Chugach Cosmic Integration

Since moving to Anchorage, I'd had my eye on what is known either as the "Chugach Front Range Cosmic Integration" or the "Chugach Front Range Link Up".  The idea is to, in one go, hike the 12 5,000+ ft peaks in the front range of the Chugach closest to Anchorage.  It's a smoker - something like 40 miles and 20,000 ft in one go.  My buddy Bill, who's about to head out to another base, had also been looking at it.  We had a couple things going for us - we're used to long days without sleep, and we were highly motivated.  There were a couple things going against us - we had done almost no scouting of the route, while fit we were sort of trying to do this thing off the couch, most people do the route later in the summer, and we couldn't start until 2pm on a Saturday because of other obligations.  But, we figured we'd give it a shot and see what happened.  Below is a map of our planned route.  Our intent was to hit Tikishla, East and West Tanaina, loop north to hit Temptation, then Koktoya, Williwaw, the Ramp, Hidden, O'Malley, cross over to tag Avalanche, then hit North and South Suicide.



 
Bill and I in the parking lot, ready to crush it.


Looking back as we head up the first ridge towards Anchorage.  Part of the allure of the Integration is that all the peaks are within 5-10 miles of town - the mountains are familiar, and it's cool to think about how big the terrain can be so close to home.


On top of I believe West Tanaina.  By this point we'd realized that the ridge walking we thought we'd encounter was more like burly, sometimes class 4 scrambling among rock chutes.  It was great to be in the mountains, though.


Looking back towards I believe Knoya Peak.  We lucked out with the weather - it was occasionally cloudy, but never rained and we had a lot of sun.


As we headed north to hit Temptation Peak we were able to walk a sheep trail along the ridge.  It was sweet - some of our only easy ridge walking the entire route.


Temptation getting closer.  We hit the peak right around sunset, and were walking northwest, into the setting sun - an awesome setting for the end of the day.


The terrain between East Tanaina and Koktoya was much gnarlier than we could have figured from the map, so we ended up having to dive down into the valley to work our way up Koktoya.  Before doing so, we took a quick 20-minute power nap.  It helped work our timing to keep us from climbing anything significantly sketchy in the dark.


Early morning on top of Koktoya.


The ridge between Koktoya and Williwaw was also pretty burly - between its difficulty and it being 5 in the morning, we were working pretty hard.  This is me climbing up one of the many rock gulleys we ended up traversing around.  Route finding was a definite challenge.


Bill on top of Williwaw.


Me looking really good on top of Williwaw.


After our experience getting up Williwaw, we decided the ridge to the Ramp was probably not the smart route and descended into a valley.  After another 20-minute power nap, we got going again.  Not knowing better, we probably went a bit too far down the valley before heading back up to O'Malley, but we hit O'Malley and Hidden.  This is looking from Hidden out towards the Ramp.



We summitted the Ramp at 5pm - 27 hours into the hike.  I had to be available for alert starting at 4am the next day, so we decided had to call it a day there.  Bill and I on top of the Ramp.


We arrived at the Glen Alps parking lot at 8 - 30 hours after we'd started.  There ended up being a lot of snow on the route, so my feet got pretty wet.  I probably hadn't seen trench foot like that since my first Denali trip with Priya.


Our actual route - some obvious deviations.  We missed out on the last three peaks, but certainly learned a lot along the way.  I'll definitely get the last three at some point, and would like to attempt all 12 of them at once again at some point.


Jess snapped this photo after, as predicted, I fell asleep while eating pizza.  I ate a ton while we were out, but by the time we got to the parking lot I was so calorie deficient that even in my apartment I was shivering uncontrollably until I shoved some food down my face.  At some point after this photo was taken, I awoke long enough to murmur, "That was really hard."  I was right.