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Avery

climber

Jul 24, 2015 - 01:36am PT

Deprivation: 2nd Ascent. 2002

American Alpine Journal 2003

Avery

climber

Jul 24, 2015 - 03:42pm PT

Deprivation, 2015: JD Merritt and Brett Baekey

http://pulldownnotout.blogspot.co.nz/2015/06/deprivation.html

Thanks to JD Merritt

Avery

climber

Jul 24, 2015 - 06:57pm PT

Moonflower, 3rd Ascent: Andy De Klerk, Julie Brugger, 1993

By Andy De Klerk

Hi Avery,

All good here in SA.
I've been keeping tabs on your North Buttress thread on Supertopo and I enjoyed Mark Westmans post. In fact I always like reading his reports and comments. Well done on highlighting another super Alpine classic.

As far as our ascent goes, here are 2 pics that I thought were the most relevant in summarizing our ascent - The first is of me starting up the Shaft in brilliant weather, and the other one of Julie near the top of the third ice band getting nailed with spindrift.

Julie Brugger and I spent 4 days climbing the Bibler/Klewin on the North Buttress but our total round trip was 14 days. We had an epic with bad weather after the first 3 days and we spent a long time on the summit plateau trying to find the start of the west ridge to descend in a whiteout. But we found it in the end and everything worked out fine, we just got a little wasted because we had only brought food for 6 days and gas for 8.

I have one of Bradford Washburns pictures of Mt Hunter hanging on my wall and every time I look at it I can't help but smile because it wasn't the Buttress that was the problem, it was the rest of the mountain afterwards that threw everything it had at us.

We approached the route as a "big wall ice climb", and our original idea was to haul up small mountain para-gliders with us. The very early Ailes de K Turbo Everest para-gliders that were more like tiny 7 cell skydiving canopies that were like flying bricks and that dropped like a stone. Ironically, when we were on the ridge just under the summit a hole in the clouds appeared and the wind was just perfect for launching. We could have been down in base camp in 10 minutes, but sadly we had left the para-gliders behind at the last minute. We'd done this combination before in the Alps and in Peru and the hit rate was about 50% and I rather wanted to climb the North Buttress than to risk not climbing it in order to maybe fly off. The rules for paragliding in the park are much stricter now than back then it was early days when both activities were not yet mainstream.

The North Buttress was really good climbing. The twin runnels and the shaft were brilliant. The prow was also really great mixed climbing. We bivvied open on the first and then the second ice bands and then it started snowing hard while we were in the Vision and then it got really unpleasant. We bivvied on the third ice band and then again just above the come again exit, and those last 5 pitches up to the ridge were just horrible with loads of spindrift sliding off all the time. The summit day was long and fine but then down on the summit plateau the weather closed in again and we couldn't see a thing for a week. When it did clear we went down the west ridge and back to Kahiltna base camp in a day.

It's a classic. We had a great time. It took a while before the memory of the great ice climbing superseded all the snow plodding that came after though. We should have left some skis at the base of the West Ridge. The post hole session up the Kahiltna was character building. The strongest retrospective I have of doing the North Buttress is how easily accessible it is with such excellent climbing, but at the same time how remote it is after you continue over the top. It's a big wall ice climb that you can fairly easily rap off of, which then changes into an Alaskan mountaineering adventure rather quickly.

Thanks to Andy De Klerk

Spiny Norman

Social climber

Boring, Oregon

Jul 24, 2015 - 09:50pm PT

Fuuuuuuuuuu… …k. Both Deprivation and the B-K. And Wall o' Shadows. Dang.

Avery

climber

Jul 25, 2015 - 04:54am PT

Moonflower: Clint Helander, Mark Taylor, Vittorio Spoldi, 2013.

http://www.facebook.com/clint.helander/media_set?set=a.732046820783.1073741831.64200417&type=3

Special Thanks to Clint Helander

Avery

climber

Jul 25, 2015 - 07:32pm PT

The French Route: 5th Ascent, 2015. Kurt Ross and JD Merritt

by JD Merritt

http://pulldownnotout.blogspot.co.nz/2015/06/all-in-on-mount-hunter-north-buttress.html

In the last days of May, Kurt Ross and I made the likely fifth ascent of the French Route/North Couloir, aka. Grison-Tedeschi, to the summit of Begguya, or Mount Hunter. (we believe the last full-ascent was by Colin Haley and the late Bjorn-Eivind Årtun, in 2009.)

A week previously, Brett Baekey and I climbed Deprivation in 21 hrs. The crux comes early, and while it may not have been "in", we made it go and made good progress after that. We went to the top of the Bibler exit pitch, the last technical pitch, near the top of the Buttress. We were ready to go to the top, but forced to rap the wall in a storm. Brett developed some sickness and ran out of time in the range, he left to start guiding in Colorado.
I wanted another go at Hunter, but via a harder route. It was important to me to go to the summit. It's hard to really quantify the difference between a climb to the top of the wall and a total-ascent. There are a lot of different ideas about what a "true-ascent" is, and I don't really care to tell anyone else what good style is, because I believe it's a personal choice. I stayed in the range and joined "Team Crevasse-holes" in their well stocked base camp. This would be Kurt's second attempt on the French route, and his third on the North Buttress. The French Route is incredibly sustained, and the crux climbing comes at like the very top of the wall, keeping it uncertain the whole way. Besides being a heart-wrenchingly aesthetic line, as a whole it's much harder than Deprivation, and considerably harder than the Bibler-Klewin.

Take Deprivation, replace all the snow ramps with steep bulletproof ice slabs, add maybe 10 involved mixed pitches, and replace the afternoon sun with the perpetual darkness of a true-north aspect, and you have the French Route.
We climbed in single push style with no sleeping bags. We shared one bivy sack to stick our feet in, and had a cut down piece of foam pad big enough for like 2.5 ass-cheeks. Our style could be described as 'light and naked', but not really fast. Our day-packs might have weighed 10-15 lbs dry. We set out near the beginning of the first reliable high-pressure, in a window of uncertain length. I brought enough food to stay well fueled for about 24 hours, and marginally so for another 12. This wasn't enough to feel good, but was marginally enough to get it done. We brought enough isobutane fuel for 4 days of water. As usual, we started just before midnight. On approach we could see that the crux ice on deprivation was already gone, just 8 days later.

We finished the crux pitch at the top of the head-wall 34 hours after crossing the 'schrund. We pitched most of it out, and were pretty consistently challenged the whole way up. We led and followed every pitch clean, not because we were trying to, but because we wanted to avoid wasting any time f*#king around.

We made a 90 minute brew-stop on the snow arete marking the end of the couloir. Our light kit wasn't warm enough to sleep at night: we were playing for all the marbles. At any given moment we needed to be either moving or bailing, and doing it quickly and deliberately. The Slovenians Luka and Alesh had dug snow and ice out from a boulder to create a bivy ledge the week previously on their attempt. Based on their description we were able to find it, and we were thankful for the work they did. We made a short afternoon nap-stop around 12,600 at the top of the wall, comfortably sleeping through the warmest hours of the day. This would be our only real rest. At this point I ate the last of my food.

We went for the summit around the time of our second sunset on-route. We climbed through worsening weather, and were briefly enveloped in whiteout on the summit plateau. As soon as it cleared we made a dash for the summit. We reached it in time for a perfect sunrise, looking over building clouds illuminated with fiery hues, and taking in an improbable view of Sultana, Denali, and Huntington. We were faced with a difficult decision. Our high pressure window was imminently closing. We were deeply satisfied to top out, but had to immediately decide between the supposed quick simplicity of a west ridge descent(if executed correctly) or the relative certainty of reversing the Northeast ridge and rappelling back down the Moonflower. We bet on a few more hours of visibility, at least enough to find the Ramen. We made our way down, with the weather closing in again as we left the upper mountain, rappelling and down-climbing into the western basin. I was in the depths of a full-bonk nutritionally, and well deprived of sleep. There was one spot where it really "got real": back at 7000ft we unknowingly rapped into a waterfall to avoid the impassable icefall leading down to the main Kahiltna. I was soaked to the bone at 23:00, and was forced to down-solo to a ledge and strip naked, putting on the only dry stuff I had and shivering away the last of my calories I consumed on the way up. We began the long slog around the massif. My only sustenance came from headphones.

We staggered back into camp during the first hours of Monday, June 1st, after a 75 hour push. The climbing was sweet, and the descent was managed. We tallied 4 or 5 hours of sleep, plus maybe another hour from nodding off at belays, on rappel, or even "gasp!" on lead. When we ran out of caffeine a general sort of fear had kept us awake.

This is the story in photos.

Special Thanks to JD Merritt

Avery

climber

Jul 26, 2015 - 10:52pm PT

Wall of Shadows. 1st Ascent: Greg Child and Michael Kennedy, 1994

American Alpine Journal 1995

Avery

climber

Jul 28, 2015 - 02:58am PT

Wall of Shadows, 1994. Cont...

Climbing: March 1995

Clint Cummins

Trad climber

SF Bay area, CA

Jul 28, 2015 - 04:15am PT

Wow, amazing photos and stories.
Thanks to Avery for putting this together, and to the climbers for sharing their photos & stories!

Avery

climber

Jul 28, 2015 - 07:43am PT

Thanks Clint.

Spiny Norman

Social climber

Boring, Oregon

Jul 28, 2015 - 07:53am PT

Totally agreed. Your alpinism threads are amazing and appreciated.

Avery

climber

Jul 29, 2015 - 03:22am PT

Wall of Shadows. 2nd Ascent: Ben Gilmore and Kevin Mahoney, 2001.

American Alpine Journal 2002

Avery

climber

Jul 29, 2015 - 09:15pm PT

Wall of Shadows, 3rd Ascent: Jimmy Haden and Russ Mitrovich, 2002.

American Alpine Journal 2003

Avery

climber

Jul 30, 2015 - 03:53pm PT

The Cartwright Connection, 2011. 1st Ascent: Jon Bracey and Matt Helliker

American Alpine Journal 2012

Avery

climber

Jul 31, 2015 - 03:53pm PT

The Cartwright Connection, 2011.

Avery

climber

Jul 31, 2015 - 11:52pm PT

Mt. Hunter, North buttress, Sympathy Variant. 2013.
by An Jong-neung

Choi Suk-mun, Moon Sung-wook,and I reached the top of Mt. Hunter on May 21 by a variation of Deprivation, the Sympathy Variant (VI AI6 R A2+). Our original plan was to climb a completely independent route just left of Deprivation, but we were stopped by the collapse of a huge ice pillar eight pitches up, near the first ice band. This pillar is at about the same height as “The Prow” on the Moonflower route. We reached the ice pillar by way of a 50m overhanging traverse (A2+). The pillar was wide but thin and sublimated; despite the conditions we kept climbing. However, while Choi was leading, the pillar suddenly fell. Fortunately, the terrain was overhanging, so none of us was injured.

We retreated, and three days later we began climbing toward our previous high point. We climbed the exact same route until two pitches below the collapsed ice pillar, where we traversed right to reach the first ice band on Deprivation. After passing this ice band we began to look for unclimbed terrain, and took our route through a rock band to the right. The ice conditions in this section were terrible and contained unstable belay stances (AI6 R). Once reaching the second ice band, we joined Deprivation again and bivouacked at the entrance to the third ice band. From here, we climbed a ramp that connected us to the Bibler-Klewin route, where we spent a night in the cornice bivouac after passing through the “Bibler Come Again Exit.” There was heavy snow on the final snowfields, and it took us many hours to reach the summit, forcing us to spend a second night in the cornice bivouac. After 30 rappels down the Moonflower, we arrived back on the glacier the following day.

An Jong-neung, Korea

American Alpine Journal 2013