Mt. Hunter, West Ridge

By: Guillaume Dargaud | Climbers: Guillaume Dargaud, et al |Trip Dates: July, 1995

Photo: Kim Grandfield

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It took me only 9 days to climb Denali and I had food and energy left. I briefly attempted a two day run up the East Ridge of Foraker, but forgot my sleeping pad and backed out after seeing some ugly crevasses on the ridge. Then I met Marc and Mark at base camp, drinking beer like any self respecting Australians. We decided to team up and go for Hunter, that interesting piece of rock towering above base camp. It's the 3rd highest summit of the area, but is technically much harder than Denali, even via its normal route, the West Ridge.

First day of the climb: no climbing. We move from base camp the base of the route in the afternoon, then go to bed on a warm night. It begins to sleet and as howling winds and wet snow batter our tent all night our will to start early disappears. In the morning we split my book in three parts and start reading in disorder. Bad choice of book: Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room!, the base of the movie Soylent Green, proves to be an even grimmer story than the movie. By the end of the day, with the storm still out there, we are depressed and only want to go home.

During the night the storm moves out and we start a little later than expected. The weather has turned to a foggy wet and we start our climb too much to the left. Not knowing very well where we are, we just keep going up; we end up climbing steep mixed with lots of shnice (shit snow and ice, a local specialty) up the ridge on the left of the plateau. There are plenty of times when the terrain is too steep or too bad to move together and we lose time doing pitches, usually poorly protected by a lone snow stake. At a certain point Mark is going up increasingly steeper soft shnice and just falls backward 20m before he can manage to stop his sluggish fall on a flat snow spot, his axe having opened his skull a good 4 cm. Further up I find myself in the same situation: I'm in deep snow up to my thighs and I fail to find the next anchor for my tools. As I keep evacuating tons of tiny ice pebbles with large arm movements, I can feel the snow behind my knees slowly give way. I dig quicker and end up carving a trench to move my way up. After 17 hours of this sort of snow digging we finally reach the main ridge and stop at the first a suitable spot for the tent. Very wet and tired.

While M&M dig up a tent platform, I set my small stove in the snow and start making water. After a few minutes we get inside and start changing and relaxing. Something weird happens at that point: Marc opens the backside of the tent, stands up with his feet still inside and starts, er, taking a piss. And then he just falls in it! We grab him and he wakes up saying he's no clue as to what happened. After making copious fun of him, the exact same thing happens to Mark. And then to me! We quiet down and decide to take it easy the day after: no long push to the summit.

So we wake up late only to find my old rope totally frozen like a metal cable. Short day with a leisurely 5 hour climb along a beautiful ridge. The steepest section offers 100m in 65° ice but the rest is quite easy, with a few ups and downs. We set up camp on a narrow spot with a marvelous view of just about everything: Denali, Foraker, the glaciers below, base camp with its incessant series of parties hiking back from Denali and its noisy taxiplane flights... The summit seems at hand just above us, but when we reach it the next morning, that high point proves to be only the start of a long plateau. We start to traverse on it for about a km in soft snow, but a cloud comes and hides the view.

With the deep snow and the lack of directions from the fog, we end up too far left to take the summit ridge. Climbing straight up proves to be real hard work with deep steep snow to reach the summit, on the last part before reaching the ridge, I sometimes have snow up to my neck... So much snow. But, oh well, by now the sky has cleared and the summit picture with Denali in the back is well worth it. Far below huge vibrations announce the arrival of Huey twin choppers coming to dismantle base camp. I light up a candle on my water bottle for Mark's birthday.

Back to the high camp we are not too ecstatic anymore: all the food we have left goes into our stomachs, except for a bunch of extra bars I brought. One more day of down-climbing and rappelling that long ridge where I have to fiercely defend my few remaining Powerbars from two hungry Aussies. We use every trick in the book: snow bollards, snow stakes, slings around boulders, down-climbing, jumping crevasses... before we finally recover our snowshoes to make it back down to base camp, indulge in some booty food, and can finally call in the planes to get back to civilization via a nice tour of the Alaskan range.

After 28 days up in the mountains and only one change of underwear, I can tell you that the smell was not nice when I arrived at above freezing temperature. First thing a loooong hot shower, then a razzia to the best restaurant in Talkeetna: salad, salmon, steak, shrimps, chocolate cake all with heaps of beer. Then a nap and back to the restaurant for a Hobbit-like second lunch. In the evening we spent some time looking at our summits with beer in hand.

The funny ending happened as I hitchhiked back to Fairbanks with all my gear. Several cars picked me up and I told them my climbing story. In the third car that took me there were 5 girls between 12 and 18. I started bragging about my accomplishment, to which they replied: "Hey, yes, we just climbed Denali too!". Most of them were from the same family and had held the record of the youngest girl up Denali at one point or another. Yup, humble, humble.

Editor's Note: This trip report can also be found on the author's web site, with photos. The author is a Major Contributor to the North American Classics project.