Winter Sun at Smith Rock

I spent last week in the chilly confines of Barrow, Alaska, and when I left on Thursday evening the temps had dipped down to -35 degrees F.  Brrr.  When I deplaned in Anchorage, it was a balmy 10 degrees F.  Several hours later on Friday morning, I walked out into the early morning gray of Portland to find tropical temperatures hovering around 50 degrees F.  The 85 degree swing wreaked havoc on my system, and I promptly fell asleep.

Alaska 2009 - Monitoring Plans and the Arctic-to-Indian Ski Tour

I just got back to Portland from another trip to Alaska. I went up for three days to attend the Open Water Meetings held by the National Marine Fisheries Service. The stated purpose of the meetings is to peer review monitoring plans for offshore oil and gas operations in the Arctic for the upcoming open water season, which is usually from July/August through Oct/Nov. Incredibly enough, in three days of meetings we didn't receive a single written monitoring plan to review. Mostly we listened to the results of past monitoring as the oil industry tried to convince us all that operations have no impacts on marine mammals despite the fact that their mitigation measures are unproven and we lack baseline data on critical issues like population densities and marine mammal sensitivity to noise. Still, I found the meetings fascinating and came away with a much better understanding of the landscape and stakeholders surrounding these issues.

I was hoping to be able to do some skiing for the last three days, but it didn't work out as well as I had hoped. A nasty rain crust from January had resulted in sketchy avy conditions at Turnagin Pass, and the snow conditions were crappy anyway. On Thursday, Brian and I got a late start but knocked out the 22 mile Arctic to Indian ski tour in the Chugach State Park, which basically traverses the back (east) side of the Chugach mountains visible from downtown Anchorage.




The tour starts in the Alpine Valley to the North of Anchorage and then pretty much runs about 22 miles to the south. You cross over Indian Pass at about 16 miles and then descend 6 miles down towards the Turnagin Arm, where we had arranged a car pick-up.

I hadn't been on regular touring skis since I was a kid, and I hadn't ever walked in my tele boots, so it was a challenge to say the least. The snow was crusty and cut up, as well as covered by a layer of volcanic ash from Mt. Redoubt, so the skiing conditions were tough as hell. The descent on skinny touring skis with tele boots and awful snow conditions really tested me at the end of a long day. Still, I had a great time and got in an excellent work out. We saw lots and lots of signs of an active wolf pack in the valley - elk bones, scat and very large prints. Pretty cool. And the mountains were beautiful. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures due to the constant suffering. Brian got a couple, so hopefully I'll be able link to his in a day or so. (Update - Brian comes through with some shots of the suffering - look fun huh? This was probably from about mile 12-13 in less than ideal conditions.)


All in all, it was a great trip up North. I've got oral argument in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle on Tuesday and then another 10 days or so of hard work here in Portland. After that, we're off to New Orleans for Jazz Fest, which will be the capper to a long spring of work, climbing, travel and play!!

Wrapping Up the Trip to Alaska

After returning to Anchorage from the Neacolas, I had about a week left on the spring fling and spent it exploring the Chugach and surrounding areas. The weather was off and on, and the snow was detiorating, but I had a great time nonetheless. We got in a ski day in Whitier, Alaska overlooking Prince William Sound.







Portage Lake was looking nice! Looks like there are some great climbing and ski mountaineering objectives around here.







I also got in a couple of cool hikes in the Chugach - McHugh Peak, Twin Peaks, Flattop/Peak 2. Fun fun fun.





And managed a day trip to Talkeetna with some sightseeing on the way back.







There are few other photos here.

Neacola Mountains, Alaska - May 10-16, 2008

Yeah, hard work pays off … in vacation time! I had put in some seriously long hours over the past 12 months, and the two-week trip to Alaska was the icing on a spring cake that included the trip to Kalymnos with Kristin. I managed to wrap in a work detour to Barrow, and the whirlwind came together as they always seem to do.

I went up to visit my friend Brian Litmans, who moved back to Anchorage about a year ago. Brian’s into the free-your-hell stuff, so we looked to put together primarily a ski trip. We tossed around a couple of options, including Little Switzerland, but we eventually settled on the Neacola Mountains just outside Lake Clark National Park. We went back and forth on the decision, but we settled on the Neacolas for a couple of reasons. First, we could find very little information about where we wanted to go. Second, we were almost guaranteed not to see a single person while we were there. And third, it looked sweeeet!



Background Research:

We looked around a bit and found some limited information.

These guys went in with Beckey to climb what he recently named Mt. Chakachmna. Apparently, it was Beckey’s second trip to that area, and I’m fairly certain I actually interviewed one of the guys he went with the first time for a job we had open several years ago.

These guys had recently flown in to the same area for a ski trip earlier this year. Their photos definitely encouraged us.

The AAJ also had a bit of information, but not much to go on.

In the end, we decided to land on the same glacier that Beckey’s group and the skiing group had landed on, because it looked like incredible terrain and a good jumping off point for other adventures. Here’s a couple topos of where we were.





We flew in with Doug Brewer of AK West in Nikiski, and he dropped us off just to the southeast of point 7530 – also known now as Mt. Chakachmna.



We got dropped off on May 10th under clear skies and calm winds – a beautiful setting – but we could already see the lenticulars forming over the summit of Mt. Spurr to the North. Hmmm … I wonder what it will look like in the morning.







Well, we woke up to about 8” of fresh snow, strong winds, and limited visibility. We wanted to go for a ski tour, but we couldn’t see anything, and the wind was howling, so we decided to hole up for the day. Little did we know it was only going to get worse. Over the next 3-4 days, we got probably 2.5-3’ of snow. We spent most of our time shoveling snow, building walls, drinking beer and bourbon, reading and playing cards.







On the 4th day (5th day?), the weather finally improved enough for us to head out for a tour to check out the surroundings. The weather cleared as the day wore on, and by 1-2 pm, we were headed up the couloir behind our camp, which leads up to a col on the ridge leading to the NE from the summit of Chakachamna. We took one run from halfway up the gully to check on stability and feel it out, and then once we reached the bottom we decided to throw the skins back on and point the tips back up the 2000’ run.




We topped out a couple of hours later in strong winds and decreasing visibility around 5 pm. The soft snow turned to wind buffed hardpack and ice at the top of couloir, and we bootpacked the last couple of hundred feet. We snapped a few photos and then I dropped in, side slipping for a turn or two before getting to the good stuff. Despite the worsening conditions, we had a great time skiing down through the rock towers, surrounded by the seracs of a remnant glacier and soaring turrets of granite. Fun!





The next day we woke up to even better weather.



The sun had hammered the south facing lines, so we went across to the other side of the glacier, where we hoped the conditions would be better.





We had made a quick tour over there in pretty bleak conditions on day three, and knew there were some great lines to be had and that the snow was fairly stable. Some of the shots from an excellent day.















That afternoon, Doug picked us up around 5 pm.



and we got the rare pleasure of checking out our lines from the air.





We considered sticking it out for another couple of days, but we were getting bad weather reports and decided to take our weather window.

All in all a great trip! We didn’t get to climb anything, because the mountains were shedding feet and feet of snow like a winter skin, but the skiing was incredible, and we had a great time.

This area has incredible potential! Especially if you have the time and patience to wait for the weather window. Drop me a line if you want any additional information – lots of climbing and skiing objectives to be had from that base camp and the surrounding glaciers.





Here are some more pics.

And yet more pics from Brian.

Go freakin' get some!

Barrow, Alaska - May 7-9, 2008

For the last year, I’ve been working with several groups representing Inupiat Eskimos on the North Slope of Alaska. For thousands of years, the Inupiats have relied on the subsistence hunt of bowhead whales and other marine mammals in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas of the Arctic Ocean.

In April of 2007, Royal Dutch Shell put forth an exploration plan proposing to drop two large mobile drill rigs and dozens of associated support vessels directly in the middle of the Inupiats’ subsistence hunting grounds during the fall whale hunt. Map. In some places, whale meat makes up as much as 50% of their annual diet, and the proposed drilling activities threatened to disrupt the fall hunt and jeopardize the safety of the Inupiat whaling crews.

Last year, I represented the North Slope Borough, the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission and the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope in a challenge to Shell’s exploration plan. We argued that the Minerals Management Service illegally disregarded the potential impacts to subsistence activities in approving the exploration plan. Here's our main brief. In August, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an injunction setting aside the exploration plan as Shell was mobilizing its fleet and moving ships into place. A Reuters article --- NY Times Article.

This month, I was lucky enough to travel to Barrow to meet with members of the North Slope Borough and ICAS. We won the first round of litigation, but the pressure to extract oil and natural gas from the Arctic is increasing. I wanted to travel to Barrow to meet folks face to face and learn more about their traditions and practices.

On the day I arrived, one of the whaling crews landed one of the first bowheads of the season, and before I had been in Barrow more than a few hours I found myself at the edge of the pack ice helping to prep the whale to be hauled up out of the water.




For the next several hours, I watched as dozens of family members arrived on snow machines and we started the long, slow process of hauling the 30 ft. whale onto the ice by hand.





Once we got the whale out of the water, they started processing the whale meat, which will be distributed to the family and other members of the community who need food. Using traditional tools, the whale meat was cut into smaller chunks and staged on the ice before being loaded up into sleds and towed off towards the village.





Some of the meat was boiled on site for folks to enjoy. Yum. Maktak.



At the same time, scientists from the Borough’s Dept. of Wildlife collected data and tissue samples from the whale.



They send people out to every whale that is landed and have assembled an impressive database of information on the bowhead whale over many years. The Borough’s scientists, who probably know more about the bowhead than anyone else in the world, provided invaluable assistance in the court case, explaining how whales react to underwater noise associated with drilling and icebreaking activities. I got a chance to meet the scientists in person and learn more about the whale and its annual migration from the Bering Sea through the Chukchi and into the Beaufort and back.

I came away from the trip with a much better appreciation for the culture and traditions of the Inupiat. The whale hunt provides the very foundation for their diet, family, psychological health and the maintenance of their history and traditions.






I look forward to offering my help as they face continuing threats to subsistence activities from the oil industry.