Awesome Alaskan April

Jeff and I headed down to the Deltas for a pre-Easter jaunt. Our goal was Institute Peak, which has thwarted me twice thus far. We had heard that the snow was still pretty sweet down there, and our hearing was good. It ended up snowing a bunch more on our ski in, which made for some tough trail-breaking, but some solid skiing.


The way in was pretty cloudy, with snow falling and little depth perception. This photo is actually in pretty good light - we ended up climbing on an old moraine to the right of this valley for no good reason, which made for some interesting poking around.


Jeff fell on the way in. It is infrequent enough that it must be documented. Incidentally, this is the only one of these photos that I took.


The next morning the weather was still pretty cloudy, so we took a leisurely breakfast in Jeff's new tent.


It did clear up late morning, though. Excited for the day.


At the base of the climb up Institute. Neither of us had approached from this aspect before, and we had a tough time finding a good route up, particularly considering the avy danger from all the new snowfall. In the end, we didn't make the top.


We didn't make the summit, but we did do some schralping. The break in the tracks a third of the way down is from me sliding a good 20 feet or so.


The McCallum Glacier/Creek area has some sweet bowls and snow fields. It would be awesome to have a few days back in here after snowfall like this.


Pretty awesome spot to pitch a tent.


Yet another amazing ridge in the Deltas. The areas back off the roads are so much bigger than you ever realize when you're driving by, even though they're only a 5 or 6 mile ski in. It can be overwhelming just standing among such size, drinking it in. It was great to be back in the mountains.

Flattop Romps

Post-Selection I've started dipping my toes in the Chugach State Park waters, beginning with climbing Flattop Peak. It's a half-hour drive from my house, right at the east edge of Anchorage, and a kind of entrance to the Chugach mountain range.


Jess and I hiked out to the base of the first Flattop Peak a week ago. It was pretty gray, and pretty icy. Since neither of us had more rugged footwear than regular hiking shoes, we stopped short of climbing the peak.


I couldn't let climbing it go, though, so I came back with crampons on a day with more sunlight, and after a week of off-and-on snow. You could see right from the start that there was way more white stuff.


About halfway up the peak. It's pretty benign if you've got the feet for it, but the very top is a bit tricky, and can apparently be much more so when it gets heavily corniced.


From the top, looking at the Chugach spilling into Turnagain Arm. Lots of good stuff back there.


Playing around with the panorama on my camera. Tough to beat that view...I've got a lot to get to know.


Semi-obligatory ice ax shot. Never needed the ax, but it was comforting to have around.


There are three Flattop peaks. I climbed back to this one, the second, but decided to pass on going back to the third, which was a good ways away and considerably steeper. Next time.

Besides being amazing to have such great mountains so close to home, it's also amazing to see the people who climb around on them when they're so close. I watched a guy slide 30 feet down a fairly steep slope before fortunately stopping himself on some brush. He was wearing winter boots with little tread and nothing else for stopping himself on the snow. Flattop is apparently regularly the source of rescues for people who've put themselves in place they shouldn't be.

On the other hand, after the first peak there were hardly any tracks. Evidently it only takes a little bit of work to earn some solitude. I'm cool with putting in the work.