Four Peaks Showcase

Cloud dapples West Face of Pen Tri Cwm (Pk. 3600+), the first of our four showcase peaks in this post. The orogeny of the Kigs can be read in the clash between the layers: meta-sedimentary paragneiss on top catching a ride on a cudgel of meta-igneous orthogneiss busting up from underneath through a brown lith of schist. The Anchorage guys of '96 climbed and named Pen Tri Cwm (from Welsh, "Facing Three Valleys") and piled a big cairn on top. Allapa and Phil Hofstetter climbed it around '03 on a drunken Autumn weekend in which we forgot our coats and slept in the open with one side accumulating snow. This soaring chunk of choss dominates the Sinuk drainage.  

Blog-lag:  2.3 years  (new Kigsblog maximum)

       The testosterone dropped. The fire in the belly cooled. Too many chicken-outs accrued. My climbing license got revoked in Kigs-court. It was the beginning of my Great Decline, the one Bachar tried to climb his way through. But my throbber of life realization had not fully loaded as of the summer of 2020, the time of the trip in this post. 

        The GLUE OF TOWN thickened. Bearanoia held me fast. The Kigs lay far away. My dog had gotten mauled by mosquitoes. I dreaded being out there in the veldt, alone, with that Timothy Treadwell feeling. The current wave of skiers and climbers here in Nome at the time of this writing had not yet arrived in Nome. I called up Rick.

        "Vertigo," he admitted. "I don't want to go on the steep stuff. But I'd be happy to go for a hike."

    Little did I understand, it was the same vertigo that was even then twining its fibers through my own nervous system. I decided to violate the Prime Directive. I agreed to a mere hiking trip. I would allow myself to be reduced to backpacker level, a Colin Fletcher charlatan. But just to hedge my shame, I hid crampons, helmets, Cobras, TC Pros, and chalk-bags in my backpack. fancying I could creep away and solo a major new route of the Kigs like some kind of choss Henry Barber.  

"Johnson suppressed a giggle each time he passed the fallen steam-shovel. Leaving it up on the High Line in the Fall had been McPherson's idea. Truth was, they had all been drunk. Things were falling apart late in the season. They had left things where they lay to get to the last train. Johnson's last look at the steam shovel showed it standing tall in direct alignment with a major gully on the hillside above. Es wird night schafft thought Johnson, but kept it to himself. The shovel looked so pathetic now, like a sad, swatted insect, sad and pathetic, like the whole Wild Goose Pipeline operation." 

            My metabolism had slowed without my knowing it. I kept on eating prodigiously. I wondered why I was so weak at the boulders. I no longer seemed able to crank 5.10. "Write it off to age," I guessed. Later, weighing sacks for another trip, I stepped on the scale. I wasn't weak. I was fat! My father warned me this precise boiling of the frog would happen. But I hadn't fully figured out the riddle as I embarked with Rick, and two more friends, on that expedition in the summer of 2020.

Hang a left up the West Fork of Grand Central and this peak, Peak 3050+, draws the eye. "Siutik" (A Pair of Ears) has a nice Distant Time vibe, though I've had difficulty hearing the name being whispered by this one. The deep cleft between the ears forms a prominent snaking couloir that Mikey Lean and I boot-packed, and down-boot-packed, in the early two-thousands. The last two pitches to the summit felt exposed after the deep confines of the couloir. Who will be the first to ski the Z-Couloir? 

The Z-Couloir on Siutik

        I found myself matched against three gazelles. Rick had hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in a faster time than Eric Ryback himself. Connor is an unsung legend who runs miles on the lonely Kougarak Road all seasons. Maisie was competing in cross-country at Whitman.

        I pulled both hamstring muscles badly in the first thirty feet of walking. My pack was festooned with superfluous climbing gear. The muck underfoot was thick in Grand Central. No overarching climbing goal loomed like a beacon. 

North Ridge of Pen Tri Cwm, looking west from West Fork Grand Central. The pass between Grand Central and Windy is all the way to the right in this photo. We detected elevated levels of PHI energy at the pass, indicating it is most likely a long-used travel corridor.

     Not many passes cross the eighty mile spine of the Kigluait Mountains. The north side of the range tends to be a hideous drop-off. Mosquito Pass is the only pass with a name on the map. The Class 2 pass connecting Windy Creek to the West Fork of Grand Central counts as one of the major passes of the Kigs. Peaks have whispered their names to me before, but no passes have ever done so. Can the lost Iñupiaq name of a natural feature be derived from clues in the landscape? 

    Once before, in residence at the Crater Lake Institute, I had skied over the Windy/Grand Central pass. To  I looked forward to hiking it in summer. But already, my legs were shot. I couldn't keep up with the others. I was old and overweight. If I had been solo, I would have declared Day 2 a rest day. But I was harnessed to a group of Thru-Hikers, two of whom were older than I!

  

"Falcon Killer" is our third showcase peak. Its allure only holds when viewed from the north from upper Windy, as in this photo. From the other side it presents as merely a series of tors on a ridge. There's no hint of this fearsome precipice lurking on the north. I soloed each of these tors one marvelous summer day. The high point was a fifty-foot 5.6 solo. At the crux, a Peregrine Falcon tried to murder me. (story here) I don't like it when people name mountains after their personal experiences. Still, I took to calling it "Falcon Murderer Peak. " Kigs-law required me to translate the name to Iñupiaq, which results in Kirgavik Inuaqti. All these syllables have proved unwieldy. Perhaps shortening it to Kirgavik— "Falcon"— would be appropriate. On several occasions with various partners I have visited the lower buttresses and done some one-pitch routes on rock that varied from "decent granite" to "death choss." The bird-shaped white scar in the middle of the face is one godawful scar. Only choss lovers need apply.

     If there is to be a PCT of the Kigs, then upper Windy Creek should be part of it. Ancient lateral moraines offer wide parkways good for walking. An ancient rock-slide crossing the whole valley is re-vegetated into a bouldering paradise. The "Two Hundred Year Old Rockfall" is the primo spot to be in these mountains. 

     On Day 2, Connor and Maisie came about into the GLUE and ran for town. Rick and I continued in the direction of Mosquito Pass. We were going to traverse the whole range into Glacial Lake and hike out to the Teller Road.

    "I can't do it," I regretted to inform Rick. "My legs are shot." 

    Or was I trying to hot-henry Rick? So we would stop hiking, and I could do some climbing? Sadly, no— my legs were actually shot. A rest day at Mosquito Pass Wall was in order. We hiked a few hundred feet up some moraines from Mosquito Pass and made camp by a tarn in the caldera.

Our fourth showcase peak is Peak 2911. There must be a name floating out there, but I have not yet encountered it. I refer to it simply as "Mosquito Pass Wall." The red arrow shows the "Hidden Couloir" climbed by Collins and me on a day so frigid that I still thank the snow-machine gods for allowing our machines to start when the climb was done. Probably the Graphite Road will go right by this scarp. There will be a tourist pull-out complete with port-a-potty where we will be able to get out and view the mountain. A climbing guidebook will list many routes visible in this picture. Dark, shadowy, and foreboding, even on a sunny day, this cirque has a gothic feel that will make people want to get back in their car and drive on. 

This is the "Apron" of Mosquito Pass Wall. The East Ridge there is a fine Class 2 jaunt to the summit of Peak 2911.

    It's not actually a caldera. It's just a very round glacial cirque. The Mosquito Pass Wall gets photographed often enough that it has become the iconic scarp of the Kigs. Rick and I spent a nice day there exploring. 

    Years ago, on a fantabulously cold day in mid-Winter, Collins and I did a nice Scottish couloir hidden in the bowels of this wall. The couloir was about ten feet wide and ten feet deep. I placed a little pro on the sides as we simul-climbed, stemming on the sides and kicking steps in the hard-packed snow. Suddenly, I realized this couloir was not ten feet deep. It was probably over a hundred feet deep. It was a "chasm," a common feature in the Kigs, a deep slot traveling into the mountain. completely plugged with snow. We were suspended by snow over a giant crack. I wanted to investigate this theory on the 2020 trip, but I was too lazy to scramble back up there. 

The map for this post shows our four showcase peaks, plus the hiking route done by Rick and Allapa over four days in the Summer of '22. It is officially a source of shame that none of these peaks were directly grappled with. These mountains were merely observed from the valley floor. I was in violation of the Prime Directive, Thou Shalt Climb. Only through controversial legislation in Kigs-court was I even allowed to make this post. It is worth noting that Sinuk to Grand Central and Buffalo to Grand Central are a no-go for a backpacker or snow-machiner. 

"The Flame," one of the choicer selections
at the Two Hundred Year Old Rockfall.

Author, looking up Windy Creek, with Pen Tri Cwm in background

Winter Palimpsest

Welcome to the third and final post to employ "seasonal compositing," a chronology-folding algorithm used to resolve the substantial accumulations of BLOG LAG built up within the seasonal cycle of Kigsblog over several years. Like stars in a constellation, the images in this post may appear adjacent though situated at differing distances from the observer. Here are links to the inner transects: 

                             Fall Bouldering Interferometer

         Early Winter Superposition  

Outer Nick Band

 From the huge snow year of 2018, this flotsam dates back to the great days of the Nick Treinen era.

VIDEO: Wait for it... the awesome "Western Cwm" of Mt. Osborn (Ooquienuhk). 

VIDEO: Nick is skiing straight down V-boulder problems on King Mountain buried by the great snows of 2018.

Nice ski tour along the ridge north of King Mountain.

My driveway 2018

Mr. Nick

Near Pane of Freezing Rain

        Winter of 2022, Nome received the best shellacking I have seen in 22 years of living here. We emerged Christmas morning to discover that Whoville had been zambonied while we slept. Everything, the horizontal surfaces as well as the vertical, had been shrink-wrapped with a 2 to 3 centimeter veneer of prime verglas ice. The whole world had been transformed into one big ice climb. These life-as-ice-climb conditions lasted well into March and the whole town had to wear spikes. I spent many hours hanging out at the "Mud Mounds," the tailings piles at the base of Anvil Mountain that are worked and sculptured by giant machines in the summer months, and form an excellent ice climbing playground in the Fall and Winter that you can drive right into and use your car as a warming hut. In a year with the right conditions and the right diggings, the dirt cliffs make a good ice climbing surrogate where you can practice technique. But in a year that gets a good shellacking, like this previous winter, you could hardly design a better ice park. Good times with friends in the dim light of Winter.

Ben and Calvin are having fun up on King Mountain after the Great Freezing Rain Event of '21/'22

Ben on the Limestone Band at Anvil Mountain.
The finest shellac ever!

Ben down in the Anvil Mud Mounds on the 
"Crook Wall." This sliver of frozen mud glazed 
with ice became the go-to practice area for aspiring
mud climbers.

s

VIDEO: Ben remains poised at top-out on Crook Wall. Mud Climbing is brutish. You swing your blunted tools hard as you can trying for penetration. But the introduction of the shellac made mud a more delicate game requiring sharpened tools and precise swings.

THE TALE OF THE TRANSIENT GORGE:  Neither my dog, Lucy

, nor the Miocene Canyon behind her were fated to live many days past this picture, taken in late Fall before the Christmas Ice. A tribute to Lucy, all-time Kigs-dog, we will save for some other caption. This one holds the crazy tale of the Miocene Mud Gorge that existed at the base of Anvil Mountain for a few days in October of 2021. The miners really wanted to dig up this hillside, even though it delves disturbingly close to the town's drinking water aquifer, and the city of course said yes. I walked up on Anvil in the Fall looking for some frozen mud to climb and found this freshly-dug gorge, still steaming with newly-exposed metamorphic rock and silt from the bowels of the earth. The walls were forty feet high in some places— a mud climbing treasure vault! Only problem was, the temperature was too warm that day. The bottom of this crumbling, sloughing, hideous gorge was no place to be. I longed to sink first tool and grapple with the ancient mud, and vowed to return with rope and rebar as soon as the temperature dipped, but a trip to California intervened. When finally I returned a week later, something felt off. The gorge had disappeared!  Filled in. I guess there must not have been any gold down there.

This alluring twenty foot piece of choss saw the light of the late Holocene for a few days before the same agents of the Anthropocene that had uncovered it with their gigantic machines returned to thrust it back into darkness. The choss waits underground. No animating force of mud climbers will ever visit it again.    

Mmm, fresh choss right out of the earth.. It's not even rock, not really, but for those few climbers
with a taste for the the Mud, this looks tasty. A steady dribble of
stone and mud fell from these walls the evening I was there and I dared not linger under them.

We take what's dead

And breathe life in

And move like knives

Through scars on land

Still untouched

No stain of hands

Caramelized

In a tilted light

No chain stays unbroken

All aims get forgotten

The weight of lead

On floors of sand

The idea reduced again

To outcome

No chain stays unbroken

All aims get forgotten 

 

                                        

                                                         The Kings of Convenience

Ring of Ayasayuk

And here in the layers of the palimpsest, we detect another ring of Ayasayuk, carbon dated to November, 2021. The quarry face, and the path of the flow, remained largely unchanged from the  year before  or the year before that.  Vince and I managed to make a complete ascent of the Diretissima this year, defined as a complete climb of the quarry face up the middle of it in some way from bottom to top, although the Fourth Tier was missing from our climb this year due to inadequate coverage. We sure wanted to get back out to the Cape after the freezing rain event to see how our climb was affected, but the ice itself made the snow-machining conditions weird, not to mention, the ice glued our snow-machines and everything else to the ground.

Looking up the Third Tier ice. This pitch weighs in at a formidable WI I. I was happy to sew it up because my climber mind has become rotted with paranoia and superfluous fear.

Looking down the Third Tier

Vince clawing at odd smear on Fourth Tier, the only ice to
present up there this year. In other rings of Ayasayuk,
the presentation on Fourth Tier ice has been spectacular.

 Fourth Tier Ayasayuk Quarry, November 2021. That actually represents a rather healthy crop of ice for a ring. 

New Friends Overlay

A poignant fact of living in Nome is: friends come, and friends go. The graph showing "Number of Climbing / Skiing Partners Available Per Year" shows a few spikes over the years— I've actually given names to these times when I had someone to climb with, the Mikey Era, the Joni Era, the Drew, the David, the Nick— but in between the spikes lay long, multi-year intervals of partnerless, lonely, solo endeavors. I am happy to say the last couple of years have brought  the biggest spike ever, an unprecedented influx of motivated skiers and climbers, cool people, with updated technology and skills, ready to do what it takes to get out there in the hills around Nome four seasons, and willing to investigate some of the more arcane sub-routines of Nome mountaineering such as mud climbing, dry tooling, snow-machine mountaineering, plus mandatory endless boilerplate. The next generation is here. I am so grateful for these new friends. The fat padder, the cowboy, the all-arounder from up the Steese, the home town kid— some have already cycled through and fled the odd, hot little town of Nome, while others remain. One more look at that graph will reveal that I, allapa, have lived through so many  Friends/No friends cycles that I am becometh the old dodger. I am doubly grateful to new friends for putting up with my wheezes, dithering, and Alaska Rang PTSD. I simply must purchase new skis with AT rig and tech bindings. Three-pin has gone to the dinosaurs.

The first of the "digging of the pit" series, this one in Buffalo Creek in January 2021 on a cold, beautiful day with good powder.

At center is Pk. 2162, the highest hill in the Eldorado / Flambeau drainages east of the Kougarak Road. In November of 2020, Keane organized a school-night  mass assault on this hill and led us on a fine ride through hill and trough country to reach this hill, Eldorado, my first time up this high point. Clouds, white-out, and darkness intervened between us and home. Our moving string of lights at time doubled back upon itself or went in circles, but all made it to school on time the next morning. 

Map of Pk. 2162. Perhaps it warrants inclusion on the"Foothills of the Kigluait" list.
Foothills of the Kigluait,  Also, this excellent foothill.

 Pk. 2162 dig

Buffalo Creek

Nugget Pass, looking north past Salmon Lake

Allapa and Sean in the big bowl halfway up the east side of Ooquienuhk (Mt. Osborn), April 2019.
I am grumpy because my brand new snow-machine sits befuddled and paralyzed down in the middle of Grand Central Valley. Everybody else got multiple runs— for instance, Sean and Keith skied a chute up above Sean there— but I only got this one run because I had to go down and continue to beat my dead horse. 

Close-up East Face of Ooquienuhk, April 2021. Friends ascended and skied slopes to left. I deviated from the skiers and climbed straight up to the Southeast Rib, but overheated in bog snow. A nap descended from the heavens and overwhelmed me at the spot from which this was taken. Phil Hofstetter and I did a route up the middle of the east face in 2004 that had a couple of pitches of water ice. 

The Sluicebox Couloir in the Northwest Cirque of Ooquienuhk, April 2021.

May 2022, Peak 2610 at Copper Creek

Newton Peak after the storm

Allapa at Nugget, Tigaraha in background

The Bluff at Mt. Distin, Snake River Valley, April 2021

Ben, Distin Bluff, snow pit

Distin Bluff detail. Eighty foot cliff.

Another trip to Glacial Lake thwarted by extreme cold, February 2021.
We dared not shut down our machines. This is looking across
to Peak Bering Air and Glacial Lake from the benches between
Stewart River and Sinuk River. Another layer of frostbite.

Mt. Brynteson and the Brynteson Ribs, March 2022.  Vince and I did an easy
three-pitch route on one of the ribs. 

Greg Stoddard Belt

Greg Stoddard represents the arch Telly Fiend, the patron saint of debaucherous ski trips. Every spring there is a pilgrimage, once the Teller Road has opened but the snow remains on the hillside in many white stripes, to the Grand Singtook, Peak 3870, to ski the Solar Sidewalk which is usually in prime condition by that time. Participants read like a who's who of Nome alpinism, a veritable Burning Man of Seward Peninsula alpinism. I went in 2021, but didn't get invited 2022, so I'm missing some orbits in the Greg Stoddard Belt. I've let my skills slip, and my ski gear is from the Stone Age. I just didn't have the ratings.   

Vince slogging in stiff wind up middle part of ridge on Singtook, May 2021. The snow was too parsimonious that year to invite skiing on the upper part of the mountain, but the lower mountain softened up by afternoon. 

Allapa on top of the Singtook once again, May 2021.
Have climbed this thing 25 times, maybe? Not counting the bails.

Lucy at twilight

Central Water Company Ridge

Pk. 2800+ and Central Water Company Ridge

BLOG LAG: 14 months

       After a long first ascent drought, I finally got up something.  With Keane Richards, in June of 2019, we did a sweet little mixed climb  in Grand Central Valley.  "Central Water Company Ridge" follows the sun-shadow line in the picture above for 1300 ft. of moderate snow and rock, to the summit of Pk.2800+ located at the southern end of Crater Lake.

Keane Richards on Company Ridge

       There's something about the camping place at the north side of Crater Lake. Morphogenetic resonance from the tent city that existed there 115 years ago makes it the de facto campsite of Grand Central Valley.   People looking for a camp in Grand Central tend to seek out Crater Lake. The 115 year old carriage road which can still be found leading up Grand Central goes straight to Crater Lake, a base of operations in the old days for the Wild Goose Pipeline that boomed, and fizzled, over a century ago in this valley. Not only can ghostly voices of long-departed Teamsters and miners be heard on the wind, but nice planks of old-growth redwood lie strewn about in abundance, and Kitchen Rock provides a windbreak as well as worthy bouldering lines.

Keane is visible belaying from the gendarme. In the background is Ooquienuh (Mt. Osborn, Pk. 4714).

        Spring of 2019: early days of the pandemic. Not much tolerance for the risk yet in those days. I lay awake at  night preparing for slow death by oxygen starvation. The only safe place to be, it seemed, was outside in the ultraviolet. 

       A Spring crust had been on for weeks. By early June, a thin crust remained, enough for dogs and sleds. In their first Spring in the Kigs since moving to Nome from Tok the previous Fall, Keane and Sarah Richards, plus intrepid younglings Rosalie and Amelia, plus Sarah's electron cloud of dogs hitched up into a couple of teams, plus myself, trailored our whole kit and caboodle up the Kougarak Road on the weekend and mushed up Grand Central to an awesome family camp in fine weather, highs in the thirties by day, lows in the twenties at night.  

Company Ridge marked in yellow

        The first night, we figured 5 am was adequate wake-up call. By 8:30 am, after we reached the middle part of the climb, the rocks began to whizz down like a sniper warming up over morning coffee.

        "We shoulda left at midnight," I deprecated.

        "OK, let's come back at midnight," Keane said commonsensically.

Sarah and Amelia about to give the signal to mush. Keane, Rosalie, and I rode the iron dogs.

      We swarmed all over Grand Central for a Saturday. Even if you do leave a trace, such as a snow-machine track, such a trace ceases to exist in the snow after a short time. Keane and I left at midnight on schedule. Rock solid was the snow, with a breeze at ten.

Keane, Rosalie, and Amelia bouldering in the nice warm thirty-degree temps at Crater Lake Camp.

       The climb was easy enough to simul-climb the whole way, but steep enough to justify the rope. Mostly we put in pickets, (long dastardly aluminum stakes,) which went into the snow easily, yet felt totally bomber. A few pitches of 45° snow led to the crest of the ridge, where an abyss dropped from our feet off the northwest side. Kicking steps in snow, we climbed past some steepish rocky kigs, banging in an occasional piton or picket. The wind picked up as we neared the top. A crafty tunnel led through a rock buttress, followed by a steep pitch with some good whacks of the ice tools into exposed tundra. The last move was an easy mantel onto a little pointed summit.  

"Not only can ghostly voices of long-departed Teamsters and miners be heard on the wind, but nice planks of old-growth redwood lie strewn about in abundance, and Kitchen Rock provides a windbreak as well as worthy bouldering lines."

       Somebody climbed the Company Ridge before us. There were bear tracks all over the climb. What I've seen all over the Kigs is that these critters definitely like to play games on snow structures in the early Spring, sliding, jumping, and climbing. Awakening from winter sleep, they step on to the front porch of their lairs, which are located high on the hillsides in skiing and climbing territory, and they mess around on the snow slopes in the nice warm sun before going back in their cave to hit the snooze button just one more time.

        Keane and I were forced to search a bit for a viable way down to Crater Lake. We finally started down a gully, but it was a trifle steep, so like some kind of gumby I called for the rope. We would down-simulclimb on pickets.

          I went down first, kicking front points in to the steep snow, and stabbing my picks in piolet canard position. The ground was steep enough. If you fell, you'd go whizzing down for quite a ways at a reasonable velocity I looked over to my left and saw tracks, 5 pinpoints in the ice. I could practically see the bear front pointing down next to me, claws forward, my mirror image, with my exact same simian climbing posture on the steep hard snow.

Looking southeast from the summit of Pk. 2800+ across Thompson Creek at Pk. 3207, the true high point of False Tigaraha, the peak mistakenly marked as Tigaraha on the map. To surmount that little summit kig there on 3207 requires one rather fearsomely exposed fifth class move. In the background, Pen Tri Cwm can be seen.

     Today, road penetration threatens the Kigluaik Mountains. What if, someday soon, Grand Central is repopulated back to the demographic it showed at the turn of the 20th Century during Wild Goose Pipeline days? A consummation devoutly to be unwished, in my estimation. But if it were so, I have no doubt that Crater Lake would be the locus of the alpine climbing scene. A nice little cirque of miniature peaks surrounds the lake. This mountain wall would lend itself well to endless scrutiny, and feats of derring do, by the legions of climbers, skiers, and boarders who would congregate there at the end of the day, and its features and chutes and walls would become animated with the legends that would accrue. We'll build a hut out of the redwood planks. The bears will probably be driven out by the arrogant humans.

       If this comes to pass, let the Central Water Company Ridge be entered as the first excrescence, a line drawn on a mountain. I predict it becomes an alpine classic, for its moderate nature, and ease of access from Tent City at Crater Lake.

Pk. 3050+, around the corner from Crater Lake in the West Fork of Grand Central, showing the number one most desirable first descent remaining to be skied in the Kigs:  the "Z-Couloir," which is visible snaking down between the two ears.