The Apex of Adventures' First Breath

The Davidson glacier above, its' serpentine body snakes the length of this valley and spills out into the Chilkat fjord where it will be slowly broken down by wind, sun, and rain. 

 

We woke up early.  Sleeping on a small bunk for five hours was hardly condusive to a productive and energetic start for the day but it was definitely crucial to kick the trip off right. 

We had paddled to Glacier point the night before and were welcomed with warm, mosquito-bitten arms by the Chilkat guides who lived in this small gathering of wooden cabins in the middle of seemingly nowhere.  We broke bread with this motley group of guides before hitting the sack.

Morning and night are blended into one long stretch of twilight at thsi time of year in Alaska, so learning to sleep while its still light out takes soem getting used to.  When I woke up I couldn't exactly tell if I was too late to make our alpine start or too early.

 

 Our 'day hike' was planned over too mcuh pscyh and beer and I had forgotten or was greatly mislead about exactly how long the aproach to our climb would be.  Oh well.  We hiked over a large boulderfield at the mouth of deep blue glacier before skirting up the side of the steep valley wall and finally comng to rest at the bottom of a 2,500 foot gully.  The next couple of hours was spent kick steppuing our way up this gully over hard packed snow. 

Finally!  We breached the last snow field and took a break.

From here we were faced with mor undulating snow and rock covered hillsides before we made it to an exapnsive snow field.  This would be our launch pad for the assault on a peak known as Supah Freak, the objective of the day.

 

The first steep section of snow travel on the glacier.

The planning rock for the ATTACK!

 

The first slog was bright and a head down keep pushing sort of experience.  But we finally crested a ridgeline and came to this spectacular series of technical rock climbing mixed with traversing up and over some soft snow.

We had one section of 5.6 rock that was absolutely the best pitch of the day and spit us out underneath a waterfall.  The temps were so high even back on the glacier in this massive snow bowl that all day wet slides kept popping all around us.  The massive effect and sound of avalanches sliding near us was a tad unnerving but also a very neat experience. 

 

The glory road to the summit was a perfect snowfield at a very manageable angle. 

Bob surveys 'Geeks', the pointy peak to our back and right.

 

Reaching the summit was a great feeling.  We had covered some insane distances to get there and being able to sit down and rest for fifteen minutes was nice.  However the day was only half over.  We had started our day at 5:30 a.m., it was now 6:30 p.m.

We plunge stepped back down and now that the soft and unstable snow had been in the shade for a while we were able to undo a lot of hard work in a matter of a couple of hours. 

We finally arrived back at camp around 2:30 in the morning and man did it feel good to go to bed!