The American Alpine Institute just received this sad news from Denali National Park:
An avalanche claimed the life of a climber near the Ruth Gorge during the early morning hours of Thursday, April 28. Two climbing parties were camped overnight on the ‘Root Canal’, a glacier landing strip and camping area that lies directly south of the commonly climbed 10,300-foot peak known as the Moose’s Tooth. A large serac, or column of ice, at the eastern end of the glacier collapsed at approximately 1:00 a.m. Thursday, shedding ice and snow onto the camp below. One male climber was fatally injured by the falling ice. His name is being withheld pending notification of next of kin.
The four surviving climbers attended to the injured climber, who was found unconscious and barely breathing immediately after the ice fall. One of the climbers called 911 via satellite phone, and National Park Service rangers were immediately notified. Weather and darkness prevented a night time rescue using military aircraft, so just after daybreak, at approximately 6:00 a.m., Denali National Park’s high altitude A-Star B3 helicopter pilot and two NPS mountaineering rangers launched out of Talkeetna en route to the accident site. Upon arrival at the scene, rangers immediately loaded the injured climber into the helicopter for transportation to an Aeromed air ambulance from Anchorage that was staged at Mile 133 on the Parks Highway, near the Mt. McKinley Princess Wilderness Lodge. During the flight the ranger/paramedic determined that the climber had died from his injuries. This was confirmed when the helicopter rendezvoused with the air ambulance.
The NPS helicopter flew the climber’s remains back to Talkeetna, and then returned to the accident site to evacuate the surviving climbers, all of whom were uninjured but had lost their climbing gear, tents, and a pair of boots in the avalanche.
Although the mountaineering season on Mt. McKinley and Mt. Foraker has only recently begun, now is the height of the spring climbing season in the Ruth Amphitheater and Ruth Gorge. In addition to the five climbers involved in the Root Canal accident, a total of 30 other registered climbers are currently attempting various peaks in this popular backcountry area of the Alaska Range.
In each of them there is a an epic adventure that is uniquely connected to the environment. There is often cultural conflict and usually there is extended travel by difficult means. These types of films tend strike a cord among outdoor adventurers. They affect us because we intentionally seek out struggle and strife in far off places.
The Way Back is an absolutely stellar adventure movie. It is exactly the type of film that engages the outdoor adventurist the most. The story -- inspired by a true story -- deals with an epic journey, minor cultural conflict and significant wilderness travel.
Janusz, a young Polish officer played by Jim Sturgess, is held for interrogation by the Soviet Secret Police. When he will not admit to working as a foreign spy, they torture his wife into revealing him as such and send him to a POW camp in Siberia. Conditions in the camp are absolutely atrocious and Janusz isn't sure that he will survive one year, much less the twenty years of his sentence.
Before long, Janusz creates alliances with a number of other prisoners including the hardened criminal Valka (Colin Farrell), Polish artist Tomasz (Alexandru Potocean), a Latvian priest Voss (Gustaf Skarsgård), a Pole suffering from night blindness Kazik (Sebastian Urzendowsky), and an accountant from Yugoslavia Zoran (Dragos Bucur). Together the ragtag crew of misfit prisoners escape the prison and lead by Janusz, they begin to travel on foot overland to freedom. The problem and the central storyline of the movie is that true freedom is nowhere nearby. The team must travel across Siberia, Mongolia, and Tibet to find freedom in India. In other words, they must walk 4000 miles through the wilderness including a traverse of both the Gobi Desert and the Himalaya before they can say they truly escaped.
In The Way Back, one can see a director late in his career with a long filmography as a complete master of his craft. The film is never an edge of your seat thriller, but it is still hard to look away. Weir has created a beautiful adventure that inspires tension from the opening shot to the closing sequence. This masterful storytelling combined with beautiful natural images keeps the audience thoroughly engaged with the characters throughout every second of the film.
The Way Back is a grand movie on a grand campus about grand people. It is exactly the type of film that you should put on your movies to see list right way...
It's not uncommon for us to get up to an anchor point only to find that we've left our cordellete on our partner's harness or to find that it is impossible to hear. Most people will just deal with these problems without thinking outside-the-box. One outside the box thought though is to use your rope for these things.
This first photo was taken in Red Rock Canyon at the start of the "Tunnel Pitch" on Tunnel Vision (III, 5.7). If you're not familiar with this route, it is an absolutely stellar ascent. On the fourth pitch, one has the opportunity to actually climb through the mountain in a tunnel. In other words, the route requires a bit of vertical spelunking.
The top of the third pitch, at the start of the tunnel, it is difficult to see or hear the second. The route follows a corner and chimney system up the wall. In order to see my climber, I built an anchor and then, using the rope, extended the anchor to the edge where it was far less difficult to see and hear.
Some might argue that this system lacks redundancy. I'm not too worried about that as I can see the whole anchor to ensure that there is no rubbing and we never have redundancy in the rope while we're climbing with a single line...
This second picture was taken in Leavenworth, Washington on one of our AMGA Single Pitch Instructor courses. The assignment was for the student to create a fixed line across a catwalk on the slab shown. This particular student didn't have the webbing or the cordellete to create a perfect SRENE anchor. Instead, he built a pre-equalized anchor with his rope. In this application, this worked really well.
In this picture, another Single Pitch Instructor candidate built a top-rope anchor, wrapping a rope around a boulder and tying it off with a double-bowline. In order to create some flexibility in the anchor he tied an figure-eight on a bite and clove-hitched it to the line going to the edge of his top-rope anchor.
This last picture shows a close-up of the figure-eight and the clove-hitch mentioned above.
Flexibility and thinking outside the box are two major tenants of climbing efficiency. One way to be efficient and to be flexible and to be outside-the-box is to use your rope for anchoring instead of other materials. Your rope is always on you and as such, it definitely provides an option that really shouldn't feel like it's that far out-of-the-box...
In the world of American climbing, there is one name that stands above all others. And no, it's not Ed Viesters, or Steve House, or Alex Honnald, or Lynn Hill, or any one of a dozen more names. The person who stands above all others is Fred Beckey.
Fred is perhaps responsible for more first ascents than anybody in the history of the planet. The octogenarian has been climbing since he was sixteen years old and has been a force in American climbing throughout his entire life.
The Mountaineers have recently strung together a number of different films that were taken of the climber throughout his life. This amazing silent film documenting many of Fred's ascents can be seen below:
Climbing, skiing and mountaineering are dangerous sports. When you undertake an outdoor, backcountry, or an alpine adventure without a guide, you assume total responsibility for your decisions and wellbeing. Conditions in the mountains are constantly changing, and no guidebook or computer web blog can take the place of solid training and experience. Though this site features descriptions of roads, trails, climbing routes, and other natural features, you cannot assume that because something is described here that it has not changed since last observed or that it will be safe for you or your party.
AAI assumes no responsibility or liability for your use of the information presented in this blog. With regard to all backcountry travel and climbing, you must make your own assessments and decisions, and you assume all risks in applying them.
