Kigsblog: 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.