Pk. 3390 and Pk. 3195, Blume Ck.

15SA, Spring viewed from Fall...

       (above) Lucy near summit of 3390, at the head of Blume Ck.  She balked at the actual summit pinnacle, which required, in her mind at least, following me down the 5.5 down-climb in the picture;  there's probably a way around this obstacle, but she never found it.  
        O.K., so maybe the 25 ft. summit pinnacle is only 10 ft. higher than Lucy's high point shown here.  The rule is:  you have to get to the very highest, most tippy-toppy point, or it doesn't count.  Without this rule in place, climbing in the Kigs would legally be rendered "ridge-walking" rather than climbing.   


       June:  summer stretched ahead.  Serotonin flowed from springs that would never expire.  The GLUE OF TOWN was effortlessly overcome.   The requisite self-centeredness necessary for escape velocity was easily achieved, as Lucy rode strapped in the dog box on the back of Prolly, trusty 4-wheeler.  Towards the western range we penetrated, that surreal terra incognita which is the visible part of the Kigluaitch from the village of Teller to the northwest, where no Kougarok Road crosses the Kigs with its urban hordes.  
       If people know any of the true names of particular mountains over by Canyon and Cobblestone, float them over these techno-mind waves, please, quyana.

       (above) Summit pinnacle, Pk. 3390.  One, Class 4 move perched over a respectable void at the summit of an otherwise boring ridge...   Condition:  foghead


       Things feel strange to me in the Western Kigs.  When you're at Salmon Lake over on the eastern side, Pacific Ocean feels far away, but here in the West, Woolley Lagoon is licking its foggy, windy head into the valleys at all times.  The rock itself, a special blend of metamorphic stew, affects the psycho-electromagnetic nonentropy fields of this region in ways that cause time distortion and shamanic dimensional-interface.

       (above) Prolly the 4-wheeler encamped for a few days at Feather River, haunted by the ghosts of her ancestors buried near this spot, the World War II junk-pile where they put everything under the ground when the war was over, Or SoI'mTold..


       Set out with the Border Collie on her first trip to the real mountains.  Trying to discover the best direct hiking route from Teller Road to Canyon Creek, stalking a hidden giant out in the cortical folds of inner Canyon Creek, a region about which I know nothing.  
     Conditon:  foghead.  Silks and wreaths of fog swirling tantalizingly around the shoulders, glimpses of eyes through the 3,000 ft. cloud ceiling.  Beautiful, yet always that familiar, flat, oppressive feeling bearing down on thoughts and hopes, claustrogo, the weight of opacity, fog, mist, creating a dreamlike sensation,  as if all of this were a scene from a Lost In Space episode. 

       (above)  Pk. 3390, south ridge.  This image weighs in on the side of the argument that the Kigluait are only hills.  But what a fine fell run this ridge provided, up among the shifting heads of fog.
      Deceptive argument, however...  within this bland, low-resolution exterior lie hidden hollows of boulder-hole and northern drop-offs.  In winter, this peak might pose a more formidable challenge even than Scotland.


       This trip happened when summer was young and strong and stretching ahead like an endless road.  This 15SA trip, it seems almost naive to say, as viewed from the charred wreckage of present Fall, was a fun trip.  Lucy and I camped way up at the top of Blume Creek, right below the Class II pass that leads from Blume to Valpa Creek.  I hiked/bouldered up both peaks at the head of the pass, Pk. 3390 (Blume?) and Pk. 3195 (Valpa?). Both walk-ups, no real radness, except for a very brief traverse through the summit rocks to get to the Class 4, 25 ft. summit pinnacle, complete with hanging choss Volkswagon registering proximate death-attractor metrics on certain loose-rock scales.  

drift-bank foghead in the Alzheimer' eternal sunshine of the spotless mind,  
bottomless breathing upward valley-draft through the strip-dancing wave, 
saw the granitoid rumors vaporizing into reality for sure, 
glimpsed pinnacles and towers through channels lined-up in the memory loss, 
sing out if you see the granite! 
there is a hidden lake beyond this picture (above and below), Pk. 3300, 
the western lake where lie the hidden dragon vaults of the sacred sought-after igneous, 
oh wondrous healing rock, 
a western lake to fly to, fly to in the jingey-copters, 
to plunder the hidden spoils of all the western range. 

(above) Lucy in peril.  In this picture, Lucy is actually arm-barring hard off that right paw.  She has no footholds, her hind legs are paddling in space;  it's a bottomless crevasse, with a 10 ft. drop down to a gravel creek bed.  Notice the polite look on her face, one ear drooped:  uh, Daddy, how about you doing that ice climbing thing you're always doing and CLIMB DOWN HERE AND GET ME!  Indeed, I felt the need to fetch my long ax off my pack before making the rescue move, and also took the time to snap this picture while Lucy held the arm-bar.  

(above) Camp at head of Blume Ck., June 2011.  The snow made for great walking and glissading on the pass between Blume and Valpa--  ValpaBlume Pass.  Hard to say if snow-machinable:  could be a bit of a blow-over on the north side, who's ever gone over it?  Here's a map (below) to jog your own fog.

Peak 3000+, Southwest Ridge

  WHY AM I COMMITTING THE WRONG I'M ABOUT TO COMMIT?  I've become a stamp collector with a little album.  I have used Photoshop to type little numbers on the mountains, which I shall now categorize, classify, number, name, shuffle, and dote over.  Even more absurdly, they're only the Kigs, barely even big enough to qualify as mountains, mere dunes, really.

   Answer:  I'M HAVING SO MUCH FUN DOING IT.  There is something about the Internet, with all that consciousness pulsating through each keystroke, that is blowing away my lifelong writer's block.  Every unit of suppressed spray accumulated over years is coming bursting out, accompanied by features formerly poo-pooed, such as maps, pictures, and route descriptions of climbs which are not even climbs at all, but firmly belong in the category of hikes, such as today's feature.  Blame it on the utter transparency of the Matrix.  Couple this giddy loss of cyber-inhibition with the giddy fun of hiking and climbing in the Kigluaiks, and click!, you have these transgressions.  I invoke the Alex Lowe theorem: FUN is the measure of the climber. 

"...Go out and have entirely too much fun..."    Doug Buchanan

(above) Pk. 3000+,  one of the high points on the divide running west from Glacial Lake.  Class II.  It was a hike-up.  I got a funny feeling it has been ascended before.  My first foray of the summer into the high Kigluaiks, the well-springs of power, chi, prana, sinh tala in Athabaskan.

(above)  The ridge took about an hour.   "The best climber in the world is the one having the most fun."  It was so much fun last week to simply be hiking up a little mountain,  not surfing around my own event horizon on a death-pile.

(above)  Looking east around the bend of upper Johnstone Creek canyon.  Pk. 3000+ in background.

     MY EXCUSE for LAMENESS, for not seeking out a pocket of true, TECHnical climbing:  this was an exploratory trip. 

    Never had I properly explored the western side of the Kigs, it was time to do so.  The goal was to find a southern approach into the Kigs from the Teller Road into Canyon Creek, where lurks granite.  The GLUE of town was attached to my ass like a stretchy tendril, so I couldn't stay in there long enough—3 days, 2 nights— to do justice to my explorations.  The resistance of the GLUE was greatly increased by my extreme and irrational BEARONOIA, though once I got out there with my cannon slung over shoulder and madly singing, I saw literally no critters at all the entire three days.  

    So, what follows, simply because it's so much fun, is a little panoramic indulgence.  To a true Kigs enthusiast it would prove irresistable and might help mediate the disgust you should feel at this public disrobement of beauty.  It should also remind you somewhat of a dog trotting in circles peeing in various places systematically and with great enthusiasm.  Do dogs not have fun when they do this?  And is not FUN the justification for today?

Thanks to "Bedrock Geologic Map of the Kigluaik Mountains," by Jeff Amato and Elizabeth Miller.  I am butchering the geology.

(above)  View looking east from summit of Pk. 3000+.

1.  Tigaraha.  Means "finger" in Inupiaq. I've climbed it by at least 3 different routes, with Mikey and Lahka, but don't know who made the first ascent. Gneiss.

2.  Pk. 3367.   Visible from many places. A landmark.  Cobblestone headwaters. Deserves a name.  I've always called it "Three Gables" ("Tikilik" maybe?).  Climbed it solo one Iditarod on a mystical snow-machining day. No idea about the first ascent. Schist.

3.  One of the Grand Central or Crater Creek peaks.  It's probably Fox (Kayuqtuq), poking up from behind.  Currently stalking this one. Gneiss and schist clashing zone.

4.  [i think] One of the Grand Central peaks that form the right side of Grand Central, Pk. 3190. I always call it the "Mother." ("Aana").  Snow-climbed it one spring via machine. Schist, as are the next two.

5. A little Grand Central peak, 3290 [i think]. I always call it "the Child" ("Uiviilaq").  Skiied with Tyler and Keith one year.

6. Tallest Grand Central Peak besides Osborn, Pk. 3922. The "Father" ("Aapa"). Cramponed up with Phil on a very cold January day.   

7.  Mt. Osborn, Pk. 4714, King of the Kigs. First ascent unknown, at least to me. Do not leave comments reminding that it does not matter, we know this. Maybe it was Osborn first climbed Osborn?  Probably a hunter from Beringia.  It's only a rolling, flowing lump in the mantle.  My understanding is that Osborn is a giant chunk of "meta-sedimentary" marble riding up on the pluton.

(above) Looking northeast from Peak 3000+.

7.  Osborn, with [probably] unclimbed west face.

8. Pk. 2490. Just north from Glacial Lake on the right.   

9. Pk. 3320. I mean the peak down below the little red "9".  

10. The north peaks of Osborn. (one on right higher.) 

11. Suluun, the Dorsal Fin. Andy and I did 3 routes there. 8, 9, and 11 are a line of the orthogneiss, pink on Jeff's map.

12. East terminus of a line of jagged peaks visible from Teller. Are they the "Sawtooths"?

(above) Looking northwest from Pk. 3000+

12.  I've heard them called the "Dragontooths" and the "Oro Grande".  "Sawtooths" works.  Ascents by Amato. A ridge studded with granite tors.

13. Pk. 3700+ over by Falls Creek. I would like to know more about this area.

14. Pk. 3300+.  Granite.  I suspect it of having non-hideous rock climbing.

15. The mysterious 3850+.  One of the higher elevations in the range.

16. Canyon Creek.  MUCH more searching for real climbing to be done.

   O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven...

    It hath the primal eldest curse upon't—

   

And yet, here's one more.  A sign of aging, plus extreme self-centeredness, plus lack of job.

(above) TR region, Johnstone Creek area

1. Pk. 3000+

2.  Inuksuk pass (see below)

3.  "Johnstone/Right Fork Pass" I had good walking on snow fields, probably a doable snow-machine ride in winter if there were not cornices..." 

4.  Pk. 2930 a slice o' the gneiss

5. Pk. 2710 couple of hour backpacker's climb, I didn't get to it.

6. Another way to get over to Canyon Creek. I'd wager it's machinable.

7.  Pk. 2345  I climbed a little 5.7 on the summit tor;  this is a classic hike.

8.  My bearanoid campsite, out of the way of the main corridor. 

(above) inuksugait  Strange to be surrounded by homunculi in the lonely mountains. Here is a link about rock piles that took seconds to find:

inukshuk

...and so there ain't nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't a tackled it, and I ain't a-going to no more