Peak 10,460 - West Face
"Hudson Peak" was our first climb of the trip. Being just behind camp, it was an obvious choice. At first we were thinking about getting started slowly, maybe climbing the easy right hand skyline. However, our climbing tendancies conqured over our evil-snow-slog-demons, and we descided to attempt the West face directly.
Marcus readying himself, with Hudson's route going through the ice circle
on the longest section of face.
We left camp at 3 a.m., thinking that this would be early enough for for the snow to remain hard. Afterall, we didn't think the face was much more than 1,000 feet high... Welcome to Alaska boys!
Approaching the face, 3 a.m.
We got to the face and began climbing at 4 a.m. I lead up with a ton of ice screws and 4 or 5 pickets. It seemed like a lot of gear, but we wanted to have enough. I climbed up a short steep snow slope (below) which lead directly to a bad routefinding choice. This was the idea of crossing through a small icefall's top crevasses via some big looking bridges. No problem in the Cascades at this hour...
Starting up the lower face. Just before some nasty crevasse crossings.
Photo: Phil Fortier
The crevasses were big and nasty. I took a side look at the bridges, and they weren't terribly thick. As I crawled on all fours across them, the slush began to give way and I sank a little more with each knee-step. Luckily I got across them without falling through, but Marcus wasn't as lucky. He plunged through a iso-therma hidden bridge, but luckily not far enough that he couldn't amble back out. With that past our rope team, I headed up the steepening slope towards the ice. The paranoia began to set in, and I felt that things might be different here. After one more nasty bridge to swim over, we were established on the ice about mid face.
Marcus following up to the belay atop the steepest ice section.
The ice started out at a moderate pitch, only 40-45 degrees. It was none-the-less exaushing work, climbing with two tools, for it had been a while since our trip warm up climb. Two pitches of running belay dropped away, and I was at the base of a short 20 steep section.
Marcus gets closer!
Seeing as things were pretty mellow so far, I took the strait up route on the headwall, and climbed the nice 60 degree ice. Having very little lead gear left (we were 1,000 feet up already), I set a belay off an ice screw and brought Marcus us. We then waited for the Phil/Greg rope to lead up behind us, and hand over the retrieved gear.
Phil leads up on the left in ice screws. The ice was probably 60 degrees
for a short headwall.
Marcus lead off onto the long snow slope above the ice, which began at about 40 degrees.
Marcus leads off onto the large snow slope above the ice.
Keeping things safe in our exposed position, we opted to continue the running belay with pickets until the slope angle decreased about 500 feet higher.
Greg waits for his turn... somewhat paitiently :)
Greg with Flight Path peak in the backround.
Dave higher on the face. Photo: Phil Fortier
As we got higher on the route, the sun poked up above the ridge top. We could feel that we were close to the summit now, and the pace slowed as Marcus lost a little steam. Aparently, he said there are no mountain like this out in Ithica, NY!
Marcus nearing the summit, and his crevasse fall on the ridge.
We eventually made the summit ridge, and began traverrsing to the highest point. Being cautious, we climbed far away from the corniced ridge crest. None the less, Marcus popped through into what I thought had to be the cornice. I instinctively ran down hill, so as better to arrest his fall. He tried not to move at first, thinking that would keep him from falling. Once he fell a little farther in, the get-me-the-hell-out-of-here instict took over, and he crawled out. Turned out that he had fallen into a crevasse, running down hill, on a flat ridge top. Wierd! I probed along as I went, jumping over one crevasse. Greg followed, and fell into this crevasse. Same story there, and soon we were all on top!
Marcus, Greg, and Phil on our first Alaskan summit!
Dave on the summit.
With the rising temperatures, and the late time (roughly 8:40) we kept our stay on the summit short. We descended the snow slog South ridge, which was easy and started with solid snow. Soon however, Marcus began to break through the crust into limitless sugar snow beneath. Not long after, we were all dropping in, aggrivating us throughly. Eventually we moved to the scree slopes down low, which turned out to be amazingly solid under foot.
The descent was good, while the crust lasted. Then it became painful.
At the base of the descent, the snow was awful, and we post holed across the schrund at the pass. For some reason, though, the flat glaciers remain relatively solid, all day long. Thus the long hike back to camp (1.4 miles) wasn't as bad as we expected. The peak's name, Hudson Peak, came from my late mentor, Tom Hudson.
Dave on a subsequent ski descent of a gully on the south side. Photo:
Phil Fortier
We spotted a continous, non-glaciated couloir on the south flank of Husdon, so a couple day later we came back to ski it. After slogging back up the South Ridge, we popped over into the couloir and began skiing down. It was pretty rough going. Flat light, little "tufts" of snow that bog you down in deep snow, and the super hard conditions all added to our poor quality skiing. However, the lower we got, the warmer and smoother the snow became. This was good, because the couloir steepened to 35-40 degrees. Turns were fast and enjoyable for all, finally.