A Dream Season in Alaska

Alpinism can be a frustrating endeavor. Half the time, you fly to the other side of the world, sit in a tent for several weeks, wait out an endless barrage of storms and never even get to put on your harness. This had been the general theme of my last five years in the mountains. Over my last five expeditions to attempt new routes in various parts of the Alaska Range, I hadn’t stood on top of a single peak. I had begun to give up hope. I was 37 years old, pondering the risks of alpine climbing and questioning whether it was worth it to pay an exorbitant amount of money to fly to a remote Alaskan glacier for my fifth attempt on my biggest unrealized dream. And then, I got lucky and ticked off two of my most improbable remaining objectives in Alaska alpinism in the span of less than two months.

After four expeditions spread over six years, Andres Marin and I finally succeeded in making the first ascent of The Shaft of the Abyss, a 4,000-foot direct line up the sheer east face of Golgotha in Alaska’s remote Revelation Mountains. This route was the culmination of a 14-year dream since I first spotted it in 2008. The Revelations were relatively unexplored when I first ventured there. In the 40 years since the first climbing expedition in 1967, fewer than a dozen climbing teams had explored the distant range. After 12 trips to the Revelations, I have been fortunate enough to make the first ascent of many beautiful peaks and routes. But the most alluring route of them all, on Golgotha’s east face, had also proven the most improbable and difficult. I’d all but given up on ever succeeding on it.

Seth Holden and I examined the face in 2010 but didn't attempt it. After Holden's death a few months later in a plane crash, I returned in 2012 with Ben Trocki, only to retreat after two pitches due to dangerous conditions. Instead, we chose to climb the massive couloir on the east face to the southeast face and, in doing so, completed the coveted first ascent of Golgotha.

I teamed up with my longtime friend Andres Marin in 2016 only to be shut down by prohibitively dangerous conditions; a sudden warm front resulted in wet snow and temperatures above zero and, while organizing camp, an avalanche destroyed our camp and partially buried me up to his waist. Fortunate to have survived unscathed, we made a makeshift bivy from the remains of our tent and endured another week before being flown out.

We returned in 2017 with Leon Davis and climbed seven pitches up the narrow runnel of the east face of Golgotha before a broken crampon forced a retreat. Andres and I returned in 2018, but excessively snowy conditions on the route did not allow for an attempt.

Andres and I returned again in March 2022, hoping to finally finish their route. Armed with the knowledge from our previous attempts, we landed on the Revelation Glacier and ferried loads to the high pass, fixed lines into the Misfit Glacier and scoped the route from the base. On Wednesday, March 23, we left basecamp and were soon kicking steps up the entrance couloir toward the route’s defining feature, the ca. 1,800-foot runnel. After four technical pitches, we bivvied in a protected cave we had discovered in 2017, one of the only places on the lower route safe from overhead hazards. The next day, we passed our previous highpoint and continued toward one of the route’s cruxes, a free hanging dagger of ice that presented one of the major questions of the entire line. From another smaller cave at the base of the dagger, I chopped a window through a curtain of ice and surmounted the crux through a combination of mixed and aid climbing, including a small lead fall. On this trip, we utilized a new-to-us tactic: climbing with a set of double ropes (70m Beal Gully 7.8mm) as well as an ultralight tag line (70m Beal 5mm Back Up Line). With this system, both the leader and the follower could climb without packs, thereby greatly increasing our free climbing ability. Once at the top of a hard pitch, the leader would simply haul the packs.

Now out of the runnel, Andres led a 170m simul-climbing block through steps of steep ice and neve. Another rope stretching pitch of thin ice over a blank slab led to our second bivy on a small ledge. While Andres organized the gear and anchor, I laid out our sleeping pads and bags in the tent. Part of the tent hung over the ledge and, as I went to turn around inside, I slid off the ledge, tent and all. Only my 10-foot tether kept me and all the gear from falling completely off the mountain. Despite a ripped tent and a close call, we managed a comfortable night.

On our third morning, another five pitches of demanding climbing took us to the summit of Golgotha. Only in the final few feet did the technicality ease. Finally reaching the summit after six years of effort and 14 years of dreaming felt surreal, but a long descent remained and the weather seemed to be deteriorating fast. Seven rappels down the southeast face and into a broken system of rock and snow lead to the major couloir utilized on the mountain’s first ascent in 2012..

Back at the Misfit Glacier, we picked up a small cache we had left at the base of Golgotha and plodded up a 1,000-foot pass back toward our basecamp on the Revelation Glacier. When we reached our basecamp at 11 PM, we were astonished to see that a massive wind storm had ripped our geodesic dome kitchen tent from its anchors and it was nowhere to be found. Scattered all over the glacier for a quarter mile, we searched for remnants of our food and survival gear well into the night. In the morning, we found the tent fly, but the tent body was never found, despite lengthy searches down glacier. It had blown so hard that a probe, which served as a windsock, had been bent and rendered useless. We had succeeded on Golgotha, but it seems that we had angered the mountain greatly. It would take nearly a week before the weather allowed us to be picked up by our pilot.

Finally climbing the direct east face of Golgotha was so much more than a dream come true. It signified the end of a 14 year journey in the Revelations. Golgotha’s east face was the pinnacle of my dreams when I first ventured there in 2008. Climbing that route with Andres was one of the most profound experiences of my life. I buzzed in the afterglow of a major achievement for weeks as a persistent high pressure system continued to linger over my home in Alaska. The buzz of accomplishment started to be pushed aside by the desire to attempt to complete another long time dream: a first ascent on the second tallest peak in the Alaska Range, 14,573-foot-tall Mount Hunter.

Mount Hunter appears small when compared to its larger neighbors, Mount Foraker and Denali. Still, it is widely considered the most challenging of all three to climb. Dozens of classic routes adorn the complex faces and sinuous ridges of Mount Hunter. For years, I’d scoped various aspects of the mountain, searching for any viable terrain that had yet to be explored. After tons of research, I identified a ridge with a protruding granite buttress on Hunter’s southwest flank. Accessing it would involve skiing several hours out of the bustling Denali base camp, where most Alaska Range expeditions begin and end. After that, we would have to navigate through a complex icefall full of crevasses and shifting blocks of ice.

I recruited August Franzen, a young climber from Valdez, Alaska. August had made a reputation for himself as a talented ice climber and a budding alpinist. Most of all, he was always psyched and positive. In May 2021, August and I set out on our first attempt. In the early morning, as I navigated through the Ramen Icefall, I took a 25-foot crevasse fall. I fell for so long that I was sure I was going to pull August in with me. When I finally came to a stop, I was surprised to find myself unscathed in the bowels of the ice. We kept the rope extra tight as we skied the remaining miles up the valley to the base of our proposed route. We climbed for a full day up steep ice faces and corniced ridges until we reached the base of the headwall. We made good progress until a storm shrouded us. As we hunkered in our tent on a tiny ledge, snow piled up and we shivered through the night as the sound of increasing avalanches filled us with fear. We rappelled as quickly as we could in the morning and carefully retraced our line back to the safety of base camp. For a year, we waiting for another chance to finish what we had started.

We returned in 2022 and immediately set to work on finding the path through the Ramen Icefall, now all too aware of the hazards. Six days of unsettled weather kept kept us stuck  in Denali base camp. Finally, on Friday, May 13, we left in unsettled weather, aware that a high pressure system was about to arrive. We carried heavy loads through the icefall and cached our skis at the base of the ridge. Two pitches of climbing up to AI4 deposited us on the rocky, corniced ridge, where we knew a spacious bivy ledge awaited.

In the morning, we awoke to clear skies and blasted up the ridge to the buttress. We quickly reached their previous highpoint. I had been on a bit of a Tom Petty kick, so I was blasting the Full Moon Fever album at the belays. Alaska climbing legend Jack Tackle frequently names his routes after Bob Dylan songs, so I was thinking it would be fun to adopt a Tom Petty theme for this route, should we be successful. The first pitch contained several small roofs and a left trending crack system with my crampons skittering over snow covered slabs. August took the second pitch and deviated from his 2021 route, finding a slightly easier, but still challenging variation to the left. I lead pitch three (Won’t Back Down Bulge, M7) past the team’s original high point. On the fourth pitch, August took a lead fall onto the anchor, easily assigning it as the Free Fallin’ pitch. I  took a fifth pitch up a decreasing angled snow slab to an amazing bivy. That night, a full moon illuminated the sky, providing us with the inspiration to later name the route Full Moon Fever.

Three more long and technical pitches the next morning brought us to the top of the buttress at 11,000’. Winds picked up on the lower plateau as we tiredly slogged toward the south summit. At this point, we had decided to try to link up all three summits, something that has only been done a few times previously (notably Jon Waterman in 1978 and Tom Choate, Dave Johnston and Vin Hoeman on the second ascent of the west ridge). We camped beneath the south summit, just out of the wind and dried our soaked bags in the midnight sun. In the morning, we awoke at 5am and rehydrated before departing with all our gear for the south summit at 8:30.

Difficult snow conditions beat us down as we broke trail through wind board at 13,000’. By 6pm, we stood on top of the north summit, the tallest of Hunter’s three summits. We had successfully stood on all three summits.

It’s highly likely no one has stood on top of the south summit since 2003. August and I descended the west ridge to the Ramen Couloir, reaching the base in just 3 hours and 10 minutes. Then, we had to cross the glacier and retrieve our skis. After a warm meal and lots of procrastinating, we skied away at midnight toward the Ramen Icefall and the lower Kahiltna Glacier. Five hours of hallucinating and painful travel later, we arrived at base camp at 5am after 24 hours on the go, then flew out a few hours later and celebrated at the Fairview Bar.