Trying to find Gladiator Basin...

Well as this was the first weekend of personal time since being in Alaska, I decided to try and do some exploration of a known area before I venture out into areas that are unknown. AAA runs trips up Kontrashabuna and into Gladiator Basin so I got some insider information on good camping locations and where to start bushwhacking when I reached the end of the lake.

My plan was to leave mid afternoon on friday paddle a ways up the lake, camp over night, finish paddling in the morning and make my way up into the basin in the afternoon/late evening. On Sunday I would come all the way back out and back to Port Alsworth. Unlike a normal trip where you are limited by sunlight, here you do not really have to worry about it ever getting dark, as the sun "sets" around 3am, and "rises" again around 430am.

I was late leaving on friday due to finishing late packing gear for another trip and then a flight came into town with a case of beer on it for us, so I could not leave right before some beer would show up.... While this may seem weird that I waited around, everything has to be flown into PTA, so getting anything "fresh" is worth sticking around for as there is no store or anything of the sorts here.

I was paddling by 9pm and it was gorgeous. The lake was as smooth as glass and the reflections were perfectly mirrored. I camped on a tiny gravel point and went to bed around midnight- it was still quite light out.


I was up and back on the lake by 7am and paddled right to the end of the lake. The lake is 15 miles long and I probably only did 3 miles the night before, so I had a little bit still to go. I took my time and enjoyed the sights.

I reached the headwaters of the lake around 2pm and packed up my backpack and cooked some food, and was hiking by 3pm or so. I was told to stay towards the right when you get into the headwaters and then look for the confluence of the Gladiator river and the main river flowing into the lake-that's the best place to cross. Right away I saw some very large bear prints (I was just told that area is on the path for the large brown bears towards to coast to catch the incoming salmon) and quite large moose antler.



After some time of walking on gravel drainages I entered the brush, and found out why it was called bushwhacking. I spent close to an hour pushing my way through the stuff only to be deadended by a stream which I really didn't feel like trying to cross (probably chest deep); so I turned around and headed all the way back to my boat with the intention of trying to paddle around all this "stuff". This whole time I can see the basin located a few thousand feet above me with a gorgeous waterfall streaming out of it. After paddling far right and up some bradded channels- which all started to form a river- I started to have a feeling that I had gone too far up river and had missed the confluence I was looking for. The river was full of log jams, strainers, and had a fairly swift current, so I figured AAA does not bring clients up this far. So rather than turn around and continue trying to find where to start hours of bushwhacking I pulled ashore and ambled around for a little while. I saw lots of moose tracks, bear tracks of all sizes and what I thought were wolf tracks. It wasn't until a little later that I saw some more human tacks so the supposed wolf tracks might have been just dog tracks (but who knows).

Around 6pm I decide to set up my tent shelter (just the tent fly and ground sheet, no actual tent body) and am casually bringing my gear from the boat to where I am going to sleep for the night. Towards the northwest I started to notice some dark clouds forming so I casually make sure my tent is together and put everything inside of it, but I am no means worried about anything (I'm not even wearing shoes, just wandering like Muir, barefoot). As I am poking around by the boat all Hell breaks loose- and I mean that God bent me over and spanked me- the rain comes in sideways, thunder and lightning start, and the winds... well lets just say that I watched my tent take off and fly down the beach with everything in it flying out.

I finally managed to catch my tent, and throw a few items back inside, and then I stand braced against the pouring, driving rain and wind for 20+ minutes with this thing bending and in full suspension in the air while I hold it. I finally managed to get a guy-cord tied around a shrub (note: always keep guy-cords on your tent, as I do on all of mine, and know how to tie a taut line hitch which is probably the most useful quick knot to tie) and during a quick break from the deluge I got another one tied off, I could finally gather up some more of my belongings from the beach. After that maelstrom I made sure that the tent was bombproof!


After all of that fun I cooked some food and moved the boat higher up the beach because it looked like the river had risen some. I woke the next morning early to try and not spend all day paddling the 15 miles back uplake; but it was raining, so I went back to sleep, and woke up an hour later to more rain, and repeated this a few more times. Finally at around 930 or so it stopped long enough that I thought I could get all of my stuff back into the boat and get off my beach before any more rain came. I didn't have breakfast because I did not want to face cooking while being dry and then having to get into a boat in the rain; i'd rather get into a boat dry and then have it rain. The river had risen 5 or 6 inches by now and was definitely faster flowing, so I wanted to get back onto the lake as fast as possible to avoid having the river really rise on me. This could have potentially been a bad situation on many levels... Many basins drain into this river so flash flooding can and there is lots of evidence of it occurring, there were many stream hazards which I did not want to try and figure out when and where I might find them, and I had a friend's SAT phone which I had to get back to him so if something had happened and I had had to sit tight that would have put a big time crunch on things. But since I am writing this, I managed to get out just fine and as luck would have it, it started raining as soon as I hit the lake! I paddled all 15 miles in a varying headwind, and rain, but still managed to make the trip in 5 hours. I got home by 530pm and had my stuff drying shortly thereafter.

WOOHOO my first Alaska adventure!

Next time I will bring chacos because there are lots of stream crossings and random things where chacos would be nice. Also dry bags and kayaking go together... next time I will bring them. And if you were wondering, headnets are amazing things, as I have no bug bites on my head (but 19 on one hand alone).

Cheers
Thomas

Panoramas

Pig Roast

After talking about roasting a pig for around a month; I finally put an order in for one, and the process started. It took 2 days of solid work, and many random trips gathering material, to prepare the grill and the pig before we actually had it cooking. We brined the pig in an apple cider brine overnight, then made an apple cider and pear sauce to pour over the pig while it cooked. We went though just over 50 lbs of charcoal, 5 gallons of apple cider, probably more than 10 cloves of garlic, and many other tasty ingredients before being able to eat our pig. And after four and a half hours on the fire, we were able to eat it! We also had a keg of Ninkasi's Total Domination to go along with our feast.



































We had around 30 people show up for our party, and the pig tasted fantastic!!!!

Ice climbing on the Middle Sister

The first weekend back at school I lead a group of students ice climbing on the Middle Sister, near Sisters, OR. Last year we sat in our tents the entire weekend because a large storm hit us. This year we lucked out with the weather and were able to climb all day saturday.




(I am wearing a yellow jacket)







(all photos M. Strong)

Dragontail: Serpentine Ridge

The following trip report is from my partner Joe, I feel he hit all the points on the head, and i am just being a little lazy and not wanting to write up my own trip report for this climb.

We climbed the Serpentine Ridge on Dragontail in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness area just outside of Leavenworth, WA. The climb is a grade IV 5.8, and was our first alpine climb. We ran into a few difficulties on the climb and had the enjoyment of an unplanned bivy on the summit of Dragontail. All of the photos are mine, except for 3 which are Joes. Also for reference, Joe has a blue helmet and I have a white one.

The drive up to Leavenworth was fine, not much traffic through Tacoma or Seattle, but not much as far as views through most of the pass. Once in 11worth the clouds had cleared, and God is that a weird weird little place! Great brats and beer, but damn, I've never seen (nor have I wanted to)so much leiderhosen (or how ever it is spelled). A beer was drank and a brat eaten and we found ourselves back in the car and on the way to the TH. the TH was fairly empty and we made quick time getting on the trail and good time to Colchuck; about 1hr 40mins.

Views of the mountain are, as I'm sure a good number of you know, stellar. Absolutely one of the most gorgeous places I've seen. We set up camp, had some dinner and studied the topo and the mountain. Sleep was good and we definitely heard some goats outside the tent doing whatever it is those things do. We woke a wee late (on trail by 7am) but made fair time getting to the route and were scrambling up the first ramp by 8:45. God that moraine is steep.





The Serpentine Ridge is the black ridge going up through the middle of the photo. We topped out at the obvious summit point.







We roped up rather early and pitched out the upper 4th stuff before, through and after the gulley. Being rather new to alpine rock, neither Thomas nor I felt entirely comfortably simuling anything that might be a bit spicy. The climbing was easy and we decided on a little mid 5th variation just before the 5.7 OW. Good call that was, a little interesting chimney with a fun internal crack system.

The crux pitches went really well, Thomas took the lead on the hardest crux pitches; his lead head and confidence is quite a bit stronger than my own. I was happy to let him lead, while I carried the back pack and cleaned. The 4-5 pitches of 5.6-5.8 are really fun climbing, a few tenuous moves, a few exposed, but mostly really fun solid locks and jams.

Above the difficult stuff the climb gets, how do you say, interesting. The TRs I'd read had definitely mentioned the difficult route finding, and they aren't kidding. this proved to be the crux of the climb. So, being a bit in doubt of where the climb went I took the "lead" through the easier stuff and followed the two route finding rules I could remember: follow signs of people and areas free of lichen. Keeping this in mind we went up, up and away (from the route).










So turns out that the two reasons that rock might be lacking lichen are, a) people climbing and b) water flowing. Bet you can't guess which one we ended up following. Not only was I following the lichen free rock, I kept seeing relatively fresh foot prints.

In no way would I describe our ascent as fast. Was it efficient? For the methods we chose (pitch most all of the climb out) we were pretty fast, but again, despite the climbing being easy, we weren't comfortable simuling most of the terrain. Everything was going pretty well, until the sun decided to go down. God that made things fun. Then I bonked. And if we needed more encouragement we found brand spanking new rap slings, apparently the party ahead of us was off-route and bailed here. So much fun at this point it was intolerable. Then Thomas called down from the sharp end, "hey dude, it's really steep up here, I don't know where to go." ---- "SHIT! Reallly?!?! Alright dude, set an anchor and bring me up."


Starting to go around the 5.7 OW because I thought the face climbing looked more interesting than the Off Width.


The start of the 5.8 technical crux. A pitch of 5.8 fingers leading into a pitch of 5.7 hands.

(Previous two photos by Joe C.)


I get to Thomas about 20 metres later and find him standing between some flake and a super steep headwall. To the left is a slab that has a big bulge and the only climbable feature (at least for us) is a short OW. To the right is a steep (80-85) flake system...looks even harder. We initially resign ourselves to an on-route bivy; but in the end (about 45 minutes later) I lift my head and say, "fuck it, get me the gear, I'm aiding the fucker."

The crack went pretty well, a little modified French freeing and I was to easier terrain. Then the summit; bliss. I belay Thomas up and we celebrate that we will be sleeping on the summit and not in some God-aweful squeeze chimney. I dunno how much warmer the summit was, but it was nice to be able to lay down. And I know what you're asking yourself, so I'll spare you the curiosity, we took turns playing Jake Gyllenhall: things got REAL cozy in that space blanket. A few hours of uncontrollable shivering and the sun was up. God it was nice to see that sun.









The next beast we tackled was the descent. The Beckey guide just says follow class 3 ledges down to Ass-guard pass, too bad it didn't say which way the ledges were. As the left looked like it would definitely send us over the glacier we elected to go skier's right. After a few hundred feet it cliffed out and we did three raps. Solid slings at the first two and then a 2 stopper and tri-cam anchor at a hanging belay about 30m off the ground. Quick descent from there littered with encounters with hikers asking if we were the headlamps on the mountain last night. Honestly, I can't see myself going up Aasguard for fun anytime soon. We got back to camp and made the best meal I've had in a good long while: TunaMac. So good after no food for a good long while.

All in all, the climbing was fun, the scrambling sucked and I am now a lot more confident in my alpine skills. I don't feel we made bad decisions, our lack of speed was largely due to lack of practical experience. Perhaps we should have selected an easier route, but I'm stoked to have this one under my belt and have put a lot of this year's goals into perspective.

Iowa back to Eugene Via the Badlands, Devil's Tower, and Glacier National Park

After spending the first month in Iowa watching far too much TV and annoying my sister I finally managed to land a job with a landscaping company. The job was quite fun, and while I worked 50 to 55 hours per week, the days alternated from very boring labor (read watering and deadheading flowers), to 11 hour days of hard manual labor. But like I said, I enjoyed it and it kept me outside for a good chunk of the summer.
When I drove to Iowa at the start of summer vacation, I drove by a few places that I knew I would want to go back to and actually spend some time looking around, so I made sure to leave myself around a week and a half to do the 2,400 mile drive back to Eugene. The three items on my tick-list to see were The Badlands in South Dakota, Devils Tower in Wyoming, and Glacier National Park in Montana. I had planned to meet up with somebody at Devil's Tower to climb with, and then do a climbing road-trip back to OR, but at literally the last minute he called and had to bail back to OR because of family problems; but he said that I could climb with his original climbing partner, so the trip was still on... sort of.




(Please note that all photos can be enlarged by clicking on them)

I split the drive into two days from Iowa city to Devils Tower (842 miles), and arrived on Monday night to a very warm welcome. South Dakota is my least favorite state to drive through, not because it is over 500 miles from East to West, but because of the enormous amount of billboards on the side of the road. It got very tiring to constantly see billboards telling you were only 250 miles away from their attraction. On my way through SD I stopped off to see the Badlands National park, which is a stunning place. The park was created from hundreds of thousands of years of water erosion over the desert like landscape. The following photos are of the badlands, AND of the Helicopter that I rode in for a tour over the Badlands (See previous post for a film from the helicopter).











I also saw the Minutemen National Attraction, which is where during the Cold War Minutemen missiles were housed (all throughout South and North Dakota incase of a nuclear strike from Russia). All of these missiles were launch ready, during the war, and could be fired in 5 minutes time once authorization had occurred. Then it would only take 30 minutes for the missiles to reach their targets in Russia.
After the Badlands I drove to Devil's Tower which is in the North East corner of Wyoming and spent two full days there rock climbing on the tower itself. I met up and climbed with two very nice and interesting guys. The following are pictures of the tower and the climbing on the tower.













The rock climbing at Devil's Tower is amazing, I won't get into details about the climbing specifically, but it is a beautiful place, and if it were not well over 1,000 miles away from me I would be going back very soon!!

After Devil's Tower I drove straight to Glacier National Park (510 miles). I had a quick stop off at Custer's Last Stand National Park again. It was mainly a food and gas stop. In the middle of Wyoming and Montana there are a limited number of gas stations, so you have to predict when you will be hungry.



The following photos are from the drive from Devil's Tower to Glacier National Park. It was a very pretty drive cutting through almost all of Montana.











This is the sun setting behind Glacier National Park:


The views in the morning were OUTSTANDING!!!

By the time I got my food that I needed for a few days of backpacking, the Park was technically closed, and while they have an after hours fee station for just the situations that I was in; I did not notice it because I had just driven 500 odd miles and did not bother looking around too much. So I just drove back up the road a little way and found a place to pull off. I figured this was probably illegal so i set my alarms for 6am. The ranger station opened at 7am, so a 6 am wake-up call was fine.
Well, I got a rude awakening, because I stayed in my tent 5 minutes too long, and a ranger came by and pestered the hell out of me for being in a non-camping zone. But it all got sorted out, and I was at the rangers station by 7am to get my camping permits. With the Rangers help I decided on doing a 35 mile hike from Two Medicine Lake to St. Mary's Lake, and then take a bus back to Two Medicine. This hike was going to include two nights of camping, which would give me the first day to hike 16 miles, 10 miles on the second day, and 8 miles on the morning of the third day to catch the bus in time to get back to my car.



Two Medicine Lake is located in the lower righthand side of the map. The trail I took went through Dawson Pass, Cut Bank Pass, Morning Star Lake, Triple Divide Pass, Red Eagle Lake and finished at the Saint Mary Visitor Center.

The hike was easily the most gorgeous hike I have ever done. You started at the mouth of a valley and hiked out to a mountain pass, then down into another valley, and out of it to another mountain pass. This occurred many times, and around every single corner was something new and beautiful to see. Glacier National Park is known for its Black and Grizzly Bears, and while I was aware of where bears might be I did not yell or clap for 35 miles worth of solo hiking. I actually never saw a bear. I did see a mother moose with two calves, a bugling elk, some snakes, and around 20 mountain goats. One of the highlights for me was getting to Triple Divide Pass, which is where Triple Divide Peak is located. This mountain separates the three watersheds of North America: The Pacific, The Atlantic, and The Arctic. The following photos are from my entire hike in the park.



















While on the hike I met up with somebody who offered me a ride back to my car if I hiked out a night early. As I was going to be really pushing it to make it back to Eugene by the evening of the 13th I decided to take him up on the early hike out and ride back to my car. This made for a long second day, 18 miles! So instead of doing 35 miles over 3 days, I did it over 2 days. I was glad to get back to my car a night earlier because it gave me a full day to do the drive back to OR, instead of trying to to it over the night and arriving in the early AM on the 14th.

























Well as you can tell from the photos I had amazing weather, which lead to an amazing hike! For a number of years I have wanted to go see Glacier National Park, and it was everything I thought it would be and more! The following set of photos is from my drive along the Going To The Sun Road which constantly is ranked as one of North America's most beautiful drives.

















I managed to start driving on The Going To The Sun Road around 8am, and I drove it East to West, so I had the sun at my back the entire way. Also since I was on the road early enough I did not have to deal with traffic. By the time I left the park around 930am there was an enormous line to get into the park on the West side. Once leaving the park, I only had to drive 540 more miles until I was home again in Eugene!!! This drive through eastern Washington and Oregon was a very hot drive as my car does not have working air conditioning. It averaged 109 degrees inside for around 3 hours!!






Eastern WA


Driving into the setting sun over the Columbia River Gorge.


I arrived in Eugene around 1030pm after 2,400 miles worth of driving, and seeing many beautiful sights.