Distin Bluff Summer Rockclimbing

and so castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually...

(above) "Distin Bluff" (Pt. 1125), August 2011.  80 ft. at its highest places.  Our first route went up the lefthand edge.  More on Distin Bluff here.  Anybody know the true name of this thing?

town was borg, we were assimilated, instantly the tentacles of digital technology began to snake into the cortical machinery behind our fragile auras;  soon we had forgotten the awareness we had achieved in the mountains...

Andy kept a spark alive;  his plane ticket for home wasn't for a day;  obsessed he was;  in the morning, lying among cables and wires, he had the will to rise and brew coffee;  we were away before noon, mounted double bareback once again on the back of the Yamaha, Prolly, off to the "Distin Bluff" for chossaneering on abhorrent marble.

(above) "Pixuusiqiri" (sinner, wrong doer), (5.7).

never before had i visited this face with a friend during the time when the songbirds were singing, at least not with all the toys, though the place had known the whack of my Cobras well in the winter;  Andy and I felt like tigers from our recent epic in the Kigs and wasted no time hopping onto a likely looking line-


oh lord, that Qaweraq marble, not so bad when frozen, but it can be FOUL when the tundra is green, oh hear me lord-  a crack jam, some well-placed cam, a little duo-doit, i was starting to dance when someone shoved a half ton detached block of marble in my face--  its gang members surrounded me quickly-- next thing I knew they were all around, over me, to the side of me, as a last resort I had to start stepping on their heads just to get out of there.  

(above) Andy Sterns on"Sivuubaruq" (fears the consequence), (5.10c), top-rope

     yes! climbing at last, stuffing in pro, moving the rope out, finally, the real deal, and then somehow, I was standing on solid ground in the middle of the climb;  i thought we had been safely on a cliff of rock, but somehow SOLID GROUND had snaked around and up from the spot where we had started and intruded into the middle of the first pitch;  so i belayed in the middle of the cliff standing at the bottom-  above us, the true line presented itself, out on a patch of Grapefruit limestone, but catastrophic bone-pulverizing collapse presented itself as well-  so we finished on another diminutive patch of Grapefruit limestone;   it was a pitch, cobbled together out of chiton dust and imagination.

(above) "Sivuubaruq"

 for a second course, we set up a top-rope on the nicest looking bit of the cliff, anticipating hours of harmless fun, we settled in at the base;  i was done after one turn-  to have gone again would be like repeating North Twin once you had already climbed it;  the very pores of the marble seemed to ooze menace, the shadow of the death attractor was never far, it was like trying to play Ringo with chalk marbles.

(above) Distin Bluff ledge

no marble tomb for Andy or me that day;  purged, reamed-out, empty again, we returned via Glacier Creek Road to our electronic enclosures in the blinking port, and let the urgencies and exigencies of the things we had known for a moment to be really very small cover us over again.

(above) Distin Bluff in winter

to summarize:  better in winter, stuck together one and all, when the whole creaking freaking tweaking edifice is not threatening to come down on top of you--  the place is really OK with a couple of good axes in your hands-

Distin Bluff Mixed

 Bluff  (Pt. 1,129)  in front of (southwest) of Mt. Distin 

     Collins and I went back to Twin Mt. for the M3 that had been denied us due to the freezing off of our derrieres related in an earlier post, but by the time we got back on a Sunday morning, a chinook had sprung, and we couldn't cross the Snake like we had the first time.   So we thumbed our noisy hideous mobiles on down the Glacier Creek Road to that old standby, Distin Bluff, a quartzite ridge of some geological sort lying southwest of Mt. Distin.  

     A conundrum fell upon us:  whether to utilize the brutally-heavy climbing equipment we had lugged up from our machines to the base of the cliff, or simply boulder around like sprightly little spirits.  We had learned from previous frostbite:  Ropes stayed inside the pack.  Axes, helmet, and crampons came out.

     Did I mention it was cold?  Well, yes.  Lunatic cold.  Pure undiluted Allapa.  However, these little south-facing cliffs have a pleasant way of providing little sunny safe havens where you can hang out under the warm mothering influence of the stone.

     Later, Jeff and I ran west a klik over to Silver Creek to check if there was ice, and, Saints Preserve Us!, there was.  We soloed Grade I, pretending we were big shots.  Thwack went the dinner-plates.  

Earp starting M-1 solo, Distin

   Next week (the mental murk of February sometime),  a miraculous email:  from an experienced alpinist, living in Nome, with tools, jonesing to go climbing.  More than just an abstraction- it was Earp.
     We saddled up my ponies, .570 Bearcat and good old .340 Polaris.  Town had been a complicated escape.  We roared off with my note to Kristine reading: 1. Glacial Lake  2. Mt. Distin, back by tomorrow at 11:00, will G-Spot you my love.  Always put tomorrow for your return time even though you will be dead by then-  better than having THEM come for you.  KOW
     Did I mention it was cold that day?   Yes.  Bitterly.  Allapa.   Little orthoscopic knives penetrated my swaddling face masks.  It was only regular allapa on the way out there, —15° F, a breeze out of the north at 5 to 15.  The incredibly tough Earp was game to continue on into the Kigs, so we thundered past Mt. Distin, down into the spreading plains of the Stewart River, west across the sprawl of the Sinuk (upon whose totally bare ice  I lucked out unscathed for the 22.3 x 10^5 time in my life, getting thrown from my horse on a spin-out.  Need studs.)

      But when we got to Glacial Lake, something mystical occurred.  I certainly can't explain it, you hadda be there.  The cold... just.. dropped.  The temps went to minus forty, fifty, sixty, who knows?  The wind freshened to a very steady 25.  It went from regular allapa to super-mega-amundo allapa, like the tune of the cold modulating from sub-Arctic to Arctic, with inhuman arpeggios.  Only the inexplicable warmth of the snow-machining bubble kept us alive.  
     There was no question of climbing the gneiss face (Peak 2740, "Glacial Lake Peak") we had come to bag that rose majestically in front of us.  There was no question of turning off the machines.  "So?" screamed Earp over the murderous wind, "Time to get out of here!" It must have had something to do with the fact that Glacial Lake is an orographic pressure valve between the Imruk Basin and the Norton Sound, and that the colder flow sinks to the bottom.
     We returned to Distin and had a splendid day on the Bluff, not thinking for a few hours about our fortunes actively deteriorating in town.

 

    Whack of frozen turf not quite the same as whack of water ice, but both vibrations are equally reassuring when you are thirty feet or more, yes, she's thirty feet or more.   A torque into the monolithic here, a hook of frozen flake there, she's telling herself, try not to care, try not to care.  This sideways foot is all I have, scuttle on by, scuttle on by....

   We do not fool ourselves that this activity is any more pointless than creating big toxic sludge ponds to obtain the yellow metal.