Tag Archive for 'Alaska'

Back from Alaska

Published on October 27, 2009 in Commentary. 5 Comments Tags: .

I made it back from a quick trip to Alaska where, once again, I had a great time. I love that state.  Thanks to Joe Stock and all of the Friends of the Chugach National Forest Avalanche Information Center, the slideshow on skiing the AK Family was a success and raised a sizeable whack of cash for the avalanche center.  Many people take their local avalanche centers for granted, but having worked at one for a season, their very existence is always tenuous.  If they do too good a job and nobody gets hurt, they are one of the first to get chopped for state funding, so they often have to rely on outside funding (such as Friends groups), to supplement their annual expenses.  Nobody is getting rich off of avalanche forecasting and it is a labor of love for almost everyone involved in it.

Continue reading ‘Back from Alaska’

Alaska Range Fly Over

Published on July 9, 2009 in Trip Reports. 2 Comments Tags: .

Bush pilots might get use to it, but the thrill of flying over wild, mountainous terrain in a small plane is one of my favorite parts of going to places like Alaska. The video below captures a bit of what it is all about.

This flight took place on the way out from the Kahiltna Glacier back to the town of Talkeetna.  Our pilot, Tyler from TAT, was mildly disappointed when he showed up and found out that the Swinging Sultanas (our official team name) was four stinky guys, not a group of girls.  Fred Marmsater asked if we could fly back via the famous “One Shot” gap, but Tyler said, “We could… but I know an even better way.”   He wasn’t kidding – I have no idea where we were or the names of the peaks, but they were mighty cool and beautiful. At about the 20 second mark, a random point release avalanche cuts loose from near the top of a peak.

On the flight in, we flew in TAT’s Turbine Otter, (aka “Precious”), but on the flight out, we were in a classic old Beaver, complete with Jonny Cash in the headphones, wood dashboards and the throaty, roaring engine.

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Into the Lenticular…

Published on June 24, 2009 in Trip Reports. 6 Comments Tags: .
Lenticular clouds are a source of awe and terror for mountaineers.  Awe as they are so surreal looking that they have been mistaken for UFO’s and terror as they signify ripping summit winds.
Courtney Phillips ponders his options as a lenticular cloud form on the 12,800' peak of Mt. Crossen.
Courtney Phillips ponders his options as a lenticular cloud forms on the 12,800′ peak of Mt. Crossen.

Patagonia is a contender for the some of the best lenticular clouds in the world, but in the US, Mt. Shasta has some of the most consistent and unique lenticular clouds around.  Lenticular clouds are particular to mountains as they are formed by water vapor being condensed or squeezed out of the atmosphere as it passes over high peaks in high winds.  In mountaineering terms, lenticulars are warning signs as you can have almost no wind down in the valleys, yet if there is a lenticular cloud on the summit… rat-a-tat-tat hang on to to your hat!  The higher you climb, the windier it will get.

In the case of the video below, we started up Mt. Crossen in fairly nice weather, then halfway up, a lenticular cloud started to form on top of the peak.  Hmmmm.  We kept climbing as there was the option of dumping our loads and coming back for them later, but fortunately the strong winds just held steady and didn’t increase.  It is hard to see, but at the summit we are actually in a lenticular cloud, which, like the eye of a hurricane, doesn’t seem so bad.  The winds were probably in the 30-40 mph range, which is annoying, but not too bad. I wouldn’t make a habit out of climbing directly into lenticulars, but in this case it worked out and was actually kind of fun.

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Kahiltna Glacier 2009 Scrabble Tournament

Published on June 22, 2009 in Trip Reports. 6 Comments Tags: .

 I can’t play Hearts or Poker to save my life and have yet to make it through a single crossword or Soduko puzzle, but I do like playing Scrabble and Cribbage.  For the sake of our marriage, I hardly ever get to play Scrabble as my main partner is my wife, Polly, who views it as a blood-sport and locks the board up with high scoring two letter words that not only dwarfs my score, but makes it impossible to play anything.  Fortunately, Kip is into Scrabble and brought a board, so we played endless rounds will waiting for the weather to clear on Foraker.

Courtney & Kip after game #374.

 Courtney claims he was a rank novice, but he says that about a lot of things before instantly picking them up (like skiing).  While Kip was the most consistent winner, Courtney had two of the bigger plays, including triples like JESTER with the J on a triple tile and BUXOM which were worth something like 75 points.  Noah Howell was also a stellar Scrabble player and probably would have been the glacier champ, except he was only around for a few games.

The video below sums up the Kahiltna Glacier Subterranean Scrabble Championships. Fred, who is Swedish, plays a mean game of Scrab, although having English as a second language can be a distinct, but humorous, disadvantage.

(Caution – strong language)

 
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Back From Foraker/Sultana

Published on June 19, 2009 in Trip Reports. 7 Comments Tags: .

Yow!  What a great ride that was!  Kip Garre, Fred Marmsater, Courtney Phillips and I ended up skiing off the tippy-top of Mt. Foraker (aka Sultana) in the Alaska Mountain Range on Monday morning, June 2nd.  We prepaid for our four-day window of good weather with two weeks of sitting in the tents in a crevasse riddled camp while we played Scrabble, read books and drank grit-infused water.  It was painful at times, but all of that has been forgotten now and the whole thing was an excellent adventure.  A big hug and thanks to Polly for posting update while we were gone.

Alaska Family Values - L to R: Foraker/Sultana (The Mother), Hunter (The Child) and Denali (The Father).

I’m swapping over to a new photo management program (Adobe Lightroom), so my photo editing and posting is a bit behind the curve, however I promise photos and a trip report or two, or three will be forthcoming.  In the meantime, I also shot a lot of video, including this little clip of sitting in the tent, on a glacier…. in the rain.

 
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Sunday Photo – AK Rager

Published on September 7, 2008 in Sunday Photo. 0 Comments Tags: .
Enduring a raging storm in a remote mountain range can be fun if you are prepared for it.
Fun & Games - Ben Ditto and Lorne Glick enjoying the scenery (or lack of it) on the Bagley Icefield. April 2008
Fun & Games – Ben Ditto and Lorne Glick enjoying the scenery (or lack of it) on the Bagley Icefield. April 2008

After flying around the Wrangell-St.Elias Mountain Range the year before, it seemed like there was excellent potential to do a combination kiting/skiing trip in the area as there is no shortage of peaks and icefields.  Our plan was to use kites to move down the Bagley Icefield, then tick off ski descents along the way.  It kind of worked, but there was either no wind, or it was a howling blizzard like in the photo above.

Alaska storms, especially in the areas right near the ocean, can dump prodigious amounts of snow in a short time and are the stuff of mountaineering legend.  This was a short but intense storm with 45mph winds for a twelve hour period – enough to bury the tents and stop us for the day, but nothing very serious in the big picture of Alaska ragers.

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Snap, Crackle & Pop – The ABC’s of Avalanches

Published on July 28, 2008 in 07 Avalanche Avoidance. 5 Comments Tags: , .

The physics of an avalanche is as easy to understand as placing one book on top of another, then tipping the lower book up until the top one slides off.  Voila – a bookalanche!  The grip or amount of friction between the books will determine how easily they slide apart.  If they are both dry and glossy, they’ll slide apart at almost any angle, but, if they have somehow bonded together through heat, humidity or moisture, you can turn them upside down and they may not come apart. 

 

One of my all time favorite avalanche education tools was this demonstration by the Alaska Avalanche School where layers of flour and sand are piled up on a flat board, which is then tipped up to 38 degrees where it rips loose and crushes the toys below.
One of my all time favorite avalanche education tools was this demonstration at the Alaska Avalanche School where layers of flour and sand are piled up on a flat board, which is then tipped up to 38 degrees where it rips loose and crushes the toys below.

This book example illustrates two important concepts of avalanches.  One, avalanches occur when a bond (friction) fails, and two; it can be difficult, if not impossible to predict exactly when that bond will fail without some additional information.  At times you could turn a mountain range over and shake it without the snow moving and at other times it will avalanche if you gently poke it with a ski pole.

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Sunday Photo – Ben Goes into a Crevasse

Published on July 27, 2008 in Sunday Photo. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

Part of the reason I like this photo so much is that it had a happy ending, but it could easily have gone the other way.

This incident took place during a 2007 trip up to the Wrangell-St.Elias Mountains with Ben Ditto and Grant Guise.  We knew there were crevasses on the glaciers, but once we started climbing up a rocky ridgeline, we decided to leave the ropes and glacier gear behind.

Once we reached the top, Grant and I skied one line while Ben shot some photos, then disappeared behind a knoll to presumably ski an adjacent line.  He was gone a while, when suddenly the Motorola Radio came to life with Ben saying “I’m hanging upside down in a crevasse and I’m going to die!”

We asked if he was kidding, to which he emphatically said “NO” and we started running back up the 750′ hill to get him, which took about 20 minutes.  Once we got to the ridge, we could see a shallow depression (the snowbridge), with a set of ski tracks going right into it, then a set of black bases sticking straight up in the air!

We had to cross the bridge ourselves to get to Ben and then fashion an emergency rescue out of a picket and ice axe (still visible stuck into the lower lip of the crevasse) which we tossed down to Ben, who then pulled himself up to the point where we could help yard him out. 

On the way up the slope to get him, Ben, being the photographer, called us on the radio and asked “Take a photo, then yank me out!”  When we got there, we were so dismayed that we forgot about the photo until afterward.

Here Ben is screaming in a mixture of pain as the blood flows back into his feet and happiness at being out of the dark hole.  As a side-note, when he first fell in he was held by a single Dynafit toepiece!

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Got Gas?

Published on July 16, 2008 in Events. 3 Comments Tags: , , .

Skiing in the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains of Alaska is incredible, yet even better is flying around up there with Paul Claus of Ultima Thule Lodge in one of his bitchin’ airplanes.  Paul is an amazingly accomplished climber/skier with endless first ascents/descents to his credit, but these skills are eclipsed by his flying skills.  Flying with Paul in the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains is like  being on stage with The Who or the Rolling Stones at Madison Square Gardens – you might only be a dorky bystander, but just being there is an amazing experience.

Paul holds the record (world record?) for short take-offs, which is something like 42.5 feet.  I can’t begin to imagine the places he has taken off and landed in, but on a recent trip up to his neighborhood, we watched him land his plane, shut it down and turn into his hanger which was in the first 200′ of the landing strip.  We were all impressed, but it was just business as usual for Paul.

Crashed Ultima Thule 185 Cessna

The crumpled Cessna 185 pictured above was one of the mainstays of the Ultima Thule Lodge and has delivered hundreds of climbers, skiers and explorers all over the Wrangell-St.Elias range.  While recently being flown by a friend of Paul’s, it ran out of gas and during an emergency crash-landing on a riverbed, perhaps ended its long, illustrious life. 

But, it is not like the Ultima Thule Lodge to be unprepared for events like this and they happened to have a new plane literally waiting in the wings…

The new Ultima Thule Lodge 185 Cessna

Below is a commemorative photo of the old 185 being flown by Jay “Birdman” Claus (Paul & Donna’s 20 year-old son) over the WSE Mountains with Mt. Logan in the background, from 2008:

RIP 185 – May You Fly Forever in the Great Skies Above!

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