Peak 3147 Expedition On Trial

 (above)   The smoking gun. The date is April 6, 2013, 21 Saturdays Ago.  The photo clearly shows Max, Riley, Kevin, ad Nate hanging out and enjoying themselves in a sheltered spot under Mt.Osborn.  Allapa admits to taking the picture.  Nate and Allapa had already stated their  day's objective to be a climb of a technical nature further down the Grand Central Valley.  So why aren't they getting after it? 

  What follows is an analyis of a case that was rendered in Kigs-Court 20 Saturdays Ago in March of 2013, Kigsblog vs. Nate and Ian, in response to a claimed "Technical Chicken Out"on the North Face of Crater Lake Mountain by said defendants.  Because of the long stretch of Post Traumatic Fog Disorder brought on by seriously horrendous incidents since that time, Kigsblog has not been able to report on this monumental ruling until now.  The influence of the case upon the subsequent GNAR in the Sluicebox Couloir makes this analysis all the more ironic. 
        The purpose of filing suit against myself back in the Spring was to jack my climbing frame of mind into an "Alaska Range state of awareness" in preparation for summer climbs on McKinley and Deborah.  Even a cursory reading of Kigsblog through the last several years will reveal the extent to which my mental preparedness for the Alaska Range had deteriorated.  The complacency evidenced by one lame post after another documenting a moment's clinging to a lump of frozen tundra close to Nome, the endless references to the dreaded GLUE of TOWN (a relentless inertial force composed not only of comfort, lack of motivation, and disorganization, but all the good things of life in town as well, the world of family and community and fun), as well as the atrophy of climbing skills due to forever approaching climbs rather than climbing them—  all these tendencies had to be cut away with the machete.  So my intention was to use the authority of the blogosphere to call bullshit on myself with a trial.
        Here then, is an account of the events leading to the trial, and a partial transcript outlining key precedents.  I thought for a while afterwards the ruling had done its job and motivated Allapa to achieve a higher level of alpine climbing, but as so often happens, the legislation held unforeseen consequences, including horrendous ENMANGLEMENT of beloved partners, and excessive COMA-HAGGERY for the entire tribe.

(above)  Looking northwest up Grand Central Valley.  Nate and I were appointed to climb a new line on Pk. 3147, on the 45° gneiss-ribbed face that defines the right side of the peak.  But we started having, to invoke Buchanan, "entirely too much fun" with Max, Riley, and Kevin, our Sno-Go-ciates.  So Nate and I ended up NOT CLIMBING.  Failure?  Success?  It was up to KigsCourt to decide.  

       It was the first Saturday in April.  Nate had hooked up with three other clubbers riding on two machines and it felt great to be clutching it up with Max's boarding crew on a Saturday in Spring.  No one in the party had ever visited the hidden Northeast Cirque of Osborn, and I was intent on checking the ice conditions there in the Sluicebox for the upcoming epic with Andy, so I showed everybody the secret keyhole in the moraines which leads to a long, recently-ablated gully curving around the mountain to the Grand Central Glacier, if it indeed qualifies as a glacier.  Storms swirl out of here on sunny days, the marble walls rime up like Ben Nevis, perpetual shadow hangs over the wall.  On the day we visited, the Cirque was strangely foggy, like a gauze, warm and still.  We might have stayed there for a ski, but everybody felt the underlying menace of the place, so we left.

(left) Stiff winds blowing in the main Grand Central  Valley as we made our egress. The Northeast Cirque, behind us around the corner where we hung out for a time was quiet.  This was completely the reverse of normal.      

    Can a decision to hang out and have fun with friends justify a no-shame bail?  That is the question at stake here.  Nate and I sprayed forth about how we would do a mixed climb on Crater Lake Peak in Grand Central, and made great show of packing our bags with the latest fads in ironmongery and cordage, then instead of climbing, hung out all day with the totally cool people we were snow-machining with, pictured above on the Grand Central Glacier, and had a lot of fun in the warm foggy paradise of snow, and made new friends.  Is this a justified bail, or should the label of "poser" be imprinted on my brand for too many repetitions of this spray and bail pattern.  Kigsblog vs. Nate and Ian was supposed to be the landmark case that settled the question once and for all.

Adjutant:  We are gathered here on Monday to review the weekend of climbing, as per standard procedure;  according to the measure of climbing, have we been true to the spirit of climbing, which is to:  1. do rad stuff 2. Worship the Earth  3. Achieve a homeostatic Ego/Id balance.
   
Judge:  As regarding the climb of last weekend, April the sixth, your attempt on the northeast face of Peak Thirty-One, Forty-Seven, how do you plead?"

Allapa:  I would like to plead a Technical Chicken Out, your Honor.

Judge:  As opposed to a mere Chicken Out, you mean.

Allapa:  Yes, your honor.

Judge:  (chuckles)  I see...

D.A.:  Your Honor, I object.  There is no such code for a Technical Chicken Out.

Judge:  Sustained.  Mr. Allapa, I hate to quote Yoda in KigsCourt, but 'Do, or do not, there is no try.'  You follow my meaning?

Allapa:  Yes, your Honor, it's just that the B.B.Y.E.S. (acronym for 'Bail Before You Even Start') was forced upon us by the circumstances that day.

Judge:  The circumstance of being with friends?  Or the circumstance of being too late to get up the route before nightfall?
  
Allapa:  Both.  Uh, don't those two follow consequentially upon each other?

Judge:   Adjutant, please read us the Kigsblogic definition of a TECHNICAL CHICKEN-OUT.

Adjutant:  A Technical Chicken Out is a decision to retreat made for valid reasons, but where the objective could have been reached with a greater level of commitment.

Judge:  As you know, Mr. Allapa, in a court of law, any bail, big or small, justified or not, constitutes a Chicken Out.  The T.C.O. clause was merely an appendum designed to mitigate the deleterious effects of excessive SELF-NEGATION after backing off an otherwise aesthetic boulder problem due to the key holds being loose rat traps.

Allapa:  Your Honor, that is exactly what I am seeking for myself.  Relief from self-negation.

D.A.:   May I remind you of the Qaaqtut matter in 2006?  Kigsblog vs. Allapa?  When he backed off a big vicious 5.6!  Rather an attractive bouldering line, as I recall.  Need I remind your Honor of the ruling in that case:  too many bails in a row may result forfeiture of climber status.

Allapa:  But the exact number of Bails was never stipulated!

Judge:  Overruled.  Allapa is correct, and out of order.

D.A.:  He can't even remember the last time he didn't bail!

Judge:  Order!  Now,  look, when you backed off the boulder problem—  uh, what was it called again?

Allapa:  Qaaqtuq.  It means, "It bursts off."

Judge:  Kack Took, right.  When you backed off Kack Took, there was no question it was fully justified.  You were going to get squished, your body mashed into the multi-ton flake of rock like the heel of God stepping in fresh turd, your friends writing enconiums on various internet sites, your beautiful boulder problem lying on top of you.  This, however, is a different situation.  A pattern is developing in which you are justifying your own lack of climber will-power with these silly rationalizations.

(above)  Another view of Pk. 3147.  I took a picture of this beautiful peak and just had to SLAP a vulgar red line of ascent upon its flanks.  The line shows approximately where Laurent Dick, Kevin Bop and I did a semi-technical face route in 2005.  This whole cursed trial comes from Nate and me making a simple decision not to climb this face again.

Allapa:  Your Honor, on behalf of myself and Nate, we invoke the NO SKETCH PARTNER LAW to justify our bail, thereby postponing forfeiture of our climbing license for said period of time required to fulfill promise of total mental commitment on the Sluicebox Couloir in weeks to come.

Judge:  Adjutant, please read the Kigsblogical definition for the "No Sketch Partner Law."

Adjutant:  The NO SKETCH PARTNER LAW states that the scope of your climbing ambitions must conform to the mean climbing ambitions of the group you are with.

Allapa:  I would like to take this chance to point out that this is a LAW.  Thou shalt not be an asshole is how one would say it in the mountains.

Judge:  Order!  Are there any further questions for the defendant?

D.A.:  Yes, your Honor.  (turns to Allapa)  Please tell the court once again your reasons for the Bail Before You Started on Peak Thirty-One Forty-Seven on April 6, 2013.

Allapa:  As I stated previously, I didn't want to sketch on the nice people we were with.  I mean, it was no big deal at the time, we got a late start, we decided not to climb, we hung out and did this sort of snow-boarding water-skiing thing on the Kougarak Road.  So what, right?

D.A.:  So what, yes, unless you care about the status of your climbing license...  This bail on Peak Thirty-One Forty-Seven fits into a long-term pattern of bailing:  GLUE of TOWN leads to NO SKETCH PARTNER leads to NOT CLIMBING.  It's all very fine and beautiful, but the natural consequence according to Kigslaw should be forfeiture of climbing license.

 Allapa:  Objection, your Honor. This consequence is not written into the stipulation, nor is the precise amount of bails specified.

Judge:  Sustained.

 (left)  Allapa detained at the start of a skiing trip by the GLUE of TOWN.  The GLUE is an elemental force that sucks like a rip-tide at the ankles of the climber as he or she is trying to gain escape velocity from the place in which they have been situated.  Little, last-minute tasks are a common constituent of the GLUE.  Like a cartoon character who has stepped in glue, the attachments of town form elastic tendrils attached to the climber's feet which retract the climber's forward mountain,, causing the climber to come springing back into town after only a few miles, usually to retrieve the crampons he or she forgot, or to log out their computers.

Adjutant:  In the matter of KigsCourt vs. Nate and Ian, the bail from Peak Thirty-One Forty-Seven on April 6, the honorable judge will now decide.

Judge:  Mr. Allapa, let me ask you a question.

Allapa:  Yes, your Honor.

Judge:  Did you have fun?

Allapa:  Fun?

Judge:  It's a simple question.  Did you have fun?

Allapa:  Yes.  Yes, we did have fun, your Honor, me, Nate, and the other clubbers,  a whole lot of fun.  Mountains floated in three-dimensional white ether, and I was so grateful to be out there NOT ALONE, not alone in that unsettling, lonesome, Kigsian way when the GLUE of TOWN pushes on your heart like G-Forces swirling towards a drain, makes you miss all your friends and hold your entire life out at arm's length so that you feel—

Judge: Yes, uh, so noted, had a bit of coffee, did we?  Yes.  Clerk, let it be noted that Mr. McRae had fun in the mountains on the day of his bail from Peak Thirty-One, Forty-Seven.

Now, Mr. McRae, you have overlooked the obvious.  The ALEX LOWE CLAUSE forces me to throw out this whole case.  Adjutant, please read the Alex Lowe Clause for the court.

Adjutant:  The best climber is the one having the most fun.

Judge:  Since you had fun, you are the best climber in the world, even though you did no climbing whatsoever.  No self-negation is merited, no revocation of climbing license warranted, and your bail is nullified.  Any coding would be irrelevant to your future climbing.  Case dismissed!

audience: (murmuring)

Judge:  Order!  Order in KigsCourt! One more thing!

Mr. Allapa, I would be remiss in not pointing out your obvious legal escape from sanctions via the Alex Lowe Clause.  But I would also be remiss in not dispensing you a piece of stern advice.  

After thirty years of alpinism, you know the score well enough by now:  if the climb is worth it, you spend the chips.  If you decide to spend the chips, you don't waste them on doubt, hesitation, and self-questioning.  Don't waste your chips on a load of drivel like this kigsblog post.  Simply climb.  Or do not climb.  Classifying your bails on a hierarchy is a giant ladder of shit.  You have some grave meditation to do, young man!  Empty your mind.  Focus on the mountain.  And organize your junk in town.  Now, I recommend you go home and read Extreme Alpinism and The Rock Warrior Way.  

(left)  Andy Sterns last week dry-tooling in eighty-degree temperatures on the artificial wall at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.  FAQ:  "How's Andy?"  A:  "Check him out!"    

     The judge was actually waving his prodigious index finger at me as he spoke.  Make no mistake, I was greatly chastised.  I left the court room with my tail between my legs.  I vowed right then and there I would pack my sack for the Sluicebox, and if the time came I would send with no hesitation, no attachments.
       And that is essentially what happened.  During weeks to come, Andy and I talked on the phone twice daily, him in Fairbanks, me in Nome, and it was all business and obssession with the weather.  When things did finally line up, and we found ourselves starting up the route on Friday, April 19, green lights stretched ahead.  There was no thought of a bail, no hesitation.   Thoughts of the controversy surrounding the long pattern of Technical Chicken-Outs was far from my mind.  If the judge was wagging his finer, I wasn't thinking about it.
          The Sluicebox was only supposed to be a training climb for my return to the greater ranges.  I was getting back that "Alaska Range feeling."  You know, the one where the mountain is rumbling, and avalanching, and shooting stones, and giving out suddenly beneath your feet, and you're coming out of denial about the danger fast, and you know it will lead to great wisdom later on, but for now you're scared to ever-loving death.
         "You have to sort of write yourself off before one of these jobs," said Doug Scott.  Well, thanks in part to the trial of Peak 3147,  I had actually been able to achieve that sort of focus and detachment.  I was able to return to the glorious stupidity of youth and go for it.  But to what end?  My partner is MANGLED and I'm back where I started, taking forever to get on rappel because I don't in my heart believe the anchors will hold, turning back on a trip after a day because I can't handle the solitude, spending weeks embedded in the GLUE of TOWN with all its charms, and staring upward as if hunted from above.  Nothing to do, but start climbing again from scratch.  Let's hope there's not another trial.

(above) Sluicebox couloir.  X marks where the rogue rock hit.  • marks rappel points.   One interesting thing this summer was Andy and I got to hang out and compare memory traces on the Accident in the Sluicebox.  Still only meta-data is available to us, but my theory of a single rock coming from above that augured in to the 45° snow right next to Andy's stance, followed by an avalanche several seconds later, was corroborated by him.

Twin Mountain T.C.O.

       Last weekend, the idea was to create a sort of Slovenian turf climbing wall in the Snake River valley upriver from Nome, but as so often happens when a trip to Twin Mountain is planned in January, we got hypothermied out.  The previous time we tried a trip to Twin Mountain in January three years ago, my friend, Chris, the dentist, froze his fingers and branded his belly with the metal of his belay plate.  "I can't feel my fingers," he said the next day.  "I don't think it's a good thing when a dentist can't feel his fingers."

(above) Nate treading lightly in front of 100 ft. quartzite/choss south face of North Twin, Snake River Valley, Saturday, January 2016, 2013.

        Technical Chicken-Out: a decision to retreat made for valid reasons, but where the objective could have been reached with a higher level of commitment.

      For example, my day at Twin Mountain with Nate Skains possessed all the hallmarks of a Technical Chicken-Out.  Stepping off my machine on the Snake River, I broke through the ice and soaked my right foot—  the magnitude of the electromagnetic EXCUSE ATTRACTOR surged upwards.  Remembering the avalanche-laden, frost-nipping debacle with Miller, Graham, Joni, and Jeff three years earlier, the magnitude of the EXCUSE ATTRACTOR surged higher again.   When we finally got to the crag (after a heroic snow-machining effort on Nate's part crossing the Snake River on a secret trail known to him from his Fall moose meanderings) many, many valid reasons existed for us NOT TO ROPE UP for the pitch for which we had snow-machined sixteen miles north of town. 

(left) Slovenian turf pitch.  Keeps getting away, as if the cold conspires to protect it.

      Roping-up would entail hideous minutes of foodling with tiny things beyond the horizon of our big-bellied puffy coats.  Eskimo dancing at the belay. Burning of chrome moly on bare fingertips.  Already, the volume of water pooled in my right Scarpa Invierno was permanently frozen into  over the bunched-up folds of my father-in-law's venerated wool socks.  In my mind I saw the snow-machine ride home, stopping Nate to ask if I could stick my foot on his belly inside his parka.  Our decision was made: forego the complications of the rope and solo around on moderate ground...

(left) A bit of mixed on South Twin.

        Bouldering happened.  Rad climbing was achieved.  But the whole escapade constitutes a Technical Chicken-Out because we could have tried to climb the Slovenian Dirt Pitch, but didn't.  
        When we got home after a long cold ride, dear Clem's sock would not come out of my right boot--  frozen in.  I wrestled my foot out of the sock and plopped the foot up on the kitchen table in the good light for the moment of truth:  no frostbite!  Sometimes frostbite creeps up on you.  Any later home, though, and them capillaries in my thrice-damaged toes woulda started a-shunting away again. 

(right) Nate starting up Graham's Gulley, low-angle but loaded with snow that had been saturated with rain and then freeze-dried over weeks past.

      Technical Chicken-Outs do not necessarily bring shame.   T.C.O.'s have kept me alive, I am convinced.  Yet, if  I look at the nodal points of the classically-shaped EXCUSE ATTRACTOR surrounding our Saturday Twin Mountain outing, I see the usual culprits:  the late start;  organizational chaos;  my teaching job that kicks my ever-loving ass all week and leaves me drained as a battery, the warning light on Ultra-Man's chest that is beeping.

      .

(left) North Twin and Nate.  We felt compelled to visit both twin summits, making for a nice FELL WALK and solo session.

      The Slovenian Hardman Icon in my mind squints at me in the glare.  He doesn't understand why I am not up on the pitch.  He is indifferent to the cold that is shunting the blood away from our capillaries.  Having boots encased in ice is just another day.  There is amusement at the corners of his smile, with a trace of derision, for the pampered American in which he is embedded, and therefore has no right to judge.   Instead of following through on the pitch, I went home to the fleshpots of Nome, like Silvo Karo deciding to go for coffee.

(above) Nate bouldering in wind, King Mountain, 2 Saturdays ago, ice crystals slashing painfully at corneas. 

(above) Engstrom's Mountain, 3 Saturdays ago.  This was the only picture I got, camera bum in the cold.  We top-roped the Orange Wall, 5.10b in summer, M5 or 6 on dry tool, with excellent keyhole limestone pockets for the picks, a dry tool testpiece I've only managed once in good style on top-rope.

             Proof of climbing, which is what this blog is, layers of a tree, each new weekend adventure a ring of spray...  Nate has passed all the litmus tests.  He came to Nome and went climbing and wielded ice tools and rode snow-machine and haunted the gym and quoted Royal Robbins and escaped the GLUE OF TOWN and bouldered and "broke the heart of kith and kin, and roamed the world at will."  But like all true climbers who land in Nome, he is soon getting on that plane again and returning to the greater ranges.  But tomorrow, perhaps, the Kigs may permit yet one more penetration so we can drive the fuzzy cathedrals before Nate flies.... 

Dorothy Falls

       Analogy for Interior Alaskan ice climbers:
  
Fairbanks, Alaska is to Dragonfly Falls
as 
Nome, Alaska is to Dorothy Falls. 

       The analogy holds, though Dorothy be not half Dragonfly.  Dorothy is where climbers are generally referred when the question is asked: "Is there any ice climbing round Nome?," though what the climber finds after hiking up the wonderful Dorothy Creek is only a paltry, rounded, 20 ft. blob of blue ice, WI 2 at best.
         I had climbed there many a time in the past, but not since the inception of Kigsblog in 2009, when Nate Skains and I spontaneously decided to motor out to mile 24 Kougarak Road on Saturday a week ago.  Since Kigsblog has never posted on the topic of Dorothy Creek, here arises the opportunity to "poo poo" this "popular" ice climbing area, just as a Fairbanks hardman might poo-poo Dragonfly for being the popular destination of weekend noobs, with a parking lot full of cars and young people in shiny new Gore-Tex, when the real climbing lies hidden deeper inside the canyons labyrinths, or up in the highest mountains.

       Nate and I developed exoskeleton as we ran laps up and down.  Dorothy Falls drip-streamed blue and wet, with the temperature well below zero;  water drip-dropped copiously from the surface of the ice as we climbed, then flash-froze onto our creaking Gore-Tex suits.  Our soft, warm bodies became encased inside a hardened, jointed, translucent shell, the memory of our warm-blooded, mammalian selves sealed over by cold, insectile sensibility— with the need for stealth and constant movement to keep from freezing immobile.  I was destined to ride home in Nate's Jeep still wearing my crampons frozen onto my  feet by the exoskeleton. 

       Cleaning out cobwebs in the brain pathways that light up with ice climbing... cobwebs accumulate rapidly while you were away on the rock... Had to rediscover that weight-shift, "monkey hang" thing in the hips where you stick your tushy out into space behind you even though your brain does not wish to stick your tushy out, only then does the absurd little system of opposed spikes on your toes and hands dig in to the ice correctly...   Death-knuckling of the shafts (due to the primordial fear of being surrounded by a steep walls with no purchase or friction whatsoever) gradually began to subside, and it was relearned that you barely have to hold on to the shafts at all.  Soon, I was bored at Dorothy Falls, a good sign...  We soloed many laps, trying to get the feeling back of movement over ice, enjoying the bonus adrenalin rush that comes each time you make the Zone 2 pullover at the top.

       The real fun comes on the mixed highballing problems to the right or left of the icefall that climb over the 20 ft., circular, marble wall that forms the Falls amphitheater:  steep little ramps and corners tufted with frozen dabs of turf necessitating stemming and pull-overs that are not without mental stimulation owing to the consequences of a mistake.  One M-5 move from last Saturday stands in my memory:  frontpoints precisely stemmed out on crystals in a nicely formed corner, you lean out and sink a big fatty in an overhanging, overflowing, overgrowing blob of turf, and without hesitation at 16 ft. you lean  your full weight back on the rig and yard up. 

       Johnson was hungry that Fall.  A man just gets tired of ptarmigan, that's all.  He was stuck out at Dorothy with everything iced up, no early season snow, the days short and dark, Nome looking very far away, and no company at the cabins except for Mr. Wiggins, and wasn't he a barrel of fun?

         One good thing:  the Company had set him up with some fine gear to use that season.  He particularly enjoyed the custom creeper / snowshoe rig he had engineered from all the truck:  right now, in this cold drought of a December, he was only using the creepers.

         After breakfast one morning around Christmas, Johnson went for his walk up the Creek, walking right out on the creek ice which was blue and bulging with suppressed flow.  As usual, he continued all the way up the drainage (which, Johnson had to admit, was not seeing the kind of color they had come to expect from it in years past) until he reached the waterfall, a charmed little spot that just made a hell of a swimming hole on a hot summer day.

       Now, Johnson, as you know a student of Eckenstein, Fehrmann, and Perry-Smith from his time at the Technicum in Saxony, as you might predict had on prior occasions executed a few moves of technical rock-climbing on the limestone walls at the swimming hole.   This Fall he had fashioned sharp and wicked hooks for his hands with a clever harness system, and with the excellent creepers on his feet intended to climb the ice of Dorothy Falls itself.

      But his efforts were over in a few seconds.  Johnson found his hooks and creepers bit the soft, pliable ice almost effortlessly.  A few kicks, and he had surmounted the steep bit in the creek.  Dorothy Falls had not been worth, as they used to say, "leaving the whiskey bar."  Johnson felt a bit embarrassed about his little divertimento--  it had taken him the better part of a day to fashion the gear.  No need to tell anybody about this one....  

       Beta:  find Dorothy Creek on the map, somewhere around Mile 20 something Kougarak Road.   Cross Nome River which is braided in this area, crossing can be problematic but usually not.  Head west up Dorothy Creek drainage at a red cabin visible from road.  Falls is a mile or two up the drainage.  If summertime and bearanoid, walk up on hillside above the drainage to the left (south) and easily drop back down into drainage at Dorothy Falls amphitheatre.  If not bearanoid, enjoy walk up the creek, about anybody can do it.  If creek is frozen, definitely wear crampons, the hike is almost always interesting and really fun and never deep enough to truly drown.  When Nate and I hiked it last Saturday there sure was a ton of overflow building the creek up.  A great place for beginning ice climbers, never hurts to bring a rope and some screws.

Ayasayuk, Fifth Iteration

(above) Raina on pointy summit of 4-story Pea Gravel mound, Ayasayuk, November 3, 2012.  

(above) Same spot 4 days later.  The ice grew surprisingly while I was in Fairbanks for those four days to say goodbye to a friend and mentor.  Though I climbed the ice visible in the picture to a discerning eye, a complete ascent of the entire cliff would require two more trips. On the sunny, gorgeous day I finished the climb, my cameral malfunctioned, so these rather gray images are from earlier trips.  The ice has continued to grow, and by Thanksgiving was blue and bulging. 

      I've down-graded the fall situation from "mangled for six to nine months" to "only minor enmanglement, maybe just a deep bruise," should I lose my purchase on this steeply canted mass of huge boulders frozen in place by semi-vertical frozen dirt.  This down-grade makes me feel better and able to enjoy the spectacular situation:  the slushy, still blue ocean stretching over the curve, and the dull yellow of the frozen dirt cliff against the sky.
        I am leaving the low-angle water ice and kicking a tentative foot into the upper dirt pitches for the first time.  Last week the dirt did not feel good, but the dirt feels good today, not the usual sensation of a cohesive mass ready to solifluct at the slightest weight.  It's Thanksgiving day.  Five above, no wind-- the Norton Sound is congealing with the first skins of sea ice.
     Now, up on the cliff, barely a centimeter of dirt glued onto a solid granite slab. Swings produce sparks.  But the steepness is not sufficient to create real tension;  magically, front points glue onto blops of dirt, good sticks are everywhere in pillows of dirt, the dirt will not landslide today.  Curved plane of blue ocean drops away as rapid progress is made scuttling through surreal steep slabs of falling sand, saturated and sculpted to the perfect consistency for dry tool climbing.
      The rim.  Four hundred feet above the silenced breakers. Chips have been spent in karmic lotteries in order to complete the ascent of this shattered facade, all for nothing:  this wall will never last.  This itereation, too, will be dynamited into the same type of dust which made the frozen climbing of it possible today.

    (above) Upper pitch of ice, Fifth Iteration, Ayasayuk 2012.

  The aquifer is not dead after all.  The seep will have its way. It twists and turns as they blow it this and  that.  Each iteration sees its own seep, but never in the same way twice, so dry in previous years I had the temerity to think it over and done. But pieces of earlier iterations reappear, toes of buttresses remembered from years back, ramps with a particular ice flow, certain distinctive cracks in the granite, all of it overladen with this gooey frozen mashed-potatoes dirt that just makes it the most fun continuous simulated alpine climbing on this fine Thanksgiving morning, until I am going mad trying to piece the whole puzzle together of how this cliff has progressed through such accelerated geological cycles, where it ends and begins. 
    Is there anyone else out there who has followed these iterations?  A foreman, an operator, perhaps? Is there a mastermind behind this cliff, a Daedulus of these iterations?  If so, allapa must not come forward, for he is surely trespassing, but let him salute you, he is one of your biggest fans, besides the same three ravens that always occupy the choice eyries, year after year.  These iterations I have shored against my ruins...

 (above) Lower drip, Fifth Iteration. 

       Clem was gone.  That is how this year's iteration started. 

Take a look at poor Peter

He's lying in pain

Now let's all go 

Run and see

Run and see

Run and see

    So I got off the plane in Nome at mid-day, all death-mongered out on the passing of Clem in Fairbanks, on the subject of which there can in truth be no words to sufficiently convey.  He was Kristine's father, and Raina's grandfather, and my father in law, and a father figure to many, and kigsblog has not the parameters to express the respect I feel.  So when I got back home I headed down the coast posing as a surfer thinking it was good to be alive.  
     Very surprised to find drips of live blue ice that had grown nicely since Raina and I had visited the spot a week previous.  Like a starving mouse seizing crumbs, I was soon soloing.  To be climbing water ice so close to a road:  it was as if the Seward Highway had come to the Seward Peninsula!  A pitch of WI1 was followed by a steepening dirt apron:  I wanted to boulder out onto the steeper dirt for kicks, but my mind saw dump-truck-sized loads of sand and gravel and boulders oozing out under my knees if I stepped up on the steep.  
    So I settled on path of least resistance, and soon gained a full-on road that transects the upper face.  This led to an enormous wall of dirt (sand and gravel would be a more apt term) with one, distinct dribble of water ice coming down.  This I soloed, but the pitch ended abruptly in a ridiculous dirt wall where the spring bubbles out of the face, ridiculous because who would ever want to climb such a slag heap?  With the orange in the West fading fast, I retreated.

(above) View from cliff.  
 Back in town, back stuck in the gluey GLUE CENTRAL of Nome, it nagged me that I had not rimmed out on my initial attempt at this year's Sixth Iteration of Ayasayuk.  I have a little Kigs-rule that states that the yearly ascent of the Ayasayuk quarry face must go from bottom to top with a maximum of vertical, and climb over whatever mediums may present themselves for that given year:  ice, mud, rock, or lameness. 
   I went back with Nate days later, but our workaday, late-afternoon formula for TOWN GLUE ESCAPAGE did not permit an ascent of the entire face;  once again, I had only time for the ice.  The dirt headwall to the rim remained unclimbed. 
    It nagged at me still.  Kigsblog lay constipated until a complete ascent could be made on the all-time Thanksgiving Day.  A person can write, and say they had an epiphany, and were laid bare upon the Earth, and were humbled by the great maker, and were weeping with thankfulness at the beauty and intensity of it all, but that wouldn't be anything at all the same as the actual moment it all happened.  Humility is to be found in the boulder-slathered fields of the quarry because it's all going to come down on you and crush you and bury you and be taken away in huge trucks and be forgotten.

     

(above) Chart from a previous post.  Simply add another slice to the bluff for the latest iteration.  As has been necessarily pointed out in earlier installations, the ordinal numbering of these Iterations is only relative from the author's point of view in space and time;  an older-timer than allapa might employ a different numbering system for the face of this ever-changing cliff. And I am glad to report the "friendly ice-making aquifer" is not dead after all.

Links to earlier posts:  Ayasayuk Iterations,   WI 3 or 4 pillar of Second Iteration,
Ayasuk 2010