alaska 2019, part 1 – west kahiltna peak

After a fun and a successful expedition to Alaska in the spring of 2018, Adam Fabrikant and I decided to return for a go at Mount Foraker in 2019. Why Foraker? Partly because the 11,000 foot Archangel Ridge is one of the longest continuously steep lines on the planet (can’t really prove that statement, but sounds really good and seems likely). And also because we had both skied Denali years ago and Mount Hunter the year before, that left Mount Foraker to finish off the triple crown of the Alaska Range.

We invited Billy Haas and Ben Peters along since they are two of the raddest mountain dudes around and this would well round out the strongest team I’ve ever been in the mountains with. We arranged for a flight over the range with Talkeetna Air Taxi to scope things from the air. Things looked really good from the air and reports were coming in that many folks were skiing big lines on Denali in pow. On June 7th we were dropped off on the Kahiltna Glacier and set up a base camp. Adam had been up on Denali guiding and was in town drying out gear, eating not freeze dried food and getting ready to come back out and join us. In the mean time Ben, Billy and I decided to do some skiing, check out the snowpack and get some acclimatization while we waited.

(Living fat at basecamp)

From the air we’d had a great look at several objectives including the Kahiltna Peaks. They looked really snowy and with their close proximity to our basecamp, it seemed like a good call for a warm-up run. Our route marked in red.

We set our sites on the south ridge of West Kahiltna Peak and headed several flat miles up the glacier the next morning despite some cloud cover.

There is soooo much good skiing around this area, but most people heading into the range are very focused on Denali and not a lot of this lower hanging fruit gets plucked. According to the rangers, guides and the pilots we spoke with, nobody had seen this south ridge line skied before. It’s hard to imagine how many skiers have walked right past this thing on the way to Denali, including myself.

We worked around the lower openings in the glacier by hugging the rock wall and entering into the chute. The snow was firm and in a melt/freeze cycle and we hoped it would soften later in the day. We skinned the lower flanks and then switched to booting as it got steeper.

Billy making the mountains look good, or vice versa.

I’ve been using the Sony RX-100 series of cameras for the past many years. I picked up the VI and brought it along as my only camera for photo and video because of how compact and capable it is. This isn’t an ad, I paid full retail, just really psyched with how the images came out!

We topped out of the chute and traversed to the east with sparkling delight inside and out.

Next up was crossing this large open glacier to connect the lower couloir to the the upper ridge. Not a bad place to be if you like snow and sun and mountains.

As a bonus we got a great look at our approach to our main objective, Mount Crosson and Mount Foraker (in the background right to left).

The crux appeared to be the steep rocky face that connected to the upper ridge. The open bergschrund pushed us to the lookers right, up through the rocks onto the snow slope angling right and onto the ridge.

Standing and staring is a key part of ski mountaineering that’s often overlooked.

The snow in the rocks wasn’t great, but good snow is never to be expected, it’s an added bonus sometimes. We had come for the adventure and the ambiance and we were finding it.

After passing through the rocky section the clouds closed in, it wasn’t a full white-out, but visibility wasn’t great. We roped up and took turns breaking trail in the nice boot top powder we encountered.

As is often the case in the Alaska Range, we found some icy spots and made a mental note of these sections for the descent.

We climbed into a little sucker hole as we topped out on the summit ridge.

The massive south wall of Denali was straight ahead of us and we were really hoping to get a good view of it because it was also on the hit list, but that was not to be the case. The clouds hung around and kept the scenic vistas from us. Oh well, we managed to get up onto a 12,835 foot peak with a 5,000 foot descent ahead of us.

I hadn’t been skiing much steep and exposed stuff building into the trip so I was feeling a little nervous about jumping straight into it. This run turned out to be the perfect way to get my mind back in the game. Mostly good snow withs some steep icy cruxes. The ski edges held and confidence was regained.

Ben working some turns in the white on white world. It was nice to have our tracks to follow!

Billy side-slipping through the icy crux with axe at the ready.

Feeling our way along.

It was nice to get into the rocks that provided some definition. Ben watching Billy disappear.

We broke out of the clouds when we hit the flat connecting glacier. The sun had lightly toasted the snow into the perfect corn for the final traverse and exit couloir. No photo’s were taken, we were just skiing and having too much fun I guess.

All smiles from Ben and Billy!

A few miles of flat skating and a short uphill got us back into camp. We rested up for a day and Adam flew in. The team was together and feeling good! The snow was in great shape, the weather forecast was ok and we decided to give the Archangel Ridge an honest effort. To be continued……….