Alaskan adventures: Part 2, Blinking and Bewildered.

The reason we’re in Talkeetna is in the 50s Don Sheldon worked out you could land ski planes on the glaciers, saving all us climbers a whole lot of time and effort getting into the mountains. Now it is a somewhat confusing mixture of locals (check shirts and beards), tourists (clean, with fanny packs) and climbers (smelly, stubble, glazed eyes). 30 mins later we are deposited, blinking and bewildered, on a glacier, surrounded by all these awesome mountains we had been pouring over in books for ages.

Mt Foraker from the landing strip, Sultana Ridge coming down to the right.

View of the north face of Mt hunter as we come into land. North Butress (Moonflower) is on the left, Z Buttress is on the right, West Ridge is RH skyline. Landing strip is visible on far left.

Our first objective on this trip was the first ascent of the ‘Z buttress’ on the right hand side of the north face of Mt Hunter. However, we couldn’t help but notice a set of prints heading in that direction. Discrete inquiries indicated a group of Swiss uber-alpinists had already climbed it and were currently on their way to blitzing up the North Buttress. Bah Humbug.

Our camp had a view of all the big three peaks. This is the big one, Denali, with the Cassin Ridge facing us.

If there is one thing climbers like doing better than going climbing, it is talk about climbing. But on this occasion, our next objective did not take much discussion. It sat there above us, big, brash, and beautiful. Nobody with a pulse could sit and that campsite and not have the desire to climb this route build inside their bellies. So it was to be the North Buttress of Hunter by the mega classic Moonflower route. We had heard that the Uber-Swiss and American wunderkid Colin Haley had taken about 12-14 hours to climb the route, so the pretentious young things that we are figured we would take about the same, despite a guidebook time of several days. Thus a handful or bars each and a potful of smash for our bivy at the top would be plenty. Time for the schooling to begin.

Tony swats up for the exam looming over his shoulder.