Five Foothill Winter

“Where was his boyhood now? Where was the soul that had hung back from her destiny, to brood alone upon the shame of her wounds and in her house of squalor and subterfuge to queen it in faded cerements and in wreaths that withered at the touch? Or where was he?

The kids teased me he was my brother. He had done some ski-mountaineering around Anchorage before he came to Nome, and some bold ski descents out on rocky St. Lawrence Island, plus he knew his way around a snow-machine. I was teaching fourth and he was teaching sixth, so it was natural the two of us would team up for a series of A.D.D.-stricken adventures this previous Fall and Winter of 2015.

Five foothills of Nome: A. King Mt. B. Mt. Brynteson C. Mt. Distin D. "Rocky Mt." E. Bear Mt.

 Snow conditions did not permit penetration into the deepest Kigs until the "wet dump event" of early March saved the Iditarod from a bumpy finish and finally brought some true accumulation. What follows in this post is a recounting of our adventures up to this point in the season, adventures that took place not in the Kigluaiks, but in the foothills of the range, and a survey of the mountaineering potential that awaits there in the Birketts, Hewitts, and Deweys of the Seward Peninsula, the medium-commitment objectives that await within the Nome radius.

Peak 2347 (Fox Mt.? Rocky Mt.?) on the left, and Pt. 1640 ("Rocky Mt. Bluff") on the right, near Milepost 22 on the Kougarak Road

He was doomed to get slaughtered from the start. It's an education thing. You see, if you remove the functional leadership from a cohort, the remaining student body is bound to wallow that much more. I had once been posted at his station in the "56er Pod," in the lee of our excellent charter school, and knew what it was to get utterly thrashed— thrashed by yourself, and those you serve, and your mind squeezed by unassailable paranoia as you walk your lesson plans like slack-lines across the abyss of each day. I could see that my friend, this portrait of the artist as a young man, was heading into a DOOM ATTRACTOR of significant magnitude, and parallel, in some respects, to the ones that had dogged me in my own "56er" days. 

Rocky Mt., aka Fox Mt., aka Pk. 2347: We parked near the old crane on the Kougarak Road around Mile 22. We left the 4-wheeler trail up Rocky Mt. Creek after half a mile and cut east across a steep ravine (little bushwhacking) up to the hundred-foot Bluff, which can offer decent mixed climbing if the temperatures have frozen it solid enough to avoid being a cliff of decomposing, body-mangling, head-bleeding choss.

          By September, he was beginning to show the first fringes of fray. Loose cannons roamed the hallway unsupervised and befuddled by adolescence, while this year's well-meaning administration walked confidently into the shadow of the valley of its own DOOM ATTRACTOR. No support was available. He flapped and floundered in a bog of learning disabilities and outmoded pedagogical practice perhaps ill-fitted to our clientele. His spirit was slowly evaporating. It was time to go to the mountains. "It is a way..." wrote Melville, "of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation..." So off we sketched to the first of the foothills.

Drew and Lucy on Rocky Mountain, looking west

“He was alone. He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and willful and wild hearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the sea harvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight and gay-clad light-clad figures, of children and girls and voices childish and girlish in the air.

Rocky Mountain (Pk. 2347), September 14, 2014

       One of the drawbacks of a foothill is that it is a foothill. Not, by definition, a mountain... On a foothill, a climber incurs great risk of a Non-Technical Climbing Foul because there is often no real climbing to be had. 

       A Non-Technical Climbing foul can be avoided at Pk. 2347 (which I will henceforth refer to as "Rocky Mountain" as I know of no other name for this hump) by means of a solo up the 100 ft. high choss cliff of Pt. 1640 ("Rocky Mountain Bluff") and which can be quite moderate and fun if the utter choss happens to be frozen together solid enough to prevent automatic death. But my partner had no crampons or axe that day, being more of a ski artist himself, so we bypassed the Bluff that day and hiked up the south ridge of Rocky Mountain, my fifth or sixth pilgrimage to the top of the hill. 

       My Non-Technical Climbing foul was later dismissed in court under the provision of the NO SKETCH PARTNER LAW, which allows a climber to NOT CLIMB if their partner is not prepared to climb. This allowed me to simply enjoy a nice day hiking up the mountain, instead of perching and preening on crampon stilts high enough above the ground to get seriously injured. It really didn't matter anyway as my climbing license was about to be revoked altogether due to my recent participation in a trip with known peak baggers.

Earp whacking turf on Rocky Mt. Bluff.  Years ago, on yet a different trip to Rocky Mountain, Joni and I skied off the wrong side of the summit in a whiteout, precipitating an epic of massive proportions that essentially went on for several days:  snow-machines, shoulder-deep snow, freezing rains, car wipeouts, knocking on people's doors in Dexter and Banner Creek, and forestalling a rescue by means of primitive internet connection. Huge fun, great times, full-scale memories...

         Rocky Mountain appears from most angles to be the highest and most massive of the Kigs foothills, not quite a Kig itself, but high enough to qualify as a Graham were it located in Scotland. My friend and I stood on its summit with the whole range hanging across the way, and the sun going down. It was that sad, frozen feeling of late Fall when the world is coming to an end, time is frozen, and you can view your entire life as if in the palm of your hand. Rose light bathed all my favorite summits in the whole entire world. In that moment, my colleague and I had finally attained freedom from our titanic Weltschmerz incurred far below in the crucibles of education. The last tendrils of TOWN GLUE snapped, our egos momentarily went to zero, and life and worries went to very, very small. In response, following Newton's Second Law, the swarming electromagnetic impulses of our energy bodies surged forward through the quantum foam like a school of darting fish, warping our time perception, creating that eternity feeling on the summit.

Allapa and good dog on summit of Rocky Mt.

           But soon enough, the mountain led us back down to the trail, and the trail back down to the car, and the car itself, of course, was a re-entry module specifically designed suck us back in to the GLUE of TOWN, back to the land of our fears, and self-wrought complications.

Mt. Distin (Pk. 2115), February 2, 2015

Drew micro-spiking up the south ridge of Distin

“A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender bare legs were delicate as a crane’s and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and soft-hued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips where the white fringes of her drawers were like featherings of soft white down. Her slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird’s soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some dark plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face.

          By February, the event horizon of my friend's DOOM ATTRACTOR had expanded outwards sufficiently to where it was exerting its influence upon several different domains of his life simultaneously. Psychological lynch mobs were assembling in the networks. A Facebook page called Nome Rant had emerged, on which any one of us might be slandered at any time. His van had stopped working, and the ventilation in his dirtbag hovel was poor. A relationship was creating disequilibrium in all quarters of his life. And, of course, the fleshpots of Front Street were never far from hand...

           He had, however, purchased a powerful, Polaris snow-machine and was "lunging at the harness" to take that monster sled to the hills, even though little snow lay upon them, and the roads still virtually open. Nevertheless, on a Sunday morning, with great smoke and thunder, we pull-started our machines, and thumbed the vectors up the Snake River towards Mt. Distin, for all practical purposes like Peter Fonda and Bruce Dern in The Wild Angels.

Mount Distin: In the summer, Glacier Creek Road leads 13 miles out to Mt. Distin from Nome and is doable by a most cars most of the time. We snow-machined up the road in February, punched through a small line of willows, and parked the machines as high as we dared on the slopes of Distin. In the Fall, it is possible for both Silver Creek and Steep Creek to sport a little ice climbing, but it ain't Valdez. I've climbed at the Bluff on several occasions, and in terms of rock quality, maybe it is Valdez, which is to say, terrible. Hiking Mt. Distin on a nice day is HIGHLY recommended. 

       If the Kigluaiks are a parabola open to the south, then Mt. Distin lies at the focus of the parabola. Mathematical proof could then demonstrate a line of sight to each point on the parabola, meaning you can theoretically see the entire range from Distin. It is the quintessential Nome foothill, a pyramid looming in the foreground of the larger Kigs in the distance, so that in certain visibilities it seems to aspire to be a Kig itself. Like its cousin Rocky Mountain to the east, Distin sports a Bluff with an 80 ft. cliff that can offer decent rock and mixed climbing, provided the climber can stomach the horror produced in his or her gullet caused by perching on the unstable Death Marble. 

Nearing the summit of Distin on a brilliant February day

“She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bent them towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot… The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the silence, low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep; …and a faint flame trembled on her cheek.

         The day we climbed Distin was so tremendously cold (yes it was, allapa, freezy-breezy, brass-monkey, witch-tit, well-digger's ass cold!) that the Judge had lifted the mandatory technical climbing requirements. The only way to stay warm in these kinds of chill factors is to keep your body continuously moving, so standing in one place to belay and messing around bare-fingered with little metallic toys is not mandatory. This left us free to flatfoot up the south ridge of Distin unroped, me in crampons and my friend in Katula Microspikes. The contention might be made that the south ridge of Distin provides the steepest and most technically-demanding line up the hill, but this kind of talk only serves to pump a hike into more than it really is: a walk-up. 

         Still, it was ice, and a fall would have mangled the faller, and the cold was so intense that you wouldn't last the time it took for your partner to make it to town on the snow-machine. We lacked, of course, emergency beacons, being too stricken by chronic A.D.D. to either find or remember such an item. Considering all these factors, I am certain our adventure that day constituted more than a mere walk-up.

Looking northwest from Distin

“Heavenly God!’ cried Stephen’s soul, in an outburst of profane joy. 

       The SNAP of various GLUE TENDRILS was felt deep within our souls the higher we climbed on Distin. Worries and cares were rendered inelastic in the extreme cold, and ours broke off and trickled away in the already-fading light. The worldview of our universe had narrowed down to the single point of keeping blood in our capillaries, so what was the point of further narcissism?  Too cold to stop on the summit, we continued over and down to our waiting machines which faithfully started after a couple of pulls, chariots to carry us back into the GLUESTREAM of town, with all its attendant confusion.

Ready for the 17 mile ride back to Nome from Distin

“He turned away from her suddenly and set off across the strand. His cheeks were aflame; his body was aglow; his limbs were trembling…

Bear Mountain (Pk. 1962), March 1 & March 8, 2015

        A component in his GLUE MATRIX and a major driver of his DOOM ATTRACTOR was his lack of skis— he had left them on the Island when he moved to Nome. Once the snow came in for Bear Mountain he lay neutralized. All he could do was wallow in the fleshpots, while the rest of Nome's small boarding and skiing community got after the excellent powder in Bear's northern bowl. 

Skiing up Mineral Creek under Bear Mountain

          The hip spot to ski and snowboard around Nome is a sweet little hill called Newton Peak, not far from town, about a mile from my driveway. There, the action-oriented and partiers alike gather at a little pullout on the Dexter Bypass that used to be the site of a rope-tow, now serviced only by your friend's snow-machine to take you to the top, unless you're willing to skin it up.  But few of these Nome skiers and boarders seem to ever make it around the corner to Newton's larger cousin on the Kougarak Road, Bear Mountain. 

Narrow gully on Mineral Creek leading to the north bowl on Bear Mt. This gully is not necessarily navigable by snow machine unless snow levels are very high.

       Rising above Banner Creek Subdivision, Bear Mountain, at 1,962 ft.,  is just 38 ft. short of a Graham, and gets you twice the skiing vertical of Newton. Though close to the road it is the biggest hill in its group, thus fully deserving inclusion in this post about significant foothills of the Nome Region. Mineral Creek Bowl on the north side of Bear is a natural powder-collection basin replete with a corniced rim and half-pipe drain exit, and I should be water boarded for putting a local secret like this on the Internet, even on a blog so obscure and ignored as Kigsblog, but the justification for doing this is to throw out a challenge to the green-dot people on Newton to get over to the blue squares on Bear. 

Tyler and Coco on the summit of Bear Mt., March 1, 2015. Note the stiff wind. Did I mention it was cold? Yes, very. This shot is all the more poignant, in retrospect. Several weeks after the shot was taken, Tyler was again skiing Bear Mt., this time down the prominent "Nose" on the west side of the hill, when his ski came off at high speed, which if you've seen this guy ski you will know was very high! A degree of enmanglement followed by self-rescue ensued. Bear Mt. has sure been a place of utmost fun with ultimate friends and utter adventure over all these years. Don't let go of that puffy coat, Tyler!

       Thanks to the new H2O Tazlinas got for a bargain at Beaver Sports in Fairbanks, my runs on Bear Mt. limit-pointed ecstasy. No more noodle city in the cruddly-cruddleton like the old days, instead a pair of enchanted swords lashed strongly to strong new Terminators, with a bewitching top-sheet design between the skis that makes them look like salmon swimming up the Tazlina when you look down as you link turns together. Not that good skis mattered on Bear this year so Utah was the powder in the bowl, you could have skied it on Snowshoe Thompsons.

Tiny dots are skiers in Mineral Creek Bowl, Bear Mt.

The weightless moment will not last

The derivative is not the function

A picture of skiing does not show skiing

Amplitude, frequency, wavelength

The tracks are not the ski itself

The skis are just the edges

The joy will not last

Over before it started

Here they come down over the lip

I slept through it sadly

Woke up at dinnertime and had morning coffee

The curtains held away the light 'til sunset

When you returned as if it were morning

Now we're off to the town for evening breakfast

The weightless moment will not last

Bear Mountain is far away

Over before it started

My skis lie far across the ocean

“Her image had passed into his soul forever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory…

Look closely and you might see Mt. Brynteson. The shovel there on the back of Smooth Andy G. proved an indispensable tool for me several times in March when I finally got to learn the truth about what a sinker that Bearcat can be.

Mt. Brynteson (Pk. 1757), March 22, 2015

        Iditarod 2015 came, and swallowed him. He seemed to vanish, into the wild fleshpots of Front Street perhaps, or maybe back to the Island to reunite with his skis, I don't know. Iditarod 2015 swallowed me as well. Debauchery from the night before cost me a day out of my hungover life.    

       GLUE MAGNITUDE was running high, but by Thursday I had extricated myself and was ready for a trip out to my old friend, Mt. Brynteson, out in the Snake River Valley hidden under thick fog. My back was sore from an Iditarod week spent digging out Super Smooth Andy G., the Arctic Cat Bearcat .570, after my initial attempt at going camping during Spring Break and penetrating to the deep water of the true Kigs had ended less than a mile after leaving my house in a bum willow-thicket crossing. So I settled once again for a mere foothill as my great Iditarod accomplishment, but once again the foothill did not disappoint, but proved more than adequate as a salve against civilization, and the befuddling mental residue of all its inconsistencies. 

The Brynteson Crags. A fine place to climb after a good ice storm

      Past the haunted Rock Creek Mine up Glacier Creek Road, around the corner a few miles, you can look up and see ribs of schist coming off the northwest ridge of Mt. Brynteson: for lack of no other term, the "Brynteson Crags." This can be an excellent place for mixed soloing and scrambling when conditions have fused the choss together by snow and ice. Much is the fun I've had on the Crags continuously bouldering over turf, rock, snow, and ice, a heightened illusion of exposure between the feet, and an award-winning view of Norton Sound to the south. Words cannot describe the fun and spiritual transcendence of the day in March I spent whacking tools into the Brynteson cliffs, eventually climbing up into sun shafts piercing the upper blue-sky world, so I won't even try.

King Mt. from down on the Kougarak Road, 2015. Tiny smudges on the left skyline are the bouldering circuit.

“He turned landward and ran towards the shore and, running up the sloping beach, reckless of the sharp shingle, found a shady nook amid a ring of tufted sand knolls and lay down there that the peace and silence of the evening might still the riot of his blood.

King Mountain (Pk. 1226), 2015

         So many worthy Nome foothills have been left out of the narrative: Anvil, Twin Mountain, Engstrom's,  the mysterious Pk. 2043 out by the Penny River, others... But this foothill post must conclude with a special shout-out to King Mountain, a large hump on the long ridge that runs between Snake and Nome rivers. The thing about King is that it's so accessible from town, yet the hike up from the Dexter Bypass Road always reveals King to be a bigger hill than you thought! 

       Near the top of King, one is rewarded with a classic little circuit of stepped bouldering cliffs, cracks, chimneys, highballs, slabs, jams, all on the King Mountain skyline, culminating in a big 25 foot overhang that sports an unclimbed M6/7 dry-tool problem (5.10b in shoes) and a genuine overhanging 5.9 offwidth. These rocks get directly plastered by the freezing-rain southwesters that slap in off the Bering Sea in Fall, and so receive extra-thick coats of the shellac that transforms them temporarily into fantastical ice-climbing terrain, though it should be noted that 2015 was a poor shellac-year, despite at least three major freezing-rains that came throughout the season.

  

“He felt above him the vast indifferent dome and the calm processes of the heavenly bodies; and the earth beneath him, the earth that had borne him, had taken him to her breast…

          PEEMARK:  I hereby solemnly and egotistically declare on the World Wide Web that I made more trips than I can remember to the King Mt. Rocks in 2014 and '15, and rubbed musk on all climbing problems V0 or M4 or easier, and squirted pee on the holds high and low, (but did not yet dry-tool the Backward-Z Crack without hanging, though I have peed on all the moves successfully). MARK!!

Red arrow points to an awesome ridge-mounted bouldering area on King Mt.

“He climbed to the crest of the sand hill and gazed about him. Evening had fallen. A rim of the young moon cleft the pale waste of sky like the rim of a silver hoop embedded in grey sand; and the tide was flowing in fast to the land with a low whisper of her waves, islanding a few last figures in distant pools...”

           Let Kigsblog leave him here, islanded by the tide, veiled behind whiteout, with the author unsure if the literary contrivances in these blog pages have done the least bit to convey the situation as it unfolded the past season, and uncertain of where he might be now. I am sure he will return to Kigsblog soon, whenever the season moves on from the semi-penetration of foothills to the full penetration of the Kigluaik proper, whenever he gets his skis back. All I can say is I felt like I could be myself around the man, which is a rare thing, and we had a great Fall and Winter in the foothills.

       

Iditarod 2014

(above) Drew assessing slope at Sampson Creek, looking northwest, through tilted iPhone.

        Like children at the beach running to the wave, Drew, Chelsea and I rode snow-machines tipsily towards the historic finish of Iditarod XLII at three in the morning. Drew wore Adidas with gym socks on his feet, and his colleague Chelsea rode two-up (whatever that means) on the back of a rather dimunitive Yamaha Bravo, through the same arctic -blizzard that had, a few hours earlier, taken four-time champion Jeff King out of the race. For all we knew, Aliy Zirkle and Dallas Seavey were around the next corner battling for first place, and we were the three slushes about to get tangled up in the historic finish.
      "This is blowing it! Let's turn around now before it's too late!"
       Surreal wind, pixellating long-term memory, the trip back wreathed in the fuzzy gauze of ground blizzard, the children running back from the wave without wetting their feet. Back at the Bering Sea Bar & Grill, we were amazed at how soon musher Dallas Seavey appeared behind us.  We must have narrowly avoided a faux pas.  Everyone was zonked out at 5 in the morning, Dallas Seavey most of all. Aliy Zirkle, with her beautiful second-place finish, wins the KigsMusher of the Year Award..


(left) My shadow is pointing east toward Sampson Creek.

        Drew, flown in for Iditarod from nearby waterlocked summits of Beringia and already fully embedded in the GLUE OF NOME, was hot to ski something. The bowls out back of Engstrom's Mountain seemed within range of a stretching GLUE-TENDRIL of town, and seemed also as if they might contain the UNPACKED we so desperately craved, so we calculated an escape vector from the Iditarod and roared off on our dreadful Hogs over bare, icy trails to a Monday appointment at Sampson Creek, near Mile 18 of the Kougarak Road, just past the most death-trappy spot on the whole 65-mile long road, an elevated gravel ramp way off the deck, guarded by an inquisitive troll that lives on a knoll in a mansion above the Nome River, and comes out to greet you should you slow your vehicle down.
       No Jackson Hole to be found at Sampson Creek. We did hydro-frack a few turns between ice patches in the upper bowls, and had entirely too much fun in the half-pipe of the creek, but the run wasn't even as good as the runs at Drew's home area on Sivuqaq. I had let Drew down, as well as under-represented Nome's skiing potential to a visiting dignitary. So, right then and there, an Iditarod ski-salvage trip was planned to Tom's Cabin, an idyllic bowl in the next valley to the west.  But first, it was back into the GLUE-STREAM sucking us back toward the fleshpots of town, and the flagrant Iditarod shenanigans awaiting us there.

(left) Drew's tracks at Sampson Creek. Due to low snow deepening the parabolic curve, it's been a fine year for half-pipes.

       Drew and I were to be joined on our skiing expedition to Tom's Cabin by the dog team of Janet Balice, winner of the GETTING OUT THE MOST AWARD for three seasons running now, plus Janet's daughter and new mushing partner, Chisana.  In lead dog position, the redoubtable DIBELS, one of Nome's top ten lead dogs of all time. Riding with me on the Bearcat, Lucy, the Tschingel of the Kigs, shmooshed up between the cowling and my body, learning to throw her weight out on the turns.

(above) Tom's, March 13, 2014. Dibels, Janet, Chisana, Lucy, Drew.

      Surely the enchanted bowl of Tom's would have snow.  Yes it did!  Snow that makes a sifting sound like that of silk, a distinct blanket, Utah powder, Hatcher Pass, sweet cherry pow pow, a foot deep. The souwesters off the Bering Sea slam into Monument Ridge and gently sift the powder grains into the big lee of the bowl, especially down a northeast-facing draw of which Drew and I found ourselves swishing and swashing for great moments of giddiness that didn't last long enough, this isn't the Nevada side of Heavenly here, folks. But redeemed, redeemed we were, and Nome skiing was redeemed as well, and our skis were sated, at least for the nonce, as we swooped down into the maw of Monument Creek, and made the short up to the cabin, to have some tea, and another run.

(above) Dogs at Tom's cabin

       We executed difficult climbing moves inside the cabin to avoid getting burned by the stove as we writhed about in the LED darkness trying to locate items, at least half the party hampered by possible diagnoses of A.D.D., but nevertheless drinking deeply of life and slush beers, and all departing friends.

(above) Kigsblog staff photographer Raina McRae skiing in Dry Creek, Nome, Alaska, Iditarod 2014, staff Mountaineering Dog Lucy in tow. In the background, bare frames from World War II barracks.

     In the midst of the Iditarod fun torrents, these totally cool Olympic dudes from Nananordic showed up like Pied Pipers with a boatload of skis and boots for children, and led the little Nomens out into the lashing wind for some inspired ski lessons. My students got to miss class the week before Iditarod. I joked with them that our visitors would be "Super-Olympians" on account of Lars, the director, actually being in the Olympics twice, but a few days later, I would get to see the moniker was actually true.

     It was the last Sunday of Iditarod-week before the dread return to work. Drew had already returned to the island. I had not yet recovered from the  shock-absorber workout at Tom's Cabin, when I got the call from Tyler:  Bear Mountain was on! The whole gang would be coming, Tyler, Keith, Jeff, but also Lars Flora, afore-mentioned Johnny Appleseed of rural Alaskan skiing. I boasted of Drew's and my powderific runs at Tom's on Friday and Saturday, but by the time we got up the mountain Sunday, Mr. Wind had returned and was moving the snow across the slopes in dunes, big traveling dollops of powder snow that exposed bare patches of ice between them, so that you might have enough snow for  one and a half tele turns before you came clattering out onto bare ice fighting for your edges. March winds made everything frostbitey as we took off skins. Tyler and Lars disappeared into the clouds while the rest of us prepared to thrash our way down the difficult conditions.

    Minutes later, I watched Lars descend out of the clouds:  he was riding telemarks! He would dig in on the snow dollops, and then leap onto the ice patches, and back into the snow dollops, without any interruption of movement, from one island of traction to the next. On Monday, I told my students:  "Yeah, that guy Lars can ski!"  At that moment, he was putting the skis on the plane for Gambell, where he was scheduled to meet up with the students of...  Drew!

   

(above) Kigsblog Chief Editor Allapa on the lower part of Bear Mountain earlier this Spring.

This post is the putrefactant which has caused such a blockage in the intestines of Kigsblog. Hopefully, now that the infectious mass has been purged through publication, Kigsblog may flow more freely once again in order to report the other momentous adventures of this rather odd Winter season. 

Thompson Creek Headwall and other Spring Adventures

"Thompson Creek Headwall" (above), panorama by Tyler Rhodes, the site of Spring weekend exploits, 5 Sundays Ago.  We approached the Headwall blindly from the broad ridge on top of it and, after some trial and error among the peaklets of Thompson Creek, managed to descend the Headwall via the wide-ish snow couloir at the righthand vertical sun-shadow line in the photo, Tyler and Keith on skis, me and Lucy on crampons!            The ideal is to suffer.  This suffering is necessary to offset the deleterious influence of growing up a spoiled American brat who has been handed everything and never truly learned the knowledge that true suffering has to offer.

     Swooshing down powdery mountainsides is NOT suffering.  A good telly run, echoing Buchanan once again, is "entirely too much fun," and I agree:  the Spring skiing in the Kigs these past few seasons has registered considerably high on the PURE ENJOYMENT spectrum, and Spring 2012 was no exception.  However, it must be noted, that although a ski-mountaineering descent qualifies as the reciprocal of an ASScent, thereby qualifying skiing as a form of climbing, skiing as an end in itself poses a transgression of the RULE OF SUFFERING because it is TOO PURELY ENJOYABLE.  

       It can therefore be concluded that the act of choosing to ski downhill rather than go climbing qualifies as a chicken-out, a cop out, a fraidy-cat failure to face the solitude of the brooding north wall.

       Panorama looking north from the Buffalo Creek/Thompson Creek divide. (above).  More panoramic wizardry by Tyler Rhodes.  The image faces the opposite direction of the one above.  This one faces north, looks down Thompson Creek, perpendicularly across a segment of Grand Central, and up Gold Run Creek.  Mt. Osborn is about a quarter of the way across the panorama from the left.   Pt. 3207, high point of False Tigaraha, at camera's left hand.  Pt. 3080, which we ascended on the way, at camera's right hand. 

    On a sunny day in Spring 4 Sundays Ago, I am sitting on the tailgate at Deep Creek Canyon, Mile 30 Kougarak Road, getting ready to return to the cold and shaded Headwall on which I had not done a route the weekend before due to damnable, super-fun skiing with Tyler and Keith.  All ties with humanity have been cut.  Flaming ruins lie in my wake. Severed tendrils of TOWN GLUE still trail from the rear bumper from yesterday's battle with the MACHETE to escape town. Beetle-browed and grim-jawed, I am sharpening the positive-clearance chisel on my BD Cobras, a knot of self-involvement, a Haston, a House, my own wizened version of Dr. Doom poised to risk it all for obscure glory on the north wall waiting out of the sunlight.  The plan is to sneak back in to Thompson Creek and solo/scramble a line through the granitic gneiss...  at last, for the first time in a long time, to face down my demons and actually climb something...

      Then, I see them...  Coming along the Kougarak Road in the morning sunshine, a sparkling parade of people I know and love, BOATLOADS of fun and friendship, all enroute to the nearby ski slopes of Nugget Pass, party after party, Jeff, Laura, Erin, Nate, Lorne, Keith, Mallory, Erica, all yahooing their way towards what promises to be a corn-fed day in the Spring Kigs, still blanketed with snow.  

        Leading the parade, Tyler, the avenging Angel of Angle, leering with the knowledge that once again he is stealing me away from my appointment with Hermann Buhl's Lonely Challenge on the Thompson Creek Headwall, that he is sucking me away from pain, blood, and bruises, into one of the FUNNEST days I will ever have skiing. 

        We will follow the sinuous gullet of a filled-in Copper Creek into the steep hills that lie to the east of the Kougarak Road at Nugget Pass.  I will spend the day hanging out on tundra patches with beautiful, laid-back Nomenclatures, trying to keep up with Tyler, taking the ridges where he drops the chutes, freshly driving out the grizzlies from the valley, and hanging with my good dog, Lucy.

(Below) Map of totally excellent ski tour, Mr. Rhodes, Mr. Conger, and Mr. McRae, May 6, 2012.   Deep Creek Canyon would be the easier way to access Buffalo / Thompson Pass from the Kougarak Road.  The endless slog out Grand Central was aided and abetted by wind and crust.  

(Below) Ian, Tyler, and Lucy gesturing over the drop-off, Pk. 3080.  

(Above) Tyler arrives at the pass between Buffalo Creek and Thompson Creek. The waters of Lethe have bleached out my memory cortex, but suffice it to say, the descent into Thompson Creek was not desirable from this point.  Mark this one down as "probably not a feasible pass." An interesting feature in this photograph is the summit pinnacle of Pt. 3207,  upper left corner, the true high point of the long ridge marked on the U.S.G.S. as "Tigaraha," which I like to call "False" Tigaraha—  a frightening solo, MARK!, squirt musk here, internet scent mark.

(Beleft) Descent Gully, Thompson Creek Headwall.   Mr. McRae, being unwilling to chatter, sideslip, or take 800 ft. skidding falls down icy-hard snow, had to suffer the ignominy of ice-climbing down slopes everyone else, including my dog Lucy, were gleefully swooping and carving.  

  

Thanks to Tyler Rhodes and Keith Conger for lending the blogseed for this post, their pictures!

      Two roads

   One leads to fun and friendship.

         The other to self-confrontation.

 The scars

  From the big Lonely

     Have not healed.

   Butterflies

      Out over the wall...

    I am glad that you are here.

What is this?

      A yellow pod in the wilderness

Containing friends in larval form.

    Easy is the Kool-Aid.

      Kernels of corn rest momentarily on my ski tips.

    There will be no climbing today.

(Below) Three views of the Sinuk headwaters, April 28/29, 2012.  Friends conjoined in a partially-metamorphosed pupal form revealing the individual faces and personalities zipped inside the pod as we found it, lying on the tundra at the Sinuk headwaters early on a Sunday morning. 

         Mr. Lastine and I snow-machined into the upper headwaters of the Sinuk River, 6 Sundays ago.  He wanted to try out his late-season acquisition, a Polaris .440 (black and silver like the Oakland Raiders).   Our plan was to leave early Sunday morning and meet up with the Rhodes/Collins party who had bivouaced "somewhere around Mosquito Pass"the night before in Tyler's Arctic Oven.  My secret plan was, once there, to abandon human contact altogether, to motor away around the corner to Turncorner Mountain for a gigantic Herman Buhl sufferfest on a narrow, exposed ridge of snow and schist.

       The day started well.  The Kougarak Road was already punched out to MacPherson's Troll at Mile 18.  Machining conditions were ideal.  We easily followed Tyler's tracks in to the upper Sinuk where we found Tyler, Erica, Jeff, and Laura encased in their curious shell-like encrustation on the tundra.  Arms extended centipede-like from within the pod-casing and served Mr. Lastine and me hot breakfast burritoes.  

       It was so incredibly cool to be there in the Sinuk head, the fortress of scatter-my-ashes-here solitude, with such a fun party of friends, with cool human company, it was so nice having a traveling partner like Mr. Lastine, we had come so far together already, I didn't want to leave.  I couldn't.  I abandoned the idea of the frightening, windy, spiralling arete, and instead climbed two forty-minute hike-ups nearby at the head of the valley on the Sinuk / Thompson divide, so that I could return in time to roar out of there with the rest of the gang.  

        Days such as these are the glorious times of our lives.  Who would be foolish enough to exchange them for something that is not only equally silly, pointless, and selfish, but painful to boot?  

(above) Map of Sinuk headwaters. 

A.  The "real" Tigaraha ("Forefinger"), Pk. 3500+ (??)

B.  "Pen Tri Cwm," Pk. 3600+ (?), this is the name given by 1990s Todd party-  first ascent?- likely not.  The name has kind of grown on me, wish I knew how to pronounce it.  

C.  Pk. 3400+(?) I like to call it "Snakey Peak" after the aesthetic, unskied, "Snakey Couloir" on the northern, Grand Central side of the mountain, which Tyler refers to as "the Z-Couloir.

D.  Pk. 2750+, one of the ridiculous summits I reached from the Sinuk on the 6SA outing which is the subject of this post.  Call it one of the "Thompson Creek peaklets," as it is much more interesting from the side other than the one I climbed.

E.  Pk. 2900+, the other "Thompson Creek peaklet" I climbed that day.

F.  "False" Tigaraha, Pt. 3207.   

MARK!  I hereby squirt a little digital/glandular secretion of ego onto the internet for having climbed each of these summits!

(below) View to the northeast from Tigaraha. The only picture I have (from a previous summer) to identify the previously unreported "Thompson Creek peaklets" mentioned above.  Pk. 2900 is the peak just to the left of the end of the rainbow.  Pk. 2750+ is the leftmost foreground peak. They were, of course, seran-wrapped in snow 6 Sundays ago.

(below) False Tigaraha from Sinuk, with badass couloir skied by Tyler on April 28, 6 Sundays Ago, the third, left-slanting couloir from the left.  This picture was taken by me weeks after Tyler's ski, 2 Sundays Ago, on a recent rockclimbing trip with Phil Westcott.  My estimation is that Tyler's couloir represents the most technically difficult descent yet skied in the Kigs.  Laurent and I climbed the couloir on the left (with some dips into the mixed on the prow to the left) with a rope years back.  Why is Tyler always skiing things I ice climb?  

(below) BONUS PIC:  The "Z-Couloir" on "Snakey Peak" (Pk 3400+?) from the Grand Central side, a fine climb between walls of marble that I did with Mikey Lean one February years ago, and one of the great ski descents still to be plucked in the Kigs, assuming no one has already plucked it. 

        In a previous post from 8 Sundays Ago, I invoked the No Sketch Partner Law:  "the scope of your climbing ambitions must conform to the mean climbing ambitions of the group."  In this rather empirical way of looking at it, if you are out with a partner who has zero climbing ambitions, then your climbing ambitions would be halved.  I was first introduced to the No Sketch Partner Law in James Ramsey Ullman's classic Banner In The Sky, in the scene where Rudi Matt remains with the injured Saxo near the summit of the Citadel.  However you name it, the Law comes down to this:  you can't sketch out on the people you're with.  You may need to practice the difficult art of NOT CLIMBING in order NOT to be an asshole.

        However, a loophole for climbing mediocrity exists here.  The No Sketch Partner Law becomes a force unto itself, much like gravity, or the GLUE of TOWN.  That day in the Sinuk, I could not escape the encampment of my friends because it was just so delightful to be in their company in the sacred CHI-giving mountains.  That day on the Kougarak Road, my friends in cars were like corpuscles of TOWN GLUE traveling down a capillary and finding me at the last minute.  For we know that the glue of town is composed of the ones we love most.  The company of friends is the most golden thing of all.   So it is that the No Sketch Law too often results in a violation of the NO CHICKEN OUT LAW which states, simply, 'Thou shallt not chicken out of climbing."

            (below)  Shadow of Tigaraha against False Tigaraha.

OTHER SPRING 2012 KIGVENTURES

      7 Sundays Ago:  Earp and pre-schooler Robby riding Crusteo, Me on Super Smooth Andy G.., went gliding out to Salmon Lake for a night.  The April weather in the interior Kigs the next morning was 50-50, not so bad, really, cloud-torn over Salmon Lake, but mellow enough to consider going for a long ski, which I decided against, wisely as it turned out.  We decided to pack it in early and swim with the Sunday GLUE CURRENT towards Nome.

      But somewhere around Dorothy Creek (Mile 26), all Hell broke loose.  We found ourselves in zero visibility, with active drifts and near-hurricane wind pushing us right off the icy road, at a place with big drop-offs.  Big surprise!  The reverse of the usual weather graphic, with the blizzard in the foothills and the calmer weather at the crest.

        Earp waved me over:  "Robby's hypothermic!"  We stopped in the storm to grimly load him into a silvery, slippery sleeping bag, which Earp then had to wrestle like a giant flopping larva with one arm while driving the snow-machine with the other.  Little did we know, that right near the spot where Earp and I stopped to load the larva, Janet Balice was crouched in a drift hole, accepting a slow death in the storm for her and her dogs;  she had fallen into the same trap as us after a two nights in the mountains and her 5-dog team, with the legendary DIBELS in lead, had given up.  The sound of our snow machines passing nearby gave Janet the courage to roust up and drag her team out to Basin Creek, where at least the road was discernible.

     9 Sundays Ago:  Solo reconnaissance trip on Smooth Andy G. out to the Grand Central Glacier to check on Sluicebox.  

(above)  Sluicebox Couloir, April 8, 2012.  Super Smooth Andy G. (Arctic Cat) in foreground.

     3 Sundays Ago:  The best trip of all:  Kristine and Raina made it out to Earp's cabin for this one, along with Carl, Janet, Rod, Joni, and Robby, as well as Tyler, Erica, Jeff, Laura, Lorne, Erin, Nate, Tom, and others, tent camping across the lake in the BLM Campground.  Flowers, midnight sun, dogs rolling in anaq.  My camera had been consumed by Spring adventures so I got no pictures.  With my family at my side in the mountains, the tensions created by the GLUE vs. the LONELY CHALLENGE had cancelled out.  Mind at rest...