Mt. Huntington, West Face (Harvard Route)

By: John Fitzgerald | Climbers: John Fitzgerald, Charlie Carr, Coley Gentzel, Seth Holly, Clint Cook, Eric Johnson |Trip Dates: April 16th- May 6th, 2005

Photo: George Bell, Jr.

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Charlie Carr and I climbed Peak 11,300 last year and we are back again to attempt the Harvard. The previous fall was warm and dry and much of the ice and snow that should have been there was missing. The winter had recorded a normal amount of snow but the range was "lacking". Our first bivouac had a fixed pin that was placed at chest level in 1999. It was now 6 feet out of reach.

April 16: The weather is great and we fly out 3½ hours after arriving in Talkeenta. We set up a basic camp, and then met the 2 teams who are eyeing the West Face Couloir route and one team (Erik & Clint) who has climbed all but the last pitch. They reported a lack of ice in the couloir. The second pitch was 5.8 rock with no pro. All rock anchors were so high they could not be reached. This made us wonder what the Harvard Route held for us.

April 17: Finishing touches on camp. Pack up and wait to see if the weather is going to change, as we were told it might.

April 18-23: It snows for 6 days and we get to know our neighbors. We wonder how long it will take for all this snow to sluff off our route, if it ever stops snowing. We easily had 6'; some think more. Hard to tell when it is windy, as snow can fill your campsite as fast as you shovel it downwind. We discuss how to start the route. We had planned on the Modern Start; six pitches of snow and/or ice to gain the end of the Stegosaur. But this option could hold snow longer. We think climbing the Stegosaur is a better option and it looks fun.

April 24 is only partly cloudy. It is nice to see the sun. It is painful to sit around on such a beautiful day but snow is sluffing & sliding all around. Unfortunately, the hill that gains the upper glacier is a perfect 35 degrees and we have not seen a major slide. A slide off the West Face took a man's life just 2 months earlier; he is still in the large crevasse at the top of the hill. It is on our minds.

Two friends of Clint & Eric's fly in and they too, are gunning for the Harvard. Coley & Seth camp next to us and we talk briefly about the route. Erik & Clint want to boot in a trail to the Stegosaur and have a look at avalanche conditions. I volunteer since I am eager to do anything besides shovel. My partner Charlie is not, and I quietly wonder why.

April 25: We wait for it to warm a little and head out in the late morning. The sun does not hit camp until well past 11am and that makes for cold mornings sitting around camp.

Clint, Erik & I head out with snowshoes. Even with the shoes, we are knee-deep. It is nice to do this without a heavy pack. We put in switchbacks, up the hill and across hard avalanche debris, below the West Face Couloir. We look at the Westman-Puryear variation, the Modern Start and then down the Stegosaur past a huge cornice. A 65m strip of ice above the bergschrund would take us to the ridgeline, halfway up the Stegosaur. Clint breaks out the shovel and goes to work above the bergschrund looking for firm snow. He finds firm snow and a little ice. Brandishing tools, a heck of a high step gets him over the bergschrund. The firm snow turns to 70 degree baby blue ice. Their 70 meter rope gets Clint up the face and up the ridge a few meters to belay on deep snow over ice. Erik & I follow. Once on the Stegosaur, we cruise up over moderate snow and past three short ice steps, stopping on low angle ice a couple pitches short of the top of the modern start. We can see 20- to 35-degree ice to the Alley. In most seasons, there would probably be snow and this could be a more dangerous section if conditions aren't right. But the dry fall left nothing but ice for the winter's snow to slide off on this portion of the ridge. Good for us. It took us 4 hours to our high point. Looking down at the lower part of the Stegosaur, I am glad we did not choose to start at the base of the Stegosaur. The ridge is rock on the east side and drops off sharply while the west side is corniced. Dicey looking terrain.

A cornice breaks off near Clint and the debris covers some of our tracks below. We down climb the ridge and rappel down the 65 meter pitch, leaving the rope for tomorrow. Once we had our shoes on, it was 30 minutes to get back to camp. Charlie is already packed and has a great dinner prepared. I pack and sleep fitfully. I am excited about finally starting the route.

April 26: Clint and Erik take off at 4am for their 2 day ascent. We leave camp between 6 and 7am. Seth & Coley take off after 8am. We make decent time to the bottom of the Alley pitch. As I am bringing Charlie up, he looks up and says "John, you are not gonna want to hear this." After 25 years of wanting the climb this route, Charlie has lost the desire. He wants to go home. My mind twisted into a knot. My heart lodged into my throat. The planning, training, money I spent I did not have to be right here. Being away from the family! I couldn't believe it.

Soon, I see Coley & Seth. We wait for them to show up.

"Ummmm…. I was wondering if I could join your team. Charlie is heading back to camp and feels comfortable rapping and hiking back to camp by himself." There are no crevasses for him to worry about. Expecting the worst but hoping for a miracle, Seth & Coley agree that it is fine with them. I just hitchhiked on an Alaskan grade 5. I am still amazed with these guys. They both work for the American Alpine Insititute in Bellingham, WA, and they turn out to be solid, fun partners and great guys.

I bypass the short but steep and verglassed Alley rock step to the right. There is a little rock but mostly just moderate snow. Coley takes us to our bivouac spot. It's only 3pm and we are hoping to fix the next rock pitch, mostly to take advantage of the warmth of the day, and also to accomplish something with the time left in the day. However, rock fall makes that a bad idea. The half pitch of the snow above the bivouac spot leads to the 5.9 dihedral, which catches rock fall from above.

I make a perfect one-person snow ledge on top of slanting ice that is well protected. Seth & Coley cut a two-person ledge in the snow. Their position is susceptible to ricocheting rocks so they dig a half cave to protect their upper bodies. The fixed pin at this boulder is 6' out of reach due the lack of snow, but we are able to sling a large spike of rock.

April 27: Coley fires off the next morning to climb the most difficult pitch of the route. The 5.9 rating would be 5.9 in rock shoes & chalk on a warm sunny day. Not an April morning, in the shade, with crampons and gloves. The pitch is also longer than usually with all the exposed rock. Seth & I jugged up.

The next pitch starts out on beautiful granite with 3 fixed pins above. I find ice-covered positive holds near the top of this 15' step. I haul the pack up, anchor the guys' packs and head up easier mixed terrain. The guys come up and we make our way to the bottom of the supposed "5.9 icy chimney" that jogs right. However, there is no ice in sight on this date, so Seth opts to climb up behind a flake on vertical, ice-covered gravel to gain a snow covered ledge. This section is usually 60 degree snow. The ledge is a good belay for his A2 rock step. He climbed it clean. This could have made a small but nice bivouac spot.

I head up mixed terrain to find the 4-pitch snow gully that leads to the Nose Bivouac. I grovel up a rock step that requires a layback. That's a layback with no pro, with crampons and a 30lb pack. It was ugly and I know the guys were thinking….."Oh geeze, what's up with all the sparks and grunting" and "That is going to hurt if things don't work out." Coley motors up the couloir for a couple pitches, then swaps the lead with Seth, who meets Erik & Clint at the Nose bivouac. They tell us a little about the route above and the "ice step" below the summit.

We dig in and I get the chance to lead the Nose pitch. I employ back cleaning, using the same cams several times. The three fixed pins on the pitch allow you climb this pitch clean. A hook helps you get to the overhanging part of the pitch. As I am leading the Nose, I hear a loud crack and look out to my left. 200' out, I see a van-sized rock falling through space. Out of sight, it collides with the West Face a couple more times before showering the glacier below with granite. Granite dust drifts past us. I fix the ropes on fixed pins and rappel. It was warm again and I sleep with my bag partially unzipped.

April 28: An 8am start has us jugging a free rope over an edge. Our summit packs make jugging "fun". The belay is tiny (room for one and half). I take off over a short snowy slab and easy mixed terrain to a snow & ice ramp that leads to the junction of the Harvard and the West Face Couloir. The 70m rope comes up 40' shy of the junction. Coley climbs ice to the junction and starts the "traverse right on 45 degree snow." Except that the 45 degree snow that I have seen in pictures and heard described is, instead, fairly casual mixed terrain. Coley belays from under the "Aviary", a big cave-like feature. Seth continues the traverse on steeper snow and rock to a small cornice between a rock and the main wall. I hike over easy mixed terrain to gain the bottom of the upper ice field and continue up 40 degree ice until the rope comes tight.

Now it's Coley's turn to lead, up steepening ice. Seth stretches the rope to a belay on a rock, and we are all grateful to get off the hard, calf burning ice. I take off from the rock, and the ice seems to steepen. There is an old fixed line thawing out of the ice. I look at the white twine and think of the guys who climbed this route 40 years before us, while trying not to bombard my friends below with chucks of ice.

Finally we have the balls of our feet on firm snow 75' below the summit ridge. Seth takes us there, traversing right, wanting to avoid the giant cornices that comprise the ridge and overhang the 6000' north face. We hike to the ice step that guards the upper summit ridge.

I ask to lead this vertical step. It turns out to be plastic ice-covered snow. One swing sticks are nice at 12,000'. I put in a screw and hit snow after a couple inches. I leave it and head for the slightly overhanging top. The ice is poor near the lip, so I reach it hoping to plunge the shaft of my tool in firm snow. It is too firm. I swing my pick deep into the snow but it only shears when I pull down. Plunging my fingers in the snow, I throw my heel over the lip and grovel. Finally I can head up rolling terrain towards the summit. I bang in a picket and sit on my axe behind a snow fluting. Seth motors by and heads for the summit and then Coley. I had been so busy just concentrating on the day ahead or the pitch ahead I never really gave the summit much thought. I really had no expectations of standing on the summit, as I expected something on the route to stop us. Of course the weather would shut us down. This is the Tokositna, for Pete's sake!

The summit is large and appears different than the picture in David Roberts' book. The wind powering up the North Face drives loose snow into the sky above us; a fantastic sight I had never seen close up. It would knock you off balance if it caught you standing up. We down climbed and rappelled to the Nose bivouac. A long and tiring day, indeed.

April 29: We slept in a little and woke to another nice sunny day. We were down at base camp in 7 hours. Charlie had make arrangements to fly out that afternoon and wondered if I wanted the cook tent or anything else he had. He flew out that evening. Kinda sad. Another partner moving on in a different direction.

April 30 - May 6: We hiked up the Tokositna to the South Face of Kahiltna Queen and the North Face of 11,520 in unsettled weather. One morning I hiked 4 miles up the Tokositna, and attempted to solo the NF of Peak 11,520 via an unclimbed 2,600' route, making it within 600 vertical feet of the summit before deciding conditions were not safe. After I flew out, the guys succeeded on the route. They were smart enough to set up a camp below the route and spend the night. 16 hours camp to camp. Nice work!

I sat in cloudy weather for a couple more days thinking I would not get to the airport on the day of my departure. Coley, Seth & I packed the runway out for Paul. A Walkman really makes life better on tent bound days and the hours you spent packing the runway.

Paul rolls around the side of Peak 9,460 in partly cloudy conditions with one wing pointing skyward. I hurry to tear the tent down. I am partially packed. As he unloads two climbers, he says he'll give me ten minutes as he points at the clouds moving across the glacier. Seth & Coley rush to grab my stuff and shuttle it to the plane. It's 4pm and my flight leaves at 12:52am. The shuttle does not run again until 11am the next morning. Back in Talkeetna, I rush around packing and trying to find a ride to Anchorage. At TAT, Chris offers to take me down the road and drop me off. I sit on the side of the road with two huge duffels and a cardboard sign "Anchorage airport, have gas $$". Ted Bundy stops (heading in the opposite direction) in his 1980's custom van. "I can give you a ride", the balding, greasy headed guy says with a smile. "Oh, I'm good, thanks".

Then a lady in a pickup says she'll take me down to the "Y", 15 miles. I huck my duffles in back and climb in. After a few minutes, this super nice lady agrees to take me the 2 hours to the airport for $20. I arrive at the airport just after 8pm.

Long days and pleasant nights!