How Stanibaby Zee and I got our PhD's in Being A Badass...from Harvard

NOTE: This blog post is a twofer, as it will also appear at some point on MSR's blog. But as I see no reason to re-write the story of this adventure, here it is:

flying down I-94

The voice over the phone was nervous.  I was barreling down I-94 somewhere outside Miles City, Montana, going about 90 on my way to the Bakken oil patch and already tired.  I was telling my climbing partner Stanislav (known in some select circles as Stanibaby Zee), who had just completed a bone dry ascent of New York Gully on Snoqualmie Peak in Washington, about the hip-deep powder my friend Tess and I had found on Teton Pass.

i think you have a powder problem

“I’m worried you are skiing too much and not climbing enough ice.  I don’t know if you will be adequately prepared for Huntington.”

This worry voiced in his familiar Russian accent made me the kind of mad that promotes a flurry of training.  Up at work in the oilfields I ramped up my workouts.  I camped for days at a time in the back of my truck in Hyalite, Montana throwing myself at leads on mixed routes.  I worked through the fear and climbed into the long days of spring until all the ice fell down and I was ready to leave for Alaska.  

training in Hyalite

Stanislav greeted me at his apartment in Seattle, and we proceeded to buy beers to drink while doing our final packing for Huntington.   We were as strong as we were going to get.  We didn’t know if our training and preparation would be enough.  He had climbed Denali three times, including Cassin Ridge,  and I the Southwest Ridge of Francis and guided several Denali trips, but this was the biggest undertaking either of us had tried.  Gear spilled out over the floor.  Five screws with screamers, a set of nuts, a single rack of cams to 3 with doubles from .5-2, a 9.8 60 meter lead rope, for the aid pitch, an 8.1 tag line/spare rope, a BD Firstlight, an MSR Reactor, spare pick each, light puffies, extra gloves, and sleeping bags.  We had lists of lists.    

back in the day (at 14 camp in 2010)

He dropped me at the airport as he had so many times in the various states where we had climbed and traveled together.  Ours was a friendship begun on Denali in 2010.  I was on an expedition with two friends from Jackson.  We were the first team on the glacier that year, along with a Russian who had climbed the mountain solo before and was now going for the ‘triple crown’ – Hunter, Foraker, and Denali.  No one had soloed all three peaks in one season. We kept skiing by his camp as I wondered just who this mysterious badass Russian soloist was.  On the third day of our trip a serac fall avalanche off Mt. Hunter knocked our team of three over and buried our legs while skiing up to the Mini Moonflower.  At the same time, an avalanche carried Stanislav 200 feet down a lower slope of Foraker which resulted in a broken finger.  We all decided to team up as two teams of two, and thus began our partnership.  That year he earned a reputation as the ‘worst soloist ever’ – and completed an ascent of Kahiltna Queen with Bojan, one of our Jackson team, a visit to the North Summit of Denali with me, and an ascent of the Cassin with a guide named Kelly from Colorado who he met at 7800 camp.  We had climbed together since that expedition all over the United States, but had not returned to Alaska together.  Until now.

That's What She Said

Stanislav arrived in Anchorage.  Our friend Lewis, who used to climb with Stanislav in Bellingham and whom we had both hung out with in the endless weather days at 14 Camp in May 2010, helped shuttle our dirtbag asses from store to store in his bright red minivan.  The forecast looked amazing.  We arrived in Talkeetna in the morning of our departure and promptly registered with the Parks Service.  They were not surprised to see either one of us, as we were familiar faces on Denali.  The ranger did not find as much amusement as Talkeetna Air Taxi did in the expedition name we registered under.  The people in TAT’s office chuckled as they registered us as expedition “That’s What She Said.”

Access Couloir

We left the green world of Talkeetna springtime and donned our headsets in the DeHavilland Otter.  After a spectacular view of our objective and a smooth landing on the Tokositna we moved into someone’s camp platform, set up our tent, and slept all night.  
We got a start at the crack of noon the second day on the glacier.  The bergschrund was our first obstacle, but a guided party climbing the West Face Couloir had wanded a clear path over the broken moat of ice.  We had to sidestep a significant distance to reach the base of the Access Couloir.  Firm neve perfect for crampons and hero sticks with our ice tools greeted us, and we simul-climbed quickly up this section.  In the lead - 10 pitches according to the book - I placed a grand total of 5 ice screws.

exposure

From the Access Couloir we gained the ridge.  Stanislav led up a mixed bit and onto some snowfields.  We stopped

to brew up at a little platform kicked out at the base of a sheltering rock before the crux pitches began.  The weather was still quite good and warm in the sun as we kicked our way up to the Spiral.  I racked the rock gear with great glee.  “Stanislav.  My dream came true.  I was afraid to say it in case I jinxed myself, but I’m gonna do this with bare hands.”

“That’s what she said."

the Spiral

The Spiral was everything I expected: legit 5.9 in crampons.  The movements were protectable, pumpy, and fun, and the rock was indeed kitty litter at the top of the pitch.  I hauled the packs and then belayed Stanislav up.  I re-racked and set out on the mixed pitch that the book had said was C2.  I climbed through the ice and rock moves and reached a slightly overhanging crack with three big orange pins hammered into it.  I studied it for a moment, clipped a pin, and yarded up on it until I could get a good hook over the edge.  Hauling the packs proved strenuous.  We moved over some easier mixed ground.  Stanislav took the next steep mixed pitch, an M5 chimney with a continuous runnel of ice in the back.   I watched him disappear into the chimney from my protected belay spot.  I heard him as he worked through the difficulties, but did not see him until he emerged on a ledge far above me.  He brought me up.  I led on in the snow that had begun falling as the Alaskan twilight wrapped our world in a blue-gray veil.  Spindrift poured down from above over golden rock that disappeared upward into cloud and storm light.  We climbed step after step of rock, finally reaching a highway of ice that led us up to the Nose pitch at last.

the only night the tent got used on the whole trip

We pitched our Firstlight on a small ledge other parties had chopped.  We melted water and fell immeditaly to sleep after setting up our camp. We slept tied into our harnesses and sliding slightly towards, or at least aware of, the abyss all night.   Daylight greeted us as we awoke, brewed up, ate, and started moving once more.  Stanislav styled his way up the aid lead on the Nose pitch.  As I belayed his lead up the tiny overhanging crack threading up the wall I recalled our days practicing our

aid climbing in Leavenworth in a slight drizzle.  We were ready for this.  So far our training had paid off, though I still despised jugging up the line after his lead.

am i pondering the mysteries of the universe, or dreaming of beer and sleep?

The belay station for this pitch was crowded, difficult, and had stunning exposure.  Below us the Tokositna glacier flowed past Hunter, which towered above us across an open expanse of air.  The next section was a spicy run-out mixed traverse that I dispatched with the knowledge that our mixed difficulties would soon be over.  Indeed, we were happy to return to neve and ice.  We joined the West Face Couloir route at this point and climbed to the top of it and over onto a traverse into a cave.  A sea of solid golden granite soared above, riddled with splitter cracks.  Were this mountain not in the heart of the Alaska Range it would have hundreds of routes on it.  We climbed up into the cave.  The snow floor was the flattest place we had seen since the ledge below the Nose.  We brewed up, took off our packs, and dozed for an hour before continuing.

Stani, with the first mountain we climbed as a team in the background

The thing that makes an Alaska Grade 6 route a Grade 6, we decided later, was that it just keeps going.  We found out why the Harvard Route had earned this grade as Stanislav led out over the mixed entrance to the upper icefields.  When I got to his belay stance I sensed his fatigue, grabbed the handful of screws from him, and continued the lead out over incessant 50 degree slopes.  Swing after kick after swing after kick after swing led us higher and into new realms of exhaustion.  We had been moving for over 20 hours.  Tired muscles were a laughable inconvenience.  Our raunchy sense of humor had gone out the window hours ago.  It was replaced by a care for each other and tolerance of each others’ eccentricities when very tired that I have only experienced between seasoned alpine partners.  We had seen each other stripped bare before (that’s what she said).  We knew when to step up, step in for the other.  Stanislav told me when to eat when my blood sugar tanked.  I grabbed the rack when his energy waned.  So it was we arrived at the gateway to the summit: an overhanging snow cornice.  

“Do you want to lead this, Stanislav?” Oh please say you do.

“Nope.”

Grumble. You wouldn’t say it if you didn’t mean it.  Time to rally.

oh shit am i leading this pitch?

International summit success!

I set a screw in the last of the ice before the overhanging snow, stared at it for a while, whined like a baby kitten, then with a feral war cry sunk my mixed picks as far as they could go into the bottomless sugar and swam, groveled, and swore my way up to the relative safety of low-angle snow.  I flopped over like a fish and kept on going.  The sun was bright in the sky.  I belayed him up on a hip belay seated one rollover below the summit.

We summited this peak - the hardest summit to reach in the Alaska Range - together while each in our own unguarded moment of emotional release.  A dream realized.  All our work, all our planning and training, our rambling phone conversations

while commuting to work, all the road trips, the ice climbs, the desert towers – we needed to live all of it to stand atop Huntington as a solid team of two individually strong climbers.  We were surrounded by a sea of peaks.  The golden granite slopes of Denali soared in the distance, marking how far we had come since our first climb together.

gotta get up to get down

In Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums, the character Japhy Ryder (a thinly disguised Gary Snyder) tells the protagonist that when you ‘reach the top of a mountain, keep climbing’.  This applied on Huntington.  We had been awake and climbing non-stop for 23 hours.  We still had to get down the sketchy overhanging cornice and many, many snowfields, a process that would ultimately take us seventeen more hours.  One scary unconsolidated downclimb, several v-threads, armloads of tat, one found ice screw, one exhausting sunny traverse and many, many v-threads later found us at the base of the West Face Couloir, getting drenched.  

A rapid warmup had turned the route into a running stream.  We rapped fast but in control, wanting to get out of the way of the ice pellet avalanches the heat was releasing from the upper mountain and away from the path of potential rockfall.  We had climbed the route just in time.  As I slid down our icy ropes to the slings of the last rap station I found the multicolored webbing was now in a running stream.  With incredulous resignation to our situation I clipped in.  Water ran down the sling to my harness, down my leg, and into my boot.  I gave a thwarted laugh that came out like a little cry.  I was so tired.  I croaked out a hoarse ‘off rappel’ and stared ahead into another Alaskan twilight.  We hadn’t used watches for the climb – as I told Stanislav at the airport in Talkeetna, we were on the mountain’s time – so I did not know the hour.  I had been seeing faces in rock – something that only happens when I am deeply exhausted – since the cave.  

the dream team does it again!

As I had on the summit snowfields, Stanislav had a burst of energy.  He took the lead making a path down the vast snowfield, mechanically kicking and swinging as I followed his bootpack.  Less than 2 hours later we were staggering on the flat trail back to camp.  We were vibrating with exhaustion and adrenaline after forty hours of climbing.  We drank the four Sockeye Red beers that we had brought and power-ate a party size bag of Lay’s potato chips.  We crashed out and awoke to some whiskey generously offered by the small party that had formed in the Posh House next to our camp among a guided party and some personal climbers from Jackson.  

Ask this guy how he really feels about the isothermic snow...

...then ask her.

For the next eight days we climbed…nothing.  The Great Alaskan Warmup  - my name for the warming trend each year during which all the snow gets isothermic and useless for walking – had begun during the last raps of our climb.  We started walking down glacier for some objectives on the other side of the Tokositna, but the crevasse bridges were too spooky with the punchy snow.  We got a flight bump over to Base Camp and tried both the West Ridge of Hunter and Southwest Ridge of Francis, only to find bottomless sugar on both routes.  We ended up eating all our bacon and junk food and drinking all our single malt far too soon.  We camped above but in sight of the runway, sitting on folding chairs with footrests lording over the masses of people waiting to fly out from Denali’s West Buttress.  People Magazine and other reading material generously lent by Basecamp Lisa, our highly refined and extremely mature sense of humor, and the company of some good-natured ice core scientists from Dartmouth got us through this too-warm week in good spirits.  We had sent our objective.  And there was always next year.

lording over the peasants of base camp

do you think we ran out of bacon?

the dirtbag herself