Hells Canyon Trip Report ... sssshhh ... don't tell anyone.

In 2000, just as I was learning how to climb, I took a backpacking trip to Hells Canyon with Kristin and my friends Eli and Jason. Jason had just moved to Portland from New York state, and Eli flew in from New York City for a visit. I had lived in Portland for only a little more than a year. We drove in from the Oregon side, up and over endless steep hills of sagebrush and eventually down into the canyon and the banks of the Snake River. That trip left a strong impression on us west coast newbies, surrounded by what felt at the time like a frontier wilderness. I recently dug out some old photos, and we look like tiny little creatures in a vast foreign landscape. At the time we felt the same way and couldn't believe we had stumbled upon such a little talked about natural wonder.

From Hells Canyon 2010

Squamish - The Grand Wall

The full weight of life sometimes keeps you down, boxes you in, prevents you from roaring at the top of your lungs. Work, family, life and death - real stuff that gets in the way of the play. Every now and then I look up and realize I've been swimming in crap for weeks on end, working too hard and letting the finer things in life slip past the ends of my fingers, which have cramped from too many long nights of typing legal briefs. The I'll step outside and start running, sprinting to nowhere, pegging my pulse and jarring my heart into action. "ARRRGGGHHH!!!!"

Its been over a month since I've posted on this blog. I intended to spend more time outside, but it didn't work out that way. A death in the family, two nights in the emergency room, and many many long hours of work kept me down as I hopelessly watched the summer weeks pass me by.

So this past weekend, I stepped onto the rock and sprinted - and screamed - and bashed in my knuckles till they bled. And it felt great.

Day 1: 1st pitch of the Great Game to the Godforsaken Land. 5.10+ A0, 4 pitches
Jungle Warfare, 5.10-, 4 pitches

Nate and I had the Grand Wall on our mind but wanted a warm up, so we headed to the Squaw. Good times!



Looking over at Right Wing - looks like its been cleaned up and provides a sweet .10b option to access the top of the Squaw.



Looking back down at Right Wing from the belay station where the two routes merge before the last .10d pitch.

The final .10d pitch kicked my ass. I took a small fall on the overhanging finger and hand crack, dangling from the end of the rope 300 ft off the deck. Sometimes it feels good to get in over your head.

Jungle Warfare was a sweet cruise.



Day 2: The Grand Wall, 5.11- A0, 9-10 pitches

Ah yeah, that's the shizzle.







Ed and Bill made some fine company at the top of the Split Pillar. Bill did a great job on the pillar and I got to take a few pics from the top.

The Split Pillar is amazing!! Woot! The Sword may have been even better, but I was too whooped to take any real shots of it. Here's Nate at the top as I look back from the bolt ladder. Airy.



Day 3: Centerfold, 5.10b, 3 pitches
Magic Mushroom, 5.9
Penny Lane, 5.9

I'm slowing down, getting worn out, finally feeling relaxed and detached from life for a few minutes. My body aches. Fingers bleed. Feet are sore. Canadian kids kept me up till 2 am with techno music. My brain slowly shakes off the effects of oxycodone and beer. Now this feels like vacation.

On the way in the first day I noticed a nice new gravel ramp heading up towards the Papoose, but I thought it was closed. A quick trip to Valhalla Pure and some dumb ass confirms that yes, the Papoose is closed and isn't expected to open anytime soon. Now on the morning of day 3, we're driving out of the campground, and there is a party of 2 walking up the ramp headed towards the crag. wtf?! Ok, screw Valhalla Pure - let's try Climb On. Ah right - so now we find out they opened it earlier this spring. Glad we can get some accurate information somewhere in this town.

So anyway, up we go for the five minute approach. A party of 2 from Vancouver is starting the 2nd pitch, so we wait a few minutes and then I head up. I'm giddy from having a 3rd straight day on the rock, and I'm chit chatting and BSing my way up to the first ledge. I feel bad for the Vancouver couple for having to listen to my gibberish, but I'm having too much fun. The .10b slab moves in the low angle groove get my attention, and we're back in the vertical.



By the end of the day, my brain and body start to shut down. I can barely muster the motivation to walk into the Smoke Bluffs for a final pitch. I pass out in a camp chair at 6 pm. Then I'm up again listening to more techno music, then back asleep, then up again listening to reggae music, then asleep again. Finally, I wake up one more time and its morning, and I'm lying in a puddle of rain water inside my tent. We pack it up and start inhaling greasy bacon and coffee before hitting the road. The caffeine in my veins barely keeps me conscious as we drive south. Slowly I start to think towards next weekend - and the drive back to Squamish - and another 4 days of the same.

On Monday, I got the inevitable questions - "How was the weekend." All I can offer is a big smile - "It was good."

Here are some more photos at Nate's page.

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.