Moose's Tooth, Ham & Eggs (attempt)

By: Chris Ferro | Climbers: Chris Ferro, Chris Thomas |Trip Dates: Early May, 2002

Photo: Gary Clark

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In May of 2001 I went with a friend to the Ruth Gorge in Alaska to climb the Ham and Eggs route on the Moose's Tooth. I had been to the Ruth before in 1997, and climbed the West Ridge route to the West Summit of the Moose's Tooth, but since then my ambition had grown and I thought the Ham and Eggs route would be a step up. It was harder, more technical, but with no cornice danger and, if there was a good amount of fixed rap anchors, not terribly committing. After all, if things went bad we could always start rapping.

We arrived in late May with plans to stay for two weeks, but the weather had other plans. The temperature during the day was more like Arizona than Alaska. In the heat of the day, we walked around in our underwear, slathering on sunblock and watching the avalanches. At night, the temps were not even below freezing, and the slush-covered glaciers never had time to harden back up. After beating our heads against the heat for a week, we decided to go home.

2002 would be different. I returned with a new partner, 18 year-old Chris Thomas, also of Baltimore and my partner on the North Face of the Grand Teton in 2001. We applied the lesson of the previous year and went a full month earlier, arriving in Talkeetna at about 3am on the morning of April 27. After sleeping for a few hours, we had hoped to fly out onto the glacier that day, but the clouds were too thick for the planes to punch through. Also, we were setting up base-camp with four other friends from the Washington, DC area who planned to climb the West Ridge route while we were on the Ham and Eggs, and one of them had a duffle bag that didn't make it to Anchorage on time. That Saturday afternoon, when it finally arrived, Continental Airlines drove it three hours north and delivered it right into our hands, but a brief weather window had closed for the day.

Sunday dawned sketchy. There were low-lying clouds and it didn't look good. We had resigned ourselves to another day of kicking around Talkeetna and doing pull-ups and rollies when one from our group rushed in and said, "Get ready!" In an hour we were in the air, and by 4:00pm we had landed, set up our basecamp, and had begun to cook our first dinner on the glacier. This time, we opted to have K2 Airlines land us right down on the Ruth Glacier between Mt. Dickey and the Moose's Tooth, instead of up at the Mountain House. It would cut out several hours of crevasse-riddled glacier travel, and put us closer to striking distance of our chosen routes.

That afternoon, almost as soon as we'd set up basecamp, it started to snow. All night Sunday night, all day Monday, and all day Tuesday the snow came down - heavy at times. Probably three to three and a half feet fell altogether, and we shoveled constantly. By Wednesday, the snow had stopped and we thought we might punch a trail into the fresh snow to put a cache of gear in about halfway up to the high camp. The idea was to save us time for when we made the move on Thursday. It was a good plan, but about 20 minutes after leaving basecamp Chris fell into a narrow crevasse. Tied to our double 8.1mm, 60-meter ropes, his weight came onto me just after I had heard his scream and dropped to the snow. I arrested, set up an anchor, and made my way back to the hole that he had disappeared into. After about an hour, he finally broached the surface with the help of my coil. Seeing as he had lost a glove, a ski pole, and his sunglasses, as well as gained a few frayed nerves, we decided to abandon the day's efforts and go back to camp.

The next day, Thursday, May 2, we regrouped, put our heads on a little straighter, and decided to go for it. Basically, the approach stays south, down by the Wisdom Tooth, to avoid the huge crevasses where the Ruth Glacier proper is met by the smaller glacier cascading down from the upper plateau on the south side of the Moose's Tooth. There are still plenty of crevasses to deal with, as Chris had discovered, but you can avoid the impassable bulk of them by staying south and skirting under the rock buttress that is just north of the Wisdom Tooth and separated from the Wisdom Tooth by a hideous icefall that looks like a death trap. That takes you into the proper canyon and on up towards the "hidden gully". They call it hidden because you can't see it until you are up there a good bit, but after an hour and a half it started to come into view.

We were breaking trail, so the going was slow, but soon we had made our way up to the next major crevasse field, which guards the last half-mile below the gully. We wound our way through it carefully, and then broke right towards the gully itself. Without that gully, you'd have to tackle the main icefall that spills down from the upper glacier head on. It's a jumbled mess and doesn't look fun. At this point, two guys from New England who had been moving quickly behind us in our tracks took over the lead. They climbed up into the gully, leaving some gear for us to clip. That gear was appreciated as we made our way up into the narrow, 1300 foot gully and negotiated its crux - a 10 foot high near-vertical step of icy rock that didn't feel too easy with a full pack and snowshoes flopping around on our backs.

Halfway up the gully, the two other guys fixed a rope and rapped down, leaving a cache and planning to make the move up to high camp the next day. We, however, continued up. There was another 600 or 700 feet of moderate ice and snow before the gully widened and ended, and we traversed left onto a steep slope with gaping crevasses beneath us. Another 600 feet (3 pickets worth) of brutal post-holing and the terrain eased off to the point where we could switch back to snowshoes for the final walk up to where we would place our high camp.

Nine hours after starting that morning, we were finally up at the big flat spot directly under 'Shaken, Not Stirred' where we could clearly (we thought) see the traverse over to the start of the Ham and Eggs route. It's a beautiful spot, looking down a few hundred feet onto the upper glacier where the plane had landed Thom Pollard and Jed Workman a few days earlier. We set up the single-walled tent (Integral Designs MK1 XL), and went to sleep.

The next morning, Friday, May 3, we started early but not too early. We were up at 5 or so, and by 7:30am we were off. It looked like a straight, easy, 20-minute traverse over to the route, but what we couldn't see was the dip where we would have to deal with some granite slabs covered by 2 inches of snow. And if that wasn't bad enough, if you blow it there, it's not just a painless 500-foot slide down to the glacier. No, no, no. Those slabs cliff out a few hundred feet down, so you'd get a nice slide, then some major air, then a big thud, then some more sliding (and that's before you hit the crevasses). In short, the easy little traverse took us more than an hour with some white-knuckle moments.

But then we had arrived. We were at the base of the actual route that we had come so far to climb. From a distance, the first pitch looked like a steep snow runnel around to the right before getting up into the couloir proper. But up close, that snow runnel was overhanging crud with the strength of day-old shaving cream. Up around to our left looked like some pretty hard rock climbing, so Chris opted for the center route. It was a right-leaning, snowy ramp that luckily had some frozen moss on it which provided the only real pick placement, and was the only thing that made the mantel move in the middle possible. Chris put in a few cams, which didn't work so well frozen (it was very cold), but they gave him enough confidence to do a straight-up tension traverse to cover the 10 feet of blank slab he encountered when the ramp came to an abrupt end. When my turn came, I just grabbed the rope and pulled - we had burned enough time on the pitch without me trying to be a hero.

After joining him at the anchor, which was a few loops of webbing fixed around something, the next pitch was mine. It was a narrow runnel of ice and snow with a tricky step in the middle. I put in a #1 Camalot in the wall to my left and scummed my body up and over the impasse. There was a huge bong piton fixed as an anchor, so I stopped and belayed Chris up. I continued and led the third pitch, which had a longer, even trickier step of overhanging ice. It was maybe 15 feet high, but with my feet out on rock and having to do some long reaches to find some good ice to sink my picks into it seemed higher. The next anchor was also a fixed sling around a rock.

Chris led the next 4 pitches up an easy, wide, snow gully and we used pickets and the occasional rap station as running protection, banging all 4 pitches out in short order. The 8th pitch loomed ahead, with a 60 foot, steep ice section with an overhanging spot towards its end. We were still simul-climbing, but I put Chris on a hasty belay as he clipped a fixed piece and put in a few screws. When I reached the crux, I got doused by 3 consecutive spindrift avalanches, and I had forgotten to put my hood up. I reached the 8th belay station (also fixed) cold and worried that the spindrift was getting worse as the day went on. The 10th pitch, a 4 foot wide icy bottle-neck, looked even harder, and I figured that if the spindrift started to carry more rocks down with it we might be smarter to just rap off and go home.

But I decided to give it a try. The 9th pitch was really just a diagonal traverse over to the right, which led up into the tight chimney of pitch 10. Once past the traverse, I got a couple of questionable pieces in below the crux, and then committed myself. There was a stretch of ice that was so narrow the wall on the right kept hitting my pack, and I couldn't swing at all with my right axe. I actually ended up swinging my left axe, switching hands and axes, then swinging my left axe again. The whole time, the spindrift was pelting my face, making it hard to see where I was going, and it was hitting my helmet so loud that I wanted earplugs. At one point, I waited for the spindrift to stop, but then gave up on that idea and just kept going. It was pretty hard, and it turned out to be the hardest pitch that I led on the route, but it wasn't quite as hard as that first pitch. (I still don't know how Chris got up that stuff.)

When the angle eased off, I put in the greatest 22cm ice screw that I have ever placed. The ice was so solid and the spot was so perfect that I almost cried when I pulled it out. After that, Chris led 3 more pitches that were still pretty narrow, but the angle eased off considerably. There were only a few more easy steps involved, and then pitches 14 through 17 were in a wide gully of deep snow. We passed guide Colby Coombs with a client on their way down, and realized that they were the source of most of the spindrift that had been pummeling us all day. They apologized, and we promised not to seek vengeance while they were below us.

The last pitch to the col, pitch 18, led up some hard, wind-blown ice, but then eased off and ended at Colby's Abalakov anchor. We considered going up to the summit, but since the climb had been harder and taken longer than we had expected, and since we knew we had many long hours of rapping in front of us as the short but brutally cold night moved in, we decided to head down. The rapping went smoothly. Most of the anchors were solid, although two or three required some maintenance. Four hours later we were back at the bottom, ready for the scary traverse back to high camp. We decided to drop down to the glacier and avoid those slabs and cliffs. It was much safer, and it turned out to be more direct. Thirty minutes after we hit the glacier, we were back at the tent.

Sixteen hours was our total round trip, tent-to-tent time. We were pretty pleased with ourselves. We fired up our stove and started to melt snow, and I realized that I had only had a quart and a half of water and ten Power Gels all day. Right about then, my legs started to cramp up, and I writhed in pain, downing water and more Power Gels until finally sleep took me away. Chris stayed up a little later, eating a full dinner and trying to get some blood back into his two frost-bitten big toes. They weren't too bad, just some minor frostbite, but it was enough to turn both toes slightly purple. Although he was wearing the Lowa Civetta Extreme boots, he had worn too many socks and constricted the circulation. He would pay for it in pain when they thawed out over the next few days.

The next day, Saturday, May 4, we slept late and woke to a clear, blue sky. The sound of planes filled the sky, and occasionally one of the more daring pilots would buzz our high camp and dive down below us into the narrow canyon that leads back to the Ruth. After packing up, we headed in that same direction, snowshoeing across the one, huge crevasse that stood between us and the gully. In another twenty minutes we switched to crampons and started the traverse over to the gully's top. About 4 ropelengths later, and after scouring the snowy edges of the rock wall, I uncovered a rap station. It wasn't much, but there was no way to back it up, so we rapped down as gently as we could.

The next rap station wasn't much better - two thin pins and a shaky nut. As Chris rapped, the nut ripped out, and I quickly stuffed it back in and tapped on it with my pick. There was no anchor at the end of that second rap, so we down-climbed about a hundred feet to a single piton tied to some blue webbing. Once again, our efforts to back it up were fruitless, so we did the old "gentle rap" one more time. After that, there were no more fixed pieces at all. I built a double Abalakov that I didn't have much confidence in (gentle rap), and then pounded a picket in to the point where I knew it would never come out. We rapped off of that, leaving it for the next party to try to extract, and finally found ourselves back down on the glacier.

The next obstacle was the huge crevasse field below us. It was amazing to see how much larger some of the crevasses had become and how the crevasse field had changed in only 3 days. On the way up there had been nothing too scary, but on the way down there were a couple of spots where the snow bridges were so thin and the crevasses so close that I was surprised that neither of us fell in. But after that, it was just an easy walk down to the lower crevasses, where we found Chris's hole even larger than we had left it. A quick leap over it's gaping mouth and we were home free.

Overall, it was a great climb. The fixed rap stations made it fast and fairly safe. We didn't place much gear, but just clipped rap stations as we went. Some of the stations were covered in snow, but with a little scrubbing in logical places and they became visible. If you saw a spot that looked perfect for a rap station, there was probably one there. The difficulty level was definitely higher than we were expecting, mainly because of that first pitch and the fact that enough people had gone before us to knock some of the ice off of the pitches higher up. As for that first pitch, I think the easiest and safest way is to go up the rock to the left. It looks pretty hard, but it must be easier than that center ramp.

The most dangerous part is the approach from the lower glacier, in my opinion. Those crevasses are hideous, and the gully is hard to protect and tricky with a full pack. You can avoid all of that by having the plane drop you off up on the upper glacier, but the number of routes you can access from there is limited. If your plans include routes on Dickey, Barille, or other mountains down on the Ruth Glacier, then a basecamp down low is best.

Although the weather is always a crapshoot, we seemed to have hit it just right. In 2001, late May was too late. The days were too long and hot, the crevasses were too wide open, the snow bridges too soft, and the avalanches too frequent. But in 2002, late April was perfect. It was cold enough, but not too cold. The nights were actually pretty dark, and a headlamp might have come in handy for two or three hours, but it never got pitch black. The temps dropped to probably twenty below zero at the coldest part of the night up high, but during the day, in the sun, a T-shirt and windbreaker were fine.

All I can say is: Go for it! If the conditions are good and the fixed gear is in good shape, then it's a pretty safe and fast climb. The lower slopes below it are definitely avalanche terrain (read Thom Pollard's trip report), but the route itself is steep enough to sluff off any recent snows. Though you wouldn't want to be in the couloir during a snowstorm, we were there 2 days after a big one and the only trouble was some deep post-holing on pitches 14 - 17. Also, we didn't go up to the summit, but the slopes up there might be ugly after a good snow. From what we could see, and from what I could see from the West Summit in 1997, the cornices up there are terrifying - some of them double back on themselves creating huge crevasses. In 1997, just below the West Summit, a gigantic cornice broke off right next to us and I thought it was all over. So we had no problems with just tagging the col and rapping down.

Good luck, have fun, and be safe!