alaska 2016 part 1- mount barille, japanese couloir

The past two years I have attempted to ski in the Central Alaska Range in spring. I flew up to Anchorage, bought food and fuel, met up with motivated and capable partners, but just ended up spending weeks in Talkeetna due to poor weather. My timing was impeccably bad. My visits were during two of the longest stretches of nasty pissy weather in recent times. However, Talkeetna is a great town for sitting in the rain, looking at maps, drinking coffee and getting fat on nutty buns and “Standard” breakfasts from the Roadhouse.

Fickle, feisty and unforgiving as Alaska can be, there is no other place that compares in combining snow quality and access to big skiing. So this spring I decided to return for another attempt.

Ben Peters mentioned earlier this winter that he wanted to pop his Alaskan cherry, so we started scheming and building a team. We approached Adam Fabrikant who had been scheduled to guide a Denali trip, but it had fallen through. So he was newly available and signed on with us. About a month out, the Dorais brothers shifted their work schedules and jumped on board as well. Five is a lot for a steep skiing expeditions, but this was shaping up to be the strongest and most capable team I’d ever been a part of.

The desire was to ski big in the Central Alaska Range. Each season brings very different conditions and weather. For best odds at getting something done in these stormy and moody mountains it’s best to give yourself several options and mountains in different areas to choose from. Our main projects were on the Moose’s Tooth in the Ruth Gorge, Mount Hunter and Mount Foraker. Each can have different snowpacks and weather. Also, the lower altitudes of Moose’s Tooth and Hunter open them up to rapid day hits since they don’t require acclimatization.

As we got closer to departure date, however, Adam and the Dorais brothers all backed out for various personal reasons and only Ben and I remained. A team of two works well for quickly skiing down and for camping logistics, but it can suck for breaking trail in deep snow. No worries, Ben and I were fired up.

On my three previous visits and several thwarted attempts, I’ve always flown into the range (or tried to fly) with Talkeetna Air Taxi because of their great reputation and because they offer up a free bunk house to stay in. I think it’s only supposed to be for a night or two on either end of trips into the mountain, but I’ve spent weeks living here. Feels like home now.

Luckily this year we only waited in town for a day and a half before the skies cleared enough and we got the green light to fly in. Packing up and the final weigh in.

Most of our travel would be close to the designated airstrips so we didn’t exactly travel light. We rented plastic sleds from TAT to schlep our shit the short distances we’d need to move.

So much planning and packing and preparing and travel to get to this point. It’s always such a relief to get in the air! All pinkies and index fingers accounted for. Ben’s Blue Steel could use some work?

The weather forecast had a few good looking days in the near future so we opted for the Ruth Gorge where we could attempt the Moose’s Tooth right off the bat. However, the clouds socked in down low on the glacier and our pilot, Paul Roderick couldn’t land. He took us to the Talkeetna air strip instead to wait it out for a minute and see if it would clear. The flights into this arena are always spectacular when there is visibility.

After a short wait we bumped over to the Ruth Gorge again to take another look. It was still socked in at the maintained air strip, but Paul dropped us up the valley out of the clouds. We loaded up the sleds and pulled them down glacier trying to find the base of the West Ridge climbing route on the Moose’s Tooth.

We strolled into nothingness for a few miles and then took our best guess at our location and set up camp.

Some digging out and organizing and our luxurious camp was set. Our team name for this expedition was Great Alaskan Ski Holiday. We played around doing promotional spoofs inviting folks out to our plush ski in/ski out accommodations! Ben selling the comforts and benefits of our cook tent.

Myself presenting our sleeping quarters in the spacious 3-man Katabatic tent. It seemed funny at the time.

Enough fucking around. The clouds opened up and we were camped exactly where we wanted to be. Right underneath the line we hoped to ski on the Moose’s Tooth!

In 2012, I came to the Ruth Gorge with Andrew McLean, Garrett Grove and Mark Holbook. When we arrived we found arctic cold, unconsolidated and unstable snow in the couloirs. We were spooked and thus stuck to low angle terrain. In fact, we spent most of our days just touring around in the flats trying to stay warm in the -20 degree temperatures. The one bright spot from an otherwise disappointing ski trip was the line I saw off the Moose’s Tooth. It scared the shit out of me and tickled my insides the way those dream lines will do. I didn’t know this then, but I was drooling over the West Ridge climbing route that’s considered one of the “50 Classic Climbs of North America”.

Ben and I decided before the trip that we would like to attempt to climb the standard route marked in green and descend the direttissima marked in red. This would require a few rappels to get onto the glacier and right back to camp.

That evening we set off to navigate the crevasses at the entry to the route and get a feel for the snow. The center of the glacier was smooth and showed no sign of depressions or holes indicating the icy caves that waited below. The margins of the glacier however were more broken up and we roped up to wind our way through cracks and over some snow bridges.

After a few thousand feet of recon, we skied back down to camp.  The snow was soft and friendly! Things seemed to be lining up for a possible attempt. Ben enjoyed his first turns in Alaska.

The next morning we woke up to the soft patter of snow on the tent walls and thus went back to bed. The ability to sleep is a very valuable skill on expeditions. We did our best to burn through hours and hours of bad weather in the dream state because it snowed most of day. The temps were warm and it didn’t create much snow accumulation. Our thoughts were continually on the route and our hope was that the upper face wouldn’t pick up too much snow.

Our bartender showing off his skills during happy hour.

I borrowed some fun reads at the coffee shop in Talkeetna. At first I thought Rules for Radicals was about how to get rad, but it’s not. It’s about something much more important, the upcoming revolution.

“Because life is there ahead of you and either one tests one-self in it’s challenges, or huddles in the valleys in a dreamless day-to-day existence whose only purpose is the preservation of an illusory security and safety. The latter is what the vast majority of people choose to do, fearing the adventure into the unknown. Paradoxically, they give up the dream of what may lie ahead on the heights of tomorrow for a perpetual nightmare-an endless succession of days fearing the loss of a tenuous security.  -Saul Alinsky-

We weren’t tapped into any weather forecasting, but things cleared a little and we thought we would try and ski the Japanese Couloir on Mount Barrille the next day. Later in the evening another group of folks entered the valley and started setting up camp a few hundred yards away. We were intrigued and headed over to welcome our new neighbors and see what they were planning. It was a group of 4 who were clearly skiers (by their bright colored pants) and clearly French (by their bright colored pants). They mentioned their plan was for the Japanese Couloir tomorrow as well.

We woke up at 6 a.m. the next morning and were moving across the valley by 7. Team France was already booting up the chute. Zut Alors!!

Not always bad to be second, the booter was in. The clouds pulled back from the Ruth and put on a nice light show on the glacier below.

The Japanese Couloir is a 3,000 foot long line that starts with a bergshrund crossing onto a wide chute.

The sun was out in full force and cooking this south facing slope. Small wet sluffs started flushing down, but staying inside the runnels. Most likely resulting from the crew ahead of us. We ran into the other skiers leap frogging their way down. They said the skiing was good and we thanked them for putting in the booter. Further up it narrowed to about 178 centimeters wide and steepened to around 60 degrees. Apparently this crux is often icy and requires down climbing or rappelling and rarely gets skied. We were lucky enough to find warm snow and could see the edge marks from the Euros that had worked through it with skis on.

After the steep crux it opens back up and then scoops into the ridge.

On the backside we traversed a 50 degree chute then climbed upwards to gain the ridge. From here the views really opened up and we strained necks trying to take it all in.

Summit selfie looking over the Ruth Gorge and with the Moose’s Tooth taunting us over Ben’s shoulder.

Beauty of a day in the mountains, but we had to stop taking it all in and get down fast. The hills were becoming alive from the heat. Turns off the summit were smooooooth and velvet-like. Very exposed, but edging was great.

Ben on the west side after the summit ridge. Place was skied out. Where do you have to go these days for fresh tracks?

We retraced the traverse and had to side step back up a little bit to get to the col. That put us staring right down the steepest thing I’ve skied in a long time!

Ben went first to test the frozen waters. It was hot and wet and held an edge, great for steep skiing.

It took a bit of time, but we slid, hopped and hacked our way through the crux. The apron was much more relaxed and casual.

Mount Barrille was the perfect warm-up run for us. We were able to check out snow on many aspects, get some heady skiing in and breath some thinner air up high. And a pretty big relief to actually get to ski something fun and scary after being shut down for the past few years. If the weather held we were planning to go for the Moose’s Tooth the next day.

To be continued……………