Mt Logan - Statistics

Mt Logan, 5959m, Saint Elias Mountains, Kluane National Park, Yukon Territory, Canada; via the King's Trench from the American airstrip, aprox. 35km and 2600m elevation gain.

Day 1 - Arrive on the Quintino Sella Glacier on the US/Canada border (the American airstrip), and travel to Camp 1 (Canadian Airstrip).  Stop 2km short due to late time and cold, establish camp early.  8km, 300m climbed, 50m skied.

Day 2 - Continue past the Canadian airstrip, speak briefly with a team of four Canadians from Revelstoke, Nelson, and McBride.  These folks brought enough food to fill several plastic trunk-bins - when we began to descend, they were digging into the plateau to wait out the storm and go for the summit.  Another team nick-named them the "40-days, 40-nights" team for how much supplies they had.  I think they likely succeeded.  Cache 1/2 supplies at 2900m, continue to Camp 2 (King's Trench Camp) at 3250m.  8km, skied 150m, climbed 500m.
Rejoined "Team Quebec," three french-canadian climbers with a french-canadian guide, who become our neighbors and co-conspirators for the remainder of the climb.

Day 3 - Retrieve the cache at 2900m.  6km RT, 350m skied and climbed.

Day 4 - Rest day.  Introduce the team to cheesy bagels.

Day 5 - Carry 1/2 supplies to Camp 3 (King's Col Camp) at 4110m.  12km RT, 860m climbed and skied.

Day 6 - Move to C3.  6km, 860m climbed.

Day 7 - Rest day.  Meet Hans Kammerlander and Marcus Neumair, two South Tyrolian climbers.  Kammerlander has climbed all 14 8000 meter peaks, the 7 Summits, and then the 2nd 7 Summits, but accidentally climbed to the West Summit (12 meters lower) in 2010.  When his mistake became news in the media, he had to come back and tag the true top, which he and Marcus succeeded on 23 May.  They were looking fit and strong, and after digging up their cache continued down the mountain.  They introduced themselves only as Hans and Marcus, and it wasn't until later that we learned we were speaking to Kammerlander (he kind of a big deal).

Day 8 - The weather is starting to deteriorate, but we are able to carry a load up to Camp 4 (Football Field) at 4840m.  This, we realize, is the beginning of the "real climbing", with a route that wind's its way through two serac section and across one spooky series of crevasses.  6km RT, 730m climbed and skied.

Day 9 - Move up to C4.  With no more sleds and heavy packs, we decide to do this in 100m legs with 15 minute breaks, and arrive in camp feeling good.  Meet two climbers from Anchorage descending - they had camped on the plateau for a week before they ran out of time, and were descending without the summit.  3km, 730m climbed.

Day 10 - Rest day.  Met a team of 4 Swiss, who had flown in two days ahead of us.  They reached the West Summit the same day the Tyrolians had climbed to the East Summit, and were happy enough for their accomplishment.  They had enough of the cold and were moving strong.

Day 11 - Weather day.  30cm of snow and moderate winds made us stay in camp.  A Polish team of four came wallowing down, looking pretty shattered, stomping along in their crampons while dragging skis on top of their sleds (we all wondered about that).  They had attempted 3 times from a high camp on the plateau over the last 10 days, but were running out of food and were heading down.  Wow.

Day 12 - Move to Camp 5 (High Camp) on the plateau at 5230m.  We had hoped for a weather forecast of three days, but only had one for 2 or 2.5 days before another storm rolled in until the end of the week.  We didn't have enough food to wait that long - doing so would put us 4-6 days overdue - so we decided to pack only three days food and fuel, and carry only what we needed for the next few nights.  We climbed up through the weakening weather, crossed the col at 5540m, and then descended onto the plateau to establish camp.  4km, 700m climbed and 300m skied.

Day 13 - last night the ski was crystal clear, if windy: today the winds are steady, but the clouds are forming faster than hoped.  Everyone was beaten and cold.  Mark and I really wanted to give these guys a summit attempt - they had worked so hard for it.  But what we really needed, and didn't have, was another day to rest and then give it a summit attempt.  So we packed up and headed down.  The winds were brutal, and getting back up and over the col was the coldest I've been in a long, long time (since Mt Vinson, I think).  4km, 300m climbed and 700m skied.

Day 14 - Rest day.  We really, really needed it!

Day 15 - Descend to C3.  Originally, we had hoped to make it to C2, but the weather picked up after we left camp and we found ourselves navigating with only 30-10m of visibility.  Another Canadian team passed us, and we learned they had reached the summit from "Windy Camp", located at 5050 meters before the col.  They were all on skis and quickly passed us and continued down.  Reaching C3 requires gps all the way into camp.  3km, 730m skied.

Day 16 - At first, the weather is so poor that we opt to make it another rest day.  We meet two canadian guides, part of a bigger team, who carried up to C4 but are turning around.  A break in the weather mid-morning prompts us to go for it and head down.  The weather closes in again, but just as we leave it starts to break one final time and just kept getting better.  We stop briefly at C2 to pick up our cache, then continue down to the Canadian airstrip and C1.  13km, 1310m skied.

Day 17 - The day is beautiful, and we're all excited that we may fly out.  Its tempered by our knowledge that we're arriving late in the afternoon, and may stay there for another night.  But still.  It feels good to climb the last grade and know that's the last climb; to cross the last col, and to be able to see the airstrip ahead of us.  We actually arrive earlier than planned - around 2pm, and after a few phone calls we hear Paul's plane at 5pm.  9km, 150m climbed, 300m skied.

Totals:  82 km traveled, 5480m climbed and skied.

Mt Logan - The Narrative

I left for Anchorage on the 6am flight from Seattle on 13 May, and met my team at the bed & breakfast.  We were an varied group - Edward and Katie were from the suburbs of Seattle and along with Mark and myself the Americans.  Andrits and Sven were from Canada, and Ellie was from Switzerland.  Mark was the lead guide for the expedition, and splits his time between Mazama, Washington and Ouray, Colorado.

The next day we drove down to Chitina, Alaska, in Ultima Thule's loaner van.  Ultima Thule is possibly the biggest bush plan outfit in the Wrangel/St Elias Mountains, and Paul Klaus has been flying in these mountains for 30 years.  If you're interested in hunting or fishing, their lodge is four stars, and if you're a climber or a skier, you'll have one of the best pilots in Alaska flying you in.

Unfortunately for us, the weather wasn't co-operating and we ended up staying two nights in Chitina.  So when Paul was able to pick us up we were completely ready to go.

We had food and fuel for 21 days, so we utilized sleds to drag half our loads up the lower mountain.  First we had to get there - US Custom rules required Paul to drop us off at the US/Canada boarder.  A Canadian plane could have landed us 8km closer, but the planes from Kluane Lake have to fly up and over the range, so adverse weather shuts them down more often than from the Alaska side.  We were a great example:  while we had to wait two days to fly in, teams from the Canada side had waited up to 10 days to arrive on the same day.  That 8km didn't seem so bad.

After a day of traveling to the beginning of the Kings Trench, we made steady progress: a day to move supplies, a day to move camp, and then a day of rest.  This also gave us plenty of time to acclimitize, so when we reached our fourth camp at the "Football Field", we were feeling good.  During all this time, the summit was wrapped in cloud and winds, and descending teams told us about the difficult conditions and frigid temperatures on the summit plateau.  Poor weather gave us an extra rest day, but forecasts were calling for a brief break between storms.  We did some calculations and realized that this was our chance - we didn't have enough food and fuel to wait out the week of stormy weather that was being called for.

To reach high camp on the plateau we had to clear a 5540m col.  Even with only personal gear, tents, and food for three nights everyone was feeling crushed by our packs' weights and the altitude.  Still, it was perfectly clear when we went to bed, giving us hope for the next day.

We woke up to the moderate winds that had been forecasted, and increasing clouds that had not.  Everyone moved slow and lethargic, having not really recovered from the previous days efforts.  We checked in with the team, looked critically at the weather, and made the right decision:  we were turning around.  It would have been great to make a full attempt - and perhaps reaching the West Summit would be a good second prize - but our strength and the deteriorating weather told us the truth. Getting back over the col was some of the coldest conditions I've faced in a long time, including these past few seasons in Antarctica.  We traveled in -40C temps with the windchill, and finally pulled back into our camp on the Football Field at 6pm.  We slept in and rested fully the next day.

Leaving the Football Field for Kings Col seemed normal.  The clouds rolled in and out, but it wasn't too cold or windy.  Less than 30 minutes after our departure that all changed.  It started to snow and visibility dropped from half a kilometer to thirty meters, then to ten.  Mark and I were navigating with compass and gps through three significantly big crevasse hazards hidden under foot-deep blanket of fresh snow, Kate and I on skis and Mark with the snowshoers.  We stuck together and kept it tight to make sure that if one of us had a problem, the other could help.  A crevasse fall in this weather would be a disaster.  Descending the final slope to our Kings Col camp was a blind grope relying on my gps to avoid the crevasses I knew existed to the left, and missing camp altogether if I went to far to the right.

Initially, in the morning we decided to call for another rest day, but the weather broke mid-morning and we rallied to continue the descent.  As we descended, the weather continued to improve until we set up our tents under clear skis near the Canadian airstrip.  The next day we finished the trip in the warmth of the sun, and Paul met us with his Turbo Otter that same afternoon.  We were sleeping in beds at the Ramada in Anchorage at midnight, though many of us admitted to staying up to 2 or even 3am, too amped by the experience to fall asleep.

Photos | Many photos here are courtesy of Sven Spengemann.  For the full album, follow this LINK.

First Impressions from Mt Logan

I think the photo album may describe my Mt Logan trip best by how small it is.  We were on the mountain for almost three weeks, and I brought home 68 photos.  That's it.

That's because Mt Logan was one of the hardest projects I've had in a long time.  Unlike Denali, there's no goat-path to follow, no snow walls built by previous parties to move into when you arrive at a camp.  We had big packs, heavy sleds, and needed to build snow walls each time we bumped camp upward.  It was a lot of work.

We had four truly sunny and calm days, although the summit only experienced those conditions twice while we were there.  We gained the plateau col at 5540m (almost 19000') to a high camp at 5230 meters, where we were only 7km and 700m elevation away from the summit.  But the weather window wasn't big enough for us to go for it, and we retreated.  That retreat was epic - whiteout skiing and navigation through known crevasse hazards and seracs, 50kph winds, and -40C temps until we finally got below the Kings Col.  We may not have reached the summit, but we weren't routed off the mountain either - we made it down in good style and with strength at the bottom.

I'm waiting for photos from the rest of my team, but until then, here's a slide show from my meager album:

Drunk History: The South Pole

This season is the 100th anniversary of the first successful traverse, and a not-so-successful second traverse, to the South Pole.   Roald Amundsen and his Norwegian team tagged the Pole on 14 December, and an English team led by Robert Scott arrived five weeks later, only to perish during the return trip.

At McMurdo Station, a film crew directed by Julie Katch and edited by Allison "Sandwich" Barden created "Drunk History: The South Pole."  Inspired by the comic Drunk History series by Derek Waters, its a humorous retelling of the story.  Warning: there is a few f-bombs, s-words, and the taking of a deity's name in vain.



The epic story still sounds like a modern debate between light-and-fast alpinists and siege-style mountaineers.  Or an example of how one team practiced Keep-It-Simple-Stupid and Proper-Planning-Prevents-Piss-Poor-Performance, while the other team suffered at every turn from Murphy's Law:  Whatever Can Go Wrong, Will Go Wrong.  The New York Times published an article about the events on 13 December 2011 - LINK.

Roald Amundsen raced to the pole using sled dogs, skis, and minimal equipment.  A gifted carpenter on the team trimmed the sleds from 100lbs to 45lbs each.  His team tagged the point on December 14th and raced back to the coast.  Remarkably little went wrong or caught his team by surprise.  They used more frequent caches then the English, letting them have a lighter daily weight to carry. They eliminated (killed) one or two dogs from each sled team as food supplies lightened after the final return cache's were laid.  The use of dogs - and some of their demise - was a focal point of criticism used afterwards by the English press.

On the slow and heavy plan, 34 days later on January 17th Robert Scott's team discovered the Norwegian flag and a tent left to mark Amundsen's success.  Since the snow mobiles and ponies proved inadequate for the task, they were dragging their equipment by hand, a technique Scott called "man-hauling", and along with their meager food supplies carried science equipment to measure snow density, take accurate weather observations, and collecting rock samples. Tragically, the English team was pinned down by a late summer storm during the return journey.  Exhausted and suffering from malnutrition, they ran out of supplies before the storm let up enough to let them reach a nearby supply cache left for the return leg.  They died of exposure and exhaustion soon after Scott's last journal entry on 29 March.

The Norwegians celebrated the centennial - a team ski traversed from the Ronne Ice Shelf to the South Pole, arriving at 11:30pm on the 14th, meeting the Norwegian Prime Minister and other government officials (the United States Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station operates on New Zealand's timezone).  The British Antarctic Survey, the Australian Antarctic Division, and Antarctica New Zealand remembered the heroic effort of Scott's team at their stations.  In the Thomas Hills, we had a toast to both explorers on their respective Days at the South Pole.

Top Ten Field Photos - Antarctica

We spent 33 days and 32 nights in the field.  We haven't traded photos amongst ourselves yet, so here's my favorite 10 images - from my camera - of that time:

Farewell flyby - the smoke-cloud was created with ATO rockets,
used to help the aircraft reach take-off speed sooner, and minimize
the chance of damage from the hard sastrugi.

Matt, Seth and Kat get the first view of the Thomas Hills
terrain descending to the Foundation Ice Stream.

Seth gets excited for Christmas.

Claire and Kat on the summit of Martin Peak - we were the
second ascent in almost 50 years.

Collecting samples in the South Mainland.

A Twin Otter aircraft took Kat, Seth and I back to the central
Pensacola Mountains for an 80km traverse of last year's sites.

Kat measuring a core snow sample before bagging.

Ice bow on a low cloud day.  Our return to Thomas Hills was
delayed by five days by poor weather.

Our very small, very remote, very deep field camp in the
Schmidt Hills.  We were 165km away from Greg, Claire and Matt.

Near the summit of South Island Peak, Thomas Hills.

My last view of the Thomas Hills, Patuxent Range, Pensacola
Mountains.  A moment later I turned around, picked up my
bags, and stepped on board the C-130 to head home.

Back in McMurdo!

A week behind, and heading home as fast as I can. I'll write more as soon as
We're done returning gear tomorrow!

Antarctica Needs This Back!

My friend Randy passed this You Tube video on to me via Facebook. A potential passenger vehicle for the overland traverses?

Shut Down!!

Poor weather at the South Pole forced our put-in flight to be canceled. Now we have to hang out in McMurdo for the weekend. Rescheduled for Monday!

"C-130 Rolling Down the Strip...

...six little beakers gonna take a little trip."
Weather permitting, we're leaving in a few hours in one of these. If you need to reach me, send an email - PG will be checking and I will be calling home periodically. Have a merry Yule and New Year!

Cargo In!!

Our project requires about 20,000 lbs of gear, food, and fuel. So we needed a cargo put in, accomplished yesterday. Greg and I came along to get a look at the area and confirm the site. Here's my favorite shot, from somewhere in the central Transantarctic Mountains.

Crampon Practice

A short walk and practice with ice axe and crampons on Tuesday afternoon. Seth is hiding behind Kat.

Crevasse Rescue

I think it's easier to learn this indoors before heading outside to practice.

Lunch

Looks like this.

Pulling Food

Today's plan focused on packing cargo: namely the 45 days of food for 6 people. You do the math. That's a lot of pasta.

I-156 at our morning meeting, strategizing for the day.

Checking the list.  Twice.  Food makes all the difference.

And this is just our dry goods - frozen food happens tomorrow morning, and is about 1/2 as large.

Everything packed into rock boxes, that will be used to take samples out once we empty them.

Midnight in McMurdo

Goodnight!

Bringing Style to The Edge of the World!

Usually I don't think I could get away with this. My clients think my sideburns and beard are unconventional enough as it goes. But these people spent two months with me last year - Greg and I were housemates back in '02 - so I don't have to worry so much about impressions. So I made an appointment with the station barber, Ildi, and walked out with this! Refreshing, don't you think?