For our first objective, Rick and I chose a North-facing couloir between Pollak Spire and Mt Neveragain. The aspect kept it out of the sun, giving it at least a chance at good snow. It also had pretty much the only ice that we had seen within about a four-hour ski from camp. It didn’t look two hard, and we figured it would go one of two ways—it would either be easy neve and fun ice with some mixed after the saddle, or it would be waist-deep sugar snow and terrible.
Now, it should be noted that we think we were headed for a couloir between Pollak Spire and Mt Neveragain, but we’re not really 100% sure—as three distinct peaks can be seen along this ridge, and only two of them have names. Either way, keep that in mind.
Given that this aspect never saw sun and that the weather for the next several days was gonna be splitter, we got a not-so-alpine start of 5:00am, ate a chill breakfast, and skied to the base. We were crossing the ‘schrund about an hour and a half after leaving camp and immediately knew the answer to our question. No neve—just deep, deep sugar snow.
I tiptoed across the ‘schrund and trenched my way upward. When it was Rick’s time to cross, he punched through. As we continued upward, the climbing remained easy, but physically difficult, and generally pretty insecure and kinda scary. We found gear about every rope length, so at least if one of us did blow it, or the massive cornice hanging over us the entire time fell, we would still be attached to the mountain.
The couloir was only about 1,800 vertical feet from the ‘schrund and never very hard, but the deep snow and terrible ice (when there was any) slowed us down quite a bit and it took us well over two hours to cover the ground. As soon as we pulled onto the saddle and into the sun, it was pretty clear that we were probably done. It was T-shirt weather, and the still-knee-deep snow clung together so efficiently that every time you stepped with your crampons, you came up with a bowling ball size snowball stuck to your boot.
Our high point was 7360ft according to GPS, and the top of Mt Neveragain (the taller of the two peaks) is only 7600ft. I don’t actually trust the GPS reading I have, since it bounced around a lot in the steep walls, and I think we were more like 7250ft, so let’s just say we were pretty close. But, the terrain to get to the top of either peak just wasn’t gonna go with the snow conditions. Each would require some easy mixed terrain, but also a good amount of snow climbing on slabs over large exposure. With neve snow, no issues at all. With the snowballing, wet-sliding mess we were standing in, it was probably a good way to take an extremely large fall.
So, we did something I’ve never done in Alaska. We kicked back at a comfortable belay in the sun, and just chilled out. It was strange to not feel the time pressure to either go up or get down, but the weather was as nice as it could possibly be, up was a pretty bad idea, and there was still a very large cornice overhanging our descent route which would eventually go into the shade. So, we just hung out, talked about life, and waited for exactly that.
After maybe an hour, the peak above us cast the cornice into a shadow, and we began building anchors. In good snow you could maybe just down climb to the south, but on this day it seemed like a good way to die in an avalanche, so we didn’t even consider it. Instead, we went back the way we came, leaving gear every 55 meters. Normally, you can place a lot of V-Threads and get down without sacrificing much, but given the lack of ice and often incipient cracks, we left a large portion of the rock rack. It took us nearly as long to descend the route as it did for us to climb it, and Rick fell in the ‘schrund again on the way down. Then we skied back to camp. The whole day out was just under 11 hours.
We celebrated with Sparkle Donkey Walgaritas (margs made with Gatoraid), ate a nice big dinner, and continued the Letterkenny marathon well into the night (or what passes for night when the sun never really sets).
The next day we rested and talked through options. Well, all aspects are basically hosed, but maybe the deep couloirs below Plum Spire cut into the mountain far enough that they never got sun. We actually saw a glimmer of water ice in one. So, that became the new plan. We re-packed, (with more leaver gear this time) and set the alarm for 5:00am once again.
