Kigsblog: Four Peaks Showcase

Cloud dapples West Face of Pen Tri Cwm (Pk. 3600+), the first of our four showcase peaks in this post. The orogeny of the Kigs can be read in the clash between the layers: meta-sedimentary paragneiss on top catching a ride on a cudgel of meta-igneous orthogneiss busting up from underneath through a brown lith of schist. The Anchorage guys of '96 climbed and named Pen Tri Cwm (from Welsh, "Facing Three Valleys") and piled a big cairn on top. Allapa and Phil Hofstetter climbed it around '03 on a drunken Autumn weekend in which we forgot our coats and slept in the open with one side accumulating snow. This soaring chunk of choss dominates the Sinuk drainage.

Blog-lag: 2.3 years (new Kigsblog maximum)

The testosterone dropped. The fire in the belly cooled. Too many chicken-outs accrued. My climbing license got revoked in Kigs-court. It was the beginning of my Great Decline, the one Bachar tried to climb his way through. But my throbber of life realization had not fully loaded as of the summer of 2020, the time of the trip in this post.

The GLUE OF TOWN thickened. Bearanoia held me fast. The Kigs lay far away. My dog had gotten mauled by mosquitoes. I dreaded being out there in the veldt, alone, with that Timothy Treadwell feeling. The current wave of skiers and climbers here in Nome at the time of this writing had not yet arrived in Nome. I called up Rick.

"Vertigo," he admitted. "I don't want to go on the steep stuff. But I'd be happy to go for a hike."

Little did I understand, it was the same vertigo that was even then twining its fibers through my own nervous system. I decided to violate the Prime Directive. I agreed to a mere hiking trip. I would allow myself to be reduced to backpacker level, a Colin Fletcher charlatan. But just to hedge my shame, I hid crampons, helmets, Cobras, TC Pros, and chalk-bags in my backpack. fancying I could creep away and solo a major new route of the Kigs like some kind of choss Henry Barber.

"Johnson suppressed a giggle each time he passed the fallen steam-shovel. Leaving it up on the High Line in the Fall had been McPherson's idea. Truth was, they had all been drunk. Things were falling apart late in the season. They had left things where they lay to get to the last train. Johnson's last look at the steam shovel showed it standing tall in direct alignment with a major gully on the hillside above. Es wird night schafft thought Johnson, but kept it to himself. The shovel looked so pathetic now, like a sad, swatted insect, sad and pathetic, like the whole Wild Goose Pipeline operation."

My metabolism had slowed without my knowing it. I kept on eating prodigiously. I wondered why I was so weak at the boulders. I no longer seemed able to crank 5.10. "Write it off to age," I guessed. Later, weighing sacks for another trip, I stepped on the scale. I wasn't weak. I was fat! My father warned me this precise boiling of the frog would happen. But I hadn't fully figured out the riddle as I embarked with Rick, and two more friends, on that expedition in the summer of 2020.

Hang a left up the West Fork of Grand Central and this peak, Peak 3050+, draws the eye. "Siutik" (A Pair of Ears) has a nice Distant Time vibe, though I've had difficulty hearing the name being whispered by this one. The deep cleft between the ears forms a prominent snaking couloir that Mikey Lean and I boot-packed, and down-boot-packed, in the early two-thousands. The last two pitches to the summit felt exposed after the deep confines of the couloir. Who will be the first to ski the Z-Couloir?

The Z-Couloir on Siutik

I found myself matched against three gazelles. Rick had hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in a faster time than Eric Ryback himself. Connor is an unsung legend who runs miles on the lonely Kougarak Road all seasons. Maisie was competing in cross-country at Whitman.

I pulled both hamstring muscles badly in the first thirty feet of walking. My pack was festooned with superfluous climbing gear. The muck underfoot was thick in Grand Central. No overarching climbing goal loomed like a beacon.

North Ridge of Pen Tri Cwm, looking west from West Fork Grand Central. The pass between Grand Central and Windy is all the way to the right in this photo. We detected elevated levels of PHI energy at the pass, indicating it is most likely a long-used travel corridor.

Not many passes cross the eighty mile spine of the Kigluait Mountains. The north side of the range tends to be a hideous drop-off. Mosquito Pass is the only pass with a name on the map. The Class 2 pass connecting Windy Creek to the West Fork of Grand Central counts as one of the major passes of the Kigs. Peaks have whispered their names to me before, but no passes have ever done so. Can the lost Iñupiaq name of a natural feature be derived from clues in the landscape?

Once before, in residence at the Crater Lake Institute, I had skied over the Windy/Grand Central pass. To I looked forward to hiking it in summer. But already, my legs were shot. I couldn't keep up with the others. I was old and overweight. If I had been solo, I would have declared Day 2 a rest day. But I was harnessed to a group of Thru-Hikers, two of whom were older than I!

"Falcon Killer" is our third showcase peak. Its allure only holds when viewed from the north from upper Windy, as in this photo. From the other side it presents as merely a series of tors on a ridge. There's no hint of this fearsome precipice lurking on the north. I soloed each of these tors one marvelous summer day. The high point was a fifty-foot 5.6 solo. At the crux, a Peregrine Falcon tried to murder me. (story here) I don't like it when people name mountains after their personal experiences. Still, I took to calling it "Falcon Murderer Peak. " Kigs-law required me to translate the name to Iñupiaq, which results in Kirgavik Inuaqti. All these syllables have proved unwieldy. Perhaps shortening it to Kirgavik— "Falcon"— would be appropriate. On several occasions with various partners I have visited the lower buttresses and done some one-pitch routes on rock that varied from "decent granite" to "death choss." The bird-shaped white scar in the middle of the face is one godawful scar. Only choss lovers need apply.

If there is to be a PCT of the Kigs, then upper Windy Creek should be part of it. Ancient lateral moraines offer wide parkways good for walking. An ancient rock-slide crossing the whole valley is re-vegetated into a bouldering paradise. The "Two Hundred Year Old Rockfall" is the primo spot to be in these mountains.

On Day 2, Connor and Maisie came about into the GLUE and ran for town. Rick and I continued in the direction of Mosquito Pass. We were going to traverse the whole range into Glacial Lake and hike out to the Teller Road.

"I can't do it," I regretted to inform Rick. "My legs are shot."

Or was I trying to hot-henry Rick? So we would stop hiking, and I could do some climbing? Sadly, no— my legs were actually shot. A rest day at Mosquito Pass Wall was in order. We hiked a few hundred feet up some moraines from Mosquito Pass and made camp by a tarn in the caldera.

Our fourth showcase peak is Peak 2911. There must be a name floating out there, but I have not yet encountered it. I refer to it simply as "Mosquito Pass Wall." The red arrow shows the "Hidden Couloir" climbed by Collins and me on a day so frigid that I still thank the snow-machine gods for allowing our machines to start when the climb was done. Probably the Graphite Road will go right by this scarp. There will be a tourist pull-out complete with port-a-potty where we will be able to get out and view the mountain. A climbing guidebook will list many routes visible in this picture. Dark, shadowy, and foreboding, even on a sunny day, this cirque has a gothic feel that will make people want to get back in their car and drive on.

This is the "Apron" of Mosquito Pass Wall. The East Ridge there is a fine Class 2 jaunt to the summit of Peak 2911.

It's not actually a caldera. It's just a very round glacial cirque. The Mosquito Pass Wall gets photographed often enough that it has become the iconic scarp of the Kigs. Rick and I spent a nice day there exploring.

Years ago, on a fantabulously cold day in mid-Winter, Collins and I did a nice Scottish couloir hidden in the bowels of this wall. The couloir was about ten feet wide and ten feet deep. I placed a little pro on the sides as we simul-climbed, stemming on the sides and kicking steps in the hard-packed snow. Suddenly, I realized this couloir was not ten feet deep. It was probably over a hundred feet deep. It was a "chasm," a common feature in the Kigs, a deep slot traveling into the mountain. completely plugged with snow. We were suspended by snow over a giant crack. I wanted to investigate this theory on the 2020 trip, but I was too lazy to scramble back up there.

The map for this post shows our four showcase peaks, plus the hiking route done by Rick and Allapa over four days in the Summer of '22. It is officially a source of shame that none of these peaks were directly grappled with. These mountains were merely observed from the valley floor. I was in violation of the Prime Directive, Thou Shalt Climb. Only through controversial legislation in Kigs-court was I even allowed to make this post. It is worth noting that Sinuk to Grand Central and Buffalo to Grand Central are a no-go for a backpacker or snow-machiner.