Keystone Greensteps (Valdez)

By: Gary Clark | Climbers: Gary Clark, Mark Jonas|Trip Dates: February 27, 2002

Photo: Gary Clark

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(See the report for Bridal Veil Falls for background information on this trip and the area.)

February 27 dawned as the day before - a slow diffuse light creeping through the gray clouds that almost perpetually cover Valdez. We had spent another night listening to the "beep, beep, beep . . " of front-loaders as they moved snow around, a 24 x 7 operation here in winter. Arriving at the parking area again about 8:30, we strolled over to the base of the falls, fully aware that the first pitch would be the test of whether we would tick this route as easily as Bridalveil. Mark remembered it as 'quite hard', but I reminded him that anything even close to vertical was hard with the tools of the early 80s.

He found a groove right away that allowed a little stemming, but there was no avoiding the fact that this was a long stretch of very steep ice with no rests for the arms or calves. He led it without whimper or pause, and soon it was my turn. I always enjoy climbing ice on top rope, because I can move on axe and crampon placements I would never trust on lead, and thus have a lot more feeling of actually climbing the ice rather than engineering my way up it. The pitch was made of the stuff I flew thousands of miles to find, and very quickly I was peering over the top of the pillar at a short ramp leading to Mark's belay. The main difference between Greensteps and Bridalveil is the relative length of the pillars and ramps. While Bridalveil had perhaps 50% of each, Greensteps was closer to 80% pillar, 20% ramp. Rather enigmatically, they are both graded as WI5 in the book, but clearly Greensteps is the more serious climb. If these were rock climbs, Bridalveil might be a 5.8, with Greensteps a 5.10-. Of course, ice climbs are deliberately rated vaguely due to the degree of variation from year to year; they are often not the same even on successive days, much less over a span of years. Still, the rating system does not in this case reflect the fact that Greensteps will always be harder.

The remaining pitches were cookbook, except the last. I knew that most people exited the main ice pillar to the left as they neared the top, in order to reach a large tree. When I got level with the tree, it not only looked rather like a very awkward traverse to get there, but there was still a good 50' of quality steep ice leading to the rim that I'd have missed by going there. So, I continued, not knowing what the rim would bring, but in the mood for a gamble. As I topped out on the ice, I found near vertical snow leading through a thicket of alders. OK, so this wasn't the kind of climbing I had come for, but it was fun in a perverse way, knowing that I had good screws down below in case the whole slope ripped. Arriving finally on low angle slopes after a good long thrash, I tied off several of the larger alders and radioed Mark to come on up. Now we'd get to figure out an alternate descent.

My long perusal of the guidebook now came in handy, as I remembered that one didn't need to rappel from any of the routes - there was a service road up above the rim for the pipeline and a power line. We had only to wallow up to it, follow it along the rim for a while, then descend a non-technical gully back to the bottom of the canyon. Easier said than done - the vertical gained in knee-deep snow seemed to be about the same as the climb, and the gully looked likely to avalanche. Knowing that Mark was in training for a 50km cross-country ski race, I graciously allowed him to lead all of this for the sure aerobic conditioning that would result. I'm not sure he fully appreciated this gesture, but he'd have probably gone hypothermic following in my tracks at the pace I could manage.

We belayed the first 200 ft of the gully, then decided it was safe enough to unrope, even managing a glissade for the bottom portion. We were back in town in time for a hot bath before dinner, agreeing as we did a post-mortem of the day over beers that Greensteps was the better of the two climbs, simply because of its continuity. I read in a climb description once a long time ago that a particular route was classic because it "had no offending easy sections". This phrase has stuck with me over the years, and I bring it out whenever appropriate, for example when a desperate climb offers a few reasonable moves to allow me to get my courage back together. "Oh, man, not another offending easy section! I hope to Hell there aren't any more of those!"

I had come to Valdez hoping to climb and document one more ice climb for the North American Classics collection. I had presumed it would be Bridalveil. We chatted for a while about which route better deserved to be in the collection, going to bed without a clear decision. Greensteps was a better climb, but Bridalveil had some excellent passages, and the cave behind Killer Pillar was a unique and beautiful feature that was almost worth the climb to see. I woke in the middle of the night with the obvious answer - both should be in the collection. Just as there are adjacent classic routes in Yosemite Valley, and the Grand Teton alone adds three routes to the collection, Valdez was easily an important enough ice climbing area to warrant two routes, even if they were only a few rope lengths apart.