Slump & Consolation: Fall of 2010

Cirro stratus over the Kigs on a Friday night in September from my doorstep in Icy View (left), right on time to create the illusion of Job one more time to cap off the school week, a week of fine Fall weather held  prisoner prowling the playgrounds smelling out trouble before it happens, all the meanwhile huge arrangements being made for the forthcoming weekend expedition and asses being made of oneself in one's family, all for the sake of climbing in the Kigs,  followed by Expedition Friday and  the sudden inexplicable rising of huge barometric pressure changes at the 3,000 ft. level, wind rising, the Nomens hunkering down to only party, the agony of defeat.  Is this what life is like in El Chalten?


       This pattern has been manifesting for a year and a half:  a precise and maddening enhosement, the weather bad when time is available, weather good when harnessed to responsibilities and the GLUE of town.  I have been through slumps before in 32 year career, but this one has really settled in.  What is implied by SLUMP is a failure to goal-achieve the BIG things.  There is always bouldering in this Arctic bouldering paradise, there is perpetually climbing, almost every day come moves with a move of the pure isolation over a particular section of stone, almost every weekend comes with a GRATEFUL TO THE WIFE mountaineering adventure of a surprisingly high cast—  but the thing that one lives for is the LARGE, the EXTENDED, the CAN'T FIND MY WAY BACK HOME of total commitment and wisdom-enhancing NO FEAR.  And a summit.  In this range, the tippy-top counts, it's part of the mathematical fun.

 Nothing coming in a year and a half.  Enhosement.

 (above) Penny Boulders, crazy meta-sedimentary a mile or two north of Penny Bridge, looking south in this photo, Teller Road in background:  homo traverse boulder and top of the orange lichen alpha clump of this group, the raptor tor, a fine klettergarten.

    Searching for causes of mountaineering slump, I consider this blog, this VERY BLOG.  There exists an exact correlation between start up of blog and beginning of slump.  COULD THIS BLOGGING B.S. YOUR ARE READING NOW BE AFFECTING CLIMBING OUTCOMES?  It's a proven fact (i jokes) that the nonentropy of minds participating in a mass consciousness structure (such as an internet site) can affect the probabilities of a climb.  More concretely, maybe keeping a blog is messing up my climbing brain.  The reintroduction of Ego after all that work to annihalate it! 

     Or, blame it on the GLUE of TOWN.  Muir had Martinez; I have Nome.  But this seems grossly unfair.  For the time has come to reveal a truth.  The slump is the result of an awakening.  The slump is transcendence, a stage of enlightenment.  The slump is the product of a slow awakening to the BEAUTY of the precious gifts of the GLUE?  It is time to look through the skin of this conceit and view the heart of the concept, the truth behind this term, "GLUE" OF TOWN, and see what really lies therein...  

so many blessings i cannot speak of them without the fragile flame of what they are blowing out like a candle:  love, family, friends— don't speak of them for they are the truly sacred— spray of climbing, but spray not of the sacred, love, family and friends... 

now the truth comes out:  the GLUE of town is composed of these wonderful things,

 these blessings...  this quagmire, this nemesis, this THING I had reified into a Chimera, is in reality the very fabric of which life is made, everything that is good, respectable, likable, warm, and human, everything that I cannot describe because my subcription is to the gloom and doom...   climbing is not important— it is the GLUE that truly feeds the spirit...

no wonder it takes such STEELY FOCUS to turn away from town

    (above) Consolation:  Penny Crags, from Penny Boulders, September 25, 2010.  Denied the copious Chi-intakes of the high Kigs, a great bouldering day between storms can forestall the onset of the climbing demons...

into white, the sudden giving way

one foot is gonna be on ice today

and one foot on rock, and rock was my bottle,

look at that white creeping in.

well, let it cover over,

let the whole thing go down,

i'm tired of the spray, 

let the machines resound,

once more into the iPodstream,

the roaring and the Kougarak,

heading into the Kigs today

with four bottles in eight socks.

the blog goes from tundra

into a blanket of snow,

now you've become an icecap

with your secrets below,

let go of summer,

it was overrated anyway,

the Cobras are out, and

now it's time to play

you crunchety-crunched,

you were stemming on rime,

don't push too hard,

ooh, that delicate spine!

the clouds were shrieking,

faith is absolute

live to see another day,

it's all turning to white.

(above) Rocky Mountain on the left, Pk. 2374, 100 ft. Bluff on the right, October 17, 2010.  Consolation in the form of a slog up the main mountain, my third time up this hill.  Too warm temps that day for the choss bluff.

 (left) Earp starting up the Bluff in a previous, more frozen-up year than this one is shaping up to be.

(above) Tom's Cabin:  rocks are visible as smudges up on the ridge.  Upon closer inspection, they open up to reveal,surprising depths of bouldering.  Not the Kigs, but a sweet Fall consolation.

(right)  October 10, 2010 (10-10-'10!  No wonder that day was such fine consolation), late afternoon, up at Tom's Cabin Rocks.  Pictured are a pair of aretes I slimed up.  Anything under 5.6,  I probably slimed up that day, including top-outs on each of the surprisingly exposed pinnacles.  However, the slime parameters were high that day, post extended Autumn rainfall, the lichen saturated to the point of mush. I know Graham and Jeff had slimed up a lot of these problems in previous years during their summer residence at the haunted cabin, and, for all I know, so did Tom, before them.  Increased ectoplasmic readings in this gulch...
(above)  The Discovery Goldfields, my ice hunting grounds on Sunday, November 7.  No ice to be found, but the snow was the finest consolation imaginable, silky sibilant grain snow parting with a sigh over steel edge of touring ski, perfectly weight-supporting.

   TINMIURAQ (above)   What privilege to be an integrated part of a hillside for a day.

     And indeed, these are times of wretched SLUMP.  The Kigs are but a distant memory, the Alaska Range so far away now I can no longer imagine facing those looming seracs.  No throne have we sat upon for many a month.  Only the gnarled clumps that cling to the ground, closer to home.
    Yet, zoom in, zoom in.  These clumps contain fractal depths and thrones in their own right...  flex and strain down in your tundra pit, hidden away from sight wrestling with rock puzzles...  what difference be a move whether it is one foot up, or thousands of feet off the deck?

Bringing Out the Bucket

     This "Prindle Bucket" (above) stashed in the moraines at Crater Creek is an indication I am still in the game.  I am a climber who has gear stashed in the mountains.  My next attempt is imminent.  I'm a player.  To the question, "Been doin' any climbing lately?" I am able to answer in the strong affirmative, yes, how are you, as a matter of fact I AM climbing at this moment, simply by virtue of having a bunch of hardware and ropes in a 5-gallon bucket cached deep in the mountains (because my back is trashed and I have to double-carry everything these days.)

       But now, September had come.  The bucket was coming out.  Summer rock climbing in the Kigs was coming to an end.  The beginning of Loserdom once more....      

        

       Saturday, September 17...  Town had ravaged me...  Too many proboscises had been reamed into my chakras...I had completely lost the plot... a chance opening of circumstances allowed escape from the glue, the terrible GLUE of TOWN, the glue that requires such shameful and embarrassing self-absorption to overcome, to simply get out and do some climbing.  
      Yukon Jack acted counterintuitively as a stimulant, and got me out of Nome on Friday night.  But then, hours later, mounted on a four-wheeler with no high beam in pitch darkness out by Salmon Lake, one mile from my destination after a long ride on a long Friday evening, I drove straight into a large herd of Muskox on the road. 
        OOMINGMAK!!   Drat!    I had only been wanting to get to the cabin and collapse in my bag.  Now I would have to bull my way through this crowd of head-butters like a Polaris Centaur.  Again I would wear the hat of wildlife harasser. 
        One calf did not grasp the concept of get outta the road.  His mom, like Jim Otto, squarely in my headlights.  I rode in tight, quick circles, advancing forwards in incremental loops, my little bobble head swivelling, waiting for the awful contact with the great skull-plate coming out of the darkness.  It took 25 minutes to sweep the herd slowly off, and certainly constituted the most perilous moment of the whole trip.  I was grateful to finally fall asleep in the utter serenity and peace of the most grateful cabin at Salmon Lake... (below)

    Ostensibly, this bucket trip would also be a rematch with the lumpen heap of Pk. 3535, scene of my fog and ennui the week before.  And indeed, the day dawned beautiful, one of those not-quite-freezing Autumn days suspended in time,  but the familiar Kigsborne ennui of hiking up a hill and calling it a climb persisted, like vestigial fog on a sunny day. 
        I followed my trail along the bluffs on the south side of Crater Creek.  AKLAQ was all around, including the polite brown one that Janet, Carl and I had met a week earlier.  But the Aklaitch were fat with fish and berries;  situation non-stressful.  I dozed and power-lounged on tussoks, captivated by the thrumming humming marvel of the Kigs...  That weird thing happened, where the mountains cease to be inert stone, and reveal themselves to be sentient presences, ever communicating....  no way to translate it. 
     
      The climbing day slipped away.  I had been defeated (for the umpteenth time) by the debilitating power drains of town, coupled with my own foolish inability to patch them. 
          As consolation, I went for a hike (above) up the upper east fork of Crater Creek, a valley I'd never seen before.  Up some high moraines until I could see around the corner, lusting for a view of the hidden north face of Pk. 3325—  it proved to be another of those brown facades on the clash zone between the schist and pluton, reminiscent of False Tigaraha:  not worth climbing, unless some ice drip were to drip it on down, which looked entirely possible, north-facing cauldron like it is... A stupendous view down the length of the entire upper Crater Creek canyon—  but I had forgotten the camera down at the bucket.  You'll just have to slog up there yourself.

Pk. 3535, Crater Creek

Pk. 3535 at the head of Crater Creek.  I walked up most of the South ridge which slants upwards to the right in the picture.

        Some lameness has crept in here.  It brings to mind the unresolved question of:  what is the lower limit of blogworthiness?   The latest is now I have failed to climb a Class 2 hill.  I have launched two Alaskan expeditions intending to achieve success on this walk-up, and been denied.  Shall I then take up valuable room in cyberspace to report this embarassment?  These are questions for the new age;  there is not yet an accumulated body of wisdom to help me decide.  
      But why not blog?  Let me detail every firing of a neuron, I shall recreate my brain on a worldwide web in conjunction with all of yours'.  The fog which follows is only an indication of my interior mental environment.

Pk. 3535 as it appeared the day I went up it, September 5, 2010.  

Fog over mountain

Fog over mind

Soon we will be mantling

Up into the sunshine

The top of the fog is an ocean

And the sky will be blue

We'll climb to the top of this island

If we can only make it through... 

  

(left) View, or lack thereof, western slopes of Pk. 3535 from halfway up South Ridge.

(right)  Claustrogo...                                      A form of madness begins to set in after a day mountain climbing in the fog.   The dissonance created when Equilibrioception is robbed of its visual component creates a mild anxiety, a hybrid of claustrophobia and vertigo:  I call it Claustrogo!  Something to dwell on as one stumbles upward through fog...  (More on Claustrogo)          At a shoulder, the ridge changed direction; I could sense it in the organelles of my vestibular system. The wind intensified.  The fog was really howling now!   The promised sunshine might still lie above, but this mountain was having trouble getting it up.  Come to think of it, the clouds had gone gray;   the September sun was getting low.  A vision of Peronto's weather map from Friday flashed into my head, all green zones and whorling Ls, along with the thought that here was come the next storm.

      Another section of weary plodding up ahead vanished into the mist.  I knew it wasn't far to the top now...  But a type of boredom had hold of me.  My mind had sprung power leaks. CHI hissed out of me and vaporized in the air like breath.  What worth this boring lump of a mountain? my mind reasoned, perhaps justifiably.  I was happy to turn around and head down.  There were interesting granite cliffs on the way.  I could huddle close to the rock in the fog and pretend to be in Tuolumne.  Pk. 3535 differs on Amato's geology map from the other peaks in the Crater Creek cirque (the C-Togs and Kayuktuqs and whatnot) by virtue of being true, unmorphed granite, as opposed to the highly metamorphic gneiss.

(above) DIBELS, Mr. White, Janet.

The miraculous, super-nice thing about the trip was getting to be in the company of friends and loved ones--  I hiked in with Carl, Janet, and DIBLS, we made it all the way to the First C-Tog and had a great night in the wind and rain.  Curious how Carl seems to have his own relationship with Crater Creek, how he repeatedly gets sucked into this vortex.  On the way in, we had Encounter #1 with a big, brown, very polite AKLAQ (Janet's first on the Seward, which seems a miracle, given how often she is found in the brush) who ran up a side hill to let us pass.  We would see more of him later.

(above) Google Earth, Pk. 3535, and hike up Crater Creek. 

       Here is one of my own personal hidden secret sequestered meaningless little rule for naming peaks:  whichever drainage is primarily responsible for opening up the view so that the peak comes into view, that drainage becomes the eponymous name of the peak.  For instance, "Fox Peak" is highly visible from one certain spot on the Kougarak Road where it crosses Fox Creek (when you are looking straight up Fox Creek), hence, the name Fox, even though the mountain in character seems more a denizen of Crater Creek on its northern side.  According to this rule, Pk. 3535 would become Crater Mountain, because it lies at the exact head of Crater Creek, and is what you see looking up the valley from the road. It's still rather a lump.  And these are just little reductionist fancies I entertain as I slog painfully and interminably over tussocks and through willows.

Return to the Oliver Perry Smith boulders

(above) Nome-Council Road, looking west.  Hike to the marble bands in the picture, walk west along the ridgeline for several miles until you reach a small, fairly paltry set of boulders—  the Oliver Perry Smith boulders.

   Bill the ferry man had gotten drunk and Johnson found himself stranded again, alone, on the far side of the Channel.  There was nothing for it but siwash once again and make the two-day trudge back to Council. He would take the back way, of course.  It wasn't the first time.

 Johnson rather enjoyed these siwashes, truth be told.  His legs covered the miles, his mind was free to roam. Johnson was always known around the diggings as a man who would rather walk miles than ride a mule.  A structural engineer by training, he had come from Europe to build bridges, but had soon run afoul of the Council City and Solomon River Railroad Company, and was reduced to a grunt, mucking his living here and there between the two town sites. 

(above)  The marble band.  About 55 ft... extremely can't-dependable MEGA-CHOSS.   Some fun highball boulders if you've got the stomach for rock that may crumble and clash into chalk dust any moment.

     Johnson came muck-a-lucking along the wagon way in gumboots.  He had almost got up to Big Hoorah, was just pulling into view of the encampment, when he saw old Lehnhart ahead on the hill, mucking away at something.  Suddenly, Johnson remembered:  'Lehnart— the money I owe 'im!' 

     Johnson veered off to the west immediately, intending to circumvent his creditor in the willows, but soon found himself ascending a steep draw even further to the west, and topping out on the crest of a high ridge, which he began following, somewhat mindlessly, I might add, further and further west.  Johnson ambled along, happy as can be, rifle in his hand.

(above) Looking east along the ridge.  What fine FELL WALKING there is on the Seward Peninsula!  World class....  It out-Scotlands Scotland.

   It was a detour that Johnson sometimes liked to make, especially on trips where he was alone.  It took him well out of his way for getting back to Council, but Johnson nursed a secret... a hidden passion that none of his pards would understand:  he liked the rocks.  Climbing them, that is.

      It was like ballet.  Old Perry Smith had showed him back in the Dresden days, back in their days at the Technische Hochschule, down by the river on the Elbsandstein.  The ways of crimping and torquing the body into the rock, the silent challenge of a rock tower, the strange sort of focus that fell over a man... 'or woman, for that matter,' thought Johnson, remembering Rand's girl that day long ago when they went the wrong way on the Grosser Wehlturm, missing out on placing the schwarze kamin. Oliver flunked out of school because they went climbing that day.  But Ollie never stayed flunked for long.'  

   (above) Oliver.  Rather an interesting piece of metamorphic something-or-other.  Crazy little mini-dikes that look friable but don't quite break when you finger-crank down on them.  Oliver is one of the only worthwhile boulders in the whole obscure clump of boulders.

        Old Perry Smith...  he would never have done something like mucking for gold, thought Johnson.  He would have scoffed at the gold.  He would have said something absurd like, "Sport is Panacea!" just to show how damned clever he was, and then...
raced ahead to launch up the rocks, the rocks that were at last hoving into Johnson's view.

 (above) OPS boulders looking west.  Insignificant little scuds of metamorphic:  NOT a destination bouldering area, but a favorite of the miner Johnson's.

      But when he got to the boulders, Johnson was momentarily too fatigued to climb.  His body sagged down against the big overhanging boulder he fondly called "Oliver," and a deep sigh wheezed out of him as he slumped into the soft cushion of the blueberry tundra.  He got out his biscuits, tipped out a hit of the aquavit, measured out his tobacco.  He noticed all of a sudden a little bird's nest perched on a foothold at eye level.  He tried to remember if it had been there last time he was sitting here.  The clouds looked like they had been painted against the blue.  Johnson sighed the contented sigh of a man without a care in the world.

(above) Oliver.  A fine picnic spot, with shelter from the rain.  Note gun for size.     

        The miner daydreamed.  Johnson got to thinking about Germany again.  Every Saturday they went to the rocks.   They had  not questioned the why?  They climbed, as Oliver often reminded them, for the ding an sich...

    On impulse, with spastic grace, Johnson heaved himself to his feet. The crusty miner faced the rock, and his body seemed to loosen.  Delicately, he attached each one of his four limbs to the overhanging rock.  His fingers latched on tiny sills.   Both his rubber boots cut loose from their footholds, causing his body to swing into space.  His blackened fingers darted out and caught a lichen-covered hold to the side.  .

(above)  Oliver east face.  This shot is SO posed.  This was the first time I ever remembered to bring my glasses so I could play around with the 10-second self-timer on the camera.  I'm pretty sure I sent this problem years ago when I was there with Nils Hahn, but I chickened out of doing it last Sunday.

       Johnson flailed.  No way he was getting over this overhang.  So instead he inched around the boulder, playing the quergang game Ferhmann used to play where you don't let your feet touch the ground or it's like a death fall, and see if you can make it all the way around the boulder without resting.     

    'Oliver would have sent,' thought Johnson.  It was always like that in the Tech tagen, Oliver going up over the beetling hangs, while the rest of them played the traversing game lower down, close to the ground.

(above) Uluraq.  Another experiment with the self-timer.  There is something inherently narcissistic about a self timer;  such a thing seems unsavory.  The small piece of stone in this picture is perhaps the least flaky slice in the Oliver Perry Smiths, a fractured sliver fallen off the mother rock, and shaped like an ulu.  Note the new toy helmet, the Petzl Elios III.

      Johnson played on the rocks until he noticed the sun going down over the Sawtooths and a chill drawing down on the air like a curtain, at which he forgot all about his musings and hastened back in the direction of the Roadhouse, where his friends would be waiting, Lehnart be damned... and he just might get a few ptarmigan on the way back...

(above) High ridge paralleling Nome-Council Road on the west where the road begins to climb over Skookum Pass in the Mile fifties, Fall of 2009.  Those are the forgettable Oliver Perry Smith boulders in profile on the top-  at least that is my own private little fanciful name I carry around for them in the quick of my own little mind.

         Johnson is the person who has climbed this boulder problem before you.  Maybe he is a hunter in the Neolithic, but in that case, how do you define a mountain over time?          

        When you are tempted to post on the internet and claim the FA of a climb on the Seward Peninsula, consider Johnson (who might have lived to go with Allen Carpe on Logan had he not succumbed to the flu in '18), who surely climbed it before you, though his exploits be forgotten.

     More on Johnson

Third C-Tog North Buttress attempt

(left) The objective: North Buttress of the "Third C-Tog," the righthand skyline, last week on the July/August cusp.  I went in to Crater Creek thinking the route was 5 pitches;  I came out realizing it was probably twice that.  Base to summit we're looking at about 2,000 ft. in the picture;  the route itself might be 1,600 ft.  I got one pitch up and BAILED.  I could justifiably blame my retreat on the rainy weather, but deep inside, I know the bail was due to my chronic, deep-rooted failure of will.  (I count COMMON SENSE as a factor in this chronic failing!)  In fact, the weather was so-so during the six days of my trip, constantly threatening, but never precipitating all that much, fine, of course, for the approach days, deteriorating markedly on potential launch days.  In 2009 I bouldered my way to the summit via intermittent cliffs and 4th Class turf on the northwest side of the mountain, but the mountain still needs a truly technical ascent.  From the back (south) side, the  third Tog is a Class 2 walk-up.

  

                      The critters:  First, the 'Skox (OOMINGMAK) on the hike in, imperiously dominating the right of way (left), then the AKLAQ hanging around our camp the first night (above). He was a young male, and appeared to be nothing more than intensely curious about humans, as if he hadn't quite been paying attention to his mother's lessons and now needed to make up for his inattention in school by studying us closely in real life. He just couldn't get enough of us;  he showed off for a while with prodigious swimming feats in a nearby lake, then climbed up class 3 slopes and scree just so he kick back on a high ledge and study us for an hour or two, all the while giving off an air of youthful carefree abandon.  I had persuaded Rick Anderson to hike in with me for the first night.  After years hiking alone in the Kigs, both Rick and I are a bit jaded on being prey animals all the time.  I was so deeply grateful to Rick for being there as we stood by our tents with guns drawn, rendering the whole thing a lighthearted situation.  

      It was awful lonely bidding goodbye to Rick the next morning.  I moved my basecamp up, and was destined to spend the next few days in hyper-aware solitude twitching with constant Bearanoia, both in sleep and wakefulness. Never did see another AKLAQ, but they saw me.  They dominated my thoughts completely;  but this is the last I shall mention of them for now....

(above)  The route:  A very pathetic act, here...  I went for the Photoshop and drew the little red line EVEN THOUGH I have not yet completed the route.  Has the Internet freed us from the penalties for such a transgression?   This is the age of transparency.  I spent days scoping the route through my shiny new binoculars, and it was SO MUCH FUN drawing the little red line.  The crooked arrow points up the anus to a tremendous, sinuous, CHASM that penetrates the heart of the mountain like an intestine.    

(above)  The foot:  these are the initial cliffs of the north buttress.  The green parts are generally pretty easy climbing, but in a good drizzle, the green can be utterly treacherous, promising good footholds, but with suddenly variable coefficients of friction.  I'm still learning the art of Kigluaik route finding;  it's difficult not to let a route default into a GREEN LINE of least resistance.  The actual route here needs to go over the overhangs visible on the left.

(above)  Proof of climbing.  My new Beal rope hanging down 4th and 5th class slopes.  This is kind of embarrassing.  It might look like one could just SOLO ropeless, and one certainly could, and yet, when one is there, it all feels vaguely treacherous, especially with a scottish mist in the air.  In fact, there was a little 5.5 on this pitch; it provided a fine shakedown, no Gri-Gri, just using knots for rope-solo technique.   Kigluaik GNEISS is so preposterously fractured that climbing is like that old Mousetrap game:  one false move, one twitch, one spasm, and one risks unleashing catastrophic rockfall.  Rope soloing makes for such ridiculously slow climbing on this kind of ground that one longs for winter, when it is all frozen in place.

(above) KAYUQTUQ (Fox), Pk. 3950(?), on the divide between Crater Creek and Fox Creek, in essence, the Sixth Tog, and possibly the second highest summit in the Kigs besides the mighty Osborne, which stands nearby to the southwest...  I personally don't have access to a map which gives me a reliable altitude for this hill.  It pops into view from the Kougarak Road around Fox Creek at Salmon Lake.  KAYUQTUQ is only a little sobriquet I have applied in order to track the thing in my cluttered head.  If it has a name, could somebody please emerge forth with it?

         Kayuqtuq is included in this post by way of a RETRACTION.   For, I have already sprayblogged about this mountain in other posts, including the following post last April...     Fox and Foxy     ...which came after the second of two fun attempts on the mountain's north face the previous winter.  In the April post, I revealed myself to be completely befuddled as to which was the true summit. The photograph above, taken from Tog 3, shows which is the true summit, and myself to have been an idiot last April.  I shall not feel embarrassed, these types of befuddlements are de rigueur in the convoluted Kigs.  I still have not actually summited this mountain.  Somebody must have... yes? 

(above)  The Breach:  the preCambrian Thompson Creek OrthoGneiss has these features I call

    CHASMS...
.... one might simply refer to them as "gullies," but this term lacks the onomatopoeic grandeur of the former word to adequately describe these grand hidden canyons, formed along fault lines within the pluton that act as enormous debris chutes that shed the run-off as the mountain thrusts higher through the lithosphere over time.
        The best climbing of this trip occured after I coiled the ropes for the day, and peeked my head around the corner into this mother of all chasms, the very Breach itself.  Chasms often have very good rock, because they contain actual granite that was on the inside of the pluton and didn't get cooked into gneiss.  The Breach was no exception.  I bouldered upwards on the sidewalls of the chasm for hundreds of feet, losing myself in the continuous movement of granite climbing, sometimes looking down to find myself over that palpable limit where you suddenly say, who are you kidding, this isn't bouldering, it's free soloing...  A chasm is, however, a very very very terrible place to be for long, a hanging house of giant beartraps, an enormous playground slide littered with multi-ton boulders, NOT a place you take the boy scouts on the geology tour, a place where the foulest words you could utter are "SEISMIC ACTIVITY..."

(above)  The bouldering spot:  disgorged from the very maw of the Breach above, it's the Breach Boulders.  Some SWEET lines!  Friction, layback, offwidth, highballs...  Very nice stone...  the creek babbles among cobblestones...  can't say much for the landings.  Worth carrying the shoes for if you venture up Crater Creek....  

(above)  The Corner:  Togs 1, 2, and 3, looking west.  The C-togs are not seen from the Kougarak Road, they are AROUND THE CORNER of this T-shaped, obviously glaciated canyon.  The first miles of the hike are rather botanical, until you get up on the old moraines in the corner area.  I have not yet located any nub of a still-living glacier in Crater Creek, but one may be hiding at the top of the valley. 

(above)  Togs 1 and 2: looking northeast.  Fourth-classed a fun route on Tog 2 in '08 up the right hand side of the main buttress in this picture.  

(above) Togs 1 and 2 again, this time looking south.  After due consideration, I decided these were two independent structures.  Geologically, the C-Togs seem to be the very striking edge of the pluton where it is poking up through the mantle of schist, like a Humpback whale snout breaking up through sea ice.  You can pretty much see where the tattered edge of the schist (the sea ice) is riding up on the summit of the granite mountain (the whale's snout).

     Why "C-Tog"?  What the hell is a C-Tog?  Please remember that for all matters geological pertaining to the Kigluait, I regard my ultimate authority to be Amato & Miller's "Bedrock Geologic Map of the Kigluaik Mountains, Seward Peninsula, Alaska, 2004."  It's rather like my bible.  On the map, the C-Togs appear as little fingernails of pink pressed up against a big zone of brownish-green schist, with a little code that says the pink is pCtog.  The map key tells us this is "preCambrian Thompson Creek Orthogneiss."  That's the shit!  In the absence of any other names, that's what I call the peaks of Crater Creek South Fork...

(above) C-Tog 3 and 4, looking southeast.  The little red line shows a very silly but very fun bouldering/scramble excursion I soloed in 2009.  (link to silly related post:  Crater Creek Scrambles, featuring Carl White )  The yellow line is the north buttress that was the main topic of this post.  The outcome of this climb is still very much pending, though it looks like the rains of August may be dampening further prospects for now.

      If Norman Clyde had had Photoshop, would he have been able to resist drawing in the little red and yellow lines?

    Crater Creek is a fantastic place once you get up there.  It's as good as any National Park.  It's the epicenter of Nome climbing, which ain't saying much, brother, let me tell you, but it's a better hike any day than Grand Central Valley to the south, where the masses go...

      HIKING ADVICE:  I would recommend the south side of Crater Creek Valley (left as you're looking up Crater Creek from the Kougarak Road.)  There's a bluff paralleling and slightly elevated above the river to the south;  if you keep strictly to that bluff, that should keep you out of bushwhacking trouble.  When you reach the beginnings of the moraines (a deep unnamed drainage joins in from the left, or south) it is time to cross Crater Creek and swing wide to the right (north) as you travel left around the Corner.  Don't be too tempted to cut the corner on the inside (southwest), it gorges out into some less pleasant, rocky hiking.  
      As for the parking on the road...  man, I just don't know, lots of camps and private property, good luck, don't piss anyone off, camp on the shoulder of the road, get permission from someone, figure out something unobtrusive...  I like to park a quarter mile or so south of Crater Creek bridge, and then angle northeast towards the hiking bluff. 

Sampson Creek Boulders

(left) Sampson Creek boulders visible from the Kougarak Road-  as i pulled up to park on the shoulder of the Kougarak Road during the rains of July, just to the north of what must be the most dangerous ramp on the entire road, i  was informed by a fellow named Ken who came motoring out to greet me that this— he gestured toward this hill- was Sitnasuak Corporation...

phase one, JOY OF DISCOVERY Nome rockclimbing, when you are getting to know all the roadside crags thinking you are the first, you are going to be the Fred Beckey of this obscure little rock clump  (not understanding that ishigaitch, the little people, have been cragging here since the Distant Time, not to mention probable instances of visiting climbers to Nome through its 100-year history, and undoubtedly the centuries before...)

typically, it goes like this:  from one of the four highways the climber espies a dark rock sticking up from the tundra fields, maybe only ten feet worth by the looks of it, but let's go check it out...   after a short hike through blueberries the climber gets to the rock and discovers that in addition to the 10 feet of vertical seen from the road, another 15 feet of vertical was hidden behind a fold of tundra, the result being a fairly sweet little 25-foot crag, with scattered dudes of 10-foot boulders, which will, from here on in, provide year-round bouldering— hooking, camming, and moss in the winter, marble and schist in the summer 

but now, after 10 years of frequent 4-season bouldering, "phase one JOY OF DISCOVERY rockclimbing in Nome" is drawing to a close for me;  i've climbed out all my favorite spots (up to the .10c level, of course-  plenty left for the V2 crowds of the future)...  which is why i was so happy, several weeks ago during the rains of July, to be exploring a brand new set of boulders, ones i had never noticed before despite how many passes, a new slant of sunlight driving by one day, a chance sighting of a rock hitherto camoflagued as bush:  potential JOY OF DISCOVERY and new fresh meat boulder takings... 

(above) A pair of Mew Gulls (Larus Canus)  i think, help me out here...  the first issue with a new crag is always:  RAPTORS:  where's the nest?  whadda we got this year?  a serene and welcoming eagle?  a stressed and strafing falcon?  a pair of ravens with marital troubles?  but as i approached the Samson Creek boulders, i was surprised to see a pair of gulls on sentry (no, they weren't jaegers or terns)-  they put up almost no resistance to my intrusion... i'm not sure they even had a nest up there.... they flew away, i never saw them again...

(above) Delilah's, a one-move 5.6 offwidth, which you will know is an oxymoron if you are student of climbing, offered here as a sarcastic comment upon the general paucity of this area for any worthwhile bouldering...   The score for Sampson Creek Boulders:  ZILCH...   one star,  not the next Cloggy, NO COLOR IN THE PAN, not worth a return visit, of which i was relieved to inform Ken when he came motoring out to my car once again as i was leaving...   

(above)  Pk. 3922 ("Aapa") in the distant Grand Central region framed through a "hole in the wall" at Sampson Creek boulders.   i'm assuming the boulders in these pictures are meta-sedimentary MARBLE, they had these awful white plates that broke at a touch, maybe this stuff:

PLATEY MARBLE (light to medium gray, medium to coarse grained, with grains 0.25 to 1 mm, heavily weathered, marble composed largely of 85% calcite and subordinate amounts of quartz anhedra (5%), tremolite (3%), locally diopside in disequilibrium (1%), and white mica (8%). Platy nature caused by thin interbeds of white mica-chlorite lenses and wisps usually less than 1 cm thick.  Frequently isoclinically folded and sheared along fold axes.  Less resistant than [other marbles] due to white mica content and folded nature, which produce broken, sheared outcrops and rubble.) (Bundtzen et al. 1994)

but i am SO NOT SURE what kind of stone it was...  i departed Sampson Creek early, and returned to the "plagioclase porphyroblasts" of the Windmill Boulders to work on the proj., mildly depressed because of the rains of July, though little did i suspect, my fortunes were soon to change in the greater mountains....

Mt. Warren (Pk. 3300+) via Fox/Warren Creek

Days of rain and self-pity at Salmon Lake (above, looking north), folded up between the mountains, the lake, the fog, and the DELUSION that I AM THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE.  On the third day I left the cabin, with a compass and a map of the Fox Creek area downloaded on a very feeble short-term memory, and headed east into the hills, having decided to provide my little summit-grubbing ego with a tiny nub of consolation:  a peak lying on the divide between Warren Creek (a tributary of Fox Creek which drains into Salmon Lake) and the Southeast Fork of Crater Creek:  Peak 3300+. 

Looking up Warren Creek (above)...   Madness quickly set in, claustrophobia.  Locked in a cell of fog all day, the brain is receiving inputs from four of the senses that the mountains are all around, but no fifth sense, no visual.  You can feel the mountains like a phantom limb.  It's disorienting, like Neo and Morpheus standing in the construct.  The obligatory Grizzly dissolved into and out of the view for a moment, precipitating much irrational fear and unnecessary detouring.

Several miles in from the Kougarak Road, the slopes began to rise, up and up.  Vapors, nothingness, sensory deprivation.  Onset of hallucinations.  Voices.  I had had too much caffineated GU.  The compass was constantly in play.  Fortunately, the terrain was matching the feeble brain download.  The summit of Pk. 3300+ (or Warren Mt., as I had started to call it) finally appeared through the fog (left).  As is usual with Kigluaik summits, the north side dropped off into chasms, while the south side provided a Class II walk up.   

This is supposed to be a picture of the fearsome drop off to the north (right), but as you can see, the image is nothing more than fuzzy shapes on a sheet.  Standing there, you could feel the space beneath your feet registering as a tingle in the solar plexus region (where lie the sensitive organelles in the electromagnetic energy body that register the sense of vertigo) but without the corresponding visuals, the feeling lacked adrenal punch. 

This, then, is the theme:  a mountain, and a sensibility, truncated by fog.  Follow the lines in this picture of Mt. Warren from the north (above), taken on a subsequent gear-ferrying trip up Crater Creek.  Extrapolate where the apex of Warren Mt. must be. Thus, our mind throws a veil over the peaks of our enlightenment.  Nothing has changed much for a week.  Reality shrouded.  Sanity diffused.  Motivation muted. Tarps dripping.  Poor American:  his belly is full, but he still finds something to complain about...

Windmills, by Raina

   Overall psyched about this post because it marks the debut of MOUNTAIN PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAINA MCRAE.  Age six, relationship daughter.  She actually had to dangle from holds with one hand and wield the camera like a veritable Jim Thornburg to get these shots. Time of shoot was about 10 p.m. last month around solstice.  Night sweet as can be, with a breeze to blow the bugs, and the 'Skox herd lurking nearby.

 (below) The "jut" on Courtyard traverse, .10c

      Something completely tedious and boring (like bouldering) is rendered interesting by handicapping oneself in a variety of ways (both on and off the field) thus increasing the challenge.  For instance, the low-ball traverse rule:  you cannot use holds that are on the top edge of the boulder.  In the picture above I may seem to be violating this rule, but I am allowed those holds on a technicality, namely, the .10c rule:  once the problem is harder than .10c I will need to begin removing handicaps to make it .10c again because that is the hardest I can climb.    

Therefore, all my hardest boulder problems shall henceforth be rated 10c.

(above) Awning.  This sloping pull-over problem I have almost topped, but not quite. Wish I were allowed the desecration of a Fat Pad for the distasteful landing in the center of the Courtyard that a blow-out from the last move would bring.

(below) Scoop traverse, 5.8.  Killer M-5 ice tool pendjy-swing move in winter, from where the Scoop gets its name:  in deep snows, always a classic little wind-sculpted scoop formed at the top of an enormous drift, out of the wind, with dreamy convex landings (when not rock hard from wind), and fun moss sticks.

(left) BoreHole Overhang, 5.6. or what have you. This move is actually just a tiny bit off the deck. I was trying to get Raina to convey a sense of exposure, but all the photo conveys is a sense of age. The move is part of the overall Bore Hole Traverse, my current "proj", constituted by the low-ball circumnavigation of the entire lower wall at the Windmills.  Rating coming in at —  .10c, of course.  The windmills have a surprising number of crack moves here and there.  

(above) Hamlet.  This was Raina's favorite pic, and she wanted it included.  This little mouse is a survivor.  Like Diemberger on K2, Hamlet narrowly avoided the SNAKE.  He'll never know how closely he touched the void.  He was the best climber, cranking Separate Reality moves upside down on the roof of the cage, and this is what saved him.  

     At the start of summer, my student Kaitlin showed up at the door with 4 fat adult mice to feed to "Speedy", our class snake, who is currently residing in my bathroom at home with the hot shower on at my summer spa for arctic pythons.  Kids from all over Nome bring their rodents to us.  Mom and Dad say we have to get rid of them.  Raina has learned to successfully petition me to take one mouse out of ever fodder as a pet, just for one night.  Hamlet was the clear choice.  

    The first three victims were dispatched without great ceremony, BAM!, squeak!, gulp.  Hamlet, the fourth, went into Raina's room, and that night slept in golden chambers.  He entertained us with his cheer, good disposition, and hard climbing.  He was a hit with the neighborhood children, pawed and fondled by all with no complaint or bite on his part.

     Raina left the house the next day.  I whipped out Hamlet by the tail and carried him towards the big cage where the python was waiting for him, coiled, ready.  And then I was overtaken.  Suddenly, profoundly...  Every unit of KARMA I had accumulated from every living MOUSE I had ever thrown to this MONSTER suddenly burst forth from my chakras in one agglomerated spasm.  I fell to the floor, weeping.  "Oh, my offense is rank, I stinks to heaven!"  I wept for 20 minutes.  I cursed Hamlet hysterically and hurled him back in his feeding cage:  "I CAN'T DO IT!"  He was just a mouse, but he was so cool, he had a life, I had known him from an earlier incarnation.  

    We took Hamlet to Animal House, the awesome Nome pet store, where Chrystie was kind enough to take him in.  A sign was posted on his cage  proclaiming him the Kurt Diemberger of mice.  He eventually went to the home of another wonderful, kind, child of Nome, Alaska, where I'm sure he is bouldering on the walls of his cage.