Ptarmigan Black Rocks Run

Having a Monday off and some time on my hands, I indulged in some grandiose ideas about doing a long-ish mountain run.  We'd had rain the day before, but it was mostly clear and seemed like I should take advantage of the good weather.  The goal was to head up Mt. Baldy, then keep running back until I got tired of it, or until I complete a loop, whichever came first.


The view from the parking lot.  Looks pretty much like fall, right?


The view from the summit of Mt. Baldy looking out towards Eagle River.


Looking out towards the mountains from Baldy.  At this point, I realized that there was more snow up there than I realized, although it wouldn't be until later that I was truly disavowed of the notion of a long run.



I made it to the first significant bump of Ptarmigan Black Rocks before fully realizing just how much snow was up there.  Four inches of fresh snow on an ice crust on top of more inches of snow (knee deep in some spots) made for some pretty sketchy running.


Looking out towards Knik Arm.  The clouds in earlier photos did clear off quite nicely.


The Ptarmigan Black Rocks have some fairly steep spots.  Pretty awesome terrain.


Peaked out.  This was as high as I got before I turned tail and ran back to the parking lot.  Still a pretty good little jog/walk/slog for the afternoon, and always good to be out and about when the weather's good.

Kodiak Goat Hunt

I had the chance to jump kind of last minute on a mountain goat hunt in Kodiak with a teammate of mine.  I'd never hunted before, so I saw my role mainly as being a Sherpa carrying heavy things.  Besides the opportunity to put some meat in the freezer, it was also a chance to see Kodiak, where I'd never been, and to camp in the mountains, so I jumped at it.

We flew in to our hunting spot, leaving from this seaplane base.  The weather wasn't great, so we weren't able to get in to any high alpine lakes, but it was good enough.  Our pilot came up to Kodiak to do some commercial salmon fishing, decided he liked the idea of flying, and has been flying in Kodiak for over 20 years.

 
We set up camp right next to Frazer Lake, where Rolan dropped us off.  It had the advantage of being close to our drop off, minimizing the base camp gear we had to haul, but had the disadvantage of meaning a long climb in part through very heavy brush every day.


 
The first day as we were hiking up we spotted a large group of goats on a ridge north of the valley where we camped, so we headed up that direction.  The weather was generally nice-ish in the mornings, which was good, as it prompted us to get out of our tent.


Bill in his overwhites.  They're just tyvek suits - if we wore these around town, I imagine people would probably assume we're meth cookers.  They were effective for the hunt, though - we actually had some goats come up to us out of curiosity.


The weather deteriorated every afternoon.  After dropping packs to successfully stalk the goats, we had to return to pick our bags back up, by which time the goats' location was out of view.


Cleaning the goats.  The spotting scope was to check out some other possibilities for the next day.

 
Coming down with 80-100 pound packs on steep terrain was pretty tough work.


It was tough work through pretty country, though.


We took a 4-man tent for just the two of us, which turned out to be a great move.  We were soaked at the end of every day.


We were allowed to shoot four goats between the two of us.  We shot two nannies on the first day, then switched our focus to trying to find a billy.  We found one at the top of this ridge.

 
After shooting the two nannies the first day, the weight of the meat and hides together was too much for us to carry everything down in one go.  We returned on the third day to grab the nannies' hides.  It turned out to be our best weather day.


We had a day to spend in Kodiak after returning from the hunt, so we kicked around town and checked out the fishing boats.  I'm not sure that I'm going to become a big-time hunter anytime soon, although eating meat you worked for is awfully satisfying.  This mountainous hunting thing does thing does get you out climbing around in big mountains and sleeping in a tent, which is always a good thing.  Lot of work, but also lots of fun.

Fall Views

Fall has come (and at this point, pretty much gone) to Alaska, and I figured I might throw up some photos of the colors.  Not exactly the same as the East Coast, but still pretty cool.














Denali from a distance.  Awesome mountain.

 












Interior fall colors.  While the interior is pretty flat and can be boring in spots, it's pretty good for the changing seasons.















The Talkeetna River, way off the road.  Nice spot to take a pit stop.














The colors creeping up the mountains.  Not long before winter comes around...like three or four weeks, if we're lucky.

 

Denali Expedition

This past June into July, I was fortunate enough to be part of a team making a summit bid up Denali (or Mt. McKinley, as some, such as the USGS, know it).  We didn't make it to the top - I got to 19,500 feet before turning around, but it was a great experience.  Before slogging through anything else I might write, the team put together a short video, and the link is below.  I make no excuse for the music - wasn't my choice.

Denali Video

In many respects, climbing Denali was no different from any of the other longer trips I've done - our days were spent, more or less, waking up, eating, traveling, eating some more, setting up camp, eating again, then sleeping.  There was probably some eating in there that I missed.  A few things stand out as unique to this trip, though.  We carried all of our food from start to finish - 21 days worth.  As it turned out, 21 days was how long we ended up staying on the mountain.  We had a couple of down days for weather, and while most of the team was able to fly out as soon as we arrived back at base camp, three of us were stuck for three more days at base camp waiting for weather which had moved in to clear out.  I've never carried that much food before; in the past, I've always had re-supplies along the way.  We were hauling sleds behind us, and if I recall correctly, our average gear weight at the start of the trip was something on the order of 120 pounds.  Pretty heavy.

Another big difference in this trip was the level of exposure.  People talk about Denali's West Buttress (the typical route, and the route we attempted) as being a walk up, and in many respects, that is true.  There is a short section of fixed ropes, and some spots where placing protection is advised, but there is little extremely technical about Denali.  That being said, it's a walk up with an incredible amount of exposure.  There are lots of places along the route where a fall will mean death (and has for some in the past), and, particularly during the time of the year we were climbing, lots of open crevasses.  We had a team member take a crevasse fall, as a matter of fact, as we descended towards base camp, and there were lots of sketchy spots.  So yeah, a walk up, just a walk up with big consequences.

The last, and most obvious, difference between previous trips I've done and this one was the altitude.  Prior to Denali, I'd never been above around 13,000 - getting up to 19,500 put me a good 6,000 feet higher than I'd ever been.  If you factor in Alaska's northern latitude, the relative altitude is something closer to 22,000 feet.  A personal goal of the trip was to see how my body did without taking any altitude prophylactics.  I found out - one of the reasons I turned around at 19,500 was that I had a pounding headache and had started vomiting.  I also found I ate significantly less above 17,000 feet.  All good lessons.  I'd love to get the chance to go back again, though, and if I do, I'll definitely be taking some Diamox or something to try to give myself a better shot at summitting.

It was tough to turn back from the summit, especially considering that this was a record-breaking summer for Denali summits.  I loved my time on the mountain, though.  We had a great team, relaxed, easy to get along with, and supportive.  I love the 3:00 mark in the video...there wasn't any music when the guy in the video was dancing, he was just be-bopping for the fun of it.  Also, what can't properly be captured in words, or pictures, for that matter, is how beautiful it is up there.  The higher you get, the bigger the scale gets, and the more amazing the scenery becomes.  At some point at 17,000 camp, I looked out and saw an expanse of clouds at around the 15,000-foot level, as far as the eye could see.  It was pretty wild to realize that, besides the 20 or so other people up there at the camp with me, no one else could see the sun.  From bottom to top, the mountain was just spectacularly beautiful.  Even without the summit, still a great trip.