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New extreme alpine route on Foraker
It may be freezing cold down here in South Africa, but in Alaska it is the perfect time to head out and hit the hills during their short spell of summer weather.
This June, two top alpinists Bjorn-Eivind Artun and Colin Haley have completed a new, daring route on the 5000 metre high Mount Foraker, a peak situated nearby North America’s highest mountain Denali.
To warm up they attempted to break the record on the Cassin Ridge of Denali, a classic and direct line previously completed in as little as 15 hours.
They then turned their sites on what they named Dracula, a route that would prove to test their skills to the max on the southeast face of Foraker, going at M6R AI4+ A0.
Haley has posted an account of the trip on the alpinist.com website recently, and is quoted below. (For the full article go to http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web10s/newswire-foraker-dracula-artun-haley):
Bjorn-Eivind Artun and I have just come out from a 37-day trip to Denali and Mt. Foraker in Alaska, which was partially funded by a Mugs Stump Award and the Norwegian Alpine Club (NTK).
On the evening of June 6, we departed with light packs to attempt the Cassin Ridge, with hopes of breaking the speed record established by Mugs Stump in 1991 (he climbed the Cassin Ridge in 15 hours, and 27.5 hours roundtrip). The forecast was marginal, and our attempt was preceded by a lot of new snowfall, but we already had waited too long for a good weather window.
Above Cassin Ledge we made a route-finding error and accidentally climbed a mixed chimney that was more difficult than necessary. While climbing the first rock band, the weather took a turn for the worse, and the mostly cloudy skies turned completely cloudy and started snowing. We had decent snow conditions until the top of the third rock band, but then began to wallow considerably in deep, fresh snow.
We had made excellent time up to 17,000' (about 11 hours) and were confident that we would break the speed record, but that hope began to disintegrate as we worked through snow sometimes waist-deep on the left (west) side of the ridge. The snow worsened closer to the summit ridge, and the final 1,000 feet to the summit took us over three hours.
We finally reached the summit at 3:43 p.m. for a time of 17 hours from the base. We brought a 20-meter rope for the approach, but simul-soloed the entire route.
After a few days rest they then attempted ‘Dracula’ in June 13. Haley writes again:
We skied from our campsite up the glacier to the base of the face and then cached our skis below a protected rock buttress at 6,800'. The lower portion of the face (before we branched off of the previous route, False Dawn) is serac-threatened, and so as soon as we left our skis, at 6 a.m., we set off simul-soloing as fast as possible.
We raced up a narrow snow couloir to the left of the main serac (but still threatened by a serac on the French Ridge) with steps up to AI3, and then made a rightward traverse to above the main serac and out of danger. We spent a total of 2 hours and 10 minutes in what I consider dangerous terrain, although we never saw anything come down from these seracs.
Above the dangerous terrain we climbed up a hanging glacier, and then departed False Dawn, climbing up to the base of the large, diamond-shaped wall that we hoped to climb. At the base of the wall we stopped to rest, eat, melt snow and bust out the ropes. The wall itself is about 3,000 feet tall, and comprised of first a large left-trending ramp system, and then a large right trending ramp system. We climbed a lot of ice runnels, and some tricky mixed bits. The rock was mostly good granite, but the technical crux came on a section of crumbly M6R.
At the top of the rock wall we had hoped to brew up, but there was still not a single ledge big enough to chop a butt-seat, so we kept climbing through the night up interminable 60-degree ice slopes to the junction with the French Ridge. Climbing all night, combined with severe dehydration and wet socks, caused me to develop frostbite on my big toes.
At the junction with the French Ridge we stopped to rest and melt snow in the dawn light. Eventually we got on our way again and slowly began the long plod traversing under the south summit and on toward the true summit, quite exhausted. We finally reached the true summit at 1 p.m., 31 hours after leaving our skis. The skies were clouding up however, and we scurried off almost immediately, heading down the Northeast Ridge.
On the descent the pair were caught in out by a storm without sleeping bags or a tent, and spent a night shivering in a crevasse before battling their way back down to their camp, almost three days after setting out.
Haley comments:
When we finally reached basecamp we had been awake for about 71 hours, and I was hallucinating a lot. The toes that I had frostbitten during the ascent had re-warmed during the descent, and had been excruciatingly painful for most of the descent and hike back to basecamp.
My frostbite looks as though it will heal up just fine (although I might not manage tight rock shoes for a bit!). The whole climb and descent felt massive, and made the Cassin feel like a small, non-commiting route by comparison.
Source website: www.climb.co.za
Image: Haley navigates a snow mushroom on Dracula (Arton)
