Juneau Icefield Traverse May 2024
Logistics were falling into place like fingers into a wet glove - nicely as long as you push past a few snags. The border guards hadn’t seemed to notice or care that there were three of us in a van with two seatbelts, or that we were packing a plethora of foreign fruits, vegetables and meats en route to Skagway from Whitehorse. The ferry terminal had free long term parking, the Skagway library had free unlimited wifi, the two blokes we met on the ferry offered up free beta for our trip, and the helicopter pilot in Juneau had an endless stream of free pessimism. The weather looked, as Joe would say, “grim”. Unfortunately for us, grim is not the forecast that makes you say “woohoo! let's hop in a helicopter and fly onto a big white icefield where the distinction between sky and ground is challenging even when the sun is shining”.
May 10th: Friday Fly Day
So it was just the three of us, sitting in the Juneau rain, still trying to emotionally prepare to front the bill of a helicopter drop that we were only able to half fill. Our preparation, fortunately, was all in vain. We got a last minute call from the beta boys we’d met on the ferry to Juneau, who asked to fill our last two seats for an impromptu basecamp trip to The Snow Towers. Hard to say no to that. We loaded up the heli with 5, and enough gear to max out the weight capacity. Our Northstar pilot dropped us up the east branch of the Mendenhall by Spencer Peak in good time which left each of us paying just shy of $160USD for the whole ordeal, not too shabby.
And then it was white, and quiet, and relieving - in that the stressful logistics were finally over and in more of a literal sense as each of us turned away from the gear pile to have a piss. We sat around for a while in no particular rush, clinking carabiners, rummaging through bags, and playing with the crazy carpet pulks we’d brought to pull gear with until I eventually caved to the game of stall chicken with a hesitant “uuhhh… I guess let's start walking?”.
May 12th-14th: 50 Shades of White
Whiteout does strange things to the mind. As a dense cloud layer settled onto us it obscured not only our vision, but our sense of time, reality and, to great comedic effect, our direction. Within 20 minutes of leaving camp, we were walking in circles.
“Joe, you're going the wrong way.”
“What do you mean? I just checked my bearing.”
“That's the way we just came from, we gotta head into the white over here.”
“I am going towards the white!”
“Not that white, this white!”
“That white will take us straight into a mountain.”
“And your white will lead us back to Juneau.”
“Are you sure?”
“Check your map.”
“Nowhere on my map does it say which white is the right white!”
I took the lead, carrying our sole compass and stumbling through each milky step as I tried to find perspective in a horizonless void. Each time I took my eyes off my skis I’d lose balance. I obsessively turned around to make sure the other boys were still there, becoming increasingly paranoid I would turn to find nothing but my own track.
“Hey stop!” I called out to Joe, who had once again taken the lead with the compass.
“What?!” he shouted back through the fierce wind.
“There's a crack in front of you.”
“No there isn’t.”
“We should rope up.”
“Why?”
“Because there's a crack in front of you.” The wind beat against our jackets, spitting ice shards into our faces.
“Where?”
“Just there.” I pointed.
“I don't see it.”
“Joe, it's right in front of you, can’t you see the ice?”
“It just looks white to me.”
“There's a patch of different white, for sure.” Digby piped in.
“I think it's a crack.” I persisted.
“What?”
“Look there Joe, a crack!”
Joe looked in the wrong direction. “A crack?”
“Joe, are you blind!?”
It turned out Joe was blind. He had neglected wearing sunglasses in the whiteout and had succumbed to some level of snow blindness. It didn’t become apparent until that night in the tent, when the pain of his mistake set in. His eyes had become bloodshot, swollen, painful, and highly sensitive to any light at all. After doing what he could to flush his eyes and stop their perpetual leaking, he donned two pairs of sunglasses and went to bed. Digby sang him to sleep with ‘I Wear My Sunglasses at Night’.
Unfortunately for Joe, his discomfort didn't stop there. On the fifth morning, waking up to our third straight day of whiteout after pushing through a heavy blizzard the day before, Dig and I heard some commotion from Joe’s tent early morning. Our tent situation was that Joe was sleeping in his tent alone, just an arms length away from the pyramid tarp shelter that Dig and I slept in. Now, rubbing weary eyes still tucked into our sleeping bags, Dig and I gathered that in the other tent Joe really had to shit. His problem, however, was that he didn't have enough forewarning from his famously moody bowels to get his boots on for the endeavor, and refused to surrender dry socks to the fresh snow. We heard him shuffling around, frantically trying to find a solution, until it came to a very sudden climax.
“I need a bag!” Joe yelled. Not the solution I would have come to, it seemed Joe was about to try and shit in his tent.
Digby turned to me, wide eyed with a wild grin “Joey, he needs a bag quick!”
“Yeah Joey, I need a bag quick!” Joe was desperate.
May 15th: Rest is for the weak... and the blind
The evening sun was magic. Far in the distance, we watched a wolverine lumbering across the sea of ice for an hour as we ate dinner. Aside from a couple birds, it was the only sign of life we’d seen thus far. Seeing such a creature in a land of ice and rock was a perplexing sight, and incredibly rare. This animal, which is so famous for being elusive, had come to the end of the earth in search of isolation, just like us.
“How good would fruit be right now?” Dig mumbled, reclined against his pack in the afternoon heat. I never like day dreaming about the luxuries of home life when I’m out in the mountains but the thought of something fresh was dreamy. “Just a big ol bowl of fruit salad,” he went on “strawberries, kiwi, juicy juicy pineapple… have you guys ever seen a pineapple bush?”
Joe and I laughed “Bush? Pineapples grow on trees, my guy.”
“Oh yeah? Describe a pineapple tree to me.”
Joe answered “It's like a coconut tree. Like with palms and stuff.”
“Hah,” Dig retorted “you guys are taking the piss.”
I sat up from my makeshift lay-z-boy and looked hard at him “No,” I hesitated “you’re taking the piss.”
“No you guys are definitely the ones taking the piss”
“I’ve seen a pineapple tree,” I offered, “it's just like a coconut tree except there's pineapples where the coconuts would be.”
“It sounds like what you saw was a coconut tree”
“It sounds like you're taking the piss”
Nobody was taking the piss, but we knew that one of us had to be wrong. An inquiring InReach message soon determined who that was.
May 17th: Dancing in the Moonlight
We walked apart for most of the day, cherishing the time alone. Joe was in the lead; his eyes, although not yet perfect, had been on the mend since his run in with snow blindness and he was seeing alright again. That said, he still experienced some perpetual involuntary leakage. When he eventually stopped for lunch early in the afternoon, Dig and I caught up with him and sat to eat. I looked across at Joe, he was hunched over, staring vacantly at his feet, his eyes leaking. A thin strand of drool wisped from his mouth before sticking to his chin - he ignored it. “Anyone got sunscreen?” he stuck his hand out without looking up. He looked so utterly useless in that moment I almost felt bad for the blind baby. It was well appreciated comedic relief from an otherwise quiet day.
Once we’d set camp in the shadow of Mount Bagot, we knew we could make Juneau in 2 days. The last section, however, had some uncertainty. From Boundary Peak 109 onward, we would have to cross a series of complex ridges, dodging icefalls and managing avalanche hazard. This would require good weather, something of a scarcity thus far. Our weatherboy got an updated forecast before bed and we built a plan from there. A heavy storm was supposed to hit late morning the next day (the 19th) dumping 50cm of snow with fierce wind through the 20th - bad news. Although it would hit hard, it also seemed to hit fast; the 21st looked bluebird - good news. If there was one thing we’d learned so far about Alaska it was to doubt every aspect of the weather forecast at all times. In this case, however, we had no choice but to take it as gospel. If the weather crapped out on the 21st, there was a good chance we wouldn’t make the border before closing on the 22nd and would therefore miss our flight home from Whitehorse at 5am on the 23rd.
We hit the skin track early the next day and pushed the pace hard, trying to get within striking distance of a one day finishing push before the storm. Within an hour of moving, patches of whiteout were already slowing our progress and the wind was picking up. By 8:30 we’d reached Boundary Peak 109 and were straining our eyes to suss a route through the icefall above. We discussed setting camp below it but couldn’t rule out the possibility of big avalanches sweeping through our location without getting eyes on the Boundary headwall. So we had a decision to make. Backtracking to a safe location to set camp would mean we’d be pressed on time to get out which could result in its own set of hazards, camping where we were could expose us to avalanches, especially with a big wind and snow event incoming, but pushing up the icefall might dump us unexpectedly into technical terrain in a blizzard. We thought we could see a safe route up, but there was still a section we couldn’t see from our vantage point. We stalled for a few minutes, hoping the weather would magically clear and our problem would solve itself but quickly realized that every second we waited the cloud was only getting thicker. The guide in me nagged to play it safe, while the boys were anxious to push into the unknown. Tensions rose again. As much as I trust Joe and Dig in the mountains, I felt the weight of responsibility. After trying and failing to have a productive decision making conversation, I turned inward and went through my own hazard analysis. Acknowledging the human factor of group pressure, I eventually settled on pushing forward with the condition that we take every safety precaution possible. The immediate hazards associated with climbing an icefall in a blizzard were undoubtedly higher than backtracking to set camp, but time was on our side, it was still just 9am. We had time to make slow, calculated progress through technical terrain in poor weather if need be, and time to turn around and backtrack if it crossed a hazard threshold we weren’t comfortable with.
As we pushed ahead, I stayed true to my condition of safety first and dismissed any suggestion to forgo a rope prioritizing speed. Ski crampons came out and we soon found ourselves clawing up steep ice in fierce winds. A sustained effort up the slope took us past just one crevasse as we managed a clean route around the otherwise crumbling feature. When we topped out the icefall onto a high plateau, we suddenly felt the full brunt of the storm, a force more powerful than any we’d experienced to this point. Disorientation from the swirling tempest plagued us with directional incompetence and, for a short time, we stumbled in pointless pursuit. When at last our gps revealed the mistake, we found a bearing and wobbled through whiteout, now in the right direction, until a slight lull in the wind marked a spot to stop for the day. We dug chest high walls around camp in an effort to escape the squall but even that was futile, ice shards blasted our faces relentlessly. We eventually found some respite in our tents, and watched from fragile safety as the storm only grew throughout the day.
He groaned, “That far still? The last couple miles felt like they lasted forever.”
“Mmm, I bet.”
He took a second to investigate our gear, “so where are you guys coming from?”
“Juneau.”
He seemed to think about that for a time. Like most tourists we spoke to that day, the only frame of reference he had for such a journey is that it takes about 6 hours on a cruise ship. I can only imagine his mental process in that moment was very similar to what I experience when I listen to my brother explaining a complex statistical modeling process. I understand the start and end points, and I can somewhat conceptualize the purpose of the journey, but the details are almost entirely mumbo jumbo.
“Well anyways, good luck with those last couple miles.” and off he went.
Nearing the bottom, I stopped at a creek to fill my water bottle while Joe and Dig pushed ahead. When I popped my head back up they were gone. A couple hundred meters further along, the trail split; still no sign of the boys, I went right. Now close enough to Skagway to smell fried fish, I passed an elderly couple on the trail who eyed me in a way I knew they hadn’t seen two other boys who looked just like me pass by earlier. That meant they’d gone the other way. Although both trails would lead down, I knew this meant I’d have to navigate the bustling tourist metropolis alone and, frankly, I was terrified. I made the final steps across the train tracks and around the corner into Skagway and then, all at once, the bustling settled as every pair of eyes in sight turned to my clanking ski crampons. I fumbled with them frantically to stop the noise, but it was too late. Heavily sunburnt, standing in the road in ski boots, full ski gear, a harness, and an enormous pack tangled with glacier ropes, I was the latest museum exhibit for all 15000 tourists packed into the two street town of Skagway that day. I had provided a feast to a crowd who had been scavenging for any scrap of Alaskan adventure. With no space for me and my pack on the boardwalks, I was forced to walk in the road for all to see. I walked fast and avoided eye contact as best I could, but it was inevitable that I would have to entertain some level of curiosity. Each time a group managed to stop me, a small crowd of eavesdroppers would form in the outskirts as they probed into my story. As much as I was flattered that these people found intrigue and inspiration in our adventure, I didn’t fare well with the attention and found myself fumbling over words in embarrassment. It didn’t help that I was weary, stinky, and ill adjusted to human interaction; I just wanted to find the van. That would take longer than expected as I took two wrong turns in town before eventually running into the other boys, who were handling their newfound fame with grace when I hobbled over. While I felt overwhelmed, clumsy, and distraught, they seemed confident, like they’d just had an easy day signing autographs and were off for an afternoon golf match at the estate.
We dropped our packs at the van in the ferry parking lot, unsuctioned from our ski boots, and peeled off base layers in favor of street clothes. For 20 minutes we lounged in the parking lot, reminiscing about our time on the Icefield. As much as we’d missed creature comforts like toilet seats and dry socks out there, all I could think about now was how I dreaded returning to normal life.
So we were grounded. Not the kind I experienced so often in middle school, more like we were literally stuck on the ground. The outcome would unfortunately be the same in both cases: I couldn’t go skiing. Once in Juneau, we were told we had 2 days to kill before the next possible fly window. And so we saw the sights of Juneau the way they were meant to be seen - in low cloud and heavy rain. Admittedly, a large chunk of our time was spent sitting on the upper floor of the library, watching colossal cruise ships delicately finagle their way in and out of port like ceramic hippopotamuses walking on ice.
May 10th: Friday Fly Day
The weather window came, sort of, on Friday after a morning spent bouncing around maps and weather charts, changing plans to accommodate cloud cover shrouding the Taku Range. Eventually we settled on a drop part way up the Mendenhall glacier, just below the cloud ceiling.
The “we” on this trip included Digby “Diggles” The HandyMan, Joe “Weatherboy” The Blind Baby, and myself “Lizardboy” The Barefoot Pisser. Jonnie, who was meant to be our fourth, had joined me for another traverse in the Canadian Rockies just two weeks prior, but that trip came to an unfortunate end when he spiral fractured his tibia descending Mont Des Poilus. I had sat with him as he mourned the loss of his Alaska trip for 2 hours to distract from the pain of a broken leg before being longlined off the glacier and taken to Banff ER for surgery.
The “we” on this trip included Digby “Diggles” The HandyMan, Joe “Weatherboy” The Blind Baby, and myself “Lizardboy” The Barefoot Pisser. Jonnie, who was meant to be our fourth, had joined me for another traverse in the Canadian Rockies just two weeks prior, but that trip came to an unfortunate end when he spiral fractured his tibia descending Mont Des Poilus. I had sat with him as he mourned the loss of his Alaska trip for 2 hours to distract from the pain of a broken leg before being longlined off the glacier and taken to Banff ER for surgery.
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| Jonnie's rescue in the Rockies. |
So it was just the three of us, sitting in the Juneau rain, still trying to emotionally prepare to front the bill of a helicopter drop that we were only able to half fill. Our preparation, fortunately, was all in vain. We got a last minute call from the beta boys we’d met on the ferry to Juneau, who asked to fill our last two seats for an impromptu basecamp trip to The Snow Towers. Hard to say no to that. We loaded up the heli with 5, and enough gear to max out the weight capacity. Our Northstar pilot dropped us up the east branch of the Mendenhall by Spencer Peak in good time which left each of us paying just shy of $160USD for the whole ordeal, not too shabby.
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| How relieving. |
As we walked, we admired the differences in pulk packing jobs. Joe’s was wide and boxy, Dig’s a little more slender, and mine looked like a wiener. Unfortunately for me, my weiner sled acted just as you’d expect a weiner sled to act, it rolled upside down and waggled all over the place. While we each managed the pros and cons of our respective pack jobs on the flats, it all went to shit when we started up a sidehill, navigating around the icefall south of Princess Peak. The core of our problems was a ridged pattern we had fitted to the bottom of our sleds to help them track, which was causing our pulks to relentlessly flip and tumble down the slope, sometimes taking the driver along for the ride. While quite amusing to watch, it was not at all an enjoyable experience. After a major mid-slope repack party, which included removing our tracking ridges, we continued scratching up the slope and into the low cloud ceiling. At the top of the icefield, we parted ways with the beta boys who shared our heli, and plowed off into the white abyss.
“You dont need visibility to ski a couloir… right?”
“Umm yea forsure”
I had been ‘joking’ about skiing a couloir we’d spotted through whiteout off Emperor Peak all afternoon as the cloud settled onto us. I truly wanted to ski the thing, but I knew it was a bit out of left field to consider chasing steep lines in whiteout, so my plan was to warm the boys up to the idea through ‘jokes’. I read em like a book, and by 1900 we were bootpacking the impressive feature after having set camp at the base. An hour and a half of climbing brought us to the upper section where skiable snow turned to sheet ice and shallow rock. With balls weather and 160 km of walking ahead of us, we made the easy decision to transition there and rip some Alaskan pow before dinner. From the base, I turned around to catch Joe hammering turns down the striking line. As much time as we’d spent together in the mountains, I’d never skied with the guy. Needless to say, this would've been a shit time to find out he’s bush league on the sticks.
“Umm yea forsure”
I had been ‘joking’ about skiing a couloir we’d spotted through whiteout off Emperor Peak all afternoon as the cloud settled onto us. I truly wanted to ski the thing, but I knew it was a bit out of left field to consider chasing steep lines in whiteout, so my plan was to warm the boys up to the idea through ‘jokes’. I read em like a book, and by 1900 we were bootpacking the impressive feature after having set camp at the base. An hour and a half of climbing brought us to the upper section where skiable snow turned to sheet ice and shallow rock. With balls weather and 160 km of walking ahead of us, we made the easy decision to transition there and rip some Alaskan pow before dinner. From the base, I turned around to catch Joe hammering turns down the striking line. As much time as we’d spent together in the mountains, I’d never skied with the guy. Needless to say, this would've been a shit time to find out he’s bush league on the sticks.
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| You don't need visibility to ski a couloir, trust me. |
The Taku Range is a gem in the Juneau Icefield. Its toothed summits shoot up from an ocean of white with aesthetic ferocity. The range draws adventurous climbers on occasion and, in my trip planning, I found myself enamored by the prospect of ascending some part of the range to find a rare ski descent between bare rock faces. That opportunity came the next morning as we approached the base of Cathedral Peak under vibrant blue skies.
Cathedral looms over the Taku Range, matched only in height by the pointy Taku Tower. While I originally suggested we attempt to gain the north ridge via a broad snaking line of snow and ice, a group assessment pointed us instead towards the commanding couloir that shoots vertically towards a col between the two summits. This way we would avoid an exposed convexity on the other route.
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| Cathedral couloir. |
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| Taku Towers. |
The Icefield plays scale tricks on the mind. You can look across the dome of white to the opposite range thinking the distance could be spanned in two hours when, in fact, it might take two days. We found that the effect was skewing our perception of the ascent route ahead. As we approached the couloir, it got bigger and steeper and more imposing until we reached the bergschrund at the base, staring up the guts of an immense beast. We donned the rope and I took the lead to find a way across the bergschrund. Although we found a spot with snow bridging, it wasn’t confidence inspiring. We transitioned from bootpacking back onto skis to increase our surface area for the crossing, relying on wind packed powder to keep an edge on the 45 degree slope. I reached the crack and looked back to make sure the boys had me tight. They were locked in, silent, and focused on my every step. We all knew it was a real possibility I go for a ride. I placed my ski out onto the snow bridge and kicked a couple times. It wasn’t wide here, I could almost span the distance to the other side with my ski, but it was hard to tell where exactly the other side was. I turned off my mind and weighted my foot, I immediately tensed up as the bridge collapsed beneath me but my ski tip caught precariously on the upper edge and held me in place. I looked between my feet into the open crack below my feet. “You good?” Joe asked. “Yeah just scared me.”
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| Digby blazing ahead. |
Once on the topside, I set up a belay for the boys to cross and we were back to bootpacking in good time. Good time, however, was hard to make from here up as we clambered through, at times, waist deep snow. Ice cascaded down the walls around us as we climbed, occasionally requiring us to press against the slope to take cover and a nervous knot was building in my stomach each time I eyed the looming cornice guarding the ridgetop above. Digby blazed ahead, doing what he does best and pushing the pace when the going gets tough, for an hour until we were staring up the sheer face of an ice wall that separated us from the ridge. Some awkward moves down low led to easier climbing to the top and before long we were all three straddling a knife edge ridge that would be our high point. Breathtaking views spanned endlessly to either side, with The Snow Towers to the east and the iconic Devil's Paw far to the west. Beneath us extended beautiful Alaskan ski lines. We sat in the cool breeze and took it all in.
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| View from the top. |
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| Dig on Cathedral ridge. |
I was first to drop the couloir and boy howdy did I ever butcher the thing. Two turns in, the winds that funneled up the slope blasted me in the face with snow, tearing off my glasses and shifting my balance. I tried to pull it back by pointed straight down but I couldn't even open my eyes without glasses so at some point I hit a bump at high speed and started to tumble down the steep slope. ‘Gosh I hope I stop before the bergschrund’. After a couple tomahawks and a fair bit of tumbling, I managed to grapple my arms into the snow and came to a sliding halt. ‘Woah’. I looked up only to get immediately smashed in the face by a wave of sluff hurtling towards me mach chicken. Snow packed into my mouth, my helmet, my jacket, my gloves, my eyeballs, my ear holes, my neurons, my mitochondria, yet somehow, after what felt like an eternity, I came out unscathed. ‘WOAH’. I was winded, but that was about it. I looked around. The one ski I had lost was sticking precariously out of the 45 degree slope just a couple meters to my right - nice. I clipped in and swooped my way down the rest of the impressive line, stopping at the base only to pluck my glasses from atop a pile of sluff. It wasn’t lost on me how lucky I’d been.
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| Joe climbing. |
Then what Dig refers to as the “Pulk Polka” began. In navigating around the north side of the Little Matterhorn icefall, we had our first test of descending with the pulks. While Dig and I were fairly committed to just chucking the thing downslope, hoping it wouldn't spontaneously combust or drop off the face of the earth, Joe was unyieldingly attached to the idea he could ride his like a miniature Clydesdale. “Didn’t work when I tried it” Dig offered, almost halfassedly, knowing full well Joe was stubborn enough to see it through. Digby and I launched our sleds, watching them veer and catch and spin, but cheering when they eventually came to a stop on the flats far below. I turned then to Joe, who was ceremoniously mounting his sled. By the time he’d wiggled his way to the convexity I was grinning ear to ear, delighted with the afternoon entertainment. He peered down the slope, then, without hesitation, shuffled over the edge. Although the image of what happened next is burned into my mind for the rest of eternity, I couldn’t possibly put it into words. Instead, I made a little video:
May 12th-14th: 50 Shades of White
Whiteout does strange things to the mind. As a dense cloud layer settled onto us it obscured not only our vision, but our sense of time, reality and, to great comedic effect, our direction. Within 20 minutes of leaving camp, we were walking in circles.
“Joe, you're going the wrong way.”
“What do you mean? I just checked my bearing.”
“That's the way we just came from, we gotta head into the white over here.”
“I am going towards the white!”
“Not that white, this white!”
“That white will take us straight into a mountain.”
“And your white will lead us back to Juneau.”
“Are you sure?”
“Check your map.”
“Nowhere on my map does it say which white is the right white!”
I took the lead, carrying our sole compass and stumbling through each milky step as I tried to find perspective in a horizonless void. Each time I took my eyes off my skis I’d lose balance. I obsessively turned around to make sure the other boys were still there, becoming increasingly paranoid I would turn to find nothing but my own track.
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| Which white is the right white? |
“Hey stop!” I called out to Joe, who had once again taken the lead with the compass.
“What?!” he shouted back through the fierce wind.
“There's a crack in front of you.”
“No there isn’t.”
“We should rope up.”
“Why?”
“Because there's a crack in front of you.” The wind beat against our jackets, spitting ice shards into our faces.
“Where?”
“Just there.” I pointed.
“I don't see it.”
“Joe, it's right in front of you, can’t you see the ice?”
“It just looks white to me.”
“There's a patch of different white, for sure.” Digby piped in.
“I think it's a crack.” I persisted.
“What?”
“Look there Joe, a crack!”
Joe looked in the wrong direction. “A crack?”
“Joe, are you blind!?”
It turned out Joe was blind. He had neglected wearing sunglasses in the whiteout and had succumbed to some level of snow blindness. It didn’t become apparent until that night in the tent, when the pain of his mistake set in. His eyes had become bloodshot, swollen, painful, and highly sensitive to any light at all. After doing what he could to flush his eyes and stop their perpetual leaking, he donned two pairs of sunglasses and went to bed. Digby sang him to sleep with ‘I Wear My Sunglasses at Night’.
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| Joe stumbling through whiteout. |
Unfortunately for Joe, his discomfort didn't stop there. On the fifth morning, waking up to our third straight day of whiteout after pushing through a heavy blizzard the day before, Dig and I heard some commotion from Joe’s tent early morning. Our tent situation was that Joe was sleeping in his tent alone, just an arms length away from the pyramid tarp shelter that Dig and I slept in. Now, rubbing weary eyes still tucked into our sleeping bags, Dig and I gathered that in the other tent Joe really had to shit. His problem, however, was that he didn't have enough forewarning from his famously moody bowels to get his boots on for the endeavor, and refused to surrender dry socks to the fresh snow. We heard him shuffling around, frantically trying to find a solution, until it came to a very sudden climax.
“I need a bag!” Joe yelled. Not the solution I would have come to, it seemed Joe was about to try and shit in his tent.
Digby turned to me, wide eyed with a wild grin “Joey, he needs a bag quick!”
“Yeah Joey, I need a bag quick!” Joe was desperate.
Digby jolted up from his sleeping bag, grabbed his shovel and started digging a tunnel out his side of the shelter while I rummaged through my things for a plastic bag. I passed the bag to Dig who in turn thrust it out the tunnel for Joe to grab on the other side - our tents were close enough he could reach it without having to step in the deep snow. We waited a minute, giggling to ourselves before I couldn’t help myself.
“How’s it going, Joe?”
“Bro, its grim.”
“Did you aim okay?” Dig prodded. There was a long, bleak pause before we got an answer.
“Nah” he replied at last. We burst out laughing.
“Bro, its grim.”
“Did you aim okay?” Dig prodded. There was a long, bleak pause before we got an answer.
“Nah” he replied at last. We burst out laughing.
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| Excavating camp in the thick of it. |
Our third storm day was where we really lost a grip. My senses were betraying me in ways I hadn’t encountered before. Images of a dog flashed in the whiteout, I heard distant whistles and non-existant voices. At one point, after watching my skis step in rhythm over and over for hours on end I suddenly gasped and fell over when one ski transformed into a weasel dashing through my legs. When I got back up I figured it was time to go talk with the other boys to regain some sanity. However, when I found them Digby and Joe were speaking “posh” and had developed a deep range of characters with convoluted, intertwining backstories that were coming to fruition in a series of broken improv skits. When they noticed me approaching, I was immediately thrown into the absurdity with a character of my own and a rather presumptuous lead in. Twenty minutes later Sir Diggles was giving a toast to the fine folks of Sir George's great manor as we stood in a circle in the white void, yelling posh profanity for nobody to hear.
We decided a day off would do us well.May 15th: Rest is for the weak... and the blind
Our rest day consisted of as much nothing as possible. Although the weather had forecasted it to be our worst day yet, we awoke to mostly clear skies. It was odd to stay put on such a lovely day after pushing through three days of dreadful weather, but Joe’s eyes needed to heal and we were broken physically and mentally from the storm. We took the opportunity to dry wet gear, catch some extra Z’s and get a bit of reading in. The view from camp was absolutely stunning. We admired the impressive spines, fluting off the Mt Bressler ridges, and fantasized skiing the imposing south face of Nesselrode. After seeing nothing for three days, we’d almost forgotten there were peaks around us. Unfortunately, after our two day helicopter delay and otherwise slow moving through bad weather, we knew we were out of time to chase big ski lines. The only reason we had been able to move at all through the last storm was that it was easy terrain. Any added route complexity would have left us tent bound until visibility improved. Now with just 7 days remaining to cover 100 km through trickier terrain, we were running out of days to be weathered out.
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| Joe's view on the rest day. |
May 16th: We Meade to get moving
Dry gear, fresh eyes (mostly), and rested legs took our pace to a new place on day 7. After three days of inching out kilometer after tedious kilometer, the sun made walking enjoyable again. Cresting our second pass beneath Mount London by early afternoon, we sat for lunch and found a chill chiller than any chill we’d found before. Layers of jagged snowy peaks extended infinitely before us, each boasting a unique take on the cracked icefall and craggy rock look. We oogled and oggled at the grandiose of our surroundings while nibbling pepperoni sticks and crushed crackers. |
| Logan Pass. |
Joe and I laughed “Bush? Pineapples grow on trees, my guy.”
“Oh yeah? Describe a pineapple tree to me.”
Joe answered “It's like a coconut tree. Like with palms and stuff.”
“Hah,” Dig retorted “you guys are taking the piss.”
I sat up from my makeshift lay-z-boy and looked hard at him “No,” I hesitated “you’re taking the piss.”
“No you guys are definitely the ones taking the piss”
“I’ve seen a pineapple tree,” I offered, “it's just like a coconut tree except there's pineapples where the coconuts would be.”
“It sounds like what you saw was a coconut tree”
“It sounds like you're taking the piss”
Nobody was taking the piss, but we knew that one of us had to be wrong. An inquiring InReach message soon determined who that was.
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| On the Meade |
From Logan we dropped onto the Meade Glacier, a massive valley glacier that carves out the west boundary of the Juneau Icefield. Our cruisy descent from the pass saw us back on the chuck and chase program - chuck the pulk and chase it down. Unfortunately for me, my chuck leaned hard left throughout its long descent, ending up far off route, which meant the chase added a good half kilometer to my day. The moving, however, was quick on the Meade. We discovered that our snow conditions allowed us to walk without skins, giving us twice the glide. We were crushing distance. By the time we stopped to set camp we’d covered 30km and still felt strong. To celebrate a successful day, we treated ourselves to our favorite playlist, and belted Taylor Swift hits until the sun went down.
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| The Swift Chalet. |
An early departure from the Swift Chalet the next morning set our course for a complex medial moraine 30km ahead near the base of the Meade. Although we had originally hoped to follow a higher, more technical route for this section of the traverse, our weather outlook was once again bleak, so we made the conservative choice to stay low. This decision paid off almost immediately as we found ourselves pushing through milky patches within 20 minutes of leaving camp, settling clouds threatening to box us in.
By late morning, the cloud ceiling had lifted to 1650m, giving us enough visibility to admire the intimidating Icefalls on Mount Leland. Throughout the day we would pass icefall after icefall, increasingly entranced by their twisting blue faces. It felt like you could peer into the minutiae for hours, maybe days, never exhausting the potential to discover new details. Since we had entirely abandoned any remnants of a filter three days prior, our admiration quickly deteriorated into dirty talk. What might have started as a freudian slip while gazing longingly at bulging seracs and deep crevices, set fire to a vast realm of comedically blatant sexy talk and foul-mouthed tomfoolery. We got a stupid amount of enjoyment from our glacier sexy talk and took every opportunity to work it into conversation for days afterwards. In fact, it took conscious effort to turn it off when we eventually reintegrated with society a week later.
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| You sexy icefall. |
Our route along the Meade progressed from the accumulation zone, where the glacier builds the majority of its mass and any cracks are well bridged, towards the ablation zone, where exposed ice becomes more common and any topographic variation exposes sagging snow bridges and open crevasses. We tiptoed through increasingly complex crevasse fields all afternoon until at last we were face to face with our objective for the day: the medial moraine. We stopped for a poop break.
Pooping on an icefield breaks a whole new intimate boundary in a group simply because there is nowhere to hide. It doesn’t matter if you walk a few meters away or a kilometer, if anybody turns around they're gonna see you poop. With so much exposure for so many days, you come to learn each person’s poop habits. Dig is an organized man with his pants down. He carefully gathers everything he needs, builds a little castle of ice blocks and crafts a proportional hole, then squats and looks majestically into the distance while he vacates. Joe is almost exactly the opposite. You could be mid conversation and Joe will interrupt with “Oh man I gotta shit aye!”. He’ll run a few steps away, rip his clothes off, settle into an unusually high squat, and clean up by stuffing snow up his butt. I think I’m somewhere in between.
A quick dinner helped our mood and we gladly practiced forgive and forget, an essential skill in the mountains, as we pushed forward until the sky turned dark around 11pm. The medial moraine had marked our low point in elevation for the trip, and we now began ascending the north arm of the Meade. We passed a moulin in the waning light, a haunting circular feature that drains surface water through its narrow portal, transporting it deep into the workings beneath and eventually to the smooth bedrock below the glacier. When we finally stopped, we prepped a hasty camp by stomping out a pad in slush and ice. Our stomping found a rhythm that helped us stay warm, and it turned into a sort of ritualistic dance. Somebody suggested we play Turkish jazz and Digby provided. Before long we had forgotten the task of making a pad entirely and were simply just there for a good time, boogying and laughing and hooting in the night.
Pooping on an icefield breaks a whole new intimate boundary in a group simply because there is nowhere to hide. It doesn’t matter if you walk a few meters away or a kilometer, if anybody turns around they're gonna see you poop. With so much exposure for so many days, you come to learn each person’s poop habits. Dig is an organized man with his pants down. He carefully gathers everything he needs, builds a little castle of ice blocks and crafts a proportional hole, then squats and looks majestically into the distance while he vacates. Joe is almost exactly the opposite. You could be mid conversation and Joe will interrupt with “Oh man I gotta shit aye!”. He’ll run a few steps away, rip his clothes off, settle into an unusually high squat, and clean up by stuffing snow up his butt. I think I’m somewhere in between.
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| Tasty glacial meltwater. |
The final complexity of our day was a section around the medial moraine where the collision point of two major valley glaciers caused a jumble of truck-sized blocks, spotted with pools of crystal clear meltwater. I was fascinated by the challenge, balancing knife edge ridges and jumping rushing streams that rumbled the ice beneath our feet. However, this navigational climax of our day coincided with an emotional clash. The exhaustion from the day, linked with the past week bending our group dynamic, testing each other's limits, had hit a breaking point. What started as frustration directed towards a tangled rope or uncooperative sled progressed into disagreement over route choice and eventually a sternly passive aggressive conversation about where to set camp. Digby, blessed with a natural level-headedness, proved a voice of reason to Joe and I, who suffer from terminal stubbornness, and suggested we stop for dinner to collect our thoughts. Once we emerged from the maze of ice, we stepped over enormous fresh grizzly prints in the moist surface snow as we sat down to eat dinner. Although we’d been moving for 12 hours already, we had no interest in camping beside grizzly tracks.
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| Moulin. |
A quick dinner helped our mood and we gladly practiced forgive and forget, an essential skill in the mountains, as we pushed forward until the sky turned dark around 11pm. The medial moraine had marked our low point in elevation for the trip, and we now began ascending the north arm of the Meade. We passed a moulin in the waning light, a haunting circular feature that drains surface water through its narrow portal, transporting it deep into the workings beneath and eventually to the smooth bedrock below the glacier. When we finally stopped, we prepped a hasty camp by stomping out a pad in slush and ice. Our stomping found a rhythm that helped us stay warm, and it turned into a sort of ritualistic dance. Somebody suggested we play Turkish jazz and Digby provided. Before long we had forgotten the task of making a pad entirely and were simply just there for a good time, boogying and laughing and hooting in the night.
May 18th: The Wolverine Way
Now normally when I wake in the night with an unrelenting need to piss, I hop into camp booties and shuffle outside - easy and painless. This time, however, we were camped at roughly 700m, an elevation that hadn't seen an overnight freeze in days. This meant we were sleeping on a thin layer of slush that gave way to 3cm of straight up water. If you lied on a sleeping mat it would spread your weight enough you didnt break through the slush, but that was not the case on your feet. I couldn’t sacrifice my camp booties to 3cm of water so, after many failed attempts to push through the piss pain, I went without them, stepping over Joe and Digby and standing barefoot in an ice cold puddle for what felt like the longest piss of my life. I’ll spare the details but pissing into a puddle that you’re standing in barefoot isn’t comfortable even at the best of times, nevermind at 3am in ice cold water while shivering uncontrollably. The boys took a break from their slumber just to watch the spectacle. They may never let me forget that moment.
From the moment we broke camp it felt like we were being stalked by wolverines. We had seen tracks the day before but nothing like this. We stepped over fresh tracks not far from the tent, and then proceeded to cross set after set for the entire day, some so fresh it looked like the creature could have been there just minutes prior. It was eerie that we never caught one in the act, considering how far ahead we could see. While it felt like a whole family inhabited the valley with the amount of fresh tracks we found, it was more likely just one or two speedy individuals. The one we’d spotted a few days prior had been moving so effortlessly fast that it wasn’t beyond a reasonable doubt one wolverine was making many tens of kilometers of fresh zig zags from one side of the north Meade to the other, hiding amongst piles of rocks that had melted out from avalanche debris along the margins.
Scavengers by nature, with many northern populations subsisting primarily on caribou, I was intrigued by the wolverines on the Juneau Icefield. There seemed to be nothing living in sight, never mind large mammals to scavenge. Either they knew something that we didn’t, or they were so hellbent on seeking isolation that they would den up high only to regularly make the 20 km commute over complex, cracked glacier to the nearest food source. The answer is probably a combination of both.
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| One of many sets of wolverine tracks. |
From the moment we broke camp it felt like we were being stalked by wolverines. We had seen tracks the day before but nothing like this. We stepped over fresh tracks not far from the tent, and then proceeded to cross set after set for the entire day, some so fresh it looked like the creature could have been there just minutes prior. It was eerie that we never caught one in the act, considering how far ahead we could see. While it felt like a whole family inhabited the valley with the amount of fresh tracks we found, it was more likely just one or two speedy individuals. The one we’d spotted a few days prior had been moving so effortlessly fast that it wasn’t beyond a reasonable doubt one wolverine was making many tens of kilometers of fresh zig zags from one side of the north Meade to the other, hiding amongst piles of rocks that had melted out from avalanche debris along the margins.
Scavengers by nature, with many northern populations subsisting primarily on caribou, I was intrigued by the wolverines on the Juneau Icefield. There seemed to be nothing living in sight, never mind large mammals to scavenge. Either they knew something that we didn’t, or they were so hellbent on seeking isolation that they would den up high only to regularly make the 20 km commute over complex, cracked glacier to the nearest food source. The answer is probably a combination of both.
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| Hazy Mount Bagot. |
We walked apart for most of the day, cherishing the time alone. Joe was in the lead; his eyes, although not yet perfect, had been on the mend since his run in with snow blindness and he was seeing alright again. That said, he still experienced some perpetual involuntary leakage. When he eventually stopped for lunch early in the afternoon, Dig and I caught up with him and sat to eat. I looked across at Joe, he was hunched over, staring vacantly at his feet, his eyes leaking. A thin strand of drool wisped from his mouth before sticking to his chin - he ignored it. “Anyone got sunscreen?” he stuck his hand out without looking up. He looked so utterly useless in that moment I almost felt bad for the blind baby. It was well appreciated comedic relief from an otherwise quiet day.
Once we’d set camp in the shadow of Mount Bagot, we knew we could make Juneau in 2 days. The last section, however, had some uncertainty. From Boundary Peak 109 onward, we would have to cross a series of complex ridges, dodging icefalls and managing avalanche hazard. This would require good weather, something of a scarcity thus far. Our weatherboy got an updated forecast before bed and we built a plan from there. A heavy storm was supposed to hit late morning the next day (the 19th) dumping 50cm of snow with fierce wind through the 20th - bad news. Although it would hit hard, it also seemed to hit fast; the 21st looked bluebird - good news. If there was one thing we’d learned so far about Alaska it was to doubt every aspect of the weather forecast at all times. In this case, however, we had no choice but to take it as gospel. If the weather crapped out on the 21st, there was a good chance we wouldn’t make the border before closing on the 22nd and would therefore miss our flight home from Whitehorse at 5am on the 23rd.
May 19th: King Blizzard and the Blizzard Blizzard
We hit the skin track early the next day and pushed the pace hard, trying to get within striking distance of a one day finishing push before the storm. Within an hour of moving, patches of whiteout were already slowing our progress and the wind was picking up. By 8:30 we’d reached Boundary Peak 109 and were straining our eyes to suss a route through the icefall above. We discussed setting camp below it but couldn’t rule out the possibility of big avalanches sweeping through our location without getting eyes on the Boundary headwall. So we had a decision to make. Backtracking to a safe location to set camp would mean we’d be pressed on time to get out which could result in its own set of hazards, camping where we were could expose us to avalanches, especially with a big wind and snow event incoming, but pushing up the icefall might dump us unexpectedly into technical terrain in a blizzard. We thought we could see a safe route up, but there was still a section we couldn’t see from our vantage point. We stalled for a few minutes, hoping the weather would magically clear and our problem would solve itself but quickly realized that every second we waited the cloud was only getting thicker. The guide in me nagged to play it safe, while the boys were anxious to push into the unknown. Tensions rose again. As much as I trust Joe and Dig in the mountains, I felt the weight of responsibility. After trying and failing to have a productive decision making conversation, I turned inward and went through my own hazard analysis. Acknowledging the human factor of group pressure, I eventually settled on pushing forward with the condition that we take every safety precaution possible. The immediate hazards associated with climbing an icefall in a blizzard were undoubtedly higher than backtracking to set camp, but time was on our side, it was still just 9am. We had time to make slow, calculated progress through technical terrain in poor weather if need be, and time to turn around and backtrack if it crossed a hazard threshold we weren’t comfortable with.
As we pushed ahead, I stayed true to my condition of safety first and dismissed any suggestion to forgo a rope prioritizing speed. Ski crampons came out and we soon found ourselves clawing up steep ice in fierce winds. A sustained effort up the slope took us past just one crevasse as we managed a clean route around the otherwise crumbling feature. When we topped out the icefall onto a high plateau, we suddenly felt the full brunt of the storm, a force more powerful than any we’d experienced to this point. Disorientation from the swirling tempest plagued us with directional incompetence and, for a short time, we stumbled in pointless pursuit. When at last our gps revealed the mistake, we found a bearing and wobbled through whiteout, now in the right direction, until a slight lull in the wind marked a spot to stop for the day. We dug chest high walls around camp in an effort to escape the squall but even that was futile, ice shards blasted our faces relentlessly. We eventually found some respite in our tents, and watched from fragile safety as the storm only grew throughout the day.
May 20th: Midnight Chores
I awoke shivering, my phone said 1am, my hair was wet from snow that had packed into my hood, my feet were wet too. The tent shook violently around me in the dark and I could feel a steady stream of snow pouring in through holes between bags we’d packed into the margins. In my drowsy state, I kicked the snow off my feet and made an effort to plug holes that were seeping snow. I’ll admit it was a poor effort, but I was cold and tired and I just wanted to go back to sleep. I continued periodically trying to plugging holes until eventually I couldn’t ignore the problem any longer
I sat up and flicked on my headlamp to assess the damage, it was worse than I’d thought. Snow had buried everything on my side of the tent, including my sleeping bag, which was now patchy and wet throughout. I pawed my bare hands through piles of snow to find camp booties and a jacket, donned them reluctantly, and slipped out of my bag. I pointed my headlamp across at Digby. He was still fast asleep, any noise I made would be drowned out by the furious rustling of the tent. I unzipped the door and was instantly blasted by the blizzard. When I ducked hesitantly outside, I was immediately knocked over by the wind and sent sprawling into knee high powder. I sat there a moment, feeling frozen moisture seeping into my thin base layer bottoms and down booties before deciding my next move. Unable to stand up, I settled on crawling through the deep snow to the place where I thought my shovel might be buried. My headlamp was entirely clouded out by the storm, making it useless in my search. When I finally found a grasp on my shovel handle, I managed a low crouch and shuffled around the side of the tent, where I waded through a thigh deep wind drift that had piled up in the slot between ice wall and tent wall. Then, between gusts, I spotted the weakness in the tent; one part of the edge had been lifted by the wind and the blizzard was osmosing furiously inside. I paddled away soft snow then cut ice chunks from the wall to pack onto the weakness, ensuring a tight seal. Several other openings came to light as I inspected the remaining edges and I plugged them as best I could. The exposure was taking a noticeable toll, however, and before long my extremities were numb and my eyes stung from unrelenting ice shards. I pushed back through the wind drift, crawled to the tent and flopped into the nook between sleeping platforms before zipping the storm away.
I sat up and flicked on my headlamp to assess the damage, it was worse than I’d thought. Snow had buried everything on my side of the tent, including my sleeping bag, which was now patchy and wet throughout. I pawed my bare hands through piles of snow to find camp booties and a jacket, donned them reluctantly, and slipped out of my bag. I pointed my headlamp across at Digby. He was still fast asleep, any noise I made would be drowned out by the furious rustling of the tent. I unzipped the door and was instantly blasted by the blizzard. When I ducked hesitantly outside, I was immediately knocked over by the wind and sent sprawling into knee high powder. I sat there a moment, feeling frozen moisture seeping into my thin base layer bottoms and down booties before deciding my next move. Unable to stand up, I settled on crawling through the deep snow to the place where I thought my shovel might be buried. My headlamp was entirely clouded out by the storm, making it useless in my search. When I finally found a grasp on my shovel handle, I managed a low crouch and shuffled around the side of the tent, where I waded through a thigh deep wind drift that had piled up in the slot between ice wall and tent wall. Then, between gusts, I spotted the weakness in the tent; one part of the edge had been lifted by the wind and the blizzard was osmosing furiously inside. I paddled away soft snow then cut ice chunks from the wall to pack onto the weakness, ensuring a tight seal. Several other openings came to light as I inspected the remaining edges and I plugged them as best I could. The exposure was taking a noticeable toll, however, and before long my extremities were numb and my eyes stung from unrelenting ice shards. I pushed back through the wind drift, crawled to the tent and flopped into the nook between sleeping platforms before zipping the storm away.
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| Slowly, sensually savoring every crumb of a delectable snickers bar, much to the chagrin of the other boys. |
As expected, we had no chance to make progress that day. By early morning I’d finished Joe’s book, the last of the reading material after getting through mine and Digby’s books already. We tuned a handheld to the Skagway weather station and got lost in monotonous repetitions of the 5 minute cycle, of which only about 10 seconds pertained to us. There was comfort in constantly being reminded that good weather lay ahead despite the ongoing torment.
May 21st: One Final Push We awoke the next morning to Joe hooting with excitement outside the tent. We’d been stuck in a whiteout since hunkering down 40 hours earlier and this would be the first time we’d set eyes on our surroundings. “How is it?” I yelled to Joe, already crawling out of my sleeping bag to get a look for myself. “Wouldn’t you like to know, lizardboy?” ever since a rash had broken out on my hands from so many days in wet gloves, making my skin bumpy and scaled, I’d been lizardboy. I poked my head outside, It was spectacular. The Alaskan ranges shot out in all directions beneath the high glacial plateau we had dug our camp into. No wonder the storm had hit us so heavy; we were like whackamoles with our heads out at the crest of the Denver Glacier.
Knowing we would be moving through tricky terrain all day, we worked to pack our sleds onto our bags. Not an easy task, this produced a myriad of creative external strapping techniques to accommodate danglers. We got moving early, trailbreaking through a field of sparkling stellars and bagging a peak in short order. When we got to the top it turned out we’d bagged the wrong peak. I could give us the benefit of the doubt and say the route finding was challenging in this section, but the truth is more likely that we’d gotten lazy with our mapping as the trip went on. Regardless, we took in a magical view and dropped into a ski descent off the backside during which Digby’s hat flew off his head and Joe, who skied down behind him, flew right on past the thing, forcing Digby to clamber back up the slope to retrieve it. Not long after, as we were scratching our way up a disintegrating south slope in the heat, Joe’s ski crampon lost its edge 5 meters below the top and he slid on his ass, dragged down by a chunky pack, for 50 meters before coming to a lazy halt at the base. Did somebody say Karma’s a bitch? Karma went a little too far on that one to be honest, it was a brutal climb to have to do twice. When I got to the top just one time I peed myself a little out of exhaustion. I’m surprised Joe didn't outright shit himself; it wouldn’t have been his first time I’m sure.
Once Joe finally caught up, we dropped into an impressive hanging glacier, ripping GS turns into the broad swath of ice above its terminus of icefalls and cliffs. In order to avoid this impassable terminus, we poked around our next obstacle, a craggy, descending ridgeline with looming cornices. After scanning several sections of the upper ridge only to be met with crumbling rock faces beyond our rappel capabilities, we were bottlenecked by the hanging glacier and pushed towards our last option, a blind and consequential solar slope. This ugly looking slope made up the base of a sharp spire that bookended the cliffed section of our obstacle, or so we hoped. If we could manage to contour its back side, it might give us a route through mellower terrain into the next drainage. A series of hasty stability tests, some careful group management between radios, and, most importantly, speed got us across the problem slope safely and efficiently. A short bootpack took us back to the ridgeline, Digby spotted a ramp between cornices and off we went, wasting no time slashing turns through soft, north facing powder into the next basin.
Our first glimpse of civilization came in the form of two dogsled teams running a track far below us on the glacier, making a ruckus barking and yipping. Dig did his best barking and yipping impression and took lead dog on our skin track, breaking trail across the steamy late morning basin. A convoy of helicopters buzzed up the valley, inevitably touring the local peaks with cruise shippers before dropping them off for a lunch ride with the dogs. As we ascended our next ridge, we couldn’t help but wonder if the helicopters could see us clambering among high snowy slopes, over rock features, with pots, jackets, bottles, bits of rope and helmets dangling off our enormous packs haphazardly. They may also have noticed we were climbing towards a feature that, to any sane person, looked hopelessly impassable. Of course, we didn't know it looked hopelessly impassable until we had labored step after sweaty step in crippling heat for nearly 2 hours, bootpacking the final 100 meters up crumbling ice and rock. It was only when I gained the final steps to the ridgeline and collapsed for a rest that I realized we were up against a challenge.
Digby, still energetic despite the tough climb, was already poking around enormous cornices when I arrived, trying to find a weakness. After putzing around a few possible candidates, he settled on one little nook, dropped onto his belly, and started wiggling towards the precipice. I watched closely, questioning every detail of his hazard analyses as he inched out onto a cornice above a cliff during the hottest part of the first sunny day after a major snow transport event. Once he had finished taking a look, I walked to the nook, got down on my belly and did the exact same thing. We put our dougheads together and made a plan. It seemed that this nook was the only part of the ridge that we might have a chance at. A bit of cornice cleanup would be required, but it looked like only a short rappel, 10 meters or so, to gain a skiable slope beneath. This little weakness proved those air conditioned butthead helicopter tourists who thought we had no chance wrong, and that was all the motivation we needed as we sawed laboriously through a hefty chunk of cornice which dropped in a spectacular explosion onto the slope below.
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| Tent life. |
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| Morning camp views. |
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| Big packs, much danglers. |
Our first glimpse of civilization came in the form of two dogsled teams running a track far below us on the glacier, making a ruckus barking and yipping. Dig did his best barking and yipping impression and took lead dog on our skin track, breaking trail across the steamy late morning basin. A convoy of helicopters buzzed up the valley, inevitably touring the local peaks with cruise shippers before dropping them off for a lunch ride with the dogs. As we ascended our next ridge, we couldn’t help but wonder if the helicopters could see us clambering among high snowy slopes, over rock features, with pots, jackets, bottles, bits of rope and helmets dangling off our enormous packs haphazardly. They may also have noticed we were climbing towards a feature that, to any sane person, looked hopelessly impassable. Of course, we didn't know it looked hopelessly impassable until we had labored step after sweaty step in crippling heat for nearly 2 hours, bootpacking the final 100 meters up crumbling ice and rock. It was only when I gained the final steps to the ridgeline and collapsed for a rest that I realized we were up against a challenge.
Digby, still energetic despite the tough climb, was already poking around enormous cornices when I arrived, trying to find a weakness. After putzing around a few possible candidates, he settled on one little nook, dropped onto his belly, and started wiggling towards the precipice. I watched closely, questioning every detail of his hazard analyses as he inched out onto a cornice above a cliff during the hottest part of the first sunny day after a major snow transport event. Once he had finished taking a look, I walked to the nook, got down on my belly and did the exact same thing. We put our dougheads together and made a plan. It seemed that this nook was the only part of the ridge that we might have a chance at. A bit of cornice cleanup would be required, but it looked like only a short rappel, 10 meters or so, to gain a skiable slope beneath. This little weakness proved those air conditioned butthead helicopter tourists who thought we had no chance wrong, and that was all the motivation we needed as we sawed laboriously through a hefty chunk of cornice which dropped in a spectacular explosion onto the slope below.
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| Digby rappelling through our nook above cornice debris. |
Although we could've spent hours carving out the perfect rappel, we didn't have time for that kind of tomfoolery, so we moved on pretty quick to setting an anchor. We dug out a sturdy but slopey boulder and slung it, pulling hard to build some sense of confidence in the thing. It felt solid enough, but Joe wasn’t entirely convinced. I volunteered as a test dummy to ease any worries; I was entirely definitely mostly probably confident in our work. I pulled on my heavy dangler pack, slapped a helmet on for good measure, and clipped in. Keeping an eye on our systems, I inched backwards. The second I fully weighted the anchor, I felt a click and the taught rope buzzed like a harp string. “Woah! Did you feel that?” Dig exclaimed “the anchor just shifted, I think it's all good though” he laughed nervously. I peered behind me over the edge and took one more step, the next instant I was falling. “oh god!” I watched the ice drop out beneath my feet, and I was sent pingponging off the walls of the notch before being caught by my prusik and showered in chunks of ice. I had stepped onto a piece of fragile, overhanging cornice and it had given out under my weight. In hindsight, we probably should have made more time for the “tomfoolery” of cleaning up the lip. I got back on my munter hitch and finagled the prusik loose. Once I’d landed on the icy slope below and skied out the bottom, weaving through chunks of fallen cornice, I turned to watch the other boys. They were every bit as uncoordinated as me, and I laughed myself silly at the entertainment. From there, it was a sweaty slog trying to find a safe route through cliffs and isothermal slopes to Upper Dewey Lake cabin.
May 22nd: Celebrity Status
As much as we tried to stuff our faces with the last remaining bits of food, when we rolled out of camp the next morning our packs felt just as overburdened as they had been the day before. Joe and I both opted to wear our harnesses, regardless we would be walking on a dirt hiking trail for the majority of our descent to Skagway, simply because we had no room in our packs. My ski crampons clanged about like church bells as we walked, drawing unwanted attention from passing tourists and a great deal of annoyed side-eye from Joe and Dig, but I couldn't be bothered to stop and find a solution. We didn't have far to go and the last thing I wanted was to take my pack off, only to have to hoist the chunky meatball back on again. I think we all shared the sentiment that the next time we dropped our packs would be at the van. This was part of the reason I never stopped to put on running shoes, which I’d carried 12 days specifically for this moment, instead opting, like the other boys, to clunk down the washed out hiking trail in my ski boots. We fielded questions from curious tourists who looked us up and down like we were savages; in their defense we hadnt washed in two weeks. One man, a weary looking cruise ship worker, asked how much further to Upper Dewey. “I dunno, maybe a couple miles” I replied.
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| R&R at the luxury cabin. |
He groaned, “That far still? The last couple miles felt like they lasted forever.”
“Mmm, I bet.”
He took a second to investigate our gear, “so where are you guys coming from?”
“Juneau.”
He seemed to think about that for a time. Like most tourists we spoke to that day, the only frame of reference he had for such a journey is that it takes about 6 hours on a cruise ship. I can only imagine his mental process in that moment was very similar to what I experience when I listen to my brother explaining a complex statistical modeling process. I understand the start and end points, and I can somewhat conceptualize the purpose of the journey, but the details are almost entirely mumbo jumbo.
“Well anyways, good luck with those last couple miles.” and off he went.
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| I seem decidedly unhappy next to Digby. |
Nearing the bottom, I stopped at a creek to fill my water bottle while Joe and Dig pushed ahead. When I popped my head back up they were gone. A couple hundred meters further along, the trail split; still no sign of the boys, I went right. Now close enough to Skagway to smell fried fish, I passed an elderly couple on the trail who eyed me in a way I knew they hadn’t seen two other boys who looked just like me pass by earlier. That meant they’d gone the other way. Although both trails would lead down, I knew this meant I’d have to navigate the bustling tourist metropolis alone and, frankly, I was terrified. I made the final steps across the train tracks and around the corner into Skagway and then, all at once, the bustling settled as every pair of eyes in sight turned to my clanking ski crampons. I fumbled with them frantically to stop the noise, but it was too late. Heavily sunburnt, standing in the road in ski boots, full ski gear, a harness, and an enormous pack tangled with glacier ropes, I was the latest museum exhibit for all 15000 tourists packed into the two street town of Skagway that day. I had provided a feast to a crowd who had been scavenging for any scrap of Alaskan adventure. With no space for me and my pack on the boardwalks, I was forced to walk in the road for all to see. I walked fast and avoided eye contact as best I could, but it was inevitable that I would have to entertain some level of curiosity. Each time a group managed to stop me, a small crowd of eavesdroppers would form in the outskirts as they probed into my story. As much as I was flattered that these people found intrigue and inspiration in our adventure, I didn’t fare well with the attention and found myself fumbling over words in embarrassment. It didn’t help that I was weary, stinky, and ill adjusted to human interaction; I just wanted to find the van. That would take longer than expected as I took two wrong turns in town before eventually running into the other boys, who were handling their newfound fame with grace when I hobbled over. While I felt overwhelmed, clumsy, and distraught, they seemed confident, like they’d just had an easy day signing autographs and were off for an afternoon golf match at the estate.
We dropped our packs at the van in the ferry parking lot, unsuctioned from our ski boots, and peeled off base layers in favor of street clothes. For 20 minutes we lounged in the parking lot, reminiscing about our time on the Icefield. As much as we’d missed creature comforts like toilet seats and dry socks out there, all I could think about now was how I dreaded returning to normal life.
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