1979 Issue - The Harvard Mountaineering Club

HARVARD
MOUNTAINEERING
NuMBER
21
SEPTEMBER, 1979
THE
HARVARD MOUNTAINEERING CLUB
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Dedicated to
HENRYS. HALL
and
KENNETH
A.
HENDERSON
who, after fifty-five years, continue to enrich the club with their
guidance and support. Their generosity with advice and their
unending willingness to tell stories on demand have encouraged
countless rising mountaineers. No club dinner or slideshow is
complete without them.
CLINT CUMMINS on the first pitch of Called 011 Accoutlt of Rai11s on Mt. Pisgah, near Lake
Willoughby, Vermont.
photo by jolw Imbrie
4
Contents
A SLIGHTLY SLANTED HISTORY OF CLIMBING IN
THE KICHATNAS ............................. . Alan K. Long
9
NANDA DEVI FROM THE NORTH, 1976 ....... . H. Adams Carter
21
FAIRWEATHER MEMORIES ....................... Terris Moore
29
RETURN TO MOUNT FAIRWEATHER .......... .John Z. Imbrie
37
LAKE WILLOUGHBY ICE CLIMBING
A FEW CLIMBING YARNS .................. . Clint Cr~mmins
41
TECHNICAL SUMMARY OF ICE CLIMBING AT
LAKE WILLOUGHBY ........................ Clint Cummins
45
SOME COMMENTS ON CLIMBING STYLES AT
LAKE WILLOUGHBY ....................... .john Z. Imbrie
55
FROM AN ELLESMERE JOURNAL .............. William Graham
58
A BLACK DIKE ANTHOLOGY
YOU CAN'T TRAIN FOR AN EPIC ........... Clint Cr~mmins
65
TWO AGAINST THE BLACK DIKE .............. .Jim Wr~est
and Brinton Yor~ng
67
WE SHOULD HAVE DONE OMEGA .......... . Dennis Drayna
70
SCENES FROM AN ALASKAN SUMMER ............ . Peter Lehner
73
THE NEV ADO CHINCHEY .................. Gr~stavo Brillembor~rg
83
HALF A CENTURY LATER ................ . Alfred]. Ostheimer III
and john deLaittre
89
DEBORAH AND HESS, 1977 ...................... .John Z. Imbrie
93
LOOKING BACK ............................... . Robert H. Bates
95
CABIN REPORT ................................ . Michael Young
98
HMC ACTIVITIES, 1975-1979 ................................. 101
CLIMBING NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
CLUB MEMBERSHIP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
5
CLUB OFFICERS
1976-1977
1979-1980
President: JOHN Z. IMBRIE
Vice President: CLINT CuMMINS
Secretary: jEREMY METZ
Treasurer: MIKE LEHNER
President: NICK VANDERBILT
Vice President: PETER LEHNER
Secretary: PAUL MILDE
Treasurer: CLINT CUMMINS
Journal: BoB BIDDLE
1977-1978
President: CLINT CuMMINS
Vice President: NANcY KERREBROCK
Secretary: jEREMY METZ
Treasurer: PETER LEHNER
Publicity: BoB PALAIS
Journal: NICK VANDERBILT
Equipment: DAVID HowE
ADVISORY COUNCIL
]R., President
Secretary
KENNETH A. HENDERSON, Treasurer
BENJAMIN G. FERRIS, ]R., M.D.
HENRYS. HALL,
H. ADAMS CARTER,
SAM STREIBERT
ALAN RuBIN
1978-1979
FACULTY ADVISORS
President: BoB PALAIS
Vice President: NicK VANDERBILT ]AMEs D.
Secretary: DAVID HowE
WILLIAM
Treasurer: CLINT CuMMINs
Equipment: Emc KLAUSSEN
journal Editor:
WuEsT
A. GRAHAM,
]R.
NICK VANDERBILT
Additional copies of this and some previous issues of HARVARD
MOUNTAINEERING are available at $3.50 each from the Harvard
Mountaineering Club, Lowell House, Harvard University, Cambridge,
Massachusetts 02138, U.S.A.
7
A Slightly Slanted History of
Climbing in the Kichatnas
by
ALAN
K.
LoNG
In June of 1962 Summit Magazine published a ''know your mountains" photograph of an imposing alpine scene. The incredible
panorama and the phony caption piqued the curiosity of a number of
climbers. Three years later Al DeMaria finally linked the intriguing
Riesenstein photo with the Kichatna Mountains in the southwest corner of the Alaska Range. As DeMaria's six-man expedition soon
discovered on their pioneering visit in the summer of 1965, the
Cathedral Spires contain an incredible number of big granite peaks in a
relatively small area. Several parties have visited the range since this
first expedition, but a number of problems have prevented the Kichatnas from becoming as popular as the Bugaboos. First, the Spires are
easily accessible only by ski plane-the nearest town (Talkeetna) is a
good 85 air miles away. Not only is it expensive to get there but even
the most fanatical climbers tend to think twice about sticking their
necks out on unknown routes when help is so far away. Second, the
weather there is abysmal. Unlike the better known areas of the Alaska
Range, where the higher elevations ensure a certain number of clear
days, the Spires have some of the worst weather in North America.
Third, the place is claustrophobic. There are very few breaks in the
walls flanking the long, narrow glaciers. Most parties have confined
their explorations to single glaciers preselected with the help of rumors
and photographs. Finally, the climbing itself is uniformly difftcult. It
took ten expeditions, twelve years, and twenty-eight first ascent routes
before an 8000-foot peak in the Spires was climbed by a route short and
easy enough that the party didn't get caught by bad weather.
Despite all these problems, a few mountaineers in the country
couldn't sleep properly with all those unclimbed peaks sitting up
there. One of these people was David Roberts, who organized an expedition the year after DeMaria's party managed to climb three peaks
off the Cool Sac Glacier. Roberts' group of five climbers was quite ambitious-they chose the highest mountain in the range and took on the
THE CITADEL from the southeast: new route on East Buttress ascends smooth face
between couloir and right skyline.
photo by
At~dy
Embick
9
additional handicap of climbing in a very cold month, September.
Overcoming these obstacles, they made several one day ascents off the
Shadows Glacier and finally succeeded in climbing 8985-foot Kichatna
Spire after a 19-day siege. The next group to visit the Spires, Californians Joe Fitschen, Charlie Raymond, and Royal Robbins, concentrated all their energy on the 8000' ers. Fighting miserable weather in
the summer of 1969, they bagged three unclimbed peaks, Mt. Nevermore, Mt. Jeffers, and Sasquatch (South Triple Peak).
The best prize remaining in the Kichatnas was 8835-foot Middle
Triple Peak, a huge mass of grey granite guarded on all sides by steep
walls, sporting a sheer 3600-foot West Face and a beautiful flyingbutress ridge on the East. Bad weather foiled an attempt from the East
by Dave Roberts and Henry Abrons in 1970. A three-man party led by
Al DeMaria was stopped by technical difficulties on the North Ridge
in 1972. That same year William Katra's group of three climbed two
more of the 8000'ers, Gurney Peak and the Citadel (P 8520), from a
Shadows Glacier camp. Middle Triple remained unclimbed. Two parties landed on the Tatina Glacier in 1975 with the sheer West Face as
their primary objective. Gary Bocarde's group of Alaskans didn't like
the looks of Middle Triple and settled for a number of shorter (and undoubtedly more enjoyable) climbs. Californians Hooman Aprin, Dave
Black, and Mike Graber didn't try Middle Triple either, but did stick
with their big wall aspirations. The routes that resulted, the Southeast
Face of Tatina Spire and the West Face of Sasquatch, demonstrated
that doing difficult wall routes was a viable alternative to peak bagging
in the Spires.
These routes demand a real commitment from the climbers attempting them. Storms were encountered on both mountains. On an early
try on Tatina, the party was only a few hundred feet up and retreated
after a miserable night. On 'Sasquatch, descent was unthinkable. The
climb developed into an epic struggle against hypothermia and exhaustion. After a 34-hour bivouac and two more freezing nights on the
face, the party got lost on the descent and was forced into a long string
of overhanging rappels in a whiteout. Without Polarguard clothing
the party might not have climbed Tatina Spire and might not have
even survived Sasquatch. What really made these routes possible,
though, was the toughness and determination of the climbers
involved.
Andy Embick and I moved up to the big time in the summer of
1976. The previous year had seen us waiting out rainstorms and digging out cracks in the Nirvana Cirque of the Southern Logans. We
10
were looking for steeper walls, bigger avalanches, longer storms, and
more glory. Dave Black and Mike Graber weren't scared off by their
bad experience on Sasquatch and wanted to give Middle Triple another
shot. We all met in Anchorage, drove to Talkeetna, and flew in to the
Shadows Glacier.
We planned to follow Dave Roberts' suggestion and cross the
Credibility Gap to get to the Sunshine Glacier below the East Buttress
of Middle Triple. Dave and Mike had taken a long look at the West
Face the previous summer and hadn't seen any good lines. On the East
Butress the line was obvious-once past an initial 1200-foot wall, the
ridge was a knife-edge right to the summit snowfield. We were gungho, but not enough to brave the avalanche-swept slope leading to the
Credibility Gap, so we looked around the Shadows for big walls.
There were several. The most attractive was the East Buttress of the
Citadel. Sharp-edged corners and continuous crack systems led up the
triangular buttress to the spire-studded ridge-just what we were
looking for!
Andy and I were sent up to fix pitches:
"Well, how far'd you get?"
"See that overhang?"
"Yeah, it arches up to the left and ... "
"No, not that one. The one way down at the bottom."
Dave and Mike's turn the next day:
"How'd you guys go?"
"We crawled, man."
The third day we climbed for 36 hours straight, waiting for a ledge
to avoid hanging hammocks in a five-pitch band of rotten rock. Poor
anchors and a huge overhang completely cut off our retreat-we had
to go up. After 17 pitches of hard aid and free climbing we pulled out
on the top of the buttress and slept soundly for nine hours. The next
morning we ran out 600 feet up a snow couloir only to find ourselves
on rotten rock again. I pulled off a small block securing a peg and a
nut. "Hey, Al, put that back. Those are the anchors." Finally the
windy summit ridge: mysteriously sculpted towers, rounded cracks,
small snowfields, a knife-edge, and an icy chimney on the top. Middle
of the night again-we peered off into the swirling clouds for glimpses
of other peaks and glaciers, wishing there were enough light for pictures. We had no idea how to get down, but we'd run out of food and
needed sleep desperately. We rappelled a broad ice couloir to the Shelf
Glacier, then found a gully back towards the Shadows. By this time
everyone was a zombie. We sat down and slid to the main glacier,
11
where I marched off into a crevasse. Never occurred to me that those
regular depressions might be holes! Dragging along behind the others,
I counted 1850 steps from first sighting to the door of the tent. We'd
climbed two of the last three nights-75 hours with only one bivouac.
After a five day storm we continued with our Middle Triple plans.
No longer quite so hungry for extreme difficulty, we talked ourselves
out of the imposing East Buttress and settled for the North Ridge.
Reports of the dreaded ''headwall'' had us a little worried, but we
were encouraged by the amount of altitude we could gain up a snow
couloir and set out at the tail end of a good weather spell. Dave nailed
incipient cracks up a steep wall and I followed with an easier pitch
while Mike and Andy constructed an elaborate bivouac shelter just
above the Middle Triple-North Triple Col.
I've always resented people sleeping well in bivouacs. I remember
spending a long night dangling my feet off Sous Le Toit Ledge on the
Salathe Wall, watching clouds blow by above and .below while Andy
snored away with his feet in my lap. Middle Triple was no different-the four of us crammed ourselves into the little hole and Andy
sawed logs noisily all night with his feet dangerously close to my nose.
I sat listening to rocks avalanching off the walls of the bivouac,
wondering whether swirling mist and gusty winds meant clearing
weather or a big storm. Again the air of mystery. I was dying for
views of the East Face of Nevermore, the West Face of Jeffers, and
Dave's and Mike's route on Tatina Spire. No such luck-not even a
glimpse to ease the monotony the next day as Mike and Andy continued for seven more ropelengths to the crest of the summit ridge.
The climbing was extremely alpine, with snow, ice, and aid climbing
on every pitch. Mike skirted the 200-foot, absolutely smooth headwall
on the left and we were ready for our summit dash. There was trouble
brewing in the Southeast. A huge black cloud lumbered towards us,
filling the sky and spitting on the rows of mountains that appeared
briefly that evening. Dave and I had left our crampons and axes at the
bivouac to save weight. Now we raced carefully along knife-edges,
climbed steep towers, and crabbed across bare ice slopes, hoping not to
drag the others off. One final rock step-I aided past a huge loose
block and stood on the summit snowfield. The rising sun was nowhere
to be seen. Andy led off, wrapped in eerie whiteout, kicking bathtubs
for Dave and me, eyes peeled for signs of the summit cornice. At long
EMBICK LEADING Pitch #5 on the CitadeL
photo by Ala11 Lo11g
13
MIDDLE TRIPLE and North Triple peaks from the northeast.
photo by Andy Embick
BELAY for Pitch #11-East Buttress of Middle Triple Peak.
photo by Andy Embick
EMBICK JUMARING Pitch #24-the Citadel on the fifth day.
photo by Michael Graber
15
last a faraway shout, "I'm on top." Our two-hour round trip to the
summit had already taken four, and as the wind picked up and the
snow started it became clear that we were in the wrong place. Heavy
hail caught us at the lip of the headwall. Frozen inside our cagoule
hoods, we waited out one burst and then another. The face turned to
unclimbable slush and we struggled to follow Andy's diagonal rappels
as the hail softened to wet snow. The difficulties eased at the bivouac
but fatigue took over. We glissaded a steep couloir and front-pointed
endlessly down the glacier next to the E Buttress, shoulders aching
from the haul bags and toes numbed from days in wet boots.
The race for Middle Triple was over. Unfortunately we had lost it.
Less than two weeks before our climb, Charlie Porter and Russ
McLean had pulled off an incredible ten day ascent of the 3600-foot
West Face. Two other expeditions visited the Spires in 1976. Rik
Rieder and Jack Roberts spent five weeks climbing out of a Trident
Glacier base camp, doing the first ascent of the beautiful Mt. Lewis and
of the 7300-foot peak between Vertex and Gurney. Joe Coates and
Royal Robbins, having ''more money than time,'' tried the Southeast
Ridge of Kichatna and the South Ridge of Citadel and climbed the
same 7300-foot peak as Reider and Roberts in a two-week stay.
The success of our climbs seems to figure more heavily than the
associated misery when it comes to planning the next year's expedition. We had unfinished business in the Kichatnas, too. Dave couldn't
make it because of medical school obligations, so we interested George
Schunk, an old friend of Andy's, and headed up there again in 1977.
We had a better route to the base of Middle Triple's East Buttress
this time. Landing on the Tatina Glacier and skiing over the col north
of North Triple Peak to receive an airdrop proved to be a shorter, less
steep alternative to the Shadows/Credibility Gap approach. This year
there was no vacillation-we had picked out ascent and descent routes
on photos from the previous trip and had a pretty good idea what to
expect. We fixed pitches for two days in perfect, cloudless weather and
then set off with a week's food. As soon as we reached the top of the
fixed ropes the weather changed. It snowed for the next six days. Mike
and I swung leads through the night and the next morning, finally
reaching a sloping ledge. We grabbed a bite to eat and changed leading
teams. Two more pitches brought us to the top of the initial wall
where we settled into a cold and windy bivouac. Cooking dinner over
ALAN LONG STARTING Pitch #5-East Buttress of Middle Triple Peak. Note luggage
tag on ear.
photo by Mike Graber
17
/
our Bleuet took a full three hours-we swore we'd bring a faster stove
next time.
Things looked brighter after a night's sleep. The weather let up a
little and the climbing became quite reasonable. George and Andy
moved confidently ahead, completing the entire low-angle ridge and
fixing a pitch on the final pillar before returning for the night. Only
one lead was especially frightening-Andy was forced to cross the
knife-edge and climb an icy slab twenty feet down on the side away
from the belayer with ferocious rope drag and little protection. George
had found a perfect bivouac ledge at the top of a chimney on the
previous lead and Mike and I spent a foot-warming three hours compacting the loose powdery snow.
The bivouac was mere subsistence living. We had slept the previous
night and weren't exhausted enough to ignore the discomfort. Andy
and George shared an ensolite pad lengthwise while Mike and I communed with the coils of a frozen rope. Breathing through rime-sealed
beards and feeling like bloated caterpillars in our cagoules and
Polarguard parkas, we lay worrying about the days and pitches ahead.
It was a bad night.
Rolling out into the lead with a few mouthfuls of granola for the
morning's sustenance, Mike and I jumared into the mist leaving
George and Andy to fill water bottles and tidy up the bivvy. We planned to descend the north face of the buttress instead of reversing the
knife-edged ridge, so all the half bags and hammocks stayed behind
holding the fort. We were wearing everything else we had. The sky
barely brightened all day. Aside from the wind and the cold, rime was
the worst problem. Carabiners jammed, glasses fogged, faces froze,
ropes doubled in diameter, and slabs turned into sheets of ice. Mike did
a delicate face lead to a sharp notch, then stopped short when he saw
the prospects above. The final pillar loomed out of the mist, split by an
icy overhanging offsized crack and blocked at the top by a huge rime
overhang. We called a conference and decided to try a small corner
Mike had noticed on the left side of the tower. Andy teased me out of
my lethargy by offering to lead the pitch and I raced at the rock,
blasting past some easy aid to a fantastic finish up a groove full of
frozen flakes. The advantage of leading high on the mountain was that
you didn't have to jumar the rimed ropes. Each of us led one pitch and
suffered for three. Having no ice axes for the summit snowfield (they
had been dropped during the first night) and being too lazy to put on
crampons, we trudged off up the snow. The summit cornice eventually materialized out of the gloomy whiteout, and there we were!
18
After a quick council to decide whether it was 7 AM or 7 PM (it was
still morning) we plodded back to the rock and rappelled to the bivvy.
A suggestion that we keep on rappelling was drowned out by the
reassuring sputter of our trusty Bleuet. We settled down for dinner.
George fell asleep with his bare hands in the snow and Andy had to be
awakened with a "Dinner's ready" when I needed matches to relight
the stove. This night was worse than the last one we'd spent there.
Mike awakened us at 2:30 AM by sitting up and singing to keep
warm. Andy looked over at me and commented that I looked like a
dead soldier in the Aleutians, probably somewhat of a euphemism.
The next day we knocked off nine more rappels to the glacier beside
the ridge. The only real excitement came when I got out of control on
the sixth rappel and would have zinged off the end if Andy hadn't
grabbed the rope. Thanks, Andy.
Back on the Tatina Glacier a few days later, our plans for North Triple foiled by weather and lack of time, we shot up and down the
Southeast Face of Flattop Peak in 12 hours. No objective dangers, no
desperate technical difficulties, no arguments-our first pleasant climb
in the Kichatnas.
Flattop marked the beginning of a new expedition. Andy returned
to medical school and the rest of us moved camp to the Trident Glacier
under the awesome 4100-foot West Face of Mt. Augustin. The easy
northeast side of the mountain seemed too dangerous so we took a
look at the West Face. The bottom was one big avalanche fan. Above
a band of seracs the snow was fluted by avalanche runnels, beautiful
only at a distance. At the top, wind-sculpted ice mushrooms tugged at
their anchors, just waiting to sweep down the narrow couloir we
would have to climb. We decided to do it.
If we hadn't been so scared we might have enjoyed the route. The
climbing was superbly alpine, snow and ice all the way. Except on
'schrund crossings and the summit pyramid we moved together,
trusting each other but not the mountain. We did the face between
midnight and 7 AM, hoping the cold would freeze seracs and
mushrooms in place. During the day the place must have been a circus,
but at night nothing moved. We descended the Northeast Face
uneventfully after a joyous two hours on the summit. Nowhere had
we seen such views or had such sunshine. The only fireworks that day
had been earlier in the morning when a huge serac avalanche swept the
bottom of our descent route.
We had been scared and cold and tired enough for one summer. We
sunbathed, skied up beautiful Miranda Peak east of Augustin, and
19
feasted our way through the rest of the trip. Even a week of bad
weather on low rations didn't spoil our good feelings about the summer. We had fulfilled our ambitions without getting hurt. We had
lived with the mountains in their harshest and their softest moments.
We had cemented the kinds of friendships that can only result from
shai:ing stress and sharing relaxation.
Tpe qays of solitude in the Spires are numbered. We may have seen
the last of them. In 1978 there were six expeditions, as many as there
were in the first ten years of exploration. Those of us who have written articles and published photographs are fighting with our consciences as we watch more and more interest develop. But here I am
writing again-I guess that telling people about great experiences
makes the good times even better for me. Bringing these trips home to
bthers adds a so~ial dimension to an escapist pastime and somehow
fortifies me for the next year's adventure.
20
Nanda Devi From the North, 1976
by H.
ADAMS CARTER
In November of 1974 Nanda Devi Unsoeld stopped off to visit us on
her way horne from a project to save the tigers of Nepal. Obviously
Devi had been named for the peak. Her father, Willi Unsoeld, had
seen Nanda Devi in 1948 while studying in India. "That is the most
beautiful mountain I have ever seen. My first daughter will bear its
name." And six years later, Nanda Devi Unsoeld was born and named
for Siva's consort, "The Bliss-Giving Goddess" in Sanskrit, and for
the peak that bears the goddess' name. I too had had a close bond with
the mountain ever since our British-American expedition had made the
first ascent in 1936. On that November evening in 1974 we studied a
new photograph of Nanda Devi from the north. Suddenly the expedi:.
tion sprang into being. Willi Unsoeld and I would be co-leaders on
this new and difficult route. With a joint Indo-American expedition,
we hoped to climb the mountain from the north on the 40th anniversary of our first ascent.
Permissions are not always easy. Garhwal, closed to foreigners for
years, had just been reopened. Permission was granted for just when
we wanted to go: during and after the monsoon of 1976. Normally the
monsoon is not severe in that part of the Himalaya. In 1936 we
generally had good we'ather until two in the afternoon and a rain or
snow shower late in the day. The summit, the highest yet reached by
man, was climbed on August 29, 1936. Not knowing that the monsoon in 1976 would be the wettest in a hundred years, we decided to
follow the same schedule.
After a number of unsuccessful attempts, Nanda Devi, 25,645 feet
and 25th highest mountain in the world, was climbed a second time by
an Indian expedition in 1964. A joint French-Indian expedition
climbed it again in 1975 but failed to make the traverse between the
main peak and Nanda Devi East. Both of these climbs were by the
original route up the southwest face. A Japanese-Indian expedition did
make this remarkable traverse in the spring of 1976. Ours would be
the fifth ascent, but by a totally new and untouched route.
The American members gathered in New Delhi in the second week
of July. In addition to the two Unsoelds and me were HMC members
Lou Reichardt and Elliot Fisher, John Roskelley, Dr. James States,
John Evans, Peter Lev, Andy Harvard and our other female member,
Marty Hoey. The Indain members were Captain Kiran Kumar and
Nirrnal Singh.
21
Our approach through the foothills was different from our twoweek march in 1936 from Ranikhet to the last town, Lata. In 1976 we
rode this far by truck, a gain in time but a loss in not seeing unspoiled
villages and their inhabitants. Lying 500 vertical feet above the road,
Lata had changed little. The ninety porters who would carry loads to
Base Camp came mostly from there. They were splendid, hardworking, willing and cheerful. We had no strikes for higher pay. One
man even brought me back ten rupees I had overpaid him. Part of the
credit goes to Kiran Kumar, who skillfully managed the porter train.
The porters' food, loaded into five-kilo pack-saddles, was carried on
the back of pack-goats.
As we left Lata on July 14, an old fellow Gust my age) rushed up.
"Bhalu Sahib!" he exclaimed. "Sher Singh," I said tentatively,
recognizing one of 1936 porters. And Master Bear embraced Tiger Lion.
Nanda Devi lies encircled by a formidable ring oflesser peaks, which
range up to 24,000 feet; the lowest col is about 19,000 feet. The ring is
broken only by the mile-deep Rishi Ganga gorge, which drains to the
west the glaciers above the inner Nanda Devi sanctuary. This offers the
only practical approach to Nanda Devi. Much has been written about
the gorge. Like others, we attatched many feet of rope along the steep,
rocky slabs and slippery, precipitous grass (and mud) slopes to assist
the laden porters. Suffice it to say that on the last three stages, it was
too steep for the pack-goats.
The trek to Base Camp was not without incident. Marty Hoey was
struck by severe dysentery two days after leaving Lata. She struggled
over the first 14,000-foot pass. Soon she had to be carried, becoming
progressively weaker and finally semi-comatose. The next day she was
transported down treacherous, muddy slopes to Dibrugheta at 11,500
feet. Under the superb direction of Dr. Jim States, all expedition
members nursed her and brought her back from what we feared was
inevitable death. On July 21 a helicopter from the Indian Air Force
managed to escape the monsoon-shrouded plains to evacuate her.
Even before we reached Base Camp at 14,000 feet in the flowercarpeted meadows of the Inner Sanctuary, we studied our mountain.
The first view of the awesome route was sobering and convinced us to
send for the "surplus" rope left in New Delhi. Photographs had given
little hint of the difficulty of the bottom part of the route. The peak
NANDA DEVI from the west.
photo by Adams Carter
23
AT NANDA DEVI BASE CAMP. Left to Right: co-leader Adams Carter, Nanda Devi
Unsoeld, head porter Jogat Singh, and co-leader Willi Unsoeld.
NANDA DEVI from the head of the Rishi Ganga Gorge.
photo by Adams Carter
24
rose 11,500 feet from Base Camp to the summit. The first 4000 feet
were guarded by steep cliffs of foul, rotten rock. The first gully to
break the cliffs was a death-trap, down which tons of ice and snow
roared day and night off the hanging glacier on the northwest face.
The only advantage was the debris formed a solid bridge over the
rushing torrent of the Rishi Ganga. It gave easy access to the slopes of
the mountain.
A second blind gully just south was climbed in the fog. It ran out
after 1000 feet, but it let us reach a rock ridge. This in turn led to
unexpected catwalks across the imposing cliffs that gave way to easier
slopes. It was a long but reasonable carry to Ridge Camp at 18,000
feet. Many of the low-altitude porters helped us to this point. We kept
only a half-dozen to carry higher. To these Nirmal Singh, an Instructor in the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, gave first-class instruction in the use of crampons, Jumars and rope. He quickly converted
these novices, who had been expected to carry only to Base Camp, into
ardent mountaineers, who jumared and rappelled with gusto. Some
later carried to 22,500 feet.
The next problem was to make the nearly horizontal, half-mile-long
carry to the north to Advanced Base. The scree slopes were easy
enough; the problem was the hanging glacier. Colossal avalanches
thundered down, sweeping the glacier clean of monsoon snows. The
weather was not behaving normally. We had little sunshine and much
precipitation. There were daily avalanches, usually in the afternoon,
but unpredictable enough to make the carry across the debris a spinechilling adventure. Both Ridge Camp and Advanced Base were well to
the side of the glacier, but hurricane winds from the slides knocked
tents down more than once.
The route up the northwest face to the foot of the north buttress
was consistently steep, averaging perhaps 50° for 4500 feet. Usually
unstable snow covered ice. It was imperative to keep far left on the
hanging glacier, in part under overhanging and protecting cliffs. Lines
were fixed and two camps were perched on tiny shelves under beetling
cliffs. The next 2000 feet had no spot safe enough for another camp.
Since there was no protection from avalanches on this upper section, it
could be climbed only under ideal conditions, but the doubtful
weather turned even worse. From August 13 to 20 a second severe
storm raged and avalanches swept the face. All activity was brought to
a halt. With only two weeks of food left, no climbers were above
20,500 feet. Prospects were grim and the mood turned sour. "Only
idiots would climb in the monsoon.'' The climbing was difficult. Even
25
when the weather momentarily improved, things went slowly, only
two or so new rope-lengths. The top of the face seemed to keep
receding. The highest ropes reached only 21,500 feet, and these had to
be dug out of the snow.
Finally the snow stopped on August 20. It took two more hard days
to reach the top of the face at the foot of the north buttress. Reichardt
and Roskelley finally moved out on the ridge crest on August 22,
twenty-three days after the first steps had been taken on the face.
Camp III was occupied on August 25 at 22,500 feet. This was actually ·
the fifth high camp on the mountain, the numbering having started
above Advanced Base.
The north buttress was the crux of the climb. The first 650 feet
were nearly perpendicular quartzite. Cracks were few and downsloping holds were covered with ice. Edges were razor-sharp.
Roskelley and States inched their way up this bottom half, preparing
the route. Roskelley did most of the leading, which was ofF9, A2 difficulty. Meanwhile both Unsoelds, Harvard, Lev, Evans, Kiran Kumar
and Nirmal Singh continued to make the arduous carries to Camp III.
Evans and both Unsoelds made six consecutive carries on the face. It
seemed that everyone of this crew would get a summit shot.
On August 28 States, Roskelley and Reichardt jumared up the fixed
ropes and with Pete Lev replaced those which were frayed by the sharp
rock. They traversed right on a small, steep snowfield and into a steep
ice gully that gained them another 350 feet. At the top of the gully,
70° ice and more precipitous rock brought them to the top of the buttress. Another rest day followed before the same trio left their companions in Camp III early in the morning to climb, heavily laden, to
establish Camp IV at 24,000 feet at the top of the buttress. It took
them all day with their loads to climb the 1200 feet and they arrived
after dark, but they were now at the foot of the final summit stage.
They had planned on a rest day, but September 1 was clear and
windless. For the first time, no plume hung off the summit. The three
hastily set out up the sharp, steep ridge in ever-deepening snow. They
put a short rock pitch behind them. They waded up the ridge through
bottomless, unstable snow. Suddenly the whole surface peeled off in an
NANDA DEVI UNSOELD on fixed ropes, North Buttress of Nanda Devi.
photo by Peter Lev
NORTH BUTTRESS of Nanda Devi and Camp III.
photo by Louis Reichardt
27
avalanche on one side of their tracks. Finally the slope slackened. They
were on the summit, just three days after the 40th anniversary of the
first ascent. That night they slept again at Camp IV.
On September 3 the second summit team ofDevi Unsoeld, Pete Lev
and Andy Harvard struggled up the fixed ropes for Camp IV. It was
late at night when they reached camp. Devi fell ill with dysentery,
which left her feeling very weak. Bad weather pinned them down
again. Eventually on September 6, Willi ascended the buttress alone to
join them. Devi's condition worsened during the night, but she
seemed somewhat better by morning. She assured her father that she
was strong enough to descend the buttress with him on her own. In
any case, no one could have carried her down the buttress. Willi went
out of the tent for a few minutes to ready his pack. By the time he
came back, Devi had taken a turn for the worse. She sank rapidly and
died ten minutes later. The exact medical cause can, of course, never be
determined. It may well have been an embolism caused by severe
dehydration. After a simple and moving ceremony, her body was committed to the snows of the mountain, whose name she bore.
For the porters, Devi had never been just another climber. They had
felt all along that she was someone divine. How else was it that she
could nearly speak their language? (Devi spoke Nepali, similar to their
Garhwali, having lived a third of her life in Nepal.) How else could she
have such beautiful golden hair? How else could she have been so
quick to see what they needed and to look out for their health and
welfare? She was their most sacred goddess, Nanda Devi, who was
returning to her own mountain home. They had known their goddess.
And because of her, this mountain will always have a special
significance for all of us.
28
Fairweather Memories
by
TERRIS MooRE
My reminiscences of Mount Fairweather begin during sophomore
year at Williams, when I chanced to read and then buy for its two
Fairweather articles, the December 1926 issue of Appalachia magazine.
Few memorabilia indeed from those years survive in our attic today,
but this one is at my hand as I write. And rereading it from the
perspective of a seventieth birthday, I now realize the surprisingly
large influence which the H.M.C. had in the forming of my life. For
here is recorded the fascinating though brief piel:e about the LaddCarpe-Taylor attempt to climb Fairweather in June of that year,
thwarted by the deep notch between 9,000 and 9,500 feet on the
mountain's northwest ridge; and now at a glance I remember that
with even greater intensity I read the long descriptive article with its
sixteen photographs and map entitled ''The Fairweather Range.''
From it, as ari eighteen-year-old I learned t,hat in the yast expanse of
Alaska only th¢ tiniest handful of mountains (St. Eiias, Wrangell,
Blackburn, and McKinley) had been explore\! and climbed to date;
while in the magnificent Fairweather Range, none yet at all! An intriguing small paragraph in this thirte~n page article also caught my eye:
'' ... within a few hundred yards of the tents we found great quantities
of little black worms, about three-quarters of an inch long, burrowing
around in the surface ice of the glacier ... Our later attempts to convince native (white) Alaskans that we had actually seen worms in the
ice were met with much skepticism and many knowing smiles, for the
local joke about the glacier worms is an old one and is sprung on all
newcomers-sometimes with amusing success. Postcards can be
bought in Juneau showing a 'sourdough' pulling ice worms (really
macaroni) from a piece of ice!''
Noting that the author of this piece, W. Osgood Field, had an identifying pair of labels, "American Alpine Club" and "President, Harvard Mountaineering Club,'' I gathered that not only were there such
clubs, but that its younger members might get into the swim of
things, at least as to then still partially unexplored Alaska. Thereafter
Harvard, its graduate programs, and the H.M.C. were for me!
These Fairweather memories, and how in a sense, via the H.M.C. I
came to share in that mountain's first ascent, emerge again two years
later in the fall of 1929, when I was a Harvard graduate student freshly
returned from summer scrambles to the summits of Chimborazo and
29
the volcano Sangay in Ecuador. At that time Henry Hall and Ken
Henderson were kind enough to bring me into the H.M.C. Next came
some occasions to learn some mountaineering from Noel E. Odell, the
legendary 1924 Everest climber, by this time an inspiring H.M.C.
figure currently teaching Geology on the Harvard faculty, and
generously leading us on winter climbs up the headwall gullies of
Huntington Ravine on Mt. Washington. And then in the ensuing
summer-how lucky can you get!-I was the one invited by Odell and
his friend Colin G. Crawford (Everest climber from the 1922 expedition) to be middle-man on their rope of three in making the first
guideless ascent of Mt. Robson, which we did on August 24th of that
year 1930. It was from this climb with two real experts, as good as any
Swiss guides and over a route technically more difficult than the Carpe
ridge of Fairweather would prove to be, that I received my best-ever
mountaineering instruction.
But why should I interrupt my second year at the Harvard Business
School, to take leave-of-absence in March 1931 (which the faculty
there granted me in a specific formal vote) to go off to Alaska just to
join a second attempt by Ladd, Carpi, and Taylor to try to climb Mt.
Fairweather? No, not of course ''because it's there,'' the amusing putdown that Leigh Mallory the early Everest climber used occasionally
when he encountered some particularly stupid questioner(!). And also
not, competitively, just to get ahead of somebody else-which, in arecent book I've read, is supposed to have been our motive. Instead, it
was the attractions for me, then 23, of the association with three very
unusual talented older men, with whom I would be in a unique onestudent-with-three-professors sort of situation for many weeks.
Allen Carpe, then 36, had since 1920 been a research electrical
engineer at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, one of only three
laboratories in the entire country in those years sponsoring basic
research. He had ''contributed in a large way to the development of
systems for multiplex transmission by means of modulation of high
frequency circuits ... held a number of patents in telephony and the
related fields of telegraph and radio.'' As a youthful radio amateur I
was greatly attracted to this brilliant mind, exceptional expertise in
this field, and his scientific vision of the possibilities for research in
cosmic ray phenomena: a then almost mysterious very dimly
understood subject. Carpe's recreation was mountaineering, with an
excellent record in the Alps and Canadian Rockies; also he had been in
the summit party on that remarkable first ascent of Mount Logan in
1925. So I had immediately responded, yes, when we met at the
30
January, 1930 dinner of the American Alpine Club in Boston and he
suggested I join him and Andy Taylor the Alaskan, in what six
months later became the first ascent of Mount Bona.
Andy Taylor (not to be confused with the "Billy" Taylor of North
Peak-McKinley fame), by 1931 was 56. He had come from a Canadian
family "socially prominent and financially well off ... father the
Grand Master of the Free Masons of Canada. One of nine children, six
of them boys, Andy as a youth was a restless soul and left Ottawa for
the West in his early teens ... but because he did not wish to finish his
schooling properly he drew his father's disapproval ... by the time he
was 20 he was 'Captain' of a small launch on the upper Columbia
River, and three years later the pilot and engineer of the principle
Stikine River steamer." Came the 1897-98 gold rush and we find
Andy at Skagway ''where for awhile he engaged in packing outfits
over the White Pass with horses. He arrived in Dawson in 1898, and
this became more or less his headquarters until1913, when he moved
to McCarthy, Alaska." He "made three fortunes" during these years
and gave away or lost apparently two and a half of them. Once he
came in from the bush ''with a suitcase full of gold dust and nuggets
worth $150,000" (when gold was selling for $20 and not $200 per
ounce!), thus initiating the stampede called the "Shushanna Rush" of
1914-a fact duly chronicled in an official USGS report. His eight page
multi-authored biography in the obituary section of the 1947
American Alpine Journal, reveals the most astonishingly diverse forty
years of wilderness experience by any one individual in the Old Alaska,
of whom I have ever had knowledge. In the winter of 1899 he learned
dog team driving by doing this with Eskimos on a mission taking supplies from Fort Yukon through the Endicott Mountains to Point Barrow. (In 1899!) A decade later we read of him as a useful member of
the International Boundary Commission survey party which spent
seven years locating and monumenting the 141st Meridian boundary
between Alaska and Yukon Territory-Andy as heliographer and also
handling their pack trains and supplying them with meat from wild
game. The Canadian deputy leader of this long work, Fred Lambart,
some years later, brought Andy onto the joint Canadian-American
Mount Logan expedition, whose leader (A.H. MacCarthy) afterward
wrote: "to Andy Taylor, more than anyone else, belongs the credit for
the successful conquest of Mount Logan.'' And he was not merely a
most experienced professional guide for rich state-side big game
hunters, a role he often also filled. Wrote one of his biographers, a
university dean: "Andy was one of the best read men I have met"
31
Photo H'. S. Ladd
THE FIRST SKI-MOUNTAINEERING in Alaska (so far as we now know).
from his library of books and magazine subscriptions at his McCarthy
cabin home. "On occasion I have sat with Andy, listening to discmsion on other subjects than the outdoors, between eminent educators,
lawyers, and others, when a question of fact would arise and be referred to Andy. He nearly always knew the correct answer."
Dr. William S. Ladd, quoted above, was 44 in the spring of 1931,
and at that point with some months of academic leave between the
positions of being a medical professor teaching at Columbia, and
becoming Dean of the Cornell Medical Center in New York City. Of
a pioneer Portland, Oregon banking family his grandfather having arrived before the railroads, young Bill had often climbed nearby Mount
Hood with his father, where the family had built Cloud Cap Inn. An
Amherst, and Columbia Physicians & Surgeons graduate in 1915, he
became a practicing doctor, first at Peter Bent Brigham in Boston,
then later New York Hospital and Presbyterian Hospital, N.Y. He
also found time to serve simultaneously for many years as a Trustee on
the boards of Amherst College, American University in Beirut; also of
Memorial Hospital and of the New York Academy of Medicine. He
specialized in diabetes, social medicine, and health insurance-his ideas
years ahead of his times.
THE ROUTE OF THE ASCENT is seen in the modern aerial photograph taken by
B. Washburn (#7677) in April, 1978, where it is the middle one of the three prominent
ridges. South Side mountain; camera faces NNE.
33
His recreation was summer vacation mountaineering, in which he
alternated between the Canadian Rockies and the Alps. In early 1926
he and Allen Carpe decided to explore the Fairweather Peninsula of
Alaska. In those years, except for its harbors and forested coastal
fringes, this apparently remained still unvisited by humans: ''we have
not been able to locate anyone who has been within 15-20 miles of Mt.
Fairweather ... and are convinced the International Boundary Maps
are not to be relied upon.'' In this region the boundary-unlike the
141st Meridian demarcation-was nothing more than a few straight
lines drawn on generalized maps from agreement as to theodolite shots
at unvisited mountain peaks from many miles away. Both men were
members of the Explorers Club and the American Alpine Club. But,
defeated by technical climbing difficulties on the 1926 attempt, Dr.
Ladd had returned to the Alps in 1928 (as he later told me) to learn
from the professional guides at Zermatt and Chamonix how, safely, to
do really steep angle rock and ice climbing. By the winter of 1930-31
he had become President of the American Alpine Club. Also, happily,
he was possessed of sufficient private means personally to finance our
entire Fairweather expedition, as indeed he had the earlier attempt. It
was probably his request letter to the Dean and my sponsoring professor at the Business School here, which did much to obtain the
unusual student leave which I was offered.
Somehow, when I had to make my difficult decision-go, or not to
go-I had the feeling that during some period in the future I would be
living and working professionally in Alaska. And from whom better to
learn about the great Territory in those years than these three
remarkable men? So in mid-March 1931, off to Juneau went the
original three; and I the lucky one, this time with them.
All the factual details about the res.ulting first ascent were of course
published long ago, in full. How, on June 3rd, all four of us reached
essentially the summit but in cloud at the very last, distant from the actual final point probably no more than .Belmore Browne's historic
1912 party from their summit of McKinley; how we were forced back
to our high camp, and on June 8th Carpe and I returned in clear
weather to take summit photographs and leave Ladd's extra light
windparka tied to our tent-pole and planted on the very top-seen
three days later from near the beach by Ladd and Taylor through their
field glasses.
Actually, when today I am asked about the climb, our route, etc., I
myself to be reliable, must dig out our publications to see what we
wrote 47 years ago. Human memory, though astonishing, has its
34
THE 9000 FOOT CAMP is located about halfway up the climbing ridge. The figure beside
the tent is that of Allen Carpe. The peak in its background across the sea of clouds is
referred to as Mount Lituya in the literature of that day, but now is being referred to as Mt.
Sabine. The view in the right background, in clear weather would reveal the Pacific Ocean,
and very distantly the mouth of Lituya Bay.
photo by Terris Moore
limits! But when I look back at our ancient photographs the memories
do indeed come flooding back, some of them as fresh as yesterday.
All three of my companions departed many decades ago, Dr. Ladd
the last of them, in 1949. And much else has changed since the four of
us climbed that interminable, sky-scraping ridge together. The surface
of the vast Fairweather glacier, at the base of the ridge ten thousand
feet below the summit, seems to have ablated away over the years,
something between one and two hundred feet. And the price of Appalachia, 50¢ on the five hundred page copy I bought in 1926, is today
with fewer pages (the A.A.C. section is now in its own separate journal) $2.50!
Happily however, all three of the early H.M.C.ers mentioned who
put our club together in the past, are still very much alive and with us.
Let this be my testament of appreciation to them and the others of that
early day, who made me aware of the great mountain as I first read of
it, now 52 years ago.
35
Return to Mt. Fairweather
by
JOHN
Z.
IMBRIE
My sophomore year (1975-76) set a pattern of procrastination for
my subsequent years as an H.M.C. officer, both in the routine matters
of slideshow announcements and newsletters and in making decisions
about summer plans. The idea of spending my summer at some
laboratory in the Midwest was none too appealing. There was always
climate modelling to be done at Brown University, but I was supposed
to be a physicist, not a climatologist. Luckily, before I had to decide, I
received a letter from Dave Coombs with an invitation to go to Mt.
Fairweather, in Glacier Bay, Alaska. Although my parents were not
immediately taken with the idea, I made up my mind to go without
hesitation. At the time Alaska seemed like the ultimate goal of the
North American climber. There was the long standing tradition of the
H.M.C. in Alaska, from Terris Moore on the first ascent of Mt.
Fairweather to the Andrasko-Field trip to Mt. Deborah in 1975. I
knew of Dave by reputation only as an H.M.C. stalwart extraordinaire. Meeting him would bridge the gap between the last generation of H.M.C. climbers and the current generation.
After a brief excursion in Yosemite, I met Dave and George West in
Seattle for the flight to Juneau. The food had been packed meticulously
into ten 4-day packages by Dave. Each meal contained a potential
"taste thrill" (to use Dave's expression) to delight our weary palates. I
could tell that many expeditions of experience had gone into those
food bags.
The flight to Lituya Bay through Glacier Bay National Monument
was awe-inspiring, although I am sure it was less of an adventure than
Carpe and Moore's arrival by boat 45 years before. The significance of
our needing two trips in a rented car to take the gear from the airport
to Ken Loken's "Channel Flying" did not hit us until we started to
pack for a carry up the glacier. After a valiant effort to hump half our
gear up the terminal moraine, we resigned ourselves to the fact that if
we wanted seven weeks of food, we would each have to make three
carries. But it was a mere 15 miles up Desolation Valley to the climb,
so we set to work. Ah, Desolation Valley-what an apt name for the
SUMMIT DAY ON MT. FAIRWEATHER. The most distant valley is Desolation Valley,
and the Pacific Ocean is at the top of the picture.
photo by Da11id Coombs
37
torturess of the subsequent two weeks. We soon realized our error in
approaching the mountain as we did, instead of using the beach and
the Fairweather Glacier. Inexperienced at interpreting maps of
glaciers, we assumed Desolation Valley would be a veritable sidewalk.
It even had a few "alpine lakes" for aesthetic appeal! We missed the
important point about the geography: the glacier flows in two directions away from a sunken, stagnant central section. After carrying the
first third of Desolation Valley, we encountered a veritable pigsty of
collapsing ice blocks and of channels filled with mud and water. The
"alpine lakes" were gaping cesspools waiting to claim us as we
dangled from the alder on the slopes above.
A stagnant glacier (one that does not flow) is supposed to melt
several times as fast as an ordinary glacier in the same conditions. Our
experience in Desolation Valley certainly bore this out: we found large
ice blocks stranded far above the general level of the glacier. Since a
stranded ice block can have only a very short lifetime, the glacier must
have been wasting at a very rapid rate. Desolation Valley is one of the
many places in Glacier Bay where changes are occurring on such an unnaturally short time scale. There has been a worldwide retreat of
glaciers since the Little Ice Age in the 1700's; in most cases it is
measured in feet. In Glacier Bay, however, it is measured in tens of
miles. The explanation for the extraordinary changes lies with the
proximity of the sea; water can clean out an ice filled channel much
faster than melting can free a valley. The history of ice ages over the
last half million years follows the extremely small changes in the way
the earth orbits the sun. Many scientists believe that the ability of the
ocean to quickly wash away thousands of years of accumulated glaciation is an important cause of this sensitivity. If this is so, then Glacier
Bay presents us with a miniature version of the forces that contribute
to the succession of the ice ages.
Despite Desolation Valley, Dave, George, and I eventually found
ourselves at the foot of Mount Fairweather, contemplating the Carpe
Ridge, the route that Carpe and Moore took on the first ascent. The
route ascends 11,000 vertical feet, so, remembering the many horror
stories about the weather, we decided to break the climb in half with
one ferry to the 9500 foot level. The route was mostly a snow climb,
but not without surprises. There was a vertical snow wall-the terror
of Eastern hard ice men with their ice hammers, yet how easy for the
old timer with his 90 em axe. A mere 100 feet from our proposed
campsite a crevasse opened up below my feet. A rope on either side and
a shot of adrenalin got me out, but the incident moved us to move the
38
MT. SABINE from camp at 9500 feet. Compare with Terris Moore's picture taken nearly 50
years ago from almost the same spot.
photo by joh11 Imbrie
tent from a level stance in snow to a precarious narrow rock ledge. We
awoke to lightly falling snow and returned to base for a week's worth
of supplies, hopefully enough to outlast any storm.
Strictly speaking, the summit day was more than a day: it took us 27
hours to reach the top and return. For the first part of the day we
moved quickly, stopping only to watch the shadow of Fairweather
project out onto the ocean. As we neared the shoulder at 13,000 feet,
the sun, altitude, and fatigue combined to reduce our pace to a crawl.
The ''beak'' (a short steep section of ice just below the summit) was
crossed without incident, and we reached the top as the sun began to
set, glad that the perfect weather was holding. The H.M.C. banner (a
piece of paper from my diary stuck to a wand) was ''unfurled,'' and a
descent in the dark ensued.
We unhesitatingly opted to hike out via the direct route to the
ocean all the way down the Fairweather Glacier, avoiding Desolation
Valley. The walk down the beach to our pickup point was a joy after
all our trials, despite the inevitable 90 pound packs.
39
Lake
Will~ughby
Ice Climbing
A Few Climbing Yarns
by
CLINT CUMMINS
Ken Andrasko's article in the '75 journal spurred my interest in the
Lake Willoughby ice climbing area, but it wasn't until John Imbrie
visited the place that I seriously considered going there. John returned
with stories and slides of multipitch steep ice climbing and fine
unclimbed lines. After consulting with Al Rubin about existing
routes, it wasn't long before my first trip to Lake Willoughby was
organized.
Determined to avoid cold nights on the frozen lake, four HMC
climbers spent the night at a little-known but well-heated house in
Franconia. The next morning an early start was easy, and we drove the
final hour to Lake Willoughby. John and I chose to try a new line to
the left of the central amphitheater, while Chris Kaiser and Nick Grant
opted for the right-end ice slabs. While John and I were sorting our
gear, some friends from school, Rainsford Rouner and Gustavo
Brillembourg, drove up. They were better organized and started up
the gully to the amphitheater ten minutes ahead of us. Silent competition arises even among friends. We did not tell them of our first ascent
hopes and assumed they had a different objective. We thought that we
were getting a free ride by letting Gus and Rainsford break trail for us.
Then we noticed them traversing left to the start of our proposed ice
climb! John quickly stifled my impulse to muscle in, and we glissaded
back down the qully, embarrassed.
Our second choice was a long ice flow near the left end of the cliff.
We knew that the ice did not reach the ground so we planned to aid
climb the first pitch and fix a polyproplyene rope. The rock was rotten, however, and the attempt failed.
Our second night as uninvited guests in the Franconia house was interrupted by the untimely arrival of the owner. John pulled on his
partly dried pants just before she stepped through the door. An
unpleasant scene was somehow avoided, and we fortunately escaped
eviction.
THE LAST GENTLEMAN (left) and PROMENADE (right).
41
The next morning, Chris and Nick chose another climb on the
right, while John and I headed for a group of three short climbs at the
far left side of the cliff. After a short approach, we chose the central ice
flow, wildly underestimating its length.
Our chosen line of ascent was a groove just left of center. I climbed
up the vertical ice as far above the belay as I dared and got a solid placement for my Roosterhead. I slipped my Fifi hook over the blade and
apprehensively eased my weight onto it. The MSR screw spun in easily, and I felt a little better when clipped in. Recommitting myself to
the unrelenting verticality was painful. Every fifteen feet the protec-.
tion process was repeated. Soon the groove became large enough for
me to insert a leg, and I was able to stand without hanging from my
ice hammer, although holding onto icicles with my slippery nylon mitt
was a bit unnerving. By the time I reached the belay ledge, fear seemed
to be dominating my composure. John seconded the pitch, not
without difficulty.
When he joined me at the belay, the second pitch had me psyched
out and I insisted he lead. Seeing him chop away fruitlessly helped me
to regain my confidence. I took over and carved some ice knobs for my
feet in the ice, which now overhung even more than before. By sinking my tools in high and pulling up to hold my hammer at shoulder
level, I was able to clear the initial bulge and lever up to the SO-degree
ice above. There, I was too gripped to hang from my hammer, but the
ice was just soft enough to allow starting the ice screws by hand. After
resting on the top screw, I didn't see much ethical difference in using
it for aid to swing around the corner to the final vertical section. A
nice belay from a cedar allowed me to bring John up as darkness fell.
We rappelled off easily and glissaded down the gully to the car.
The tale of that weekend cannot be appreciated without the note of
three associated adventures. The first involved an incredible forty foot
trip in the car across a road island piled high with snow. I had failed to
slow down for a fast approaching T -intersection, due to an overdose of
Beach Boys songs and boots cluttered around the clutch pedal. Fortunately our car ended up hanging over the main road and a passing car
pulled us out. The second thriller came about when Nick fell when
seconding Chris on one of their climbs. Chris got lifted off his stance,
leaving both of them suspended precariously from one Salewa ice
screw. Chris urged Nick to return quickly to the ice and the moment
passed. The last incident was nearly the curtain for everyone concerned. On the drive back to Boston, we crested a hill doing forty in
the snowy night. Two cars were coming uphill, one in each lane. We
42
waited for our lane to clear, but those headlights just kept coming
closer. At the last second, John took a hard left and our hearts stopped
as we squeezed between the two cars. We never looked back, being
absorbed in John's successful efforts to pull out of the skid he had just
created.
The next weekend allowed us to complete our planned new lines on
the cliff. A long day on Saturday was needed to traverse a high ledge
onto the midsection of the ice flow on the left end of the cliff. Two
nice ice pitches followed in the giant corner. The descent went
smoothly by walking back left along the top of the cliff, making one
150-foot rappel to the high ledge and reversing the devious approach
route.
That night we met Nancy Kerrebrock and Brinton Young and
tented on the frozen lake. Sunday we did the left and right flows of the
triplet on the far left end of the area. John and Nancy did the righthand route, Renormalization, in one pitch. Brinton and I did the other
line, Plug and Chug, in two, with John later following. Although a
steep bulge on the second pitch of Plug and Chug gave us a few anxious
off-balance moments, both routes seemed easier than the central flow.
On Monday John and Brinton climbed an interesting pillar just left
of Stormy Monday (the route ofRainsford and Gustavo). Leading, Brinton hung on his hammer incorrectly and got his hand stuck in the
wrist loop. A struggle freed his hand but also sent him on a 35-foot
unplanned descent. John finished the lead.
Meanwhile, Nancy and I climbed a two pitch route just left of
Twenty Below Zero Gully that involved vertical bushes and thin ice to
reach a belay niche. After I finished the second pitch, a communication
problem occurred as Nancy began seconding it. Her axe got stuck and
simultaneously one crampon started coming off. I couldn't hear her
calls for tension and I couldn't figure out what was going on. After
twenty minutes of struggle she fortunately prevailed and completed
the pitch. After this incident I became a firm believer in rope-tug belay
signals.
The next winter John and I returned to Lake Willoughby, guessing
correctly that we would find thin ice in the early winter that would
disappear in the first thaw and be gone in the spring. It was right after
Christmas; all the roads were dry and the lake was unfrozen. The first
day we climbed a two-pitch line to the right of Twenty Below Zero
Gully. We flipped for pitches and I lost, so I did the 60-degree first
pitch. John led some vertical ice and then climbed a twenty foot pillar
passing a large rock overhang. He received a surprise when I noticed
43
that his protection for the pillar, a screw in soggy ice, had been pulled
out by the angle of the rope. We stomped down the descent trail and
lodged ourselves in boulder caves for the night.
The next day we did a complete ascent of the left-end ''ledge''
route, taking advantage of the fact that the ice reached to the ground.
We quickly scrambled up the approach gully, and reached the base of
our climb just as the sun hit the cliff. From the road, view of the
lowest part of the ice flow is blocked by trees. From the base of the
climb, however, we saw that only a thin slab of ice reached the
ground. The lowest fifteen feet were a mere one-half inch thick! But,
having made the approach, I was willing to ignore the dangerous
nature of the pitch. I rationalized that the ice would probably never
reach the ground again, and this would be the only chance for the ascent, ever. Although John urged me to climb the ice direct from the
ground, he quieted when I offered him the lead. A little rock climbing
in crampons reached two-inch thick ice, dubiously protected by pitons.
I got a bit of a scare when a two-foot wide plate of ice six inches away
from my hammer broke off and slid down the cliff. Reaching the crux,
a rock overhang under the ice, I removed my Dachsteins and reached
between icicles to a bucket hold on rock. A piton was banged in upside
down under a loose flake, ice tools were grabbed with bare hands, and
the overhang was cleared. The steep ice above seemed trivial by comparison, and soon I was at the belay. John managed to climb the ice
directly with a top rope, and flashed the next pitch. I took the third
pitch, John's the year before. It was a vertical groove that gave spectacular bridging and good protection. John did the fourth pitch, with
a potential fall stopped when he grabbed a screw. We decided to continue straight up. John led a final twenty foot vertical pitch, followed
by a prolonged upwards scramble in the dark. At one point I climbed a
short handcrack in my crampons and monkeyed up tree limbs to
safety. John, left with both packs, was glad for a toprope. We kept
stumbling upwards until suddenly we appeared at the summit, register
and all! The last "first" we cared to do was finished, and we groped
down the descent trail to a feast of chocolate chip cookies.
44
Technical Summary of Ice Climbing
at Lake Willoughby
by
CLINT CuMMINS
Location: On the southwest side of Mt. Pisgah facing Lake
Willoughby, 7 miles north of West Burke, Vermont on route SA. It is
41/z hours from Boston in ideal conditions, 51/z hours when icy. A
laundromat in Lyndonville provides a warming station.
Conditions: The weather is consistent; the ice is thick on most
climbs; the approaches and descents are easy-all good reasons to make
the extra hour and a half drive from Franconia. However, afternoon
sun can turn the climbs into waterfalls.
Descents: A trail follows the cliff's edge from the south end up to the
top of Promenade after which it turns back towards the summit. It is
easily found but one must be careful to leave the trail and go down a
short gully on the right in order to reach the road near the parking
areas. Rappellil).g down is advised for all climb~ north of Stormy
Monday.
·
Rating System: An extension of the Nation:)l Climbing Classification
System (NCCS) is used. A Roman numeral describes how long the
route will take the average team. Nfixt, a "V" rating describes the
length of the longest "vertical" s~ction, in meters. An optional "T"
rating describes thin ice sections, if any. T1 means that ice hammers
with tubular picks cannot be used on the thinnest parts, and a T2
rating applies when only Terrordaetyls or other positive clearance tools
can be used. What "vertical" means is the point at which hand tools
are used primarily for support rather than for balance, when the
climber is in a stationary position. In the pure case of a flat surface of
ice, this would occur at 85 degrees. However, an ice corner or groove,
where bridging allows the climber to lean in and take his weight off
hand tools, is not considered "vertical" even though the overall angle
may be straight up and down.
In terms of other ice rating systems, the New England Ice system
would give the following climbs a "V": 2, 6, 9, 11, 12, 17, 18.
Climbs 21 and 22 are given a "III", and all other climbs get a "IV".
Peter Cole's adjective system would give a "Moderate" to climbs 21
and 22 and a ''Hard'' to all other climbs here.
Since ice conditions are quite variable, these ratings are not meant to
be more than approximations of the actual climbing difficulties on any
particular day.
45
1 2 3
4
5
6
MT. PISGAH, from Lake Willoughby. This, and subsequent photos of the cliff were taken
in February, 1978 by John Imbrie.
.
Starting second pitch, Called 011 Acc01ml of Rains. I:ake Willoughby in background.
46
7
8 9
47
1
2
3
Key to photos.
1. PLUG AND CHUG II V6, 2 pitches.
First Ascent: 2.20.77 Clint Cummins, Brinton Young, John Imbrie.
2. MINDBENDER III V10, 2 pitches.
FA: 2.13.77 Clint Cummins, John Imbrie.
3. RENORMALIZATION I V4, 1 pitch.
FA: 2.20. 77 John Imbrie, Nancy Kerrebrock.
48
4
5
)
6
4. SHAKER HEIGHTS III V4, 3-4 pitches.
FA: Winter 74/75 Ken Andrasko, Chris Field.
5. LEDGE APPROACH III V5, 2-3 pitches plus 400' of 4th class.
FA: 2.19. 77 John Imbrie, Clint Cummins.
This is a way to do C.O.A.O.R. when the ice doesn't reach. One 150 foot rappel will
reach the left end of the ledge system from the trees directly above. This is the best
descent.
6. CALLED ON ACCOUNT OF RAINS IV V5 T2, 5 pitches.
FA: 12.28.77 Clint Cummins, John Imbrie.
The first pitch is seldom seen. When it exists, it will be thin and rock protection is a
must. A long horizontal, a 3/4" angle, and a #7 Hex are a bare minimum.
49
8
9
7. UNNAMED, UNCLIMBED. Potential lines.
8. BRINTON'S FOLLY I V6, 1 pitch.
FA: 2.21.77 John Imbrie, Brinton Young.
There is a gully which diagonals right to the base of this climb. It can also be used to
approach Stormy Monday.
9. STORMY MONDAY III V6 T1, 3 pitches.
FA: 2.12.77 S. Rainsford Rouner, Gustavo Brillembourg.
10. UNNAMED, UNCLIMBED. This climb may someday reach close enough to the
ground to be climbed.
50
12
13
14
11. THE LAST GENTLEMAN IV V7, 4-5 pitches.
FA: December 76 S. Rainsford Rouner, Timothy Nichols Rouner.
12. PROMENADE IV V12, 4 pitches.
FA: January 77 S. Rainsford Rouner, Peter Cole, Timothy Nichols Rouner.
13. UNNAMED, UNCLIMBED. This ice flow and its neighbor offer sustained and
possibly dangerous climbing under the best conditions. As standards improve, they are
likely to be ascended.
14. UNNAMED, UNCLIMBED.
51
15
16
17
18
15. FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY II V4 T1, 2 pitches.
FA: December 76 Brian Becker, Peter Cole, Tad Pfeffer.
16. TWENTY BELOW ZERO GULLY III VS, 3 pitches.
FA: January 74 Henry Barber, Mike Hartrich, Al Rubin.
17. GLASS MENAGERIE III VB, 2-3 pitches.
FA: 2.18.77 Timothy Nichols Rouner, Chip Lee.
18. EXTENSIVE HOMOLOGY III VB, 2 pitches.
FA: 1.31.79 John Imbrie, Dennis Drayna.
52
19
20
21
22
19. CRAZY DIAMOND III V6, 2 pitches.
FA: 12.2.77 John Imbrie, Clint Cummins.
20. SLAB LEFT II V4, 2 pitches.
FA: Unknown.
21. SLAB MIDDLE I V3, 2 pitches.
FA: Unknown.
22. SLAB RIGHT I V3, 2 pitches.
FA: Unknown.
53
Some Comments on Climbing Syles
at Lake Willoughby
by
JoHN
Z.
IMBRIE
After Clint's crippling fall on Whitehorse, the ice overlooking Lake
Willoughby lost its sparkle. Soon, however, the situation improved
and the trips to Portland began. While Lyndonville and the Maine
Medical Center are not exactly next door, who could resist the temptation of soft, thick ice just waiting to grab the picks right out of one's
hands? Certainly not I. The new lines of winter 77/78 had already
been grabbed, but the classics would always be there. Where there are
classics, Dennis Drayna is not hard to find, which explains why he and
I found ourselves risking all on the drive to Vermont in my shattered
VW. Besides a completely demolished front end, the car could not
manage on anything less than 2000 rpm. Tow starts using my old
MSR rope bridged the gap between the meager capabilities of the
starter and the unforgiving demands of a senile fuel injection system. A
warm night in Franconia was the only other thing we needed to start
us on Promenade, one of Willoughby's most challenging offerings.
The technological revolution in ice climbing opened up Lake
Willougby to the ice climber, but also brought up questions concerning the sort of style in which routes should be done. The length of the
vertical sections demands the placement of screws in vertical situations.
At first it seemed that the only way to do this was to rest on a hammer
or axe placement to free both hands. Unfortunately, this puts the
climber in a particularly vulnerable position just as he reaches the end
of a runout (besides being rather unclean). One could not be certain
that placements worthy of full body weight would appear in times of
need. The practice also opened up the vertical arena to people who did
not have the technique to climb long vertical sections without resting.
Thus the question of what would be an acceptable number of rests
arose. Too few meant taking big risks: too many would turn a climb
into a farce. Happily for the sport of ice climbing and for the safety of
the people exploring the vertical realm, the dilemma has been bypassed
by yet another set of technological developments. The tubular hammer
pick and the MSR screw have brought one handed screw placements
on vertical ice within the capabilities of the mere mortal. The hammer
CLIMBING A PILLAR at mid-height on Promenade.
photo by Dennis Drayna
55
creates a hole in the ice and the screw can easily be turned into it with
one hand. The process is much safer than "hanging out" and is
aesthetically less objectionable. I feel that the climber who has made
such a placement has earned a rest on that screw, but that question
should be left for each climber to answer for himself. Situations where
it had been just as dangerous to place a screw as to complete a runout
can now be handled quickly, safely, and in good style. Poor ice conditions that make sitting on tools too chancy can now be protected.
Methods for dealing with Willoughby's vertical ice thus changed from
Fifi hooks and dangling feet in winter 76/77 to more mature methods
in subsequent years.
Dennis declined my offer of the first lead, so it was up to the Terrordactyl in my left hand, the Bird in my right, my crampons, and my
MSRs; hopefully I would also play a small role. After climbing 70 feet
up to what might have been the first belay, I opted to continue on a
leftward traverse towards a stance behind an ice column. The ice was
not up to the usual Willoughby standard because of the geometry of
the situation. About 120 feet up, there is a two foot overhang in the
underlying rock which results in a sheet of ice with air behind it. The
ice below the sheet, where I was traversing, was consequently poorly
attached to the rock and not very thick. Super placements were rare, so
this was not Fifi country. I placed three screws in vertical situations;
after Whitehorse I was taking no chances. Fifteen feet before the belay
I eyed a spot of good ice three feet over my head. I popped the Bird
into it at the limit of my reach, instantly relieving my right arm. Moving up a bit I held on with the Terror' and turned the screw in to safety.
I reached the belay stance while Dennis was shouting something, but I
couldn't be bothered. Was it my fault if the rope was only 150 feet
long? I mused on how one might climb the 80 foot chandelier to the
right of our climb as Dennis seconded the pitch.
The next pitch crossed the overhangs. The pillar I used became
wider as it rose ~nd for some reason the only good placements were to
the left. As my feet were constrained to the center, I experienced
severe ''barn door'' problems. When these eased I held on for a screw
placement and clipped in to regain my composure (not to mention my
hands). At the top of the pitch I longed for the days when I could
swing leads with Clint, but my daydreams were short-lived as Dennis
flashed the pitch. He proceeded to describe how he saw the ground
through the hole left by a beL1y screw. As we were no longer at that
belay stance, we laughed and set to work on the final pillar. I guessed
that a traverse to the right across honeycombed ice would lead to easier
56
ground, which it did, thank God. A tricky rock move led to the
bushes, completing the climb. The next day our swollen knuckles persuaded us that photographing the cliff would be more fun than climbing it. This strategy had the added advantage of leaving time to report
to the director of HMC ice climbing activity at the Maine Medical
Center.
57
From an Ellesmere Journal
by
WILLIAM
A.
GRAHAM
Notes on the 1978 Ellesmere-Bowman Island Arctic Alpine Expedition, a
joint Venture of the Canadian Alpine and American Explorers' Club led by
G. VanCochran, Fellow of the Explorers' club.
28 April, 9:30 a.m. Airborne out of Montreal for Frobisher and
Resolute Bay, N.W.T., the long preparations for this trip begin to
seem worth it: mid-winter sled and ski-equipment tests in Vermont,
six months of telephone and letter exchanges, checking and rechecking
of gear, advance shipment of supplies, and sixty-mile weeks of road
running. Our last darkness for four weeks is already hours behind us as
we fly from burgeoning springtime toward the sunny ice-wastes of an
arctic April (ten minutes out of Montreal in the 737, and there is total
snow-cover below).
rr-~tw
tl-4-flt.d.,( f,'on
~c--~---~-~~--~~~--·~~~~-~~1~0N
58
We land mid-afternoon in Resolute, are met by our fifth American
me)llber, Peter Rogers-my climbing partner for several years now
and ex-H.M.C. president. He has flown in via Winnepeg from San
Francisco. We go to work on the tarmac in the sunny cold (-2 degrees
F.) to load our gear and supplies into the sleek little Twin Otter that
will fly us the next three hundred miles north to the last Eskimo settlement in the Canadian Arctic, Grise Fiord. By six p.m. we are again
airborne. From my vantage point in the co-pilot's seat I have a breathtaking view of the vast spaces and stunning whiteness of island and
frozen sea some 9000 feet below. I am reminded of nothing so much as
the southern Egyptian desert from the air-only the mountains, wadis,
and wind formations are carved in snow and ice rather than sand and
clay. We land at eight in bright sunshine (will we adjust to this sun
that only circles, never sets?) and are met on the runway plowed from
the sea ice by fully a third of the 92-person settlement. Every plane's
arrival here is an event. The bluffs and peaks that rise to 2000 feet only
a quarter mile behind the houses on the shore glitter in the sunlight; it
is hard not to be exhilarated.
4 May, 11:00 p.m., Grise Fiord. Nearly a week gone-the unexpected
(an accident) and the predictable (overland transport problems and bad
weather) have postponed our departure as the ''advance group'' by
two days. On our first full day in Grise, we sorted gear, repacked food
supplies and equipment, and took a practice climb up one of the bluffs
above the settlement. This last jaunt ended in tragedy when Peter
broke his leg en glissade during the descent, a silly accident that ended
his trip before it began. Van, an orthopedist, set the leg, but Pet~r had
to be flown out yesterday for home to have the leg properly X-rayed
and perhaps reset. Massive disappointment for him and us; we must
reorganize food and supplies based on a new number, and our proposed seventy-mile ski-crossing of the high ice plateau on the return
trip from Bowman Island main peak, our first objective, may now be
impossible with a reduced number. At the very least, Peter and I will
not climb Bowman together.
After three days of negotiations with the Eskimos through the jovial
mediation of the informally acknowledged "head honcho" of Grise,
Pijameeni, we did finally arrange for four of the large sled (komatik) and
snowmobile combinations to carry us north through the lower mountain valleys to the inland (western) end of the giant fiord of Mackinson
Inlet and thence east towards the mouth of the fiord where Bowman
lies. The one dog-sled team in the village will also do a fifty-mile supply carry for a mid-way fuel dump to get the Canadian part in and all
59
of us out again. We were all set to go early this morning, only to find
that the wind kept rising rather than diminishing; with the
temperature at least ten below zero, neither we nor the Eskimos who
would drive the skidoos wanted to buck a thirty-five mile-an-hour
headwind for twenty miles up Starnes Fiord (our line of access north).
Thus we spent the day pinned down here, working on modifications
to our hauling sleds and re-sorting gear for the Nth time. Waiting.
6 May, 11:30 p.m., Mackinson Inlet. Utter wildness, utter silence; utter joy, and a certain awe; we have set up base camp on the fiord ice in
the shelter of a promontory on the southern side of Mackinson, and we
four are now alone here, separated from the nearest human beings by
over 200 air miles (to Thule, Greenland, east ac~oss Baffin Bay) or
nearly 100 overland miles (back as we came, to Grise). It is a white
world, but hardly monotone. The brilliant blues of the many glaciers
and the oddshaped icebergs that they calve into the fiord are all around
us. The reds and browns and blacks of the rocks and crags that rim the
fiord and stand in ragged lines along the valley glaciers above are sharp
contrasts to the snows from which they project. And the whites of the
snow on ice-domes, glaciers, and fiord ice are themselves patterned and
textured by wind and pressure into wind slabs above and sastrugi
below. Most of all, there is the circling sun and swiftly moving clouds
that alter constantly the lighting and perspective of everything. It is an
untouched fairlyland of changing hue and aspect.
The trip in was long and hard, nearly thirty hours underway, only
six of which were spent at rest in an early morning bivouac. Often the
snow was too deep or the gradients too steep for the skidoos and loaded
komatiks, and we all pushed and walked and shoveled and sweated to
move everything only hundreds of feet. Once through the mountains
and down to the fiord ice of Mackinson, however, the final leg of the
trip, eighteen miles down the fiord ice to where we now camp, was
easy. Enroute we even detoured once to shore to stalk and photograph
a small herd of musk oxen and watch them race up the glisten mountain slopes in the sun. Here we are "dug in" about six miles west of
the mouth of Mackinson on the fiord-ice itself. Our camp commands
views N and NE across Mackinson and towards the sea, and S down
the ten miles of this subsidiary inlet, a narrow finger of water and ice
that points south toward the glacial ice cap locked around the mountains that separate Mackinson from the southern shore of Ellesmere.
The tallest peaks in sight go up to 4500 feet, yet the most impressive is
the spire of Bowman Island three miles away to the NW. Only 1800
feet high, its granite shaft rises from the middle of the six mile wide
60
fiord and is clearly the distinguishing landmark of the area.
8 May, Midnight, Mackinson. Three polar bears marched right into
camp this morning. Whether the wind hid any noise or we were
simply engrossed in food we don't know, but we emerged from
breakfast to find their snowshoe-sized prints only ten feet from our
door, their clear sets of tracks trailing off around the point over what
had been virgin snow an hour earlier. No one is at all unhappy about
not having seen these awesome creatures and faced the decision of how
to react. We were all a bit jumpy tonight as a result of this affair, but
it helps to have ,had a second straight day of exhilarating ski climbing
up and down Of)e of the glaciers that sweep down from the peaks east
of us across "~ur" inlet. The pleasant fatigue of the climb sent us all
into the sack a~ hour ago and I, the last to fall asleep, am also nodding
(may this tent be safe from bears).
13 May, 10:30 p.m., Mackinson. The three Canadians arrived with
Van's wife Bobbie and three Eskimos in the early hours of the 10th.
Their trip too was gruelling, but faster than ours because of the trail
broken four days earlier in our crossing. One of the. Eskimos,
Aymushee, is staying on with us, and this gives us two skidoos for
climbing trips farther away along the fiord for the ten days that he and
Bobbie will be here. Radio contact with qrise apd Resolute has been
blocked all week, a characteristic of atmospheric conditions in this area
on occasion, and it has snowed and snowed-two meters in four days.
We have built half an igloo, a number of ice walls as windbreaks and
have a tattered old canvas tent of the Canadians patched up into a
moderately comfortable expedition kitchen and eating tent. We have
taken some ski tours down the fiord and attempted a couple of 3500
foot ice domes above our camp, but the weather has turned us back
from the summits each day since the Canadians arrived. I am having
trouble with a pinched nerve in my right arm, so the enforced camp
days are not that unwelcome at the moment. We read and talk and
putter.
.
15 May, 12:30 a.m., Mackinson. The 14th dawned a little more promising and three of us decided to make an initial food carry ten miles
among the peaks across to the southern shore of Ellesmere. With our
party weakened by Peter's loss and the heavy snows of the past four
days, we are dubious about the proposed five-day traverse to the south
coast next week. And rightly so, as we discover in the twelve-hour
marathon of this "dry run" on skis, hauling two small sleds of food
and gear among us. We manage only a mile-and-a-half an hour down
to where we cache the food-and we stumble into camp exhausted.
61
of us out again. We were all set to go early this morning, only to find
that the wind kept rising rather than diminishing; with the
temperature at least ten below zero, neither we nor the Eskimos who
would drive the skidoos wanted to buck a thirty-five mile-an-hour
headwind for twenty miles up Starnes Fiord (our line of access north).
Thus we spent the day pinned down here, working on modifications
to our hauling sleds and re-sorting gear for the Nth time. Waiting.
6 May, 11:30 p.m., Mackinson Inlet. Utter wildness, utter silence; utter joy, and a certain awe; we have set up base camp on the fiord ice in
the shelter of a promontory on the southern side of Mackinson, and we
four are now alone here, separated from the nearest human beings by
over 200 air miles (to Thule, Greenland, east ac~oss Baffin Bay) or
nearly 100 overland miles (back as we came, to Grise). It is a white
world, but hardly monotone. The brilliant blues of the many glaciers
and the oddshaped icebergs that they calve into the fiord are all around
us. The reds and browns and blacks of the rocks and crags that rim the
fiord and stand in ragged lines along the valley glaciers above are sharp
contrasts to the snows from which they project. And the whites of the
snow on ice-domes, glaciers, and fiord ice are themselves patterned and
textured by wind and pressure into wind slabs above and sastrugi
below. Most of all, there is the circling sun and swiftly moving clouds
that alter constantly the lighting and perspective of everything. It is an
untouched fairlyland of changing hue and aspect.
The trip in was long and hard, nearly thirty hours underway, only
six of which were spent at rest in an early morning bivouac. Often the
snow was too deep or the gradients too steep for the skidoos and loaded
komatiks, and we all pushed and walked and shoveled and sweated to
move everything only hundreds of feet. Once through the mountains
and down to the fiord ice of Mackinson, however, the final leg of the
trip, eighteen miles down the fiord ice to where we now camp, was
easy. Enroute we even detoured once to shore to stalk and photograph
a small herd of musk oxen and watch them race up the glisten mountain slopes in the sun. Here we are "dug in" about six miles west of
the mouth of Mackinson on the fiord-ice itself. Our camp commands
views N and NE across Mackinson and towards the sea, and S down
the ten miles of this subsidiary inlet, a narrow finger of water and ice
that points south toward the glacial ice cap locked around the mountains that separate Mackinson from the southern shore of Ellesmere.
The tallest peaks in sight go up to 4500 feet, yet the most impressive is
the spire of Bowman Island three miles away to the NW. Only 1800
feet high, its granite shaft rises from the middle of the six mile wide
60
fiord and is clearly the distinguishing landmark of the area.
8 May, Midnight, Mackinson. Three polar bears marched right into
camp this morning. Whether the wind hid any noise or we were
simply engrossed in food we don't know, but we emerged from
breakfast to find their snowshoe-sized prints only ten feet from our
door, their clear sets of tracks trailing off around the point over what
had been virgitl snow an hour earlier. No one is at all unhappy about
not having seen these awesome creatures and faced the decision of how
to react. We were all a bit jumpy tonight as a result of this affair, but
it helps to have ,had a second straight day of exhilarating ski climbing
up and down ope of the glaciers that sweep down from the peaks east
of us across "our" inlet. The pleasant fatigue of the climb sent us all
into the sack aq hour ago and I, the last to fall asleep, am also nodding
(may this tent be safe from bears).
,
13 May, 10:30 p.m., Mackinson. The three Canadians arrived with
Van's wife Bobbie and three Eskimos in the early hours of the 10th.
Their trip too was gruelling, but faster than ours because of the trail
broken four days earlier in our crossing. One of the, Eskimos,
Aymushee, is staying on with us, and this gives us two skidoos for
climbing trips farther away along the fiord for the ten days that he and
Bobbie will be here. Radio contact with qrise apd Resolute has been
blocked all week, a characteristic of atmospheric conditions in this area
on occasion, and it has snowed and snowed-two meters in four days.
We have built half an igloo, a number of ice walls as windbreaks and
have a tattered old canvas tent of the Canadians patched up into a
moderately comfortable expedition kitchen and eating tent. We have
taken some ski tours down the fiord and attempted a couple of 3500
foot ice domes above our camp, but the weather has turned us back
from the summits each day since the Canadians arrived. I am having
trouble with a pinched nerve in my right arm, so the enforced camp
days are not that unwelcome at the moment. We read and talk and
putter.
15 May, 12:30 a.m., Mackinson. The 14th dawned a little more promising and three of us decided to make an initial food carry ten miles
among the peaks across to the southern shore of Ellesmere. With our
party weakened by Peter's loss and the heavy snows of the past four
days, we are dubious about the proposed five-day traverse to the south
coast next week. And rightly so, as we discover in the twelve-hour
marathon of this ''dry run'' on skis, hauling two small sleds of food
and gear among us. We manage only a mile-and-a-half an hour down
to where we cache the food-and we stumble into camp exhausted.
61
We have our answer about the proposed crossing: no go.
17 May, 10 p.m., Mackinson. We have readjusted our plans and decided to join the Canadians in climbing as many peaks as we can in the
area. Since everything in the range of our camp is unclimbed, our only
problem is deciding which to tackle first. On the 15th, the two
Skidoos towed our entire group of nine, including Aymushee, the
Eskimo who had stayed on with us to Bowman for a reconnaissance
climb. This took us up the easy outrider peak east of the main summit.
The weather turned clear and calmer, and we had a grand romp up the
central snow couloir to the "saddle" that joins the two peaks of
Bowman. From the saddle to the eastern summit was a matter of
minutes, and from this lesser peak we had unlimited vistas in every
direction save due west, where the rock and snow of the main summit
blocked the view. We could see forty or fifty miles; the number of untouched peaks, ridges, and glaciers was all but overwhelming. No one
wanted to descend even for a hot supper before midnight, so we simply
sat in the sun and the wind and absorbed it all. The route up the east
side of the main peak seemed feasible, and with that still to look forward to, we gave ourselves up to the leisure of not worrying about a
descent in the dark-something no Alpine peak can offer.
18 May, 10:00 p.m., Mackinson. Yesterday four of us climbed
Bowman's main peak-certainly a high point for all, since this was our
chief objective. A late start stretched our twelve-hour climb into the
first hour of today, but we ascended and descended "uneventfully."
How little that word says! Climbers use it to say no one was hurt,
there were no close calls and no truly "desperate" moments, and certainly that was the case with Bowman. But it says nothing about the
intricacies of thought and action that move one up each new pitch or
down each rappel. It was precisely the concentration on the snowcovered ramps and slabs of our climb, the little dihedral half-way up,
or the six-inch crack filled with snow, that made our "uneventful"
climb a full and ultimately "eventful" experience. And what was the
high point of our climb-the five minutes in a fifty-knot gale on the
tiny snow-covered summit, or the moment of utter relaxation when
everyone flopped down in the shelter of a rocky outcrop after our descent and sat in silence? We climbed a new peak, we shared food and
BOWMAN ISLAND MAIN PEAK, from col.
BOWMAN ISLAND from lateral moraine on southern shore of Mackinson
-Hubert Schriebl.
63
small talk, we sweated and froze, we came down bone-tired but
elated-how else to describe an "uneventful" climb?
26 May, 10:00 p.m., Resolute Bay. We are nearing the end now, four
weeks after we set out from home. Our flight will leave just after midnight and breakfast will find us sweltering in the heat of Montreal
(even here it is 25 degrees outside). How full the past nine days have
been: the Bowman climb only whetted our appetites, and at least one
group was underway every day after that, ranging out into the most
attractive peaks that our eyes or maps could find; Long ski climbs up
virgin glaciers, ice axe and front point work on the rims of big ice
domes; hour-long ski descents down gentle and not-so-gentle ridges
and glaciers-these all merge now into a kaleidescope. of impressions.
Numb fingers, sweaty backs, sun-reddened eyes, a broken leg, angry
moments of annoyance-these are there in our thoughts with the
breath-taking vistas, the long, silent ski runs, the quiet summit
moments, and all the other pleasurable sensations. No trip is ever
unmixed in its experiences, no group is ever utterly at one in its decisions and desires. Still, we did tolerably well by one another and would
surely do it all again if we could.
As we left Grise at noon today, the receding snows had already
begun to advertise the coming summer. The little settlement looked a
little muddy and not so pristine as when we arrived a month ago; yet it
was not a place we were in a hurry tb depart, even to return to night
and day and the other cycles of home. Leave-takings should be like
that.
64
A Black Dike Anthology
Since its first ascent in December of 1971, the Black Dike has served as a
standard of New England ice climbing. Its length, setting, and traditionally
poor ice have firmly established its reputation as a major climb. Its absolute
technical difficulties are substantial but not extreme, and it has received many
ascents. The different climbers and different conditions involved in each ascent,
however, have produced vastly differing impressions of the route in its details.
Accordingly, we present the following collections of personal accounts of the
climb by HMC members.
You Can't Train for an Epic
by
CLINT CUMMINS
The first time I went ice-climbing was in January of my freshman
year. Brinton Young and I drove up I-93 to Franconia Notch looking
for ice. It was a clear winter day and the main face of Cannon was so
impressive that we didn't notice the now-famous gulley on its left end.
We spied a distant ice-gully north of the highway and floundered
towards it for twenty minutes before realizing our efforts to reach it
were futile. Our ambitions suffered a temporary setback, and we settled for Willey's Slide in Crawford Notch.
In February I was initiated into the tradition of ice-climbing in Huntungton's Ravine by Michael Lehner, and a few more weeks brought
an attempt to climb the Whitney-Gilman ridge on Cannon, only to be
driven back by a bitterly cold wind on the first pitch. By this time I
had heard stories about the Black Dike; one tale claimed the final pitch
was one hundred feet of dead-vertical ice.
In March, I learned that three other freshmen had climbed the Dike.
Not wanting to be outdone, I began to train seriously. I completed the
Whitney-Gilman, peeked around the corner, and noted that the Dike
was not as steep as reported. I led steep ice at Frankenstein Cliffs, and,
as a final affirmation of confidence, made the (second) ascent of a vertical flow of yellow ice called the Drop Line.
Finally feeling ready after climbing on five of the last six weekends, I
set off with John Imbrie and Jeremy Metz early one Tuesday to do the
big one, the Black Dike. Leaving at the extreme hour of three a.m.,
we arrived in Franconia Notch at six. After slipping and stumbling to
the base of the gully, I realized the route was somewhat inobvious. I
65
vaguely remembered something about soloing the first pitch and finding "the" rock traverse. Armed with this sketchy but crucial information, I led out onto the ice, and crudely flattened the finely honed
blade of my ice hammer when I miscalculated the thickness.
The morning was cold and overcast; the ice was extremely hard. I
arrived at a plausible belay spot near a corner, but immediately spied a
yellow sling forty feet above. Ahah! The rock traverse. With hardly
more than a moment's thought I forged ahead and began rockclimbing. My crampons screeched against the rock. Just below the
sling I mantled up onto a ledge covered with loose rocks. I cleared the
rocks off by throwing them off to the side. Unfortunately they were
funneled into the bottom of the gulley, straight at John and Jeremy.
Jeremy got hit by an apple-sized rock in the arm, causing much embarrassment. I manteled up on the small cleared space and found the
yellow sling tied to an angle piton, which I plucked from behind a
loose block with my fingers. There was no rock traverse here. I replaced the angle piton like a chockstone behind the block and rappelled
back to the belay spot, feeling rather foolish. Two screws squeaked
their way three inches into the ice and Jeremy came up.
I started the second pitch by stepping out left onto eighty-degree
ice, the steepest on the climb that day. At the same time, John climbed
slowly up the first pitch, belaying himself on a second rope. I made it
past the steep section with care and continued up, waiting for the ice
to become thick enough for ice-screw protection. Awkward climbing
continued, with placement of my ice axe and hammer being difficult.
About half-way up I saw some slings frozen under the ice, so I broke
away the ice and clipped the rope into them. They were my only protection on the pitch. I finally arrived at a good belay stance, anchored
by one tied-off ice screw and a small wired stopper smashed into a thin
crack in the left wall.
Jeremy seconded, having some difficulty with the initial steep section. His home-modified ice axe wasn't working so well, and he took
three falls on my toprope. Luckily there was a lqt of snow at the belay
stance, and I was able to hold him without putting any weight on the
anchors. Snow began to fall.
Unbelayed, I started up the third pitch, while John climbed the second pitch. I climbed up to the next steep section and looked around for
protection. The ice was probably thick enough for an ice screw, but
since I only had one with me, I wanted to save it for the unknown difficulties above. I tried chopping around icicles to thread a sling, but
ended up just chopping out a seat under an overhang, protected from
66
the snow. Somehow I felt safer in my little alcove than I felt at the
belay stance with its dubious anchors.
John climbed up to Jeremy without incident, so I continued up the
third pitch past many awkward moves and cave-like ice flutings.
Needless to say, I never got up enough courage to place my only ice
screw. Near the top, the ice was hidden under the new snow and I
couldn't see how solidly my hand tools were placed in the ice. By the
time I reached a belay in the trees, my powers of concentration were
washed out. I decided the Black Dike would be my last ice climb of the
season and probably my last ice climb, period. Meanwhile Jeremy and
John followed in turn, Jeremy breaking his axe tip in the process. We
stumbled down a trail in darkness and drove back to Cambridge to collapse. I managed a C- on a math hourly the next morning.
Two Against the Black Dike
by JiM WuEsT and BRINTON YouNG
Foamy, odd, the ice hangs like gobbets and smears of yellow drool
frozen on the rock. It is January 1977. For the first time, we are at the
base of the Black Dike in winter. Franconia Notch was calm, and we
are naively surprised to find here that insistent wind and snow steal our
warmth and enthusiasm. We are not alone. There are also four other
climbers, strangers, one pair on the ice and another waiting beside us.
The report of the leader's axes are punctuated frequently by crashes
and shouts, as falling plates of ice shatter close to the belayer. As the
Black Dike responds to the bite of axes and crampons, we resolve to
belay in protected places. It is no longer early, but we cannot safely approach the ice until the other climbers have finished. We fidget uncomfortably, wishing we had started earlier. A solitary seventh climber
arrives without greetings and heads directly toward the ice. We are
ready to tell him irritably that he can wait behind the rest of us, but he
stops, removes a shaggy pack, curses softly, and turns to us in despair.
"Do any of you have an extra pair of crampons?" he asks. It is John
Bouchard. We do not, and he descends, not yet willing to solo Fafnir
without crampons. The two waiting climbers share the reassuring information that a bolt belay can be found at the base of the crux pitch.
Later they grow impatient, or perhaps cold, and descend to Franconia
Notch. We are delighted and frightened; it is our turn to climb the
Black Dike. At the base of a thin steep runnel of ice, we search for the
bolt. An hour passes. Good protection is everywhere, and we do not
67
need the bolt; but deep in the dark cleft of the Black Dike, we need to
find something familiar and expected to reassure us. Our courage, confidence, and common sense desert us: fifteen feet from the obvious
line, we are terrified of being off-route. At last we place two solid
screws in deep ice and scratch our way to the frozen runnel, but now it
is tqo late. Confronted shamefully by our cowardice and inexperience,
we retreat.
It is !).OW early in March 1977. Once again we are at the base of the
Black Dike. Last night a roommate of mine from college appeared after
eight years of silent separation. In the process of catching up, I was
telling him how much I'd begun to enjoy climbing during these years.
He interrupted awkwardly to tell me that his brother had died recently
after' a fall on Cenotaph Corner in Wales. I'm not a superstitious man,
but I can recognize a bad omen. I say nothing to Brinton about this
distressing episode, but today I would need all of my courage just to
follow him up a ladder. Fortunately there is no ice in the Black Dike.
It is January 1978. Although the Black Dike looks familiar, we have
changed; we are not as easily intimidated. We belay securely and efficiently, but as Brinton leads off he notices that his left crampon has
only one front point. He pauses, yet we do not retreat. Ice descending
the first pitch forms a staircase of gentle bulges, and Brinton advances
without needing front points. At the base of the second pitch, where a
misguided zealot had chopped the bolt a year before, we study the
thirty-foot runnel of steep yellow ice. Footholds run up the left side.
Brinton decides he will need front points, but hopefully only the ones
on his right foot. The footholds disappear near the top of the runnel
but Brinton, rotating delicately on a single front point, grunts his way
up the last few feet. He disappears into a narrow gully and stops after
seventy feet of slow progress. Thirty minutes pass. I grow impatient,
and my injured finger begins to freeze.
Above, Brinton has run into trouble. Straddling a pillar of ice at the
head of the gully, he cannot twist his left foot enough to plant the
single front point. He exhausts himself in a struggle, but manages to
clip into the nylon wrist loop of his axe before letting go. Hanging
from the axe, he has begun to place a screw when he notices that the
wrist loop has been cut. Gripped by a horrible fascination, he watches
it tear slowly under the strain of his weight. The screw goes in before
the loop parts, and after a rest he is able to work his way up the pillar
to a stance. Worried that we will be trapped on the Dike by darkness,
I follow as quickly as I can, without pausing to warm my hands. At
the belay Brinton soberly tells me that the rules of the game have
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BRINTON YOUNG climbing the steep runnel on the second pitch.
photo by jim Wuest
changed and points to his left foot. Now both front points are missing.
We assess our position: we are one pitch from the top of the Black
Dike, it is very late in the afternoon, Brinton has one good crampon,
and I have a finger grey with frostbite. There will be no retreat. By
cutting steps for his left foot, Brinton manages to climb the last pitch
in gritty style and arrives at the belay, a tied-off bush, with only one
front point intact. In the dark, I follow by headlamp, and we hug at
the top of the Black Dike to celebrate our friendship and our passage.
69
We Should Have Done Omega
by
DENNIS
T.
DRA YNA
By the time I had actually come so far as to turn off Route 93 and up
into Franconia Notch, my Black Dike experiences had been notable for
their failures. The previous attempt, for example, was thwarted before
the New Hampshire state line by a freezing rain storm that forced us
to apply the MSR stove full blast to the inside of the windshield in an
attempt to maintain a useable view for the driver. The result of that
strategy was a series of prominent cracks running across the VW's
windshield and a fast but not particularly sure return to Cambridge.
CLINT CUMMINS stands at the base of the Black Dike amphitheater. The Whitney-Gilman
ridge and the Black Dike are on the left. The other ice climbs in the picture were in
exceptional condition when this photo was taken.
pl10to by De1111is Drayna
70
This attempt was once again with Clint Cummins, that master of
ice climbing and subtle persuasion who was, as always, constantly
assuring me that the Black Dike was wildly overrated, and that the
whole thing should take us only a couple of hours. He turned out to be
right, but it was the reasons for our easy time that made the experience
exceptional.
My own feelings about the climb were cautiously optimistic. I
wasn't too worried about the technical difficulties, but the ice on the
crux was bound to be thin and, after all, there was the weather. The
day was crystal clear, with a stiff northwest wind and a temperature of
about - 10°F. A large high pressure system had left us with several
such days in a row, which in turn had been preceded by a warm heavy
rain. The cold front had moved in very quickly, leaving the trees with
a thin coating of ice and Cambridge full of huge frozen puddles. We
set out early that midweek morning prepared for, well, at least a
moderate tour de force.
With our very first glimpse of Cannon Cliff, it was clear that the
conditions were extraordinary. The weather conditions that had led to
hopes for large quantities of ice had indeed produced ice, enough ice to
lead to a major change in Clint's attitude. Clint was coming up to do
the Dike with me as a favor. Lord knows, he'd done it enough times,
but my own lack of an ascent was beginning to embarrass me, and I
was very grateful that he had offered his car and his ice climbing talent
for my own satisfaction. The first climb we saw was Omega, a climb
which then had but a single ascent and a fearsome reputation for thin
ice. Now the ice extended in very climbable form all the way to the
ground. Clint realized the opportunity and immediately tried to convince me that the Black Dike was better left for another day. Even
now, I can't figure out why he ever agreed to my wish to stick with
the original plan, but we kept on driving until the parking area further
up the cliff. At that point we noted that the Dike looked good, but
not especially so, while further up the cliff the ice was astonishing.
Over the long aid route Ghost ran a runnel of ice that came within a
pitch of the ground. It extended continuously for 600 feet, passing
over the sizable overhang high on the face by a thin pillar some 20 feet
high.
Armed with the hope of thick ice on the crux, we charged up to the
base of the Dike. As usual, Clint convinced me that it was in our best
interest to solo as much as possible, so, after the obligatory destruction
of my ice axe point on the first placement, I took off after Clint,
unroped. He was setting up a belay below the crux when I began to
71
get gripped on the steepening ground fifteen feet lower, and it was
only his casual nonchalance that forced me to pull myself together and
complete the easy ground with at least some self-respect remaining. He
then dispatched the surprisingly thin crux, stopping midway so I could
largely release the belay and take photographs. Some more steep but
secure ice, and he was standing on the large ledge calling me up. By
the time I reached him, the fierce wind had Clint shivering, and after
he had pointed out the exceptional condition of the nearby climbs and
ice formations, I slyly offered him a belay should he want to get moving and lead the third pitch. That pitch, in its usually excellent condition, went quickly (he led), and rather than face the wind at the top of
the cliff, we rappelled the route as the weather began to deteriorate.
I was satisfied; I had finally done the route and had a good time of it.
But it was that runnel of ice coming over the Ghost roof and down the
cliff that T have remembered most clearly ever since. Ice climbing has
seen great technological advances recently, advances that opened up
the ice pillars and frozen waterfalls and produced an ice climbing explosion that is, in fact, now almost over. The next breakthrough will
come when climbers begin to think in terms of routes like that one.
72
Scenes from an Alaskan Summer
by
PETER LEHNER
To climbers, only one thing is more enticing than a spectacular mountain: a
range full of them. For we three brothers, Alaska was a range of such ranges.
On the way north, we climbed a bit in the Canadian Rockies.
june 26, 1976. After endless days of planning, driving, and aborted
attempts on various peaks, we have actually set off up the Athabasca
Glacier. As time is not our primary concern, we practice falling into
crevasses and climbing out of them. The falling needs little practice.
Michael lowers himself in and Carl and I must wait in the stark wind.
On a flimsy snow bridge below, surrounded on six sides by ice,
Michael is warm. How strange.
One is never bored here. As it continues to snow and as the wind
gets more ferocious, our entertainment, the avalanches, become more
frequent. Every ten minutes they stop conversation.
We leave a small crack open in the door of the tent, very high up
under the fly. Yet still the snow manages to enter and dowse the stove.
We are never apart from our surroundings in the mountains.
June 27. We attempted Mt. Snowdome and climbed until a huge crevasse
and white-out conditions stopped us.
How quickly and thoroughly our tracks are erased. A crevasse could
swallow us up and within hours our tracks would be gone, the hole
recovered, and our intrusion forgotten. And yet, nature is extremely
delicate: in the arctic tundra a footstep will outlast its maker by many
years.
This trip ended with three cases of severe sunburn, so we left the mountains
for a while and drove north to Alaska. Our plans took us to McKinley National Park where we prepared to spend three weeks trying technical routes east
of Denali.
july 6. And the food-how could I forget? We lay out snowshoes
and put breakfast on one, lunch on another, and the rest is dinner.
Breakfast is heaviest with all the oatmeal, cocoa and sugar, but we're
still under one pound per person per day so there is hope ... until we
try to get the food bags into our packs. It seems a matter of elementary
geometry that they cannot fit. A few punches and a helpful foot now
and then and it goes. The walk-in does not promise to be fun.
july 7. After wallowing through muck, sweat, Cutter's bug goop
and fighting off vulture size mosquitoes we reach the McKinley river
73
McKINLEY at midnight. South Peak on the left.
photo by Peter Leimer
bar (which we must cross). We go through a few streams, already having given up the hope of staying dry. A large channel stops us from
moving forward so we proceed upstream, crossing more rivulets and
getting soaked. Carl tries his hand on a large channel. He inches out
and the water gets deeper and deeper: calves, knees, thighs, waist.
Michael and I, belaying him, are nervous but not as scared as Carl: he
suddenly yells "pull" with his voice somewhat higher than normal
and surges home. He topples and is face down in the 32 degree, fast
glacial river. As he does not come up very quickly, Michael goes in for
him. More pulling and we're all out-but on the wrong side of the
river.
july 8. And if I thought that yesterday was bad! (The walk-in
continues.)
74
july 9. And I had the gall to think that yesterday was unpleasant.
july 11. The weather finally looked as if it would allow an attempt 011 Mt.
Tatum, just across the McKinley Glacier from our tentsite on McGonagall
pass, via a steep scree/snow/ice climb to a ridge.
As the sun warms everything, the ice turns to slush and the snow to
mush. The climbing verges on wallowing. Yet we soon reach the
ridge. We are no longer close together; conversation is neither easy
nor frequent. We are now 75 feet away from each other, separated by
clouds, wind, cold, and the frequent windings of the ridge. We are
isolated, each in his own world. The thoughts are now individual, one
walks alone-well, as alone as one safely can here. In the lead, I think
just of where I'm going, how to get there, and how not to fall off.
The exposure is increasing, now 3000 very steep feet on either side. As
I traverse one section, I start an avalanche with each step. The ridge
grows quite steep and narrow and I climb on all fours. I'm still vertical
using arms stuck up to their elbows in the snow. Below me, Carl and
Michael are ready to jump off the other side of the ridge should I fall.
My fingers and toes are soaked from the wet snow, and are near the
nip stage. The clouds are all around us and the snow conditions are
wretched and deteriorating. No matter. I feel so good and at home at
this moment that all the pain is worth it. At last to be high on a flimsy
ridge, alone above the glaciers. This euphoria fortunately eludes
Michael and Carl who decide that it's time to turn back. So it goes.
july 13. We have a slight excess of fuel: after one half of the trip, we
have used about one twelfth of the gas. So we central heat the tent for
a while.
july 18. We moved camp from the pass to the glacier draining Silverthrone Col. The weatl1er and the icefall dimmed our enthusiasm to place a
camp on the Col. After an aborted attempt on a rock (shale) route up the
southwest ridge of West Tripyramid we tried the west ridge of Silverthrone.
Some front-pointing got us by a bit of ice and up atl avalanche scar.
We traverse left along a huge yawning crevasse which deepens and
narrows to a point where we can jump its two foot width over a 75
foot drop. From there we have a staircase up another avalanche scar to
the bergschrund. As we again traverse left along a very sharp lip, we
notice an enticing snow/ice face up to the west ridge. It looks long,
but this early in the day the avalanche danger should not be too great.
We decide to climb together, roped 75 feet apart, to save time and
energy. This means, however, that each one of us is, in effect, leading.
If one of us falls, the others will be pulled off and the three of us won't
stop until we hit the bottom. Yet the rope affords a psychological pro-
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MICHAEL LEHNER on the North Flank of the west ridge of Mt. Silverthrone.
photo by Carl Leimer
tection that we deem so important on a psych-out climb like this. Also
it is hard to separate myself from my two brothers in my mind; we
have done so much together and functioned as one unit so often that it
is natural to climb together as a team.
After a long lead up this steep slope (55-65 degrees), Michael is dead
and his toes are hamburger. A quip about fresh food tonight is not appreciated. Carl leads on and the midday mush starts again as the snow
softens. After about 650 vertical feet of this, he escapes up and over the
ridge via a bit of interesting mixed climbing-an airy lead over a 2100
foot face. We follow him up and there the sun greets us: bright,
strong, and full in the face. We see far down to the glaciers on either
side of us; we see Silverthrone 3000 feet above us and Denali 10,000
feet above us. All is bright white.
76
After the col, we stay right at the ridge, the cornice to the north,
the rocks to the south. The going is slow for the snow is soft and I
keep floundering up to my waist. It is also rather steep. The weather
gets worse, the clouds thicken, and the visibility drops sharply. Soon I
can see just a short way ahead. Again and again I feel as if we must be
getting there. Tpen the clouds clear for a moment and all I see is more
ridge.
Finally we ma\<.e the 11,270 bump and join the main body of Silverthrone. The hard part is over, we look forward to a long snowshoe to
the summit through 18 inches of powder. What was rain and snow in
the valley has rymained fluffy snow up here, with no wind to pack it.
It is strange to be in gentle powder reminiscent of a quiet winter walk
in the woods so high up on a bare mountain. Then the white-out
moves in and all each of us can see is his two brothers. Where mountain ends, and clouds begin we cannot say. We wait a while for the
weather to clear. As it looks hopeless, we turn arollnd and head down
the icefall. The mountain/ cloud confusion entices Carl to take a short
cut down a cloup slope. All of our remaining energy is taken pulling
him up over a huge overhanging ice-cliff.
july 21. We had removed the poles from the tent so as to reduce its height to
about one foot, lower than the ice wall we had built around it as protection from
the wind.
In the morning, before I could make breakfast, I had to slide out and
repitch the tent. There I saw the weather; quite cold but crystal crisp
and no wind. We're soon on the move. We plan to climb the couloir
on the south side of the west ridge of West Tripyramid. The couloir is
great: hard snow, smooth surface and easy switchbacking up. We gain
altitude iJ;lcredibly fast and relatively painlessly. At last there are no
crevasses to worry about.
This couloir leads to an 11,000 foot col. From there it is only 700
feet to the summit. The way up seems to follow the ridge for 200 feet
and then another couloir for 400 more. It looks viciously steep and we
wonder if it will go. But we forge on in the hope of a summit and it is
passed quickly. A bit more ridge and ... success!
Although it is late, 4:15 p.m., we decide to go for Central Peak.
The day is still perfect and we couldn't be happier. We walk along one
mile on slightly sloping wind-packed snow. It is one of the most
pleasurable experiences in my life-the walking good, the weather
fine, completely apart from one world and completely at one with
another. The wind had worked wonders on the snow, carving it into
wondrous shapes, forms, and creatures. It is calm, beautiful, and rich
77
here. All around in the foreground are spectacular peaks-Ragged,
Jagged, Deception, Silverthrone, and Carpe. 9000 feet below, the
green tundra encircles us. 9000 feet above stands Denali.
We reach the col. It drops sharply 400 feet and then rises steeply to
Central Peak. We drop into it and soon are on top of the
peak-eating, drinking and resting. Unfortunately this is Alaska. This
means that the weather stinks all the time except for brief stints of
clearing. These intervals tempt climbers to overextend themselves so
that when the weather socks in, they've had it. Well, we are tempted
and get taken. It whites-out just as we have to cross the mile of ridge.
If we had had the brains of a tape-worm, we would have wanded the
route. Now we pay for it. We run across the ridge, racing the dying
visibility.
This climb ended our successes in the Alaska Range. A Jew more attempts
and a lack of food helped us decide to leave these mountains. A week in Anchorage with some good friends filled our bellies, assuaged our bruises and
blisters, and renewed our desire for the mountains. So with more food we
headed for the Arrigetch valley, 100 miles northwest of Bettles Field in the
Brooks Range. A float plane landed us on a small lake, two days away from
base camp.
August 3. Base camp is a perfect tent site on a meadow with reindeer
moss made just for barefoot frisbee throwing. In the surrounding
cirques, the rock has been carved into flat, smooth sloping sidewalks
which have all been cracked by the freezing of the underlying streams.
What an incredible place this is: a tranquil valley surrounded by
Yosemite-like walls, with spires and towers that would make
Chamonix jealous. We go up a ridge between two cirques and discuss
possible routes up a nice wall which leads to an airy, spired ridge high
above everything. Many of the walls seem too hard, they would take
days of nailing or 5.11 climbing, neither of which we can do. No matter, the ridges are good enough.
August 4. Four hours late, the airdrop offood and equipment finally arrives.
The plane comes by for the second pass, he is slow and low. But the
idiot in the back pushes out the boxes much too late and all four smash
on the rocks beyond our chosen landing area. We wince as we see our
MICHAEL and PETER LEHNER on west ridge of Mt. Silverthrone.
photo by Carl Leimer
79
here. All around in the foreground are spectacular peaks-Ragged,
Jagged, Deception, Silverthrone, and Carpe. 9000 feet below, the
green tundra encircles us. 9000 feet above stands Denali.
We reach the col. It drops sharply 400 feet and then rises steeply to
Central Peak. We drop into it and soon are on top of the
peak-eating, drinking and resting. Unfortunately this is Alaska. This
means that the weather stinks all the time except for brief stints of
clearing. These intervals tempt climbers to overextend themselves so
that when the weather socks in, they've had it. Well, we are tempted
and get taken. It whites-out just as we have to cross the mile of ridge.
If we had had the brains of a tape-worm, we would have wanded the
route. Now we pay for it. We run across the ridge, racing the dying
visibility.
This climb ended our successes in the Alaska Range. A few more attempts
and a lack offood helped us decide to /ea11e these mormtains. A week in Anchorage with some good friends filled our bellies, assuaged our bruises and
blisters, and renewed our desire for the mountains. So with more food we
headed for the Arrigetch 11alley, 100 miles northwest of Bettles Field in the
Brooks Range. A float plane landed us on a small lake, two days away from
base camp.
August 3. Base camp is a perfect tent site on a meadow with reindeer
moss made just for barefoot frisbee throwing. In the surrounding
cirques, the rock has been carved into flat, smooth sloping- sidewalks
which have all been cracked by the freezing of the underlying streams.
What an incredible place this is: a tranquil valley surrounded by
Yosemite-like walls, with spires and towers that would make
Chamonix jealous. We go up a ridge between two cirques and discuss
possible routes up a nice wall which leads to an airy, spired ridge high
above everything. Many of the walls seem too hard, they would take
days of nailing or 5.11 climbing, neither of which we can do. No matter, the ridges are good enough.
August 4. Four hours late, the airdrop offood and equipment finally arri11es.
The plane comes by for the second pass, he is slow and low. But the
idiot in the back pushes out the boxes much too late and all four smash
on the rocks beyond our chosen landing area. We wince as we see our
MICHAEL and PETER LEHNER on west ridge of Mt. Silverthrone, ·
photo by Carl Leimer
79
View of BATTLESHIP and ARTHUR EMMONS (left) and PYRAMID (right) from East
Maiden. The route on Pyramid followed the left skyline.
photo by Carl Leimer
food bursting into the air: oatmeal, pudding, M&M's. Just like a marriage, the whole affair is showered with rice.
August 6. We ascend the boulder field below the Maidens. We get
to a ledge in the right center of the face. An easy dihedral (layback or
face climbing) leads to a ledge (150 feet, 5.5-5.6). Then straight up the
face on small cracks (5 .4). Now the crux: 65 feet up a steep dihedral
that ends as a blank wall (5. 7). A friction traverse (5.8) leads to another
small ledge and crack where one belays. We traverse left up to a large
dihedral (5.3) from which an escape is found straight up to the East
ridge (5.4). A few pitches of class 4 climbing and we're on the summit
of East Maiden, 7050 feet. Our first views of all the valley take away
the little breath we have left.
August 11. Bad weather prohibited any large climbs. On a small practice
climb, I Jell and had to rest a Jew days. Michael describes a climb.
Carl and I had set out to attempt the prominent north ridge of the
unnamed peak east of Shot Tower. However, after walking along the
ridge for a while, it became apparent that the 5.8, A2 of the first pitch
would probably continue for a while. So we descend and cross the
80
WATERFALLS of Creek 62-42 in the Arrigetch range.
photo by Peter Lehner
cirque to an easy buttress and couloir leading to a col on a ridge. A
pitch of 5.3 and an A2 move to surmount an overhang brings us to a
ledge. We have lunch and guess that we are one third of the way
there. How wrong we are! After lunch, we move together for a while
until it grows harder and I resume the lead. We arrive at a col on the
ridge we had started on earlier. There we stop; there is nowhere to go.
The other side of the ridge is almost vertical; the ridge to the left is
easy, but then quickly drops to another col which would have required
a rappel and some very difficult climbing to get back out. The ridge to
our right, up to the summit, is a vertical ten foot wide wall of 5.8-5.10
free climbing on giant loose flakes. Thus at 4:30, after a belated snack
of victory M&M's, we start downclimbing. By 11:30 we are back at
the tent and have a candlelight dinner.
August 13. Unable to climb, I (Peter) took a short walk up a creek.
Gorgeous cascades empty into deep hidden pools. From far away,
the creek is a tangled chain of silver, but from nearby, one senses that
it lives. Beside the stream are patches of bright blue flowers, and silky
cottonball flowers that reflect the setting sun. The sun itself is seen on
spider webs as droplets between rocks. From this small detail to the
huge walls around, this valley is paradise.
81
August 16. I still could not climb because of a sore knee. Carl describes a
climb on Pyramid.
We cross a glacier to the headwall. After 20 minutes of debating, we
decide to climb regardless of the weather and scramble up some talus.
Two fun pitches lead to a large ledge. We walk on it together and
then one pitch leads to the ridge. Another leads back to the ledge as we
are a bit lost. Three more class 3 pitches bring us to the prow and a
dead end. We backtrack and start up a dihedral. Michael gets 15 feet
up and decides it will not go. One more pitch back takes us to an easy
route: two pitches of 5.4 to the base of the summit. After determining
that this was in fact the summit, we aid a difficult move to reach it
at 3:50.
Other climbs followed. We climbed Citadel via the class 3 west ridge; from
the summit we could look down the vertical face and east ridge and congratulate
ourselves on Oil~ wisdom in choosing that route. We did an airy, class 3 climb
on the soHth side of the peak Carl and Michael had Jailed on earlier, and named
the mountain Moria.
AugHst 22. At last we're climbing again. We set off early to try an
unclimbed peak between Shot Tower and Moria. A gully directly
below the tower (the walls are dead vertical) is our route up. Once up,
a section of talus leads to a thin but easy ridge towards a peak. This we
climbed unroped. Another first ascent. We think about naming it; one
possibility is after Bob Marshall, the hardman who discovered this
area. He deserves a peak as thanks.
82
The Nevado Chinchey
by
GUSTAVO BRILLEMBOURG
It seems high mountains like the Nevada Chinchey are constantly
veiled in mystery. This mystery pervaded our journey up the coast of
Peru to Huaraz. One drives up the coastal desert until the foothills of
the Andes are within sight, then heads up endlessly winding roads,
over the infamous Cordillera Negra, down into the Callejon where
Huaraz is located. Fourteen thousand foot passes are crossed by car,
and the last is reputed to give the eager climber his first view of the
majestic Cordillera Blanca. Alas, our crossing was made on a cloudy
night, and even after reaching Huaraz we were denied a glimpse of
these fabled mountains.
Finally, on our first day up the Honda glacier, we were presented
with the sight of the mountains. Camp I lay on the floor of a natural
amphitheater. At the head of this amphitheater were Chinchey and
Pucaranra, two pyramid shaped mountains rising up next to each other
and sharing a col. To the west rose Palcaraju, an immense monolith
with a spearhead shaped summit block. To the east were the three
Condormina peaks, smaller than the others, but ever impressive with
their steep western faces.
The cirque itself was formed by huge rock walls over which
thousands of tons of ice spilled, sending enormous avalanches down
our way every hour or so. Our camp was perched in the middle of the
glacier-well out of danger's way, but near enough to the shattering
rhythm to gain an undying respect for Mother Nature.
It was not hard to see where the route would go. The upper reaches
of the mountains surrounding us were inaccessible in all but one place,
due to icefalls. The point of weakness we called the "rockband", a
thousand foot cliff of dubious rock. Once this was' climbed we would
be able to reach the col between Chinchey and Pucaranra, directly
below the three thousand foot southwest face.
The mountains were pervaded by the culture of the Indian peoples
that lived below. I remember walking up the Yanganuko valley on a
cloudy day a year before this expedition, and meeting an Indian
shepherd who sat on the crest of a hill with his sheep. I looked at him
and asked him where Huandoy, one of the most striking mountains in
the Cordillera, was. He answered simply:
"Don't you feel her? She lies above you."
However miraculous this may sound, just as he said this, the clouds
83
cleared and Huandoy became visible for an instant: a huge, intensely
beautiful three-headed monster (the mountain has three summits), rising in a sweep far above me.
The shepherd saw the peak as a goddess, capable of inspiring joy or
sadness, capable of giving and taking. When the clouds cleared
momentarily, it was obvious to him that the mountain was being
generous to the ignorant foreigner, and he smiled. This attitude was
shared by the two "locals" on our trip: Glicerio Henostroza and Lucio
Bustamante.* Having lived their lives in the valley, they were full of
stories about their "hills". Stories not about formations of rock and
ice, but instead about magic, wondrous feats, and legendary
characters.
4:30a.m. on June 24 found Chris, Calahuilpa, Glicerio, David, and
Lucio setting off on the first reconnaissance of the band while some
waited eagerly at Camp I, and others headed down to Base Camp for
rest and more supplies. An early departure was obligatory: the cold of
the morning would allow the safest crossing under the icefall and up
the gully which led to the rock itself. As we had seen this part of the
route buried by avalanches before, no one was sluggish.
The wait at Camp I was not a long one. The five climbers returned
by 2 p.m., exuberant at what turned out to be an important day. A
route had been established by ace Andean routefinder, Glicerio, on
good rock with no difficult climbing (5.3). The rest of the afternoon
was spent celebrating; enormous amounts of pancakes and jelly were
consumed.
This was a wonderful breakthrough-the route now seemed feasible. After waiting out the first of our three Andean storms, Camp II
took only three days to stock; which left the entire expedition on the
col at 17,500 feet nine days after our arrival at Base Camp. The col was
immense and flat, like a huge, white football field. On one side was
the Northern Blanca, on the other the southern, with Huantsan rising
like a twisting pillar of rock into the deep blue of the sky.
It seems climbing a mountain such as this requires a set rhythm. We
certainly had one: set a camp, find the route to the next camp with a
respectable amount of complaining and wrong turns on the way, rest
again, and repeat the cycle. Resting, of course, was our forte. Much
time was spent basking in the sun, tropical tans being hard to beat.
Other activities such as eating, reading, and melting enormous quan'The other members of the expedition were: Chris Ladd (called "Calahuilpa" on the trip.
Calahuilpa means "face with little hair" in Quechua), Roy Baron, Chris and Nancy Kerrebrock,
David Hughes, and I.
84
tities of snow were popular.
Despite the restful atmosphere of Camp II, we were eager to move
on as Chinchey's beautiful Southwest face now lay accessible above us.
Though eighty degrees in places, much of it was relatively low-angle,
and the condition of the snow and ice was good. A short storm interrupted reconnaissance of the route, but even so, the first steep section
of ice was climbed and fixed on the first day. The entire face could not
be ascended in one push, so a third camp was to be placed at approximately 19,000 feet. We spent the night of July 2 preparing for an all
out two day effort to reach the summit. Finally, we were off on the
face in the bitter, pre-dawn cold.
I expected walking across the col to the base of the climb would be
pure elation. It was not. Though the snow was frozen hard, and one
did not sink in, climbing at this altitude with a pack was painful. The
cold was also unusual, as I found I did not warm up even after half an
hour of exercise. As we climbed the ridge that split the first thousand
feet of the face, the sun rose directly over Chinchey's summit, producing a spectacular halo of light. Camp III was placed on top of this
ridge, below a steep section of ice. As it was still early, we continued
up the fixed ropes placed the day before. This was by far the most enjoyable part of the climb as one could rest while waiting for another to
prussik a section of fixed rope. Noontime found us exhausted at the
top of the first section of difficult terrain.
Glicerio immediately set to work on the next section with Lucio and
Calahuilpa. Two hours later, this too had been overcome, and we
slogged up the curious snow covered slabs that led to the last and
steepest section just below the summit. By now the afternoon clouds
had set in, and we huddled together eating lunch. As the summit
seemed near, Chris, Calahuilpa, Glicerio, Lucio and I decided to move
on. Due to very cold feet, Nancy and David decided to return to Camp
III. The first few hundred feet of this last section consisted of steep
rock slabs separated from a covering of brittle snow by a layer of air.
After this, a moderately steep pitch of ice and snow brought us to the
top of a cornice only one hundred and fifty feet from the top.
Glicerio was now well established as the high altitude expert, and so
he began to climb the last section. It was steep, perhaps eighty degrees,
and made of curiously hollow, brittle ice that had pockets and edges
like organ pipes. Two hours of effort on this pitch gained only 75 feet,
and Glicerio rappelled down exhausted. We had been so close. We
rushed down the face, reaching Camp III well after dark.
Everyone was discouraged. Optimism was hard to sustain as we
85
were growing weaker (Nancy had bronchitis; I had mononucleosis;
others were afflicted with exhaustion). So much effort had been put
into the mountain; we could hardly conceive of missing by half a rope
length. Another attempt would be made the next day.
The morning of July 4, 1976 dawned clear. Eager to have an early
start, Chris, Nancy, Glicerio, Lucio and I set off without breakfast.
This soon turned out to be a mistake as we found we could not warm
up, even though extreme exercise. We agreed to retreat to Camp III
for breakfast. Already weak from yesterday's efforts my illness largely
took over once Camp III was reached. Calahuilpa took my place after
breakfast and the party set off again.
My day at Camp III was spent in little things: brewing tea, checking
on progress, reading, and worrying. At 3:30p.m., David got out of
his sleeping bag and stepped outside to peer at the face-the summit of
Chinchey had just been reached.
All had gone fairly smoothly. Glicerio, more rested and mentally
prepared, rapidly ascended the fixed ropes and finished the lead to the
summit cornice. The last few feet were climbed and, after a brief stay
on the summit, the climbers descended quickly. All returned to camp
gleeful. Something grand had been accomplished, not for mountaineering, or even for the Harvard Mountaineering Club, but for a
group of young climbers taken in by a marvelously wild and still
untouched place.
Descent from the mountain was rapid, and we reached Base Camp
on July 6 with all the gear from the mountain retrieved. Celebration
followed. In Peru this meant Patsamanca, the wonderful rite performed by all successful expeditions on return from the mountains. It
consists of slaughtering and consuming a ram, brought to Base Camp
specifically for that purpose. So as not to offend the peak being attempted, this ram is acquired only after the expedition succeeds in
climbing the intended route.
This ritual was a marvelous way to end the trip, as it symbolized the
entire experience: communion in a very real way with an extraordinary
culture and its magical, beloved mountains. We had approached the
mountain humbly, lived in awe of its power for a month, and now
were allowed back to safety to enjoy the ''fruit'' of our experience.
Chinchey had been kind. We had seen its fury, in the form of awe inspiring avalanches and storms, yet we had also seen its beauty. For us,
the Nevada Chinchey became more than just a mountain.
86
"A SPACE-AGE
mule train"; summit in background.
87
EAST CHABA GLACIER, 1927. Boulder in right foreground was key to determining
recession.
photo by john deLaittre
EAST CHABA VALLEY, 1977. Boulder has not moved; glacier has receded to the right
foreground.
pltoto by William Daltl
88
Half A Century Later
by ALFRED J. 0STHEIMER III
and JOHN DELAITTRE
Fifty years ago, Harvard Mountaineering (Volume I, Number 2, June
1928, pp. 47-59) published an account of the 1927 Ostheimer Expedition
to the Columbia, Chaba, and Clemenceau areas of the Canadian
Rockies. Our expedition of eight men was out from Jasper for 63 days;
we studied many glaciers, collected fossils, listed the flora and fauna,
photographed extensively, and climbed 35 peaks of which 28 were first
ascents.
The then Editor of Harvard Mountaineering in his ''Foreword''
commented that this expedition was ''perhaps the greatest tour de
force ever accomplished in a single season in the Canadian Rockies,"
and ventured the guess that this record would not likely be exceeded.
Little did he guess that we would return to the scene half a century
later!
In 1977, we did return, not to climb peaks again, but to determine
the recession of the East Chaba Glacier, and to look for more fossils at
the Columbia Glacier. Our party consisted of the two writers plus
Mrs. Ostheimer, daughter Margaret, recorder Liz Dailey,
photographer William Dahl, woodsman Jimmy Takvam, Jasper Park
warden Rob Watt, guide Charlie Berry, cook Lois Berry, and helper
Les Hopkins.
We camped at the East Chaba Glacier, the Columbia Glacier and at
Fortress Lake, all during the last ten days of July. Fortunately the
weather was perfect. The only disturbance was before breakfast one
morning when a large grizzly bear paused to look at us from across
Chaba Creek-and walked on by!
Recession of the East Chaba Glacier was the object of our first research.
For two whole days we explored the square mile basin from which it
had receded during the twentieth century-a basin bounded by terminal moraines, lateral moraines, and the present glacier. We found no
remains of the paint marks we had placed on boulders near the tongue
in 1927, so we had to rely on photographs we had taken of boulders
and of the tongue in 1927 in relation to the lateral moraines and the
vertical rock formations on the sides of the glacial valley.
From our 1927 studies we knew that the East Chaba Glacier at its
center in the summer of 1927 was moving downward about 5.6 inches
per day. We also knew the recession between June 30 and August 20,
89
1927 (51 days) was approximately 28 feet.
Fortunately, we were able to study our 1927 photographs in minute
details, particularly the ones of boulders near the tongue. On the second day we were scattered over the East Chaba basin, looking anxiously for boulders to match the 50 year earlier photographs. Suddenly a
shout from the warden, Rob Watt, brought us all together. In a few
excited moments, we agreed he had probably found the key boulder.
And we went on to prove it by the location of other boulders in direct
relations to the key boulder.
At last we had established where the tongue was in 1927. The
measurement team headed by William Dahl then swung into action.
With a 300 foot nylon cord, the distance from the key boulder to the
tongue of the existing glacier was determined to be 2,550 feet. This
amounts to an average recession of 51 feet per year. With that objective accomplished and certified by our 1977 party, we broke camp at
the East Chaba and moved on to the source of the Athabaska River at
the tongue of the Columbia Glacier.
Incidentally, on our hikes around the Columbia Glacier area we
could not help but notice that the tongue of the Columbia has also
receded about half a mile since we were there in 1927. We had no accurate way of determining this as we did at the East Chaba. We
estimated from our maps.
Fossils were our objective at the Columbia. During the summer of
1927 we trained ourselves not only to watch every step we took in the
mountains, but also to look for signs of fossils. What could be more
appropriate than that the important find of the summer was made by
Alfred Ostheimer. Here is his own account of that occasion on the east
side of Columbia Glacier ("Every Other Day," Alfred J. Ostheimer,
1928):
"As we returned toward the tongue I turned over each rock, every
slab and stone, in the hope of finding some fossils underneath. On the
opposite side of a little gully, I noticed a mound of broken, coffeebrown shale. To my amazement it was alive with crustaceans of ages
ago! We broke the larger rocks, chipped them, and collected nearly
forty pounds of trilobites. Some were small; some large. Some were
clearly preserved; others imperfect. That we had made quite a find, I
knew, but to classify them was a job for a paleontologist.''
Professor Percy E. Raymond of Harvard was that man. He studied
the specimens upon our return, and he found two trilobites of the
Middle Cambrian never before found or described. He named them
Athabaskia Ostheimeri (sp. nov.) and Athabaskia Glacialis (sp. nov.), as
90
reported in the American Journal of Science for March 1928. What a
fine reward for all of our careful eye-balling of mountain surfaces!
In 1977 we again searched the eastern slopes of the Columbia glacial
valley, and we did find more fossils. But Professor Alison R. Palmer of
Stony Brook, New York, identified two samples as Olenellus, from a
different fossiliferous interval, a bit stratigraphically lower, than our
find in 1927. Apparently the recession and lowering of the Columbia
Glacier caused us to be searching lower down in 1977, by one or two
hundred feet. When we return in 1987, we will scramble a bit higher
up!
Mountains on all sides of us-both in 1927 and 1977. What
beautiful, thrilling and even terrifying sights they are. In 1927 they
were ours from their very heights; in 1977 they were ours again from
their lower slopes and valleys. Time will not erase memories of our
closeness to Chaba Peak in all its white serenity, and to the cloudmaking peak of Mt. Columbia, nor of our distant views of the great
Tsar, the Tusk, Clemenceau and Bras Croche, among many others.
Memorial. A note of sadness in the mountains in 1977 was the
absence of our late friend and class-mate, W. Rupert Maclaurin, who
had been a member of the Harvard Mountaineering Club. In 1927 he
was a good companion, an avid natural historian, and a fine climber.
Would that he had lived to return with us half a century later.
Books and Records of our 1927 Ostheimer Expedition, all appropriately bound in crimson leather, were donated in their original state by
the writers, at the conclusion of our 1977 expedition, to the "Archives
of the Canadian Rockies" section of the Peter Whyte Foundation at
Banff, Alberta. Photocopies were also donated to the Historical Society
at Jasper, Alberta. The public is welcome to view these books and
records at either place. In this way we believe they will be permanently
preserved and useful. They represent our happy memories of work and
wonderment in the Canadian Rockies in 1927.
91
Deborah and Hess, 1977
by
jOHN
Z.
IMBRIE
Mike Young and I climbed on Mts. Deborah and Hess in July, 1977,
having become obsessed (like several small parties before us) with
Deborah's North Face. My old VW was overloaded with gear, with
an old army footlocker tied to the top. The extra air resistance meant
flat-out driving, but I had an "eat, drink, and be merry" attitude
towards the 120,000 mile old engine. I picked up Mike in Colorado
and without stopping for breath we made the deathmarch approach to
Mt. Robson for a training climb. Our snow-wallowing skills were not
up to the occasion, so we proceeded to Alaska. Bill Sewell flew us in to
his homemade airstrip at the end of the Gillam Glacier, after airdropping most of our gear. The footlocker protected our food and gas very
well, though Mike almost airdropped himself pushing it out the door.
Our only hope on the North Face lay in a fast, rock-free ascent. A
line of grey extended straight down the center of the face between the
North Rib (the route of Dakers and Gowans) and the Northwest
Ridge. It was an appealing route, but more importantly it held the
greatest promise of being a pure ice and snow route. Two starts on the
face were abandoned when whiteouts and snow sloughing off the face
blocked all progress. With the snow piling up between myself and the
face faster than I could push it aside, I had to fight to stay in balance to
place a screw worthy of rapelling from. One feels very much at the
mercy of the mountain in these situations. We got one good shot at
the route when the weather cleared. Halfway through the first rockband, the line of snow and ice became a mere thin layer of snow over
rock. We decided the wisest thing to do was to retreat, rather than
forcing a route through in the hope that the remainder of the climb
was easier. It is possible that earlier in the year one would find better
conditions on this route. We descended over a shoulder of P9730 to
avoid having to climb in and out of a nasty crevasse that had delayed
our ascent.
Viewed from the shoulder of P9730, the Northwest Face of Mt.
Hess looked like an appealing consolation climb. A narrow, crevasseLeft: NORTH FACE OF MT. DEBORAH from P9730. The attempted route lies just right
of center.
Right: NORTHWEST FACE OF MT. HESS from P9730. The route follows the glacier in
the center of the picture.
photos by jo/111 Iwbrie
93
free glacier flowed down the face at a respectable angle, just steep
enough to keep one's interest up, though not so steep that one would
need to belay. There would be no worries about ice petering out on us
on a glacier! Another incentive to do the route was the fact that our
radio was useless anywhere but near the tops of mountains. A rest day
at basecamp filled us with an insatiable desire for comfort, so we carried our basecamp up with us. The monster 15-pound radio brought
the weight of our climbing packs up to 50 pounds. Nevertheless, the
climb was straightforward. We camped at the top of the glacier as the
summit was quite a long traverse away. The radio sprang to life and
we had the unusual experience of calling home from high up on an
Alaskan mountain. The next day we made the top and descended by a
route just east of our ascent route (a poor choice in the afternoon sun).
I had a brief attack of food poisoning on the way out (from our summer sausage) but recovered just in time to meet the plane.
94
Looking Back
by
RoBERT
H.
BATES
A few years ago-1932 to be exact-I took part in my first mountain expedition. Bradford Washburn, my classmate who brought me
into the H.M.C., had organized and was leading his second expedition
to Alaska. We were a group of six: It consisted of Brad, a veteran of
difficult climbs in the Alps, where he had made a new route on the
Aiguille Verte; Harald Paumgarten, Austrian Olympic skier who had
stayed on after the races to write about the U.S.; Bob Monahan, a recent Dartmouth graduate and forester; and two H.M.C. classmates,
Walt Everett and Dick Riley. Walt had spent a summer with Brad in
Chamonix but Dick and I had climbed only in New England.
We traveled very fast (by 1932 standards) from Cambridge to Lituya
Bay on the Fairweather Peninsula, first going by train to Montreal,
and then on by colonist car on the Canadian Pacific to Winnipeg and
on to Vancouver. There was no motor road across Canada from east to
west in those days, but each transcontinental Canadian train included a
special car for immigrants. This coach was equipped with a stove,
refrigerator, and bunks that could be formed from movable parts of
seats. Since no colonists were traveling during the Depression and
since we had gained permission to use the car, we bought boxes of
food in Montreal, set out our sleeping bags and rode our inexpensive
private coach across the continent in supreme comfort and contentment. Conductors and brakemen liked us and would drop in from
time to time to regale us with bear stories and point out the best stops
for us to rush out to buy fresh milk or delicacies from local bakeries.
On the fifth day of travel we reached Vancouver, where five of us
and nineteen pieces of baggage crowded into and onto 'a taxi and
lurched off to the Canadian National docks to board a passenger
steamer that was to take us to Juneau. The ensuing trip along the Inside Passage was memorable: sea ducks kept crossing the bow, salmon
were jumping, and high beyond miles of uncharted woods the icy
summits of the Coast Range gleamed. Along the route totem poles occasionally grinned at us from Tlingit villages, while in other areas
sourdoughs on board kept a lookout for bears walking the beaches.
Nine days after leaving Boston we reached the Alaska capital, built
on a steep mountainside, with much of the action concentrated on the
wharf and fishing boats. Here we met the pilot who was to fly us to
Lituya Bay for our attack on 15,292-foot Mt. Fairweather. Despite our
95
overloading the plane, the pilot, after a long run, took off, and under a
1000-foot ceiling flew us 150 miles west to Cenotaph Island in the
middle of the Bay, where La Perouse had hoped to establish a French
trading colony in 1786. Now the only inhabitant was Jim Huscroft, a
fine old trapper and prospector who lived on the island, mostly alone,
for twenty-seven years. His cabin became our base. To ensure our
welcome Brad had brought him a year's supply of snuff, which he
loved to chew.
The plan was to fly our gear to a lake near Mt. Fairweather, but the
lake was still frozen, and since we could not keep the plane we
changed our objective to unclimbed Mt. Crillon (12, 730 feet), which
was somewhat closer.
That began a summer of exploration and back packing where we
learned about loose sedimentary rocks, devils club, slide alder and
crevasses. Of course we made errors; Bob Monahan fell head first
backwards into what was fortunately a water-filled crevasse. Fortunately he avoided any physical damage. On another occasion while
we were rowing a very leaky boat among small icebergs to the other
side of the Bay, an eager bailer bailed the draining plug right out of the
bottom of the boat and threw it out with the water. That required
rapid action for the Bay was too cold for swimming.
To reach our mountain we rowed to the Crillon Glacier and packed
heavy loads up it to Crillon Lake. From there we were finally able to
climb a mountain which we named Lookout, for it completely blocked
our view of Mt. Crillon. One particular incident during that climb I
remember well.
Washburn, Monahan and I were on one rope with Washburn
leading and Monahan at the other end. We came to a forbidding gendarme in the rotten rock of the ridge and dropped down onto the face
to parallel the ridge and ascend a gully beyond the gendarme. Below us
a steep snow slope dropped off for a couple of thousand feet to a
crevassed area below. Our gully turned out to have a thin covering of
snow over loose rock. Since Brad found unstable footing and no belay I
worked over to a rib of rock at the side of the gully. There I found a
handhold and began to pull myself up, but as I pulled I dislodged a
huge block of stone which toppled towards me. Instinctive selfpreservation made me push myself out from under it and fall backward
onto the slope below. The huge rock grazed my cheek but I landed
unharmed on the snow right in front of Bob Monahan, who grabbed
me. Under his arm I could see a cloud of rock dust and hear the great
stone as it bounded down onto the snow slope, thus starting hissing
96
avalanches that grew until it roared down, filling crevasses until it
gradually stopped far below. The sounds and the smell of the rock dust
were impressive.
When we finally gained the summit of Lookout some days later, we
learned to our dismay that access to Mt. Crillon was by a very different
route. Weeks later we reached the cliffs that guard its splendid plateau,
but by that time our supplies were gone and we had none for an attempt on the still distant summit. However, we did find the basic
route which Brad and Adams Carter were to use when they made the
first ascent two years later. We also learned some of the hardships and
pleasures of climbing in unmapped country. Our H.M.C. party got
along famously throughout the summer and we acquired much that
would be of use to us in the years ahead.
Undergraduate members of the H.M.C. undoubtedly will find our
accomplishments very meager, and of course in a modern context they
were, but forty-six years ago our efforts produced in most of us a
tremendous desire for further climbs and expeditions. For that alone
the summer was a great success.
97
Cabin Report
by
MIKE
YouNG
The story of the Harvard Cabin's beginning is passed on in the verbal tradition. The history is inconsistent, inaccurate, and distorted. I
shall do my best to continue the tradition.
About 1963 some Harvard students decided Huntington Ravine iceclimbers needed a half-way house in which to swap lies and reassure
each other that "yes, indeed, the weather is too foul for climbing. The
gullies are avalanching and perhaps we should retreat to Conway.''
Anyway, the story goes that during two summers H.M.C. members
under the guidance of a local man gathered together logs of Herculean
size to form the dark and almost snug Harvard cabin.
With a central meeting ground ice climbing activity in Huntington
rose sharply. Future pioneers in Alaskan climbing received their initiation by facing sixty mile per hour winds sweeping down the gullies
only to be confronted by even more formidable winds on the Alpine
Gardens. Armed with ice-axes as long as ski poles, ice daggers, and
ten-point crampons, early visitors to the cabin found chopping steps up
Pinnacle Gully an all-day task. Few climbers undertook the longest
climbs in December and January, preferring to wait until the sun
lighted the ice a precious hour or two longer. Because of the likelihood
of finishing in the dark, climbers stuffed their packs with bivouac gear
and the wise began the hour walk up to the base of the climbs in the
morning twilight.
While climbers such as Charlie Porter, Tom Lyman, Johnny Waterman, and Boyd Everett mastered the sleight-of-hand techniques for
step cutting, technology marched on in Scotland and California.
While wintering in the Antarctic, John Cunningham discovered it
was possible (for him) to front-point up 70° ice using only his nose for
balance. Out west, Yvon Chouinard, the guru of American climbing
who advocates that simplicity in climbing is aesthetically superior,
complicated climbing by developing rigid crampons and curved picks
for ' 'piolets.''
There was noticeable resistance to these advances among Harvard
Cabin climbers. While hunting mice with his ice-axe one cold winter
night in the Cabin, Boyd Everett told a hushed (perhaps drunk) audience that he would gladly pay Yvon a hundred dollars to come east
and front-point up Pinnacle Gully on a top-rope. Progress and profits
followed Chouinard east as he arrived in North Conway to give
98
seminars to the disbelieving on acrobatics for ascending ''hot ice and
wondrous strange snow." A party climbed Pinnacle using only frontpoints and the Black Dike received a first ascent.
Until these events the climbs in Huntington Ravine were as hard as
any done in the East. Suddenly the frontiers of climbing moved from
the Alpine setting to roadside locations. Whitehorse, Cathedral, and
Frankenstein became the playground for ''Hard-men.'' The Harvard
Cabin was left with a few Alpine purists and people new to iceclimbing. Still Cabin inhabitants uneasily eyed each others' equipment
wondering if their newly purchased Chouinard was already obsolete as
others unpacked their Terrordactyls and Roosterheads. The word vertical, much abused in rock-climbing, became the measure of an ice
climb. Tall tales of climbs done elsewhere filtered through the smoke
and the drying clothes hung over the stove. ''The first pitch was the
crux and then it eased off to vertical with the last fifty feet being a
walk-up at only 80°." Often climbers stayed up so late retelling and
reenacting every move of a Yosemite climb by candlelight that they
were unable to climb the next day due to pulled muscles and sprained
egos.
As the standards in ice climbing rose, the quality of life in the Cabin
improved with the advent of official caretakers. During the winter of
1970 Lydon Brown arrived at the Cabin for a weekend climbing trip
and remained the rest of the winter as self-appointed caretaker. He did
battle against trash left by thoughtless climbers and heroically attempted to organize sixty bodies seeking to sleep in the eighteen by
twenty foot cabin on George Washington's birthday. With wood
gathered from the avalanche path in Raymond's Cataract he kept the
cabin at a sultry 50°. The Forest Service requested that the H.M.C.
have a caretaker on a regular basis, so Lydon returned the following
winter. Matt Luck followed him, with his famed double-bitted axe,
and then Susan Coons, one of the few women to climb in Huntington.
During the winter of '75-'76 Gary Nonemaker was caretaker. He
dazzled the tourists at Wildcat with his skiing and roused grumpy
climbers at 7:00 A.M. with the chain saw.
In October of '76 I plodded the two miles from Pinkham Notch to
the Cabin with the intention of building a loft for the caretaker. Having a short concentration span for work, I left the addition to the
Cabin for Peter Crane to finish this past year.
The Cabin is open to the public from the first of December until the
first of April, so October and November brought quiet times to the
dark hovel. The rain and sleet turned to snow as the winds increased in
99
intensity. Each day the grip of winter strengthened and each week I
added another layer of wool. To conserve my scarce wood supply I
seldom used the Ashly stove, which meant early bedtimes and late
rises. Too cold for reading, I listened to the creaking cabin timbers and
to the winds roaring like Mack trucks as they thundered out of the
ravmes.
In December I welcomed cabin guests almost hungrily. With record
cold temperatures, the snow did not consolidate, and every day the
trails needed to be rebroken. I encouraged climbers staying at the
Cabin to leave for Huntington early, making the walk easier for me.
One lonely day in December the mercury sank to - 25 ° Fahrenheit
and the summit weather station recorded winds over 150 miles per
hour. The relentless wind drove snow in through cracks in the cabin,
dusting the ipterior with white. Firing up the Ashly warmed the cabin
up to eight degrees. A window blew in, and I ran out of the cabin to
seek warmth in running up and down mountain trails. Real winter
had arrived.
The ice climbing season, however, began much earlier. In late October icicles formed on the buttresses in the Ravines and grew into
thick columns. Blue and brittle, the ice shattered under repeated blows
from my ice axe. Often I needed seven or eight swings for a firm placement. During moments of high anxiety I smashed the knuckles of
both hands trying to implant my tools ever deeper into the ice. My
fingers remained swollen all that winter. Royal Robbins states that
unscarred hands are the mark of a skilled aid climber; unswollen
knuckles must be the correlate in ice climbing.
By January the ice seemed more forgiving and the gullies in Huntington Ravine offered long ramps and large ice bulges. The character
of the climbs stabilized, and through repetition I grew familiar with
the variations on each climb. With ·Jon Waterman, the caretaker at
Tuckerman Ravine, I made mid-January nude ascents of Yale and Pinnacle Gullies, evoking memories of the Vulgarians.
Perhaps due to my painful knuckles, my climbing speed increased
during the winter. Jon and I thwacked our way up Pinnacle in five
minutes, and we succeeded in climbing all the gullies twice in five
hours. Later I discovered I had broken two fingers. My R. R. correlate
says little for my ice-climbing technique.
In March the ice softened and the floorboards of the Cabin began to
rot once again. The ravines gushed with small waterfalls and Cabin
guests grumbled over the deteriorating conditions. Climbing projects
were aborted in favor of sunbathing on the rocks in the Alpine Garden
100
near the summit of Mt. Washington. Even the winds seemed paralyzed by spring fever and blew lazily, if at all.
On April first I bolted the shutters on the windows, locked the
Cabin door, and left for Pinkham. As I walked down the Tuckerman
Trail I passed an almost continuous line of people hiking up to Tuckerman Ravine toting skis, beer, and fur coats. Some were playing tape
cassettes or holding radios up to their ears. Real spring had arrived on
Mt. Washington. It was time to leave.
HMC Activities, 1975-1979
1975-76. This year saw participation in all phases of mountaineering
by HMC members. Within the Boston area, approaches were made on
public transportation to novel spots like the Quincy Quarries, Hammond Pond, the Wellesley Arches, and Kenmore Square. Further ventures went to Cannon Mountain, the Gunks, Whitehorse, and
Cathedral. During spring break, three climbers braved the thirteenhour drive to Seneca rocks in West Virginia and enjoyed steep crack
climbing. Winter climbing included ascents of all the ice gullies in
Huntington Ravine, using the cabin (with caretaker Gary Nonemaker)
as a refuge. Ascents were also made of the Whitney-Gilman ridge, the
Black Dike, and the abundant ice flows near North Conway. The annual attempt of a winter traverse of the Presidentials failed, but six of
the original eight completed the Northern Peaks and descended to the
HMC cabin. In the fall and spring, beginners' trips filled the Quincy
Quarries and introduced novices to the nuances of slippery rock. A
small beginners' ice climbing trip visited Willey's Slide and Frankenstein Cliffs. The HMC sponsored several slide shows, among them
presentations by Henry Barber and John Bouchard. The long-awaited
Journal was finished and distributed in June.
1976-77. This year HMC climbers in search of practice and
challenge explored nearly all of the New England climbing areas. In
addition to visiting Boston's bouldering areas, ventures were made to
Crow Hill, Joe English Hill, Ragged Mountain, East Peak, Cannon
Mountain, Whitehorse Ledge, Cathedral Ledge, and the Gunks. The
winter saw much ice climbing activity at Huntington Ravine,
Frankenstein Cliffs, Cannon Mountain, and Lake Willoughby, where
101
several first ascents were accomplished by club members. Two HMC
parties attempted the Winter Traverse over intersession, with the
South to North group being successful in four days. Another group of
four climbers trekked to Mt. Katahdin. A traverse of the Knife Edge
to the summit and the first ascent of a 200 foot ice climb were completed by members of the team. In the milder seasons, several trips
were taken to local practice areas to familiarize beginners with the
skills of climbing, rappelling, and belaying. In the winter, a beginners'
ice climbing trip was made to the HMC cabin in Huntington Ravine.
HMC-sponsored slide shows included subjects like Yosemite and the
Kitchatna Spires with Andrew Embick, Mt. Fairweather with John Imbrie, the Arrigetch with Mike Lehner, the Cordillera Blanca with
Gustavo Brillembourg, Dresden with Rick Hatch, and Mt. Deborah
with Ken Andrasko. -Clint Cummins.
1977-78. This was an important winter for ice climbing in New
England as heavy snowfall and lots of sun brought many routes into
excellent condition. John Imbrie and Clint Cummins led the attack on
the desperates, and many others made the trips to Frankenstein Cliffs
and the North Conway area. The standard beginners' trip to Huntington Ravine filled a weekend in early December. In addition to
renewed activity at the Quincy Quarries and Wellesley Arches, club
trips visited the Shawangunks, Crow Hill, and Ragged Mountain.
Thursday meetings were well attended and the slide show series was
highlighted by John Bouchard, Peter Keleman, Peter Cole, and Jimmy
Dunn. John Imbrie amazed the easily impressionable with' 'Of Ice and
Men''.
1978-79. HMC activities were hampered by a severe lack of transportation: only one undergraduate had a car. Initiative proved partially
successful as many visited the Arches, Quarries, and Rattlesnake
Rocks, completing the routes that had previously evaded them. Thursday nights were spent perusing Climbing and Mountain, the fruits of a
splurge of subscriptions. Slide shows continued to entertain,
highlighted by a special talk by Lou Reichardt on the American ascent
of K2 (courtesy of Henry Hall) and presentation by John Bragg of his
ascent of Cerro Torre. Henry Barber described Russian mountaineering, Peter Cole spoke on the Alps, Mark Hudon on the state of the art
in free climbing, and Al Rubin described "the mellowing of a
mountaineer.''
A scarcity of ice delayed the beginners' ice climbing trip until
March. The cabin had been well cared for by Doug Hochshartner and
Jim Tierney after the outhouse had been relocated on a rainy worktrip
102
View of the CILLEY-BARBER ROUTE in the South Basin of Mt. Katahdin, from the
Pamola Ice Cliffs.
photo by Brinton Yo1111g
during the fall. The Presidential traverse was once again successful and
the now traditional Christmas trip to Katahdin saw many ascents of ice
climbs. A battle developed for the freshman members between the club
and the crew team, both of which lay claim to several 5.10 climbers.
Buildering became popular and resulted in a few close calls with the Ad
Board, and the pumpkins appeared on Memorial Hall for the umpteenth Halloween in a row. -Bob Palais.
103
Climbing Notes
Colorado. During the 1976 Christmas holidays, Andrew Embick,
Chris Kaiser, and I took advantage of the mild winter to do some
climbing in Colorado. Sunny, calm days in Eldorado Canyon enabled
us to do routes such as T2, Super Slab, Ruper, and the Northwest Corner
of the Bastille as if it were spring. We moved on to 14,000 foot Long's
Peak in Estes Park to attempt Keiner's Route on the east face. Andy
became ill during the climb, but Chris and I completed the route in
light snowfall. When we, too, felt the effects of the altitude. We abandoned the summit, but managed to persevere through the epic descent.
Andy and I then drove to Telluride to try Bridalveil Falls, picking up
John Bouchard on the way. The time and fear factors moved me to
bow out, but John and Andy were able to climb the 300 foot icicle in
seven hours.
Yosemite. In September of 1977, Chris Kaiser, John Imbrie, Jeremy
Metz, and I met in Yosemite with plans for big walls. The heat was to
frustrate our desires for climbing on the preferred south-facing walls,
although we managed to do the East Buttress of Middle Cathedral and the
standard abundance of climbs on the shady Apron. After parching
ourselves on sunny routes like Royal Arches and Washington's Column,
we abandoned the Valley and finished our summer with a fine route on
Fairview Dome in cooler territory. -Clint Cummins.
India. I was physician on an expedition to Nun, a 23,410 foot peak
in Ladakh, India, organized by Mountain Travel, and led by Galen
Rowell. Five climbers (Rowell, Kim Schmitz, Maynard Cohick, Pete
Cummings, Pat O'Donnel) made the summit, by the northwest ridge;
Benner and Malcolm Jones reached 23,000 feet. This was the fifth
ascent of the peak. -Gordon Benner, '59.
Left: KRAUS and McCARTHY practicing sixth class climbing, Poops, Shawangunks,
late 1950's.
photo by 0. Dorfman
Right: BOB PALAIS practicing fifth class climbing, Poops, Shawangunks, 1978.
photo by Pa11l Milde
105
A Ips. Mike Young and I climbed in the Chamonix area for a few
weeks in August, 1978. We climbed the popular North Face of the
Triolet and the Swiss Route on Les Courtes, both in excellent weather.
New England Ice Climbs. In late December, 1977, Clint Cummins
and I climbed an ice route on the South Face of Mt. Kineo, overlooking Moosehead Lake in Maine. The route, which we named Maine
Line, is about 250 feet high and involved several vertical sections of up
to nine meters. In late January, 1978, Karen Messer and I climbed the
righthand route of the two to the right of Dropline at Frankenstein
Cliffs, New Hampshire, which we named Welcome to the Machine. The
climb is 150 feet high and has an eleven meter vertical section where it
goes over an overhang. In the middle of February, 1979, Dennis
Drayna, Peter Kao, Ben Townsend, and I climbed an ice route at Joe
English Hill, near Manchester, New Hampshire. The route is found
towards the left end of the cliff, and is 100 feet high. There is some
moderately steep and thin ice at the start, after which the climb is low
angle except for a final four meter vertical section. One must obtain
prior permission to enter the area from the Air Force Tracking Station
(which controls the area near Joe English Hill). Even if one has made
arrangements, one can expect some Air Force doubletalk at the gate.
We named the climb Ice Command. -john Z. Imbrie
In 1978 I made a trip to Colorado and Wyoming with Jack MacPherson. We completed many classics on the Bastille and the Red
Garden wall (Yellow Spur, Green Spur, Hair City, Ruper, Over the Hill,
etc.) and climbed with Jeff Achey (Super Slab, C'est Ia vie) before leaving for Colorado Springs to climb granite crags on Pike's Peak and
Turkey Tail. We teamed up with Leonard Coyne to tackle the loose
sandstone of the Garden of the Gods. On our way to the Tetons and
Devil's Tower, we met Britisher Gordon Tinning and visited Lumpy
Ridge and Hallet's Peak in Estes Park. We finished our trip in the
Needles of South Dakota. I spent the latter half of the summer in New
Hampshire climbing on Cathedral (including Pendulum, Wonderwall,
and the Prow with Jimmie Dunn, Mark Sonnenfeld, and Ed Webster)
and on Cannon (VMC and Direct-Direct with Bruce Dicks). -Bob
Palais.
106
Presidentials. After conditions forced us to abandon a traverse in
1978, I spent a year making lots of the equipment I would leave
behind. At 7 a.m., Doug W orsnop and I started north from Crawford
Notch and arrived at treeline within two hours. The winds grew continually stronger and, at 1 p.m., we stopped to wait out the weather at
the Lakes of the Clouds refuge room. The next morning found us
heading for the Alpine Gardens hoping for a relief from the brutal buffetting, and a possible descent to Pinkham. In the lee of the summit
cone, however, the winds seemed less menacing, and we felt we would
be abandoning the traverse without giving it our best effort. With
only a few words, we turned north and headed for the Washington
summit.
At 10 a.m. we started north and were soon exposed to the full force
of the wind sweeping upward from the Great Gulf. We were leaning
well out over our toes to avoid being toppled, but decided to commit
ourselves to the northern peaks. The temperature hovered near zero as
a high pressure zone moved in. We melted ice for lunch at Edmunds
Col, and the weather became beautiful. The wind dropped to 30
m.p.h., and from Adams we could see the summit buildings on
Washington. Tired and happy, we moved on to Madison and then
down to Randolph, grateful that the weather had been so kind to us.
-Peter Kao.
107
Membership
of the
Harvard Mountaineering Club
HONORARY MEMBERS
HALL, HENRY S. ]R., '19, Honorary President, 154 Coolidge Hill,
Cambridge, MA 02138
BATES, RoBERT H., '33, 153 High Street, Exeter, NH 03833
CARTER, H. ADAMS, '36, 361 Centre Street, Milton, MA 02186
ODELL, NoELE., PROF., Clare College, Cambridge, England
RICHARDS, IvoR A., PROF., Magdalene College, Cambridge, England
WASHBURN, H. BRADFORD, ]R., '33, 220 Somerset Street, Belmont,
MA 02178
WooD, WALTER A., ]R., Box BEE, Southampton, NY 11968
LIFE MEMBERS
AsPINWALL, PETER, '54, 1650 Waldorth Court, Wheaton, IL 60187
BASSETT, DAVID R., '49, 1600 Brookline Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI
48604
BATES, RoBERT H., '33, 153 High Street, Exeter, NH 03833
BENNER, GoRDON A., '54, 155 Tamalpais Road, Berkeley, CA 94708
BROKAW, CALEB, ]R., '42, 646 West Road, New Caanan, CT 06840
CARTER, H. ADAMS, '36, 361 Centre Street, Milton, MA 02186
CARTER, RoBERTS., '39, Box 172, Medina, WA 98039
CLARKE, WILLIAM L., '59, 11 Brigham Woods, Concord, MA 01742
CoLLINS, LESTER A., '38, 1619 33rd Street, Washington DC 20015
CRONK, CASPER, '57, 804 Dobbin Drive, Kalamazoo, Ml 49007
DELAITTRE, JoHN, '29, 327 Delfern Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90024
DENHARTOG, STEPHEN, '55, Blueberry Hill, RFD, Lebanon, NH
03766
DuNN, FREDERICK L., '51, 115 San Felipe Avenue, San Francisco, CA
94127
FERRIS, BENJAMIN G., '40, Box 305, 10 Town House Road, Weston,
MA 02193
FISK, IRVING L., '50, 95 McGee Avenue, Mill Valley, CA 94941
108
FoRBES, GEORGE SHANNON, PRoF., '02, 8 1/2 Ash Street Place
Cambridge, MA 02138
'
FoRSTER, RoBERT W., '50, 2215 Running Springs, Kingwood, TX
77339
FuLLER, CARLTON P., '19, 12 Fletcher Road, Belmont, MA 02178
GooDY, RICHARD M., PROF,. AM' 58, 805 Brush Hill Road, Milton,
MA 02187
GRISCOM, ANDREW, '49, 345 Middlefield Road, Menlo Park, CA
94025
HALL, HENRYS., ]R., '20, 154 Coolidge Hill, Cambridge, MA 02138
HAMILTON, IAN M., '50, Barcombe, Lewes, Sussex, England
HARTSHORNE, RoBERT CoPE, '58, Math. Dept., Univ. of California,
Berkeley, CA 94 704
HENDERSON, KENNETH A., '26, 29 Agawam Road, Waban, MA 02168
HILL, GEORGE J., II, MD, '57, 7 Willow Glen, Huntington, WV
25701
jERVIS, STEVEN A., '59, 45 Christopher Street, New York, NY 10014
KERNEY, KEITH P., '66, 5505 Glenwood Road, Bethesda, MD 22034
MAGOUN, FRANCIS P., III, '50, Spy Rock Hill Road, Manchester, MA
01944
MATHEWS, GRAHAM W. V., '43, Box 381, Carmel Valley, CA 93924
MAXWELL, ]AMES C., '30, 140 Piedra Loop, Los Alamos, NM 87544
McCARTER, RoBERT S., '46, 269 South Irving Boulevard, Los
Angeles, CA 90024
McLEOD, JoHN, ]R., '54, 3 Maya Lane, Los Alamos, NM 87544
MILLER, MAYNARD M., '43, 514 East First Street, Moscow ID 83843
MILLIKAN, RICHARD G., '63, 2917 Regent Street, Berkeley, CA
94705
MoLHOLM, JoHN, 37 Gray Gardens East, Cambridge, MA 02138
MooRE, TERRIS, MBA'33, 123 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
NEVISON, THoMAs 0., ]R., '51, 4432 Avenue del Sol NE,
Albuquerque, NM 87101
NICKERSON, ALBERT W., '62, 115 Mt. Auburn Street,
Cambridge, MA 02138
NoTMAN, JoHN H., '41, 902 Second Avenue South,
Clinton, IA 52732
OBERLIN, JoHN C., '35, 26140 Robb Road, Los Altos Hills,
CA 94022
O'BRIEN, LINCOLN, '29, 1535 Bat Point Drive, Sarasota,
FL 33579
109
ORDWAY, SAMUEL H., III, '52, c/o State Dept.,
Washington, D.C. 20520
OsTHEIMER, ALFRED j., III, '29, 3220 Diamond Head Road,
Honolulu, HI 96815
PITTMAN, CHARLES, 163 Old Glory Mews, 1027 Valley Forge Road,
Devon, PA 19333
PAGE, RoBERT A., jR., '60, 3125 Woodside Road,
Woodside, CA 94062
PoMERANZE, STEPHEN M., '63, Box 3516, Boulder, CO 80303
PUTNAM, WILLIAM L., '45, 406 Longhill Street, Springfield,
MA 01108
RICH, PAUL joHN, III, '59, First Church, East Bridgewater,
MA 02333
RIDDER, WALTER T., '40, 4509 Crest Lane, McLean, VA 22101
RITvo, EDWARD R., MD, '51, 4057 Hayvenhurst Avenue,
Encino, CA 91316
RoBINSON, CERVIN, '50, 251 West 92nd Street, New York,
NY 10025
Ross, joHN M., '48, 150 Upland Road, Cambridge, MA 02138
ScoTT, DouGLAS C., '35, Northeast Road, Farmington, CT 06032
SosMAN, joHN L., MD, '40, 648 Lowell Road, Concord, MA
01742
SPITZER, LYMAN, jR., 659 Lake Drive, Princeton, Nj 08540
STACY, DAVIDS., '40, RR 1, Box 68, Carbondale, CO 81623
STREIBERT, SAM, 294 Highland Avenue, West Newton, MA 02165
ToDD, CLEMENT j., '44, 3450 Lookout Mountain Circle,
Golden, CO 80401
WALKER, joHN B., jR., '33, 643 Oenoke Ridge,
New Caanan, CT 06840
WALLING, RITNER, East Coast Salvage, 20th and Adams Avenue,
Camden, Nj 08105
WHIPPLE, EARLE R., '55, c/o 35 Elizabeth Road,
Belmont, MA 02178
ACTIVE MEMBERS
AsHDOWN, IKE, 370 Washington Street, #1, Somerville, MA 02143
AsHENDEN, AMY, 93 Walker Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
BAYLISS, LIZ, Mower B-21, Harvard College
BIDDLE, RoBERT, Canaday F-12, Harvard College
BLACK, j. FRASER, Weld 51, Harvard College
110
BRILLEMBOURG, GusTAVo, Adams A-37, Harvard College
BROCKMEYER, DouG, Pennypacker 45, Harvard College
BROWN, jEFF, Dunster A-41, Harvard College
CABOT, CuRRIE, 10 Garden Terrace, Cambridge, MA 02138
CASSILL, J. AARON, Quincy 629, Harvard College
CHEW, KHENG-CHUAN, Hurlbut 2, Harvard College
CLARK, BRIAN, 51 Avon Road, Wellesley, MA 02181
CuMMINS, CLINT, 18 Frost Street #2, Cambridge, MA 02140
DAvis, Russ, Mower B-11, Harvard College
DoEBELE, JusTIN, Canaday D-31, Harvard College
DoRDAL, PETER, 112 Child Hall, Harvard University
DRAYNA, DENNIS, 18 Frost Street #2, Cambridge, MA 02140
FELD, ANDREW, 60 Martin Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
FINDLEY, SETH, 39a Lee Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
GENZEL, REINHARD, 116 Fayerweather Street,
Cambridge, MA 02138
GOLDINGS, ETHAN, Matthews 38, Harvard College
GRAHAM, WILLIAM, 64 Adella Avenue, West Newton, MA 02165
GROVER, GAVIN, 10 Chetwynd Road, Somerville, MA 02143
GuMUCHDJIAN, ANDRE, Lowell F-32, Harvard College
HEIMANN, JoHN, Wigglesworth F-32, Harvard College
HoBKIRK, DouG, 25 HARVARD STREET, ARLINGTON, MA 02174
HOLM, LoRENS, Richards 122, Harvard University
HowE, DAVID, Eliot H-42, Harvard College
IMBRIE, JoHN, 18 Frost Street #2, Cambridge, MA 02140
KAISER, CHRIS, 36 Anderson Street #2, Boston, MA 02114
KAo, PETER, Leverett F-41, Harvard College
KILBURN, DAN, Quincy B-42, Harvard College
KLAUSSEN, ERIC, Lowell E-42, Harvard College
KNox, T AMSIN, 10 Garden Terrace, Cambridge, MA 02138
KuczERA, GEORGE, 3 Harris Street, Somerville, MA 02143
LANGFUR, HAL, Leverett A-14, Harvard College
LEHNER, PETER, Briggs 75, Harvard College
LEVINE, BARRY, 91 Walker Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
LoNG, ALAN, 12 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
MESSER, KAREN, 93 Walker Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
METz, ANDREW, 8 Prescott Street, #7, Cambridge, MA 02138
METZ, ]EREMY, 91 Walker Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
MoNTANA, DAVID, Canaday D-54, Harvard College
MILDE, PAUL, Lionel B-11, Harvard College
MuKHERJEE, TIM, 60 Walker Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
111
NEWMAN, BILL, Child Hall #2, Harvard University
NoRCHI, CHUCK, Bertram 13, Harvard College
PALAIS, BoB, Quincy A-12, Harvard College
PASTER, RicH, 12 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
PELLEGRINI, DANIEL, Thayer 12, Harvard College
RADCLIFFE, MARK, 27 West Street #5, Cambridge, MA 02139
RINTOUL, STEVE, Straus A-12, Harvard College
RovNER, S. RAINSFORD, Adams A-37, Harvard College
SAVAGE, DAN, Gallatin F-41, Harvard University
ScHOERMAN, RoY, 1616 Massachusetts Avenue,
Cambridge, MA 02138
SHERIDAN, ERIN, Winthrop E-22, Harvard College
STENSAAS, Jo ANN, 91 Walker Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
STEVENSON, THOMAS, Thayer 14, Harvard College
STIER, KAREN M., 10 Fernald Drive #23, Cambridge, MA 02138
STIER, MARK T., 10 Fernald Drive #23, Cambridge, MA 02138
TowNSEND, BEN, 93 Walker Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
VANDERBILT, NicK, Dunster A-33, Harvard College
VEST, WALTER, Kirkland H-42, Harvard College
WILSON, NANCY, 47 Electric Avenue, West Somerville, MA 02144
WoJCIK, STEVE, 42 Whittemore Road, Newton, MA 02159
WoRSLEY, NELIA, Winthrop C-51, Harvard College
WoRSNOP, DouG, 12 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
WuEST, }IM, 22 Robinson Street #21, Cambridge, MA 02138
YouNG, BRINTON, 68 Standish Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
YuNICK, SuzANNE, Mower B-21, Harvard College
GRADUATE MEMBERS
ANDRASKO, KEN, 52 Waterhouse Street, Somerville, MA 02144
ARNON, STEPHEN, MD, 27 Graystone Terrace,
San Francisco, CA 94114
BEAL, WILLIAM, Dundee Road, Jackson, NH 03846
BECK, BRUCE, P.O. Box 1038, Crescent City, CA 95531
BELL, GEORGE, 794 43rd Street, Los Alamos, NM 87544
BEZRUCHKA, STEPHEN, 1 Hutton Avenue, Toronto,
Ontario M4C 3L2, Canada
BLAKE, JuDY, Herpetology Department, Biolabs 087,
16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138
BLASZCZAK, LARRY, 12 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
112
BuRKE, }AMES, 84 East Street, Foxboro, MA 02035
CARMAN, TED, Box A-6, Lanesboro, MA 01237
CLEMENT, DAVID, 3A Union Terrace, Cambridge, MA 02141
CoBB, JoHN C., MD, 4824 East Sixth Avenue, Denver, CO 80220
CocHRAN, NAN, 233 Ash Street, Weston, MA 02193
CoLLINS, JosEPH, 6 Sunny Brae, Bronxville, NY 10708
CoMEAU, ALAIN, 7 Deer Run, Wayland, MA 01778
CoNROD, RoBERT, 66 Scott Road, Belmont, MA 02178
CooMBS, DAVID AND ELIZABETH, 2411/2 Lieuallen Street,
Moscow, ID 83843
CooNs, SusAN, 1477 Portola Road, Woodside, CA 94062
CouLTER, DouGLAS, Chocorua, NH 03817
Cox, RAcHEL, 50 Ashford Street, Allston, MA 02134
CRANE, PETER, 61 Lincoln Street, Belmont, MA 02178
D'ARcY, RAY, 119 Huron Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138
DELAPPE, IRVING, MD, 8907 Ridge Place, Bethesda, MD 20034
DENSMORE, DANA, 22 Ashcroft Road, Medford, ,MA 02155
DICKEY, ToM, 25 Huckleberry Road, Lynnfield, MA 01940
DRiscoLL, TED, 615 St. Andrews Road, Philadelphia, :PA 19118
D~RAND, DANA, 3117 45th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.
20016
DuRFEE, ALAN, 405 West 118th Street, #31, New York, NY
10027
ELDRIDGE, HARRY, South Meadow Farm, Lake Placid, NY 12946
EMBICK, ANDREW R., MD, P.O. Box 158, Schurz, NV 89427
ERSKINE, LINWOOD, 370 Main Street, Worcester, MA 01608
FIELD, CHRIS, Box 684, Newcastle, WY 82701
FIELD, WILLIAM, 200 East 66th Street, #D-504,
New York, NY 10021
FISHER, ELLIOT, 209 Hamilton Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
FLANDERS, ToNY, 391 Washington Street, Somerville, MA 02145
FRANCIS, HENRY, Sky Farm, Charleston, NH 03603
FRIEDMAN, C.J., 2326 20th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 29009
GERMAIN, MICHAEL, 315 Newtonville Avenue, Newton, MA 02160
GLEDHILL, FRANCIS J., 17 Wellington Avenue, Somerville, MA
02145
HANSEN, LoRENTZ, 67 Alta Vista Drive, Yonkers, NY 10710
HART, JoHN, c/o Holland and Hart, P.O. Box 8749,
Denver, CO 80201
HAYDEN, ToM, c/o Keech, Keech Road, Relay, MD 21227
HIGHTOWER, J.R., 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138
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HoFFMAN, DAVID, 13224 East 26th Avenue, #2, Spokane, WA 94211
HoGUET, RoBERT, 101 Central Park West, #15A,
New York, NY 10023
HoLCOLME, WALDO, 180 Canton Avenue, Milton, MA 02187
HoPE, PETER, MD, Center Sandwich, NH 03237
jAMESON, JoHN, 1607 Silver Street, Albuquerque, NM 87106
]uNCOSA, ADRIAN, c/o Department of Botany, Duke University,
Durham, NC 27706
KENNARD, HARRISON, MD, 246 Dudley Road, Newton Center,
02159
I
KENNARD, JoHN, MD, 182 Tarrytown Road, Manchester, NH
03103
KRAUS, HANS, MD, 465 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022
LEDOUX, PAUL, 7 White Street, Arlington, MA 02174
LEWONTIN, STEVE, 27 Fainwood Circle, Cambridge, MA 02138
LusTER, PETER, 1849 Vernon Street, N.W. Washington, D.C.
20009
MARES, DAVID, 11 Eastman Street, Medford, MA 02155
MERKULOW, J., 3245 West Pierce Avenue, #2, Chicago, IL 60651
MEYER, CINDY, 65A Charles Street, Boston, MA 02114
MILLIKAN, GEORGE, 60 Kingston Road, Berkeley, CA 94707
MoRTON, DoNALD, Anglo-Australian Observatory, Box 296,
Epping, New South Wales, 212, Australia
MuHLHAUSEN, CARL, 12 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
0BERDORFER, ANTHONY, 150 Fletcher Road, Belmont, MA 02178
OPPENHEIMER, HAROLD, 1808 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64108;
PATTERSON, WILLIAM, 39 Addington Road, Brookline, MA 02146
QuESADA, PETER, North Fryeburg, ME 04058
RADAcK, Emc, 40 Beach Bluff Avenue, Swampscott, MA 01907
RAu, DEAN, 819 Ella Avenue, Willmar, MN 58201
REICHARDT, LoUis, Harvard Medical School, 25 Shattuck Street,
Boston, MA 02115
REISER, GEORGE AND PAMELA, 16A Forest Street, Cambridge, MA
02138
RoBERTS, DAVID, 22 Cedar Street, Somerville, MA 02143
RoGERS, PETER, 621 Stockton Street, San Francisco, CA 94108
RosENFIELD, ERIC, 555 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022
RuBIN, ALAN, 28 Langdon Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
ScHAFER, JoHN, 508 West Philomena Drive, Flagstaff, AZ 86001
ScuDDER, THAYER, 2484 North Altadena Drive, Altadena, CA
91001
MA
1
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SIGGIA, ERIC, 20 Cortland Drive, Amherst, MA 01002
SKILLMAN, GEORGE, 409 Main Street, Concord, MA 01742
SLAGGIE, LEo, 6358 Lakewood Drive, Falls Church, VA 22041
SLATTERY, WAYNE, 1 Continental Court, #14, Woburn, MA 01801
SMITH, FRANCIS, Hampshire Country School, Rindge, NH 03461
STEINWAY, THEODORE, 221 West 82nd Street, New York, NY
10024
STORJORAUN, DoNALD, 6 Cold Harbor Drive, Northboro, MA
01532
STORY, LEON, 62 North Main Street, Ipswich, MA 01938
SuLZBERGER, ]AY, c/o Mathematics Department, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139
TucHMAN, ALMO, 875 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021
VAN BAAK, DAVID, 1050 14th Street, Boulder, CO 80302
VAN BAALEN, MARK, 124 Whitcomb Avenue, Littleton, MA 01460
WARREN, STEVE, 105 Raymond Street, Cambridge, MA 02140
WEINER, jEROLD, Foster's Pond, R.R. #1, Andover, MA 01810
WEINSTEIN, NEIL, 101D Phelps Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ
08901
WEST, GEORGE, 1105 Fawnwood, Little Rock, AR 72207
WHITE, ERic, 87 South Street, Williamstown, MA 01267
WILLIAMS, ANDREA, 60 Hammond Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
YATES, JoHN, III, 13 Middle Street, Hadley, MA 01035
If there are any changes or corrections to be made in the Membership List,
please notify the Club Secretary, Lowell House, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.
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