Journal

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

BD employee Chris Thomas sends big in Alaska on Mount Huntington

Besides being Black Diamond's Warranty Manager, Chris Thomas is a prolific climber. In a building full of climbers, Chris is one of our most stoked and accomplished. Ice, rock, mixed, bolts, trad, boulders... whatever the style or discipline Chris is sending it at a high level. He sent us the following email from Alaska where he had another safe and succesful trip, this time with a first ascent.

 

From:     Chris Thomas
Subject:    Huntington
Date:    June 4, 2009 12:02:34 PM MDT

Rick and I just got back into Talkeetna after an outstanding trip to Mt. Huntington up in Alaska. Huntington has become something of a grudge match for me—this is my third trip to the East Fork of the Tokositna, with all previous attempts being thwarted by the notoriously bad weather. This time, we came prepared: 40 lbs. of meat, 8 lbs of cheese, three fifths of liquor, four iPods between the two of us filled with movies and music, chairs, three tents, etc., etc. We left no item of comfort behind! We could have waited out a hurricane and stayed fat and happy.

So it was with great surprise when the weather was good enough for TAT to fly us in on the very first day, and as far as we could tell, the high pressure was gonna stick around for a while. As soon as we landed we started packing for the climb. The goal was to do the first single-push style ascent of the fabled Harvard Route. After a bunch of previous attempts I knew the route pretty well and figured we had a shot at it. The climbing was even more beautiful then I remembered it—solid granite cracks that are straight out of the Valley and ice/mixed pitches that could be at home in the Adirondacks.  We pulled it off in 27 hours ‘schrund to ’schrund. Enough time out to get pretty tired and hallucinate a little, but not so long that we had to stop and bivy. On the descent we were pretty out of it... the "buddy check" for setting up the rappels was in full force, and I swear I saw a bunny rabbit dressed like a pirate pointing his sword at me from inside a crack. Definitely the hardest I’ve “tripped” from exhaustion before!

We rested and partied in our gluttonous basecamp for a few days, but quickly became tired of being lazy and got hungry for some more. We spotted a great looking ice and mixed line on the west face between the popular Nettle-Quirk and the Harvard Route. We took a light rack, one down jacket and one extra pair of gloves between the two of us and started up. The crux was definitely pitch 2, a sketchy traverse on top of a snow mushroom that led to a M7+ overhang. One of Rick’s pitches was pretty out there, too: unprotected vertical rock led to WI 5 climbing… he only placed like two screws on the entire 70-meter pitch. Maniacal...

We intersected the now-familiar Harvard Route at the Nose and the weather finally broke... it started storming pretty hard and it was time to get the hell out of there. I regret not pushing all the way to the summit, but we still had a blast and managed to put up a new route. We’re calling it the Community College Couloir in a pun on the Harvard boys.

Hope you’ve been well. I'm still up here in AK, doing some salmon fishing, but I'll see you back at BD next week.

ChrisT

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