appalling order.

         Illumination of Kigs topography has occured for me in a distinctly south-to-north direction. My working kinesthetic familiarity with these mountains is like a climbing skin on a ski or the arrow of time, it slides in only one direction, which is a pity because the uplift is quite a sight more spectuacular when viewed in northern mode. The last few days I have been skittling over Google Earth, U.S.G.S. maps, iPhoto, and online geology papers (a research effort aided and abetted by a grotesque skin-flapping thumb injury incurred recently at the Windmill Boulders that is taking days to heal) trying to reason out more about the Kigs unilluminated north side.


(above) Northern aspect of Kigluaiks from northeast. Left to right, the four skyline summits are: Osborn, N. Peak Osborn, Pk. 4250+, Pk. 4500+. The namesake of this post, Pk. 3054, is a squat little knob atop a triangular snowfield sitting in front of and blending in to the choss of Osborn. This photo was ripped off from an awesome panoroma at Mansoor Saghafi's zoomable panorama of Kigs.

     Research into the north side surfaced two things. First, a new obssession to explore these canyons more deeply. Second, a brouhaha in the press:  controversy over newly discovered documents revealing gross mistakes in local geography and Nomenclature quoted by Kigsblog General Editor allapa. Indictment, subpoena, trial, and retraction, with the reputation of a famous scientist at stake, and Kigsblog turned against itself like an autoimmune disorder. Deep embarrassment, as well, before the four or five people in the world that might ever have noticed, ever have cared.

(above) Pk. 4500+ and Grand Union Glacier. Photo ripped off from Kauffman in the link given below.

       So here is my mistake that caused such a flap:  I referred to the Grand Central Glacier as the Grand Union Glacier. This geographical error made its way into the Nome Nugget following the reportage on the Accident in the Sluicebox a year ago, thus propagating the misnomer to the properly outraged masses.  Not sure how I came by the mistake: Wikipedia specifically says that the Grand Union Glacier is the "only remaining active glacier in Western Alaska" so maybe I assumed it had to be the small glacier I was already intimately familiar with and knew to be an active glacier (I fell in the bergschrund once!) located in the northeastern gyre of Osborn (oh King of Kigs) at the head of Grand Central. I should have noticed that "Grand Union Creek" was marked on the map, but I didn't get around to it until this post!

(above) Area comparison of Grand Union vs. Grand Central glaciers, 2010 Google Earth.

       Reasearching this post, I stumbled upon an online publication I had never viewed before. Here is the link that opened the can of worms:

  

LINK:
U.S.G.S. publication that exposed Kigsblog to a misappropriation suit. Scroll down for the part about the Seward peninsula. 

(above) Osborn from the west. This shot gives us another look at the peaks to the north of Osborn (left in the picture) recently declassified as independent peaks.

     The article linked above offers an overview of research and publications pertaining to glaciers on the Seward Peninsula. One truism I had already encountered, which seems to have been perpetrated by Dave Hopkins, the famous Beringia scientist, is that "three living glaciers" exist (or existed recently) in the Kigluaik Mountains, which always puzzled me: which three?  Where? I had my theories. Now, this newly-discovered link has substantiated them.

1. Grand Central Glacier  2. Grand Union Glacier 3. Phalarope Glacier  4.Thrush Glacier  5. Thompson Pass  6. Tigaraha  7. Thompson Creek  8.  East Fork Smith Creek  9.  Pass Creek

(above) EDITED: recent Holocene glaciations:  I'm not a glaciologist. I'm not really sure what the criteria are to determine TIME OF DEATH of a glacier. Something to do with mass balance. So all I have are questions.

1. Grand Central Glacier. Why, in 1973, does Hopkins decommission the Grand Central Glacier after looking at aerial photographs from 1950? I was standing on the thing the other day and it seemed, well, slightly glacial, or at least still to be steaming like a fresh Holocene turd from its recent glaciation. I have a feeling this glacier has been dying more slowly than most in the Kigs. It gets constantly fed by Mt. Osborn's little pet storm it keeps alive in the localized weather of the northeast cirque.   

2.  Grand Union Glacier on the Middle Fork of Grand Union Creek. Hopkins referenced this glacier as the "westernmost" active glacier in North America.  I haven't managed to get over to the Grand Union valleys yet, of which, I surmise, there are three.  Brooks, in 1901, stated there was a glacier in the East Fork of Grand Union, but this one was said "to no longer exist" by Hopkins in 1973. But which valley is Hopkins talking about when he references, as one of the three glaciers in the Kigluaiks, a glacier in "an unnamed tributary of the Pilgrim River adjacent to Grand Union Creek?" Did he mean the Phalarope Glacier? It does not make sense the Phalarope would be on an unnamed tributary, as Calkin's description would place it in a tributary named, of all things, Glacier Creek. Perhaps there is some confusion about the geography. I certainly contributed to the confusion by misappropriating the Grand Union Glacier's name in the Anchorage newspaper!

3. "Phalarope Glacier"(?) on Glacier Creek, referenced in USGS article as "7.6 km northwest of Thrush Glacier." I am not sure if I marked the right one on this map, but it makes sense there would be a glacier on Glacier Creek, right? 

4. "Thrush Glacier" referenced in USGS article. The location of this one I am sure of. This was one of my guesses for the "three glaciers of the Kigluaiks." Andy Sterns and I did three routes here in 2009. The encircling granite walls of Suluun form a huge weather hippodrome that feeds the tiny glacier tucked in the back.

5.  Mosquito Pass Glacier?  There is an odd, round declivity in the moraines at the base of the North Face of "Crater Lake Peak" where Jeff Collins and I climbed a couloir in the dead of Winter one year. I used to think it might be a glacial remnant, but just this evening, Ken Shapiro, hardcore snow-machine explorer but not a real geologist, ventured the opinion that this declivity is a "caldera." Hmm...  

6. Tigaraha Glacier?  Having climbed many times up and down the icy slopes directly under the north face of Tigaraha (remember: Tigaraha is mismarked on USGS maps), I would venture that there's not enough permanent ice left on this one to even qualify as a remnant. But the steam is still rising from its ablation.
7. Thompson Creek Glacier? If there's not a glacier there now, one must have passed through within the last half-Millenium. You can practically smell its recent passage coming off the Holocenic moraines that spill out into Grand Central.

8. Probable location of Smith Creek East Fork Glacier.  Henshaw and Parker referenced a living glacier in this cirque in 1913, but Hopkins stated it had dried up by the time of his 1973 field work. 
9. Pass Creek Henshaw and Parker said the glacier was in this drainage, before Hopkins determined they were talking about Smith Creek East Fork.

Or maybe, the next glaciologist to come along (and I would venture the Kigs are due for a glaciological check-up) will come to the conclusion that there are no remaining glaciers in the Kigluaik Mountains!

(left) Yet another look at Osborn, Northeast Face view, snapped in 2010 from a ledge on Kayuqtuq. 

OUTCOME OF KIGS-COURT TRIAL:  A counter-suit was filed against Hopkins, et al... on behalf of Kigsblog-allapa, also against Kigsblog-allapa, Judge Kigsblog-allapa presiding.  Namely, a claim was made that incomplete documentation of glaciers in the Kigluaiks and misleading conclusions made by Hopkins, et al... contributed to the misappropriations by said Kigsblog-allapa.  Settled out of court with no shame or guilt;  allapa is hereby relegated the civic responsibility of continuing to explore the hidden subconscious of the North Side, using no unfair advantage of technology that would trash the country. 

(above) Proposed graphite mining operation on North Side Kigluaik Mountains. Helicopters are in the air at the time of this writing. 

Link to Save Graphite Bay Facebook page.

       Blank space on the map, neurons with no dendrites, unilluminated canyons, a dark region of the KigsBrain visited only in forgotten dreams, animal migration-corridor nerve pathway haunted by people and spirits, unvisited cortical regions populated by two-thousand foot nordwands,  a chunk of TOTAL wilderness away from everything, precious, precious, TOTAL wilderness, an invaluable load of a very rare thing that should evaluate at the highest price we can possibly give it, untouched nature--  these are some of the things the Kigs North Side means to me, but it means a whole lot more to many other people. Since it has always been the full intention of Kigsblog to point attention to the theory of sentience for rock and earth, then it should be added that the fate of the Kigs North Side also means a lot to the mountains and the rivers and the estuaries, could they be represented.

(above) "Dragontooths, aka "Oro Grande Tors," from the northeast. Not sure about the origins of the name "Dragontooths."

      The author has made one bonafide trip to the Kigs North Side. In the summer of 2012, Andy Sterns and I spent two weeks in the Dragontooths, referred to elsewhere in this blog as the "Oro Grande Tors." A long fence of orthogneiss tors runs along the top of a ridge to the south of Oro Grande Creek. This ridge is what put the teeth in the Sawtooths, it dominates the view of the Kigs from the northwest.

       Each day Andy and I would schlep our rock gear up the three-thousand foot approach to bag another tor. Each day, as we mantled on to a new summit, we were rewarded with a stupendous view to the north out over the Imruk Basin--  the very lands sitting plum dab in the middle of Graphite One's target red rectangle in the image above.

(above) Dragontooths, "Nauloq Tor," third pitch of Caballero Blanco, II, 5.9. A pathogenic cell creeping its way into an otherwise healthy tissue.

       I now see that Andy and I were like cancer cells, functioning like a pre-cancer in this lobe of land. First, the climbers come creepy-crawly up the last bits of Earth that remain untouched by human hand. Then, industry and helicopters will soon follow, to suck out natural resources and transport them somewhere else so somebody can make money somewhere else. 

      It seemed so innocent, climbing those beautiful towers on a sunny day in the middle of bloody nowhere. How were we to know we were a portent of cancer? 

Thompson Creek Headwall and other Spring Adventures

"Thompson Creek Headwall" (above), panorama by Tyler Rhodes, the site of Spring weekend exploits, 5 Sundays Ago.  We approached the Headwall blindly from the broad ridge on top of it and, after some trial and error among the peaklets of Thompson Creek, managed to descend the Headwall via the wide-ish snow couloir at the righthand vertical sun-shadow line in the photo, Tyler and Keith on skis, me and Lucy on crampons!            The ideal is to suffer.  This suffering is necessary to offset the deleterious influence of growing up a spoiled American brat who has been handed everything and never truly learned the knowledge that true suffering has to offer.

     Swooshing down powdery mountainsides is NOT suffering.  A good telly run, echoing Buchanan once again, is "entirely too much fun," and I agree:  the Spring skiing in the Kigs these past few seasons has registered considerably high on the PURE ENJOYMENT spectrum, and Spring 2012 was no exception.  However, it must be noted, that although a ski-mountaineering descent qualifies as the reciprocal of an ASScent, thereby qualifying skiing as a form of climbing, skiing as an end in itself poses a transgression of the RULE OF SUFFERING because it is TOO PURELY ENJOYABLE.  

       It can therefore be concluded that the act of choosing to ski downhill rather than go climbing qualifies as a chicken-out, a cop out, a fraidy-cat failure to face the solitude of the brooding north wall.

       Panorama looking north from the Buffalo Creek/Thompson Creek divide. (above).  More panoramic wizardry by Tyler Rhodes.  The image faces the opposite direction of the one above.  This one faces north, looks down Thompson Creek, perpendicularly across a segment of Grand Central, and up Gold Run Creek.  Mt. Osborn is about a quarter of the way across the panorama from the left.   Pt. 3207, high point of False Tigaraha, at camera's left hand.  Pt. 3080, which we ascended on the way, at camera's right hand. 

    On a sunny day in Spring 4 Sundays Ago, I am sitting on the tailgate at Deep Creek Canyon, Mile 30 Kougarak Road, getting ready to return to the cold and shaded Headwall on which I had not done a route the weekend before due to damnable, super-fun skiing with Tyler and Keith.  All ties with humanity have been cut.  Flaming ruins lie in my wake. Severed tendrils of TOWN GLUE still trail from the rear bumper from yesterday's battle with the MACHETE to escape town. Beetle-browed and grim-jawed, I am sharpening the positive-clearance chisel on my BD Cobras, a knot of self-involvement, a Haston, a House, my own wizened version of Dr. Doom poised to risk it all for obscure glory on the north wall waiting out of the sunlight.  The plan is to sneak back in to Thompson Creek and solo/scramble a line through the granitic gneiss...  at last, for the first time in a long time, to face down my demons and actually climb something...

      Then, I see them...  Coming along the Kougarak Road in the morning sunshine, a sparkling parade of people I know and love, BOATLOADS of fun and friendship, all enroute to the nearby ski slopes of Nugget Pass, party after party, Jeff, Laura, Erin, Nate, Lorne, Keith, Mallory, Erica, all yahooing their way towards what promises to be a corn-fed day in the Spring Kigs, still blanketed with snow.  

        Leading the parade, Tyler, the avenging Angel of Angle, leering with the knowledge that once again he is stealing me away from my appointment with Hermann Buhl's Lonely Challenge on the Thompson Creek Headwall, that he is sucking me away from pain, blood, and bruises, into one of the FUNNEST days I will ever have skiing. 

        We will follow the sinuous gullet of a filled-in Copper Creek into the steep hills that lie to the east of the Kougarak Road at Nugget Pass.  I will spend the day hanging out on tundra patches with beautiful, laid-back Nomenclatures, trying to keep up with Tyler, taking the ridges where he drops the chutes, freshly driving out the grizzlies from the valley, and hanging with my good dog, Lucy.

(Below) Map of totally excellent ski tour, Mr. Rhodes, Mr. Conger, and Mr. McRae, May 6, 2012.   Deep Creek Canyon would be the easier way to access Buffalo / Thompson Pass from the Kougarak Road.  The endless slog out Grand Central was aided and abetted by wind and crust.  

(Below) Ian, Tyler, and Lucy gesturing over the drop-off, Pk. 3080.  

(Above) Tyler arrives at the pass between Buffalo Creek and Thompson Creek. The waters of Lethe have bleached out my memory cortex, but suffice it to say, the descent into Thompson Creek was not desirable from this point.  Mark this one down as "probably not a feasible pass." An interesting feature in this photograph is the summit pinnacle of Pt. 3207,  upper left corner, the true high point of the long ridge marked on the U.S.G.S. as "Tigaraha," which I like to call "False" Tigaraha—  a frightening solo, MARK!, squirt musk here, internet scent mark.

(Beleft) Descent Gully, Thompson Creek Headwall.   Mr. McRae, being unwilling to chatter, sideslip, or take 800 ft. skidding falls down icy-hard snow, had to suffer the ignominy of ice-climbing down slopes everyone else, including my dog Lucy, were gleefully swooping and carving.  

  

Thanks to Tyler Rhodes and Keith Conger for lending the blogseed for this post, their pictures!

      Two roads

   One leads to fun and friendship.

         The other to self-confrontation.

 The scars

  From the big Lonely

     Have not healed.

   Butterflies

      Out over the wall...

    I am glad that you are here.

What is this?

      A yellow pod in the wilderness

Containing friends in larval form.

    Easy is the Kool-Aid.

      Kernels of corn rest momentarily on my ski tips.

    There will be no climbing today.

(Below) Three views of the Sinuk headwaters, April 28/29, 2012.  Friends conjoined in a partially-metamorphosed pupal form revealing the individual faces and personalities zipped inside the pod as we found it, lying on the tundra at the Sinuk headwaters early on a Sunday morning. 

         Mr. Lastine and I snow-machined into the upper headwaters of the Sinuk River, 6 Sundays ago.  He wanted to try out his late-season acquisition, a Polaris .440 (black and silver like the Oakland Raiders).   Our plan was to leave early Sunday morning and meet up with the Rhodes/Collins party who had bivouaced "somewhere around Mosquito Pass"the night before in Tyler's Arctic Oven.  My secret plan was, once there, to abandon human contact altogether, to motor away around the corner to Turncorner Mountain for a gigantic Herman Buhl sufferfest on a narrow, exposed ridge of snow and schist.

       The day started well.  The Kougarak Road was already punched out to MacPherson's Troll at Mile 18.  Machining conditions were ideal.  We easily followed Tyler's tracks in to the upper Sinuk where we found Tyler, Erica, Jeff, and Laura encased in their curious shell-like encrustation on the tundra.  Arms extended centipede-like from within the pod-casing and served Mr. Lastine and me hot breakfast burritoes.  

       It was so incredibly cool to be there in the Sinuk head, the fortress of scatter-my-ashes-here solitude, with such a fun party of friends, with cool human company, it was so nice having a traveling partner like Mr. Lastine, we had come so far together already, I didn't want to leave.  I couldn't.  I abandoned the idea of the frightening, windy, spiralling arete, and instead climbed two forty-minute hike-ups nearby at the head of the valley on the Sinuk / Thompson divide, so that I could return in time to roar out of there with the rest of the gang.  

        Days such as these are the glorious times of our lives.  Who would be foolish enough to exchange them for something that is not only equally silly, pointless, and selfish, but painful to boot?  

(above) Map of Sinuk headwaters. 

A.  The "real" Tigaraha ("Forefinger"), Pk. 3500+ (??)

B.  "Pen Tri Cwm," Pk. 3600+ (?), this is the name given by 1990s Todd party-  first ascent?- likely not.  The name has kind of grown on me, wish I knew how to pronounce it.  

C.  Pk. 3400+(?) I like to call it "Snakey Peak" after the aesthetic, unskied, "Snakey Couloir" on the northern, Grand Central side of the mountain, which Tyler refers to as "the Z-Couloir.

D.  Pk. 2750+, one of the ridiculous summits I reached from the Sinuk on the 6SA outing which is the subject of this post.  Call it one of the "Thompson Creek peaklets," as it is much more interesting from the side other than the one I climbed.

E.  Pk. 2900+, the other "Thompson Creek peaklet" I climbed that day.

F.  "False" Tigaraha, Pt. 3207.   

MARK!  I hereby squirt a little digital/glandular secretion of ego onto the internet for having climbed each of these summits!

(below) View to the northeast from Tigaraha. The only picture I have (from a previous summer) to identify the previously unreported "Thompson Creek peaklets" mentioned above.  Pk. 2900 is the peak just to the left of the end of the rainbow.  Pk. 2750+ is the leftmost foreground peak. They were, of course, seran-wrapped in snow 6 Sundays ago.

(below) False Tigaraha from Sinuk, with badass couloir skied by Tyler on April 28, 6 Sundays Ago, the third, left-slanting couloir from the left.  This picture was taken by me weeks after Tyler's ski, 2 Sundays Ago, on a recent rockclimbing trip with Phil Westcott.  My estimation is that Tyler's couloir represents the most technically difficult descent yet skied in the Kigs.  Laurent and I climbed the couloir on the left (with some dips into the mixed on the prow to the left) with a rope years back.  Why is Tyler always skiing things I ice climb?  

(below) BONUS PIC:  The "Z-Couloir" on "Snakey Peak" (Pk 3400+?) from the Grand Central side, a fine climb between walls of marble that I did with Mikey Lean one February years ago, and one of the great ski descents still to be plucked in the Kigs, assuming no one has already plucked it. 

        In a previous post from 8 Sundays Ago, I invoked the No Sketch Partner Law:  "the scope of your climbing ambitions must conform to the mean climbing ambitions of the group."  In this rather empirical way of looking at it, if you are out with a partner who has zero climbing ambitions, then your climbing ambitions would be halved.  I was first introduced to the No Sketch Partner Law in James Ramsey Ullman's classic Banner In The Sky, in the scene where Rudi Matt remains with the injured Saxo near the summit of the Citadel.  However you name it, the Law comes down to this:  you can't sketch out on the people you're with.  You may need to practice the difficult art of NOT CLIMBING in order NOT to be an asshole.

        However, a loophole for climbing mediocrity exists here.  The No Sketch Partner Law becomes a force unto itself, much like gravity, or the GLUE of TOWN.  That day in the Sinuk, I could not escape the encampment of my friends because it was just so delightful to be in their company in the sacred CHI-giving mountains.  That day on the Kougarak Road, my friends in cars were like corpuscles of TOWN GLUE traveling down a capillary and finding me at the last minute.  For we know that the glue of town is composed of the ones we love most.  The company of friends is the most golden thing of all.   So it is that the No Sketch Law too often results in a violation of the NO CHICKEN OUT LAW which states, simply, 'Thou shallt not chicken out of climbing."

            (below)  Shadow of Tigaraha against False Tigaraha.

OTHER SPRING 2012 KIGVENTURES

      7 Sundays Ago:  Earp and pre-schooler Robby riding Crusteo, Me on Super Smooth Andy G.., went gliding out to Salmon Lake for a night.  The April weather in the interior Kigs the next morning was 50-50, not so bad, really, cloud-torn over Salmon Lake, but mellow enough to consider going for a long ski, which I decided against, wisely as it turned out.  We decided to pack it in early and swim with the Sunday GLUE CURRENT towards Nome.

      But somewhere around Dorothy Creek (Mile 26), all Hell broke loose.  We found ourselves in zero visibility, with active drifts and near-hurricane wind pushing us right off the icy road, at a place with big drop-offs.  Big surprise!  The reverse of the usual weather graphic, with the blizzard in the foothills and the calmer weather at the crest.

        Earp waved me over:  "Robby's hypothermic!"  We stopped in the storm to grimly load him into a silvery, slippery sleeping bag, which Earp then had to wrestle like a giant flopping larva with one arm while driving the snow-machine with the other.  Little did we know, that right near the spot where Earp and I stopped to load the larva, Janet Balice was crouched in a drift hole, accepting a slow death in the storm for her and her dogs;  she had fallen into the same trap as us after a two nights in the mountains and her 5-dog team, with the legendary DIBELS in lead, had given up.  The sound of our snow machines passing nearby gave Janet the courage to roust up and drag her team out to Basin Creek, where at least the road was discernible.

     9 Sundays Ago:  Solo reconnaissance trip on Smooth Andy G. out to the Grand Central Glacier to check on Sluicebox.  

(above)  Sluicebox Couloir, April 8, 2012.  Super Smooth Andy G. (Arctic Cat) in foreground.

     3 Sundays Ago:  The best trip of all:  Kristine and Raina made it out to Earp's cabin for this one, along with Carl, Janet, Rod, Joni, and Robby, as well as Tyler, Erica, Jeff, Laura, Lorne, Erin, Nate, Tom, and others, tent camping across the lake in the BLM Campground.  Flowers, midnight sun, dogs rolling in anaq.  My camera had been consumed by Spring adventures so I got no pictures.  With my family at my side in the mountains, the tensions created by the GLUE vs. the LONELY CHALLENGE had cancelled out.  Mind at rest...

Writers Night

(left) An earlier Iteration of the Ayasayuk ice, early '00s.  The Grade III+ pillar where Mikey and I epic-ed is at center of photo.

Nome Arts Council held a WRITERS NIGHT last month in January, local authors getting together to read their original works inside the awesome vault of Old St. Joe's Church.  Mine came out steaming like a fresh pile of ANAQ, it being the product of a weird eight hour blitz of most-likely abominable writing that occurred just prior to the reading. It was fun writing about Mikey, she is a type of badass of the positive attitude.  

CAPE NOME

Mikey's going to come off.  Any moment she's going to explode off the ice and be dangling in space in the wind and darkness.  My job will be to hold her on a top rope and try not to go skating off the edge of the frozen waterfall when she goes.  The rope will pendulum and saw through banks of overhanging icicles and shattered granitic gneiss.  

It was hard, the move.  I had done it on lead twenty minutes ago and peed my pants a little.  But the really exhausting thing had been dealing with the pitons just below the crux.  To bang the pitons in I had to cram my body into this cramped little alcove of stalactites and thrutch around trying to get a good hammer swing;  the footing was bad, everything was horrible, the sun was going down, I was there for an hour making grunting noises and dropping things while Mikey sat below patiently holding the rope, her warmth sublimating away despite wearing both our big puffy coats.   But the pins had been pump well spent;  they had given me the security to commit to the Grade IV ice pillar above.

Then it was Mikey's turn to follow.  As had I, she waged a titanic battle trying to get the pins out...  Tap... Tap... Tap... Even though I couldn't see her from up top the pillar, I could picture her down there thirty feet below, all puffy coats, helmets, headlamp and bobbles, kicking, kicking, trying to get footing, all the while trying to pound out vise-gripped strips of metal using new modern ice-climbing tools that are so light they are named after sub-atomic minutae.  Tap...  Tap... Tap... went the Quarks for twenty-five minutes.  Like any faithful dirtbag climber, Mikey was not going to leave without recovering the gear, she had been schooled to the point of paranoia, recover the gear, and now she couldn't hear me yelling to forget the gear, I'm freezing, just try to get up, even though it's too hard.

     Finally, the tapping stopped.  The rope moved a little. I knew Mikey was abandoning the pins and going for the crux.  And it was then I knew she was going for a whipper. 

(left and below)  Mikey on top-rope, Left Flow-First Iteration, sometime in the early '00s.  The left flow was always quite a bit easier than the center one.  I soloed it on several occasions, which tells you just how easy it must have been, but no one else will ever know for sure because it was blasted into chunks and trucked away to exist as part of the new jetty at the Port of Nome, as well as other seawall structures within road's reach on the Seward Peninsula.

She isn't going to back off, you see.  The climbing spirits flow through Mikey and have taken control.  Her big mushing mittens are set in the wrist loops of her Quarks.  With characteristic determination, she is gripping down on cold icy shafts and setting the tools in the vertical ice above.  I know she is totally pumped from fussing with the pins in the alcove, but somehow I also know that nothing is going to stop Mikey from pitching herself at that crux like Don Quixote at the windmills.  The quarks are rebounding off the ice. Prepare for impact.

I pat my anchor—  a network of three willow branches knitted together with slings to equalize the forces.  It should hold.  But suddenly my anchor seems absurd.  It's the "Help me Mr. Wizard moment."  That vertiginuous feeling when your awareness scopes out to a point in space where you can view yourself against the wall, the veils of denial disintegrate, you realize you have done a silly childish thing and imperiled lives unnecessarily.  What's Charlie going to think?  What of my own spouse, Kristine?   The light is gone.  Mikey is emitting audible epithets over the breeze, terrible thrashings, ominous cussings, if her students could hear her now they would not recognize her.  The rope moves up an inch or two.  I'm sitting in a pool of slush trying to stamp out footholds.

The current of fear and sympathetic amygdala response running up and down the rope intensifies.   An inhuman sound begins to rise over the wind, a moaning wail, the sound of an animal suffering horribly...  catecholamines and fear receptors are triggering and firing, alarm is running up the rope like a current, MIkey has the screaming-barfies sensation in her hands, the wrist loops have cut off her circulation, her legs are starting to sewing-machine.  Here it comes.  With one hand off the rope, I fumble frantically with an ice screw.  Maybe I can push it into something and lash more of myself to the cliff, but I drop the screw, my mitten is out on the runway preparing for take-off but I can't reach it.  The sun is reduced to burning embers over the Bering Sea.

A scream.  A perfect, Hollywood, girl scream, several seconds duration, with receding Doppler effect.  Mikey is off.  Sudden pressure.  Rope stretch and rope twang.   

And now I have been jerked right off my stance and pulled forward like a diving shortstop.   I'm gliding smoothly across the frozen pool at the top of the waterfall.  Somewhere I hear the crashing sound of ice, and a muffled squawk.  I'm heading for the lip.  Maybe I can grab those two gravestone-shaped chunks of gneiss there to stop from going over the edge.  I don't feel too bad about my own injury or death, but I feel really really terrible about Mikey's...  

Tough plants, those willows.  No first person narrative from crumpled bodies.  There's no way to dramatize what amounts in the end to a routine top-rope fall, but then again, this story was not about the fall.   I came to a stop with my head looking down over the edge, the rope locked off twangy tight in the belay device.  Now that I could see her, turns out Mikey really was dangling in space, like Kurz,  Arachne, Jonathan Hemlock, her headlamp revealing tiny flakes of snow drifting down.   We could actually hear each other now...

"I think I'm starting to get the hang of it!" yells Mikey.

__________________________________________________________________

(above)  Mikey emerging from Osborn's Northeast Cirque (home to the largest little living glacier in the Kigluaik) and starting up the East Ridge. First we slogged up the broad couloir at the left end of Osborn's huge marble north face.  Near the top, we took a side trip up a three-pitch, M4 variation, the top of which you can see behind Mikey.

MT. OSBORN

Have I sucked Mikey in over her hat again?  Nobody else breaks into a grin when you ask them if they want to go suffer in the Kigluaik Range just to climb a mountain.  What does Charlie think?  I think Charlie is worried about his snow machine.  

Mikey hates the snow machine.  I hate the snow machine.  But the snow machine is necessary to get to the high Kigs.  We will have to suffer the snow machine, but we are both slightly in fear of the things, like dudes at a horse ranch.  The proposal is to motor in to the north fork of Grand Central valley to the fabled north wall of Mt. Osborne and make an alpine ascent of the northeast ridge, then start the dreaded machines and motor back to Nome, all in one day.

In the morning I can't find my hat, which turns out to be on my head.  The glue of town binding me to my life is so thick that I have to hack at it with the machete, damaging women and children on the way out the door, my awful Hog already roaring and fuming in the driveway.  Mikey has been ready to go for hours.  We arrive at Osborn by two in the afternoon.  A yawning, brooding gloom comes over the sun as our machines enter the shadow of the north face of Osborn, a dark, enormous, marble amphitheatre located at the very swirl point of the cusp between weather basins, the mighty Imruk Basin to the north, the wise and omnipotent Pacific Ocean to the south.   Osborn's wall is 2,500 ft. and draped with ice.  Mikey and I  take up the long axes and head up a low angle snow gully at the wall's left extremity.  The snow is deep, and we have to plod using the insectile "upward posthole" trick.

(above)  Has this couloir been skied?  North Cirque Osborn, '06 or so. Once again, the naming problem: North Couloir? 

(below)  Mikey in the marble halls.

Hours pass.  Mikey and I are having an utter blast.  We are in the mountains, the sacred meta-sedimentary chunk of Osborn itself, and walls are all around.  We are feeling so good we decide to bust out the rope and make a three-pitch variation up a rock band, mixed climbing up to M3.  I place cams and Mikey takes them out.  Our crampons bite ice and our tools hook limestone.  We top out on the crest of the northeast ridge.  It's not steep, but it's bullet hard, so we leave the rope on.  All Alaska is at our feet now, you can make out Distin and White Alice thirty-five miles south.   The summit of Osborn, a certain little rimed-up hump on the summit ridge above us, begins to look tantalizingly close.  The snow has gone peach, but neither of us notices.

(left)  Mikey at the belay on our mixed variation to the North Couloir.  There was some real climbing, though the real climbing was still just practice for the real thing. 

Again, the sudden moment of awareness, the snapping out of the aerobic trance.  What the hell are we doing? I suddenly think.  The sun is going down.  The middle-of-nowhere quotient is fantastically high.  And here's Mikey and me like the dazed children we already were questing upward for the top of the mountain.  Epic.  Why was it hidden to our perception until the last minute, why didn't I see the epic coming?  We were having fun, I guess.

  As often happens at sunset, the breeze has changed direction.  We stop for a conference.

"Down?"

"That's what I was thinking."

"You got any water?"

"Almost nothing.  Whaddya you got?"

"Nothing."

(above)  Mikey near our high point on the East Ridge of Osborn, right about the time we snapped out of our climbing trance and realized we had continued too long.  I returned the following year and soloed the ridge;  it's the kind of thing where nothing is the least bit hard, but you wouldn't want to slip or you'd go for a high-speed pinball.

We have to make five rappels. Mikey is bonking.  She is stumbling like a zomby, but it's OK because we're off the part of the mountain where a fall was going to result in a rapid sliding fall of up to 800 feet.   In the gully, I start bonking too.  It's a dehydration bonk, a severe one.  We're both zombies, just the worst kind, speechless, listless, joyless, hollow shells.  We have to rest for twenty minutes simply to gather enough energy to walk for five.  Hallucinations set in, flashes and movements in the corner of the vision.  It's the middle of the night now, and I have Mikey's headlamp, which doesn't seem fair, so I turn to give it back to her, but she is far, far up the mountain still—  I have left her behind.  Not necessarily for dead, but it makes me wonder.  And now I am wracked with guilt, because I'm not going to wait for her.  Because there is only thing in the world.  There is only the thermos full of liquid H2O waiting for me at the machines. 

We will arrive back in town at six-thirty in the morning, just as the concern calls are beginning.  In the time it takes to get off the mountain and drive the machines forty-five miles back home in the icy cold, we will live several lifetimes, lifetimes full of suffering, nauseau, and pain.  But now Mikey has arrived at the machines at last.  And now we are all packed up, and the dreaded moment has arrived:  it's time to pull the cord on the machine.