Oregon Creek Hill

       Broke GLUE-LOCK on early February weekend, Mr. McRae and Mr. Lastine, astride fearsome, belching, two-stroke torpedoes aimed west away from Nome, to climb and ski the mysterious hill at Oregon Creek, "Pk. 1900+", a foothill of some prominence left out of my foothill report from the Winter of 2015.

Looking up Oregon Creek. Pk. 2900+ in background. Super Smooth Andy G. in foreground.

     Mr. Wind had destroyed our snow even before we got to it. As we dismounted machines and disengaged boards at Oregon Creek, Pk. 1900+ rose bare before us, slopes of snice corrugated by schist chips, once-fluffy snow like we had skied the day before on Newton ABSOLUTELY POUNDED by a continuous blow-holes into a veneer unskiable, at least by an old telly dad with my pitiful skills.

Parts of the old road are still visible and helped us get through the willows to the gulches on snow-machine. Saw no cabins, but lots of remaining ditches on the hillsides

       The greatest excitement occurred during the snow-machine phase, of course, the most dangerous segment of any trip, when, unbeknownst to my own awareness, I executed the most prodigious jump ever accomplished by myself on my snow-machine (the redoubtable Bearcat, Super Smooth Andy G.) when, purely by accident, I launched off a bare tussock at high speed and sailed 16 feet over a creek. Leonard, following my tracks, wasn't as lucky... his front end went into the creek and he over the handlebars, his face smashed in the process.
        "How is my face?" he inquired.
          Oh no, the wedding is off. It was like that Seinfeld episode where George drops the guy at the Shawangunks. How is his face?
          "Not gushing."
           He examined himself in my phone. Nothing to do but get back on the hogs and GUN IT onwards toward our objective.

    Did I mention it was cold? Allapa, allapa, yes, cold as a van of I.C.E. Agents throwing up dust in a carrot field. Since I had never climbed Pk. 1900+ (though it has undoubtedly been well walked-over by members of the Oregon Creek mining community who lived at the foot of it some time last century), I left my skis strapped to Super Smooth Andy, and set out to bag the summit. Leonard couldn't go up because he had neglected to bring his Micro-Spikes, and the snow, which could no longer be deemed snow but simply ICE, seemed really a bit treacherous, take-off-like-a-rocket-on-easy-ground kind of thing.

Shadow selfie on summit.

       "Could this be the mist bootyful somewhat we half ever seen." Just short of a Donald, Pk. 1900+ evinces a pleasing architecture, the ridges like runnels, the kigs-view as encompassing as any hill's, jagged as it is into the big flows of weather that stream across the peninsula between the Norton Sound and Imruq Basin, the very flows that had hardened our ski into an ice climb. 

       With the attainment of this high point, all of my dreams and ambitions had been realized. Buddha-hood, achieved. Ego/Id structure, momentarily stabilized. My self-identity was no longer in doubt for I had become nothing. There lay the Kigs in the near distance to the north. The GLUE TENDRILS simply vaporized into wisps that dissipated in the clear, cold air. 

One looming question remains. Is Pk. 1900+ the intriguing summit that often pokes up behind the Snake River hills as I am driving home on the Beltz Highway from Nome? The one that sometimes gets mistaken for Osborn because of the way it pokes up? In other posts,, I have attributed this peak as Pk. 1460, the one out by Cabin Rock. So I drew this little map to see if there existed a line of sight poking through the Snake River hills. Thinking now that peak must by 1900+. What an utterly exciting discovery to make in a mundane life of driving back and forth from Nome to home.  

(Pk. 3300+) Canyon Creek

      The measure of a valley is the degree to which it and the surrounding peaks radiate a certain type of energy:  sinh tala, after the interior Athabaskans, or maybe just chi.  But measure requires a unit, and there is no established unit of measure for chi because the Uncertainty Principle renders chi too unpredictable a form of energy for quantitative measure, one only "feels" it qualitatively.
        Whatever, Canyon Creek in the western Kigluaik Range is a valley that exudes particular waveforms of this energy.  For so long I had tried to access Canyon's mysterious interiors, but like Alice at the door to the garden, had been denied, until 2SA weekends ago, when Rick Anderson and I finally managed to find the right pass into Canyon Creek on snow machines, in sunny Spring traveling conditions.   

(above) Pk. 3300+, Canyon Creek, Kigluaik Mountains, April 14, 2012.  I ascended via the easy slopes on the righthand side, treating the opportunity as a mere peakbagging exercise, wussing out of more challenging lines due to a good excuse:  a good friend waiting at basecamp who deserved better than to wait the extra hours a more technical line would have required.  To be fair, even the lowly Class 2 slopes sported some AI1;  you wouldn't want to trip on your pantlegs, or you'd go whizzing down the slope at a high rate of speed! 

(above) Map of Canyon Creek area

   A.  Snow-machine pass of choice to access Canyon Creek from the south. 

   B. Pk. 3300+.  Climbed to summit via easy southwest slopes.

   C.  Untouched gneiss. 

   D.  Pk. 3850+.  Highest peak in the area.

   E.  Canyon Creek

   F.  Pk. 3390.  Climbed last year.

   G.  Blume-Valpa Pass.  Easy hiking- maybe not so good for machine.

   H.  Pk. 3195.  Also climbed last year.

    I.  Johnston-Canyon Pass.  Easy hike. Possibly snow-machinable.

   J. Johnston-Right Fork Pass.  Class 2.  

   K. Inuksuk Pass (American-Right Fork) Interesting set of manmade rock piles.

   L.  Pk. 3000+.  Climbed year before last 

(above) Pk. 3850+.  This mini-massif may be the fifth highest independent summit in the Kigs, depending on how you define "independent summit"— (My unofficial list: 1. Mt. Osborn (4704)  2. Osborn's northwestern neighbor, Pk. 3998   3. Grand Singatook (Pk. 3870) and 4. Kayuqtuq (Pk. 4000+ ?)  Peakbagging the summit in the above picture was my primary objective this Canyon Creek trip, but Pk. 3300+ up canyon seemed like a nicer place to be, so we camped there.

(below) Gneiss towers on the southeast shoulder of Pk. 3850+.  The wall in this picture has, on very rare occasions from certain summits, flitted into my frame of perspective through lined-up corridors of mountain, but its exact location remained hidden in the geologic folds until this trip, when Rick and I turned a corner on Canyon Creek to discover its true location.  

The NO-SKETCH PARTNER LAW is stated thusly:  the scope of your climbing ambitions must conform to the mean climbing ambitions of the group.

     What this means is, you can't be an asshole.  We've all had that kind of Comstockian partner who is ready at a moment's notice to bail from the corniced ridge on which you both are standing.  Some alpinists have no natural ability to execute the crucial task of NON-CLIMBING when the conditions permit, and these are the ones who seem strange and extremely self-centered within a group in, or going to, the mountains.  Such a climber cannot hang except with those of their own kind.  It takes great effort.

      On Friday, 3SA, as Rick and I were packing for our weekend trip into Canyon Creek, I saw a post on Supertopo by a friend of mine:  Jabber's thread on Supertopo .   He was bailed on by a mancrushed partner!  Huge arrangements had been made and dates precisely calibrated for the two of them to escape the GLUE OF FAIRBANKS, but at the last minute, the guy goes "off with Bridwell" to some other mountain.  Clearly, a violation of the NO-SKETCH PARTNER LAW.

(above) Rick Anderson at the "Snow-machine Pass into upper Canyon Creek," looking south.  (The one labelled "A" on the map.  Gneiss unclimbed tor in background!

(below) Upper Canyon Creek from Pk. 3300+, looking southeast.  The Snow-machine Pass is at center of photo.

 

      I was psyched!  A friend to go to the mountains with!  And a fellow Kigluaik lover who's been all over these hills on foot and by dog team.  It's so much fun doing trips with Rick because we can sit around like long-lost brothers discussing extremely obscure minutia of hill and valley, and never grow bored with it.  
      But first we had to escape the GLUE OF TOWN.  Over many weeks of winter, the GLUE OF TOWN had gotten Rick pasted down like a victim from the movie Alien, but I was certain the lure of a trip to the Kigs in perfect April weather would loosen the bonds of the slimy substance that coated him.  I offered him my best old mount, Crusteo, the Polaris .340.   The GLUE began to loosen.  We hacked at it with our machetes, carving away excuses, harboring sleep throughout the weekdays, patiently unraveling obstacles.  My wife Kristine, who possesses the magic power to either dissolve or intensify the GLUE with the slightest look, was blowing in our favor;  someday soon Kristine and I will wage our own war on the GLUE and escape together, but for this weekend it was Rick and I, and I was mighty glad of it, someone experienced with whom to share the adventure.   

(below) Rick power lounging at Canyon Creek basecamp, base of Pk. 3300+.

(below) Pk. 3300+ from south.  This photo was taken in June 2011.  Rick, note the fresh, cataclysmic landslide in that gully we were hanging out in behind camp—  Is that why I felt creepy in there?

(below left and below right)  Inuksuk.  I found these homunculi on a previous reconnaissance to Canyon Creek, at the pass marked "K" in the map above.  I know nothing about how they got here, only that it looked like a likely place to herd reindeer into a ravine.

        Solitude is jagged and hard, a bare floor.   All it takes is another mind in a lonely valley to warm the place up, no matter how cold the temperatures, no matter how far from town you might lie.  So enormous is the contrast between a trip into the Kigs with friends, and a trip to the Kigs with no one, that my brain cannot even grasp the disparity;  they are two different mental modes, the one primitive and speechless, the other easy and confident. Both are necessary for wisdom, I cannot turn my back on either.  But it is very hard to fight the GLUE alone.  I am deeply grateful for the friends I have found, for the times we have had huddling in the wind and surreal beauty.

(below)  The Grand Singatook (Pk. 3870) from the north. Nils Hahn and I had a great trip here sometime in a June of the 2000s.  We came from the Teller Road seeking the ultimate Nordwand of the Kigluaik on the back side of the Singatook:  instead we found a two-thousand foot snow-slope capped by two or three pitches of easy Scottish-gully ice.  Why are my climbs always skiable?  

   

Kayuqtuq North Face

  

  (left) Earp on easy mixed at 30 below, an NB (new bail) on unnamed peak located on divide between Crater Creek and Fox Creek (for fancy's sake I refer to it here as Kayuqtuq), Monday of Iditarod week.  We turned around a pitch below the summit having done perhaps 1700 ft. of Class 4/5 snow and gneiss climbing— the crap gneiss, the brown, bloody stool-colored stuff.  In background of photo you can see the formations referred to elsewhere in this blog, also fancifully, as the "C-Togs."      


I was relieved to see consternation on the normally fearless Earp's face as we dismounted our machines (my new Bearcat and the redoubtable Polaris, Crusteo.)  It confirmed what I have never been able to verify but always felt:  that it's scarier than hell to be alone up a lonely valley in the high Kigs at 40 below.  I always harbor secret terror just to be there in the deep water...

(above)  Kayuqtuq (Pk. 4,000+) may qualify as one of the rare "Four Thousanders" of the Kigs.  Kayuqtuq means "Fox" (Vulpes Vulpes).


Crunchy stabby, dagger-and-go, dagger-and-go...  we certainly would have soloed but the slabs looked so loaded man, well hung and snow-white tan, so we hassled the rope between us, which slowed us horribly.  Beautiful, arighaa, bon, bon, but did I mention it was cold?  Yes, it most certainly was, sure is cold, yessir, man!, allapa!, F-word!

(above)  Pk. 3050+, south wall of Crater Creek on the drive in;  Crater Creek is a sort of parallel analogue to Grand Central Valley 10 miles south.  The peak in this photo appears to be a sort of translation of Grand Central's Crater Lake Mountain (Pk. 3147), very confusing since Crater Lake ain't at Crater Creek.  

(above)  The Third C-Tog (Pk. 2650+)   

       Definitely uncomfortable with the naming of things.  These are not the real names.  The names on this blog are just little contrivances my brain has had to come up to cope with the hours of slogging in solitude in the Kigs.  

     What do you do when you have come to know a geological feature as a distinct entity?  You're dangling from the thing all day, admiring its form, power-lounging on its tundra ledges, admiring the view, and, at times, talking to the thing, talking to stone itself—  at some point you invent a little cognomen to apply to this geological formation so that you might refer to it succinctly in your self conversations.  So the names in this blog in many cases are just widgets of one guy's brain and not meant to be taken seriously.    (BTW people, it was not Stan's fault that the spire in the Arrigetch got called Justice Spire.  He only climbed it...)  So, why continue something sure to offend?  Because it's just too much fun!  The Kigs are a landscape right out of an Ursula Leguin novel....

       If you know the true name of the mountain, please comment...

Descent.  

              Often, the scarlet "L" burns on my forehead, and I doubt our decision to bail from Kayuqtuq.  Other times I trust that our intuitive apparatus was working correctly at the time, that some hurt or extra suffering lay in wait among the folds of potentiality surrounding the last pitches to the summit.  Endless vacillation between these two poles. 

        For me at least, the vacillations have tended to settle upon the former pole, the Pole of Total Loserdom.  Those last moves WOULD HAVE BEEN glorious.  It was ONLY —35° F (with the wind at 20 knots and increasing as we neared the somewhat).  We bailed at the rock bands that guard the summit, 2 or 3 pitches more of casual mixed climbing.  Question marks lurked:  there was going to be frostbite....  I see a fearful sweaty little dad go scurrying back down to the security of his fuming machine.  

      Obviously, once again I was committing the logical error of equating my entire self worth with a moment's action.  Power is gushing from the breaches in my ego.  So last night I got out The Rock Warrior Way and began patching the patches of the patches so we can go up again next weekend.  Here's a link to Arno's site warriorsway.com