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.... 

Twin Mountain, Sunday, January 17

despite the one cool climb, the Brynteson trip the weekend before was a big failure—  my original intention had been to reach a climbing destination directly across the Snake Valley at Twin Mountain, but chickened out of crossing the river willows on snow-machine— the Brynteson chutes and aretes i narrated were a consolation prize, my fourth time up there, they are fun cliffs in winter mon, drive all the way to north side of hill before dismounting and ascending.

(right) N. Twin Mountain cliffs at sunset,
Snake River Valley, showing big chunks of avalanche set off by Graham on January 17

We started up the snow-covered turf ramp left of center, left of the orange-lichen wall-  there was an awkward move around a willow lump-  Chris and I rappelled from a snow-filled alcove above-  it was chill factor 55 below, and we didn't have our act together-  Chris's ATC burned a frozen brand into his belly....

(normally i would consider it a degredation to spew such spray, such shameless i-Beta, but the Snake River Valley is already well degraded IMHO, so what does it matter?)

next weekend on the 17th of January, i returned with a secret weapon:  an actual, human, climbing partner, the indefatigable Chris Miller, primed and ready, mounted on top of a big yellow Ski-Doo, with his poor feet jammed into Phil Hofstetter's too-small snappy red Koflach climbing boots.  off we roared, me on the new smooth-riding .570 Bearcat.

the cold:  the fabulous cold.  did i mention yet it was cold?  well, it was.  it was cold.   allapa.  allaparunga.  Clem, Clem!  i am cold.  these boots, they don't work!   the wind was blowing 20 over the ridgetops, with an ambient well below zero, twenty, twenty-five below that day, with the wind at twenty mph, Art Davidson baby.  much too cold for technical climbing with ropes, but we were choosing to do it anyway.

Twin Mountain cliffs came up fast this time when Chris gunned the hog across Snake River, with a minimum of willow-shredding. foolishly, we had not donned harnesses before the ride and froze our fingers doing so.  as i started up the icy snow slope towards the cliff, last week's avalanche was far from my mind, when

  

    click!

i should have been expecting it.  the slope cracked neatly and ran exactly a centimeter and stopped.  it was nothing, slope angle wasn't maybe over 31°,  but i was gasping anyway, having a very heart attack, stricken, white, panic-attacking;  Chris,  saw Ian acting weird further up the slope and thought nothing of it, dude's always acting that way-  

but that click, that mechanical click, all the heinous snow slopes all those years we've crouched on with our ears to the surface waiting for that very clicking sound, all the friends we've lost, Tom, Johnny, Alex, Randy, Nemo, how is anyone supposed to know?  the accrued resonance of fear built up over years in Alaska had me cursing and sputtering most vilely

(left)  quartzite is metamorphosed sandstone:  this kind in Snake River is pure choss.  but in winter, it meshes with its bryophytic symbiotes, freezes solid, and you get good Cobra thunks, just like real ice!  the living climbing wall...


as we were getting into lead-climbing mode on the quartzite cliff, lo and behold, along came Earp on a borrowed snow-machine! and now here she was coming up the slope!  now, here is an individual who can fully appreciate irrational fear of a snow slope!, for i had seen Joni's picture of the big one she had ridden at Turnagain Pass—  

sure enough, when she reached a point, right where the slope gradient kicks back to exactly 35°—

whompf!

she had my same reaction, stricken, white, gasping.

(right)  choss-  i came back the following weekend by myself and soloed a bunch of stuff-  i gave each route i did a very serious name, and various ratings in several different languages, but i forgot it all...

as i'm banging in pins like fury on ground where on another day i have soloed, lo and behold, from down below came a roaring over the wind:   Jeff and Graham a-straddle their dreadful SkiDoos, stalking our cliff.  they were off their machines and up to the cliff in seconds.  i tried to hear what they were saying but i was hanging onto the tips of willows and snow-kneeing over a rather troublesome little drop-off (with some good protection from a Bugaboo, i might add)

i was too far away to hear the click , but i heard the 

                          BOOM!! 

Graham, the tiger, had sunk his claws into a fairly huge 38° raft and set if off, maybe 30' x 90' x 16".   large blocks of snow slipped and slithered down the slope before coming to rest in a hissing pile-up of fragments.  i couldn't see from my perch, but apparently Earp had to do the RFYL!

one by one, we bugged out.  Chris and I made it out last and epicked in the darkness on our machines.   we emerged from the whole ordeal NOT unscathed... we ended the day sitting in hot baths discussing our frostbite over the phone.

Avalanche on Mt. Brynteson

there it is, you can see a horizontal, white line left of center low on the mountain but above the willows- that's the crown face left by the avalanche two Sundays ago on January 10-  I was on my way down from a very fun very cold solo on the cliffs above, when I cavalierly began plunge-stepping down the convex face of a mid-mountain cornice created in a lee-slope deposition zone...

it was maybe 300' x 60' x 16" with me on top of the slab treadmilling the whole raft underneath me (fortunately i had been facing inwards with cobras drawn)-  the trigger made such a a gentle, audible, beautiful, gradual, resonating

                                                               whompf!...

noise, like a long row of playing cards going down underneath the floor-  i instinctively pedalled upwards as the horizontal fracture shot propagated before my very eyes and i now found myself climbing on a moving plane of snow-   i don't know how far i slid along with the mass trying to mantle onto the top of its crown-- when it came to rest after a short amount of slding, i was lucky to be perched on an unbroken plate of snow- probably a good thing i kept climbing up through the downward motion-  the ensuing rush was well worth the consternation of those few seconds-  mark, this avalanche ranked next to nothing by Chugach or Alaska Range standards, but still, this occasion marks my first true avalanche experience on the Sewie Peninsula, and was certainly sufficient to increase the heartbeat a bit...

the event over-shadowed the other highlight of the day, an enjoyable highball / solo type thing, a fun fun job of climbing on the quartzite arete visible in the rear of the photo- call the line i did M-3 with a picturesque top-out onto the north summit of Brynteson, done in extraordinarily cold conditions, sub-zero with stiff winds out of the north- moss sticks, stemming, overhangs, cams, surprisingly good climbing for a big blop of CHOSS....



here's John Brynteson, one of the 3 Lucky Swedes