Alaskan adventures: Part 3, Hallucinations on the glacier.

The route was the stuff of dreams. Steep solid granite walls, separated by icefields, linked together by narrows ribbons of ice. What we hoped to be 'easy' early pitches turned out to be hard, brittle steep ice, or thin ice and mixed like Tony on the Twin Runnels, above. The obvious rock feature above is 'The Prow' the crux of the first rock band.

Tony climbing up to the Prow. At this stage, Viv and I are busy congratulating each other on the tactical foresight of bringing such a strong rope gun as Tony to dispatch the hard climbing for us. This is the key, I believe, to hard ascents and often overlooked in the planning process.

Me on Tamara's Traverse. This wasn't actually on the route, Viv just sent me out there for a photo op. No wonder we took so long.

Our biv. Not quite on the top of the buttress as we planned, but on a wee ledge hacked out of the first icefield, about a third of the way up. Oh well. We actually started up the next section in the afternoon sunshine, but backed off as it was melting in the heat, abseiling to this ledge cut by a previous party. I was slipping off all night and never got any sleep, so was pretty happy when dawn came and we could get going. And for breakfast? Our 'easy' entry pitches to the next rock band turn out to be blimmin hard. We are being made to work for this.

Tony in 'The Shaft'. I have never seen such good, steep ice climbing in the mountains. Pitch after pitch, it just kept coming at you. This brought us to the second ice field, then the next crux being 'The Vision' bringing us up to the third. The guidebook had this as 2 pendulums plus aid, but the guidebook writers obviously didn't have a Tony to dispatch up and dispense with all that nonsense. We keep plugging away and early evening we find ourselves at the end of the technical difficulties and the base of the 50 deg slopes leading to the top of the buttress. Many parties end up abseiling down from here. We had planned to go to the top and descend the West Ridge, but we were a day behind schedule, pretty short of food, and it was still a long way up. "So how do you feel about continuing up?" I asked, trying to disguise the keenness in my voice. The weather was so good it would be a shame to descend now, so I sucked a gel, tied in and started plugging up. "Come on legs, do your thing..."
But they didn't. A lack of sleep, food, water and acclimatisation had taken their toll, and knackeredness grounded us all to a slow crawl. We made it halfway up this slope before a convenient flat crevasse provided an ideal opportunity to rest, brew water, eat and generally try to recover in the warm evening sun. We never really discussed the option of another biv, although in hindsight it may have been a good idea. There was an implied desire to keep going that night to the summit and descend.


So that we did, slowly plugging away. getting to the chilly summit at 3am, each cocooned in our own little world of exhaustion and private suffering, not realising till afterwards that we were all in just as bad a state as each other. 1/3 mars bar and a sip of water to celebrate and it is time to start heading down.

Immediately I start to feel better, gravity, altitude, temperature and biorhythms all starting to work in our favour as we quickly drop down the West Ridge in a beautiful dawn.

The views down to the lower Kahiltna Glacier are stunning, as we get a sense of the huge scale and wilderness of the mountains around us. Our smooth decent gets slowed by a number of hangups, abseils down an ice slope, a tricky rock step, more abseils, a stuck rope. It is good to have 3 of us as we each take turns at leading out and solving whatever problems arise. Sleep deprivation is having interesting effects. I start to see interesting things in the shapes and patterns on the surrounding rock walls and glaciers. Crevasses look like words, I try to find meaning in what is written on the glaciers, I am convinced that rock walls are covered in interesting paintings, graffiti left by an ancient civilisation perhaps, or the marks left at the highpoints of generations of climbers. I see a ski piste, chairlifts, fences and slalom courses on the glacier next to basecamp. I am aware it is unlikely to be there and I am probably hallucinating, but I am still utterly convinced of it's presence. It was an interesting experience and way to finish such a great climb, buzzing as I truded up to camp, some 70 hours after leaving.