Crater Creek Walls

Ben Cross and Brayden Bahnke free soloing first ascent of Tog One apron

BLOGLAG—15 months.

    Spin the previous post, in which Ben and I bailed from cold clammy walls in Crater Creek, forward one year. Now it's early summer 2023. In this new climate, in which Nome has become Southeast Alaska, the only summer month to ever hold rainless days is June. So Ben, Brayden, and I are going back to Crater Creek a June later, to try the crack system on the north side of Tog One. Ben and Brayden, the new generation of Nomegrown climbers, have been up to great things in the preceding year, maturity coming to fruition. Ben grappled with the Harvard Route on Huntington, and Brayden has been pulling down at Grapefruit Rock in Fairbanks. Personally, as a climber, I am greatly reduced. I have backslid down the levels of difficulty. I have slid back to a level of skill correlating with my second week of climbing in high school. The final evolution of a lifetime of climbing, turns out, is a beginner shaking with vertigo. I am happy to accompany the rope guns of Nome. I am along for the ride, not yet quite like old Fred Beckey waiting in the tent at basecamp. 

Good parking pullout on southeast side of road to stash car in summer. 

       Instead of parking at the bridge and posthole-wacking up Lower Crater Creek, we drive north another mile on the Kougarak Road and take the Grouse Creek approach, which joins in to the main valley of Crater Creek higher up, at the moraines. Although this shortcut has one hideous moment where you bushwack down from Grouse Creek Pass into upper Crater Creek valley (it's even more hideous going back up on the way out), this approach to Upper Crater Creek is recommended.

Pitch 2

    I have eyed the crack system on Tog One for years, even fondled the holds on the first pitch. I have often found myself resting on boulders in Crater Creek, paralyzed with extreme fatigue brought on by carrying massive backpacks full of climbing gear I seldom used, studying the crack system on Tog 1 for hours. It seemed to peter out into a band of white rock.

This old box camera shot of Tog One is all I got. The red line shows approximate line of
our (unnamed) route. (5.9, two pitches) The yellow line shows Ben and Brayden's solo. 

       Ben leads up the first pitch. And what to say of the protection? A general rule for climbing on "Pre-Cambrian Thompson Creek Orthogneiss" (pc-TOG) is to equalize three pieces of mank which will count as one point of protection on lead. This tells you something about the integrity of the stone in the Kigs. When I follow, the pitch feels harder than I thought it would, maybe 5.9.  

For reasons of weight, double rope is the way to go in the Kigs

        "Crack system" is perhaps a misnomer. The crack climbing on Tog One presents more like low-angle slab— smear, jam, edge, layback, smear.  This is due to the reality that there is no solid "wall" of rock when it comes to the TOG. Rather, a wall is composed of fractured, disconnected flakes, like a wall of stacked boxes, with little cracks between the boxes. "Crack system" implies a traceable continuity of cracks occurring within a relatively monolithic section of rock.

     Ben leads the second pitch, as fun as the first pitch, another 5.9, I suppose. Most memorable on the second pitch is a loose stone, weighing maybe one stone, protruding from the crack, in a place where no other holds are available, so you have to carefully insert a toe jam just under the death stone and step up on it without a lot of flapping or spasm. As I move past the stone, I hate to think of how Ben and Brayden had executed this delicate move above me while I waited below on the ledge, my soft, trusting cranium pointed upward.

"Perhaps 'crack system' is a misnomer."

            Three specks on a wall in Crater Creek— at last, playing with ropes and gear, instead of merely bouldering. We gazed upward at the third pitch. The crack system petered out into a wide band of pale, shitty orthogneiss. Climbable, but hideous. I prepared myself for the psychological duress of getting dragged up the pitch by youngsters too inexperienced to realize how full-sketch the kigs-rock was.

        But Ben surprised me by agreeing we should just bail from that point. We prepared to rappel off.  It was then I saw Ben had the right stuff to make it in the Kigs. In the long haul, kiganeering is about managing your probabilities, always choosing the route that will improve your probability of avoiding death or enmanglement. THERE WILL BE BAILS. We bailed off and called it a modern route, even though it did not continue up to the rather nebulous summit of Tog One. 

Looking up the "Apron" as Ben starts up. In the background, the profile of the excellent
"Slimedog Millionnaire" (5.9, ten pitches) on Tog Three. 

       That evening, Ben and Brayden free soloed up the low-angle buttress to the left of Tog One. We had been lolling about the base wandering if the Kigs had any true friction routes, and if maybe you could put one up on this buttress. I declined soloing along with them, acquiring chicken-shit points, which doesn't matter now that Kigsblog has revoked my Real Climbers Certificate. After they returned to camp, I pressed them for details, ratings. They mumbled there might have been a 5.7 move or two.

        These two guys are my new heroes. I hope they continue the technical climbing trend in the Kigluaiks. Someday soon they will be driving in their expensive pick-up trucks to Mosquito Pass looking for crack systems that don't peter out into death-choss. They hardly spray-post at all, and they never get their cameras out, which I think is so cool. However, this means that all my pictures are of them. So, to make up for this imbalance, we close with three pictures of the author, bouldering in the Kigs, each one of them savagely retro-posed— I climbed these things back in the day (with the possible exception of the tor in the middle, the face of which Vince climbed, but which I climbed by a different line), but I didn't climb them in the picture, so they're fake. 

The Rockslide in Windy Creek

Gneiss tor on the Balustrade Tors, SE Ridge of Ooquienuhk (Mt. Osborn)

Balustrade Tors, Ooquienuhk 

The High Slog Ratio of the pre-Road Era

(Left to right): East Tig, Grand Tigaraha, West Tig, John, Paul, George, and Ringo. The Fab Four appear
to be clumped together in this shot, like Mick Jagger's "four-headed monster." 

BLOGLAG: almost two years. Blog-lag has ballooned exponentially. In order to keep to keep the seasonal revolutions in chronological sequence, fall, winter, spring, summer, (red, white, green, brown) I am forced now to chronicle events occurred in ancient history— almost two years ago. It was the early stages of a revolution taking place in Nome rock-climbing. A new wave of strong climbers, including several actual Nome-grown locals, was beginning to push the standards far past whatever this old has-been climber had ever been able to accomplish. Ben was completely shed off High School at Nome-Beltz and had taken a NOLS course which he had financed with his own earnings. At the same time, I was lamenting the loss of my powers due to age, and was happy to be going to the mountains with an authentic young gun from the village. 

The Erratic located at the headwaters of the Sinuk River

 A summer job impended for Ben so we went to the Kigs early season, two trips in late May and early June. Here lies the pompatice of failure for both trips: 1. Expend too much energy wallowing in snow on the hike in. 2. Subtract energy from the actual climbing when you finally get there. True equation, for me at least, but even Ben admitted he was tired by the time we reached the actual rocks after lifetimes of post-hole-packing.

Ben on the John Tor

SLOG RATIO = Number of miles hiked on the approach divided by number of pitches climbed. A high slog ratio means too much approach. A low slog ratio means lots of climbing with very little approach. Crags close to the road will have a slog ratio equal to less than one. Belaying from the car constitutes a slog ratio of nearly zero. For the purposes of this post, our first trip into Crater Creek had nine miles of brutal slogging over half a pitch of wretched climbing for an absolutely dismal slog ratio of 18, and our second trip had eight miles of backpacking over two pitches of chess climbing for an appalling slog ratio of 4. Doing climbs with slog ratios as high as these elicits questions such as: Are you crazy bro? Fly to Vegas, take bus to Red Rocks.    

Ben on Paul

       "You can't see the walls of Crater Creek until you turn the corner eight miles up there." Weak sauce of the Mind to get us up eight miles of occasional bushwacking over collapsible snow. We provided proof that mental energy exhibits measurable mass. For, if you emptied your mind, like Kwai Chang Kaine upon the rice paper, the Spring snow crust would support your weight. But if you entertained thoughts that invariably creep into one's mind unbidden— the glue of town, the stove you left on,  the bursting of a blister on your heel— you'd suddenly find yourself post-holing, one leg stabbed up to your crotch in the snow, and a freaking enormous pack full of ropes and hardware bearing down, the mass of which, obviously, can be tossed aside in this proof, as the mass of your pack was the same before and after your thoughts took on the extra weight of mind that made the snow crust collapse.

Kigluaik Mountains showing the two sites featured in this post. Tigaraha is mismarked.
Real Tigaraha is over by the Fab Four.

     The Togs of Crater Creek are denotations on my "Miller-Amato Geological Map of the Kigluaik Mountains." Next to little fingernails of pink located in the West Fork of Crater Creek is the stamp, "pC-Tog", which stands for "preCambrian Thompson Creek Orthogneiss." "Orthogneiss" is a fancy name for total choss that once was, and still mainly is, granite. By my count there are seven distinct Togs leading up the west fork culminating in Tog 7, which is the big unnamed peak at the head of the valley, Peak 3800+. Of course, there are different ways to delineate "one tog unit" of a wall. Tog 3 is the best tog, sporting the classic Slimedog Millionaire, (IV, 5.9). Ben and I came a-slogging in the early Spring of 2022 with an attractive crack system on the First Tog in mind. 

West Fork of Crater Creek, May 30, 2022. The first three togs are visible on the left.

          A day of wet slogging brought us to a camp in boulderfields. When  we got to the base of the route the next day, the north-facing cliff rose straight up out of a steep snowfield. Moats between cliff and snow guarded access. A cold clammy film of moisture seemed to coat the rock. The dread of vertigo that had plagued my golden years of climbing gnawed just outside the periphery of my vision. Both Ben and I had envisioned summer rock climbing on warm rock. This was not that. Stoke sagged. Mojo faltered. Ben led up most of a pitch, put in an anchor, yo-yoed back down, and we spent the rest of our time top-roping around, practice climbing on our little slab area. Ben was kind about accommodating my disability. I accrued another chicken-out to my name. It doesn't matter. They've long since rescinded my climbers license.  

Tog 1

     A week later, Ben and I repeated the process, having learned nothing from Crater Creek the week before. We post-holed into the Sinuk and I accrued a second chicken-out. This post carries an overarching message: don't be too eager, in a year of high snow and cool Spring temperatures, to get into the Kigs for summer rock climbing.   

Ben fooling around on unclimbed wide on George Tor.

    "Fab Four Tors" is my pet name for the four, prominent, eighty-foot tors poking from the crest north of Tigaraha. (At this point, let us take a moment to remind the kigs-reader:  Tigaraha, "The Index Finger," remains mismarked on most maps.  Real Tigaraha is the unmistakeable, fingerlike projection located one valley over to the west from the map's False Tigaraha.) Viewing the Fab Four from the east, left to right, they are John, Paul, George, and Ringo, plus a fifth tiny tor that can only be George Martin, or perhaps Mal Evans. Prior to going there with Ben in 2022, I had already bagged all four tors on various trips over the last two decades. George was the hardest. A tricky 5.9 lead on the east face led to the mop top. Ringo went via a steep 5.9 lead on the north. John and Paul are easier. I used to routinely solo the great songwriting duo on any number of trips over the years. I was hopeful Ben and I could finish the route Mikey Lean and I had started but not finished years ago, the North Arete of the West Tig. As the previous weekend at Crater Creek, Ben and I ended up thwarted by too many miles of post-holing, as well as the ongoing decomposition of Ian's climber mind.

Looking up North Arete of West Tig.

    The Spring of '22 was during the final quell before the Kigs-road. Even now, as I write this in '24, I don't know the name by which the graphite road will be called. It was the old days. It was still a fucking wilderness out there. On a Friday night, Ben and I parked the car in the familiar quarry at Mile 29 and began to beat tundra due west with big climber packs on our backs. This was the milk run to Mosquito Pass in the old days, eight miles of tussocks, slush crossings, horrendous mosquitoes, and river crossings, which I suffered many, many times, and I would suffer again if it would take the road away. We took a north up the upper Sinuk drainage, hoping to get to the good camp at the Erratic. But we got dragged down prematurely by our 30 kilo packs. 

Big hill to get up to the tiny tors

     The north cirque of Tigaraha (which most likely doesn't possess enough glacier anymore to constitute a glacier) was a nightmare the next morning. Endless interminable snow-fields led up the giant slope to the tiny tors at the top of the hill. If you entertained one, errant thought, BOOM, you found yourself post-holed to the crotch. When finally we dragged ourselves to the top, I was too pooped to evince much raw psyche for climbing. Even Ben admitted to a level of approach fatigue, to some measurable diminishment of climbing psyche due to the wide lake of postholes we had crossed. A sad but common tale in the Kigs back in those days BTR (Before The Road) when the slog ratios were, appallingly, in the eights, meaning eight miles of slogging to reach one piddling little pitch of climbing .

Closer to town, the new wave of Nome boulders, Ben and Braden, were pulling 
down hard at the Sunset Rocks in 2022.

      We roped up. Ben led a pitch up John tor, then Paul tor. I marveled that I had routinely soloed this great song-writing duo during my days of decade past. It was only 5.6. But now, a victim of WACHD (Wasting Aging Climber's Head Disease), I did not feel relaxed on the rock, even though the rock of the Fab Four Tors is some of the best granitic gneiss on the Seward Peninsula... which is not saying much, as the whole of Beringia appears to be a wasteland of metamorphic choss. Late afternoon brought chills, scud, and breeziness. There was some of that cold damp film upon the rock again. The old man, (me), was doddering about the tors indecisively, muttering, thinking about that scene in Deep Play where Silvo Karo decides to go in for coffee instead of climbing. Ben wandered the tors, perhaps similarly stupefied, I'm not sure, in wonderment of the rock sculpture. We had screwed the pooch, again. There would be no notable first ascent of the North Arete of West Tig. For me, another chicken-out would be checked in my registry. As always, it was grand beyond description to be in the mountains, in the High Kigs, among the topples of gneiss and schist, with mighty Oquienuhk the Snow-capped hanging tall just right over there, with Ben, excellent human being that he is. It was time for him to go to work. So we headed down. 

Ben, Braden, Vince, and others are putting up harder problems than I ever did, taking Nome
rock climbing to new levels. Here are Ben and Braden at Windmills.