One,Those,Doug,Buchanan,www.Al DIY One of Those

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By Doug Buchanan, www.AlaskaStories.comOne of Those...It wasn't desperate until short final. Up until then it was one of those big money things, where the two of us got together and counted out all our money, including what, if we would have spent on a bottle of beer, we wouldn't have enough. So we didn't buy the beer, and we could afford to fly to a mountain that would have taken three days to ski to. Let a guy get a little money in his pocket, and first he gets lazy.So we flew. We were with the famous late Ron Warbelow of Tanacross, a little north of Tok. Well, we had earlier convinced him that he should fly mountain climbers to glaciers, and he would make a fortune, since no one else in the area would do glacier landings. There was a reason no one else would do glacier landings, but he didn't know that yet, so he got a friend to tell him some of the basics, and he started flying the very few of we financially destitute climbers wanting to go to obscure mountains requiring landing on a different glacier each time, incurring all the hazards for the minimum return.Approaching the mountain of our interest, we were impressed with the rolling wave of clouds boiling over the ridge from the south and disappearing in whispy fingers reaching out toward us as we set up on long final. We were in a Helio Currier. Things looked good. Then about short final, when we were getting kinda low, between the towering mountains at hand on both sides, and the nasty part of the glacier below us, before we were at the narrow tongue of snow that looked like a good landing spot, the reason the fingers of wisp were reaching toward us, reached us.The unique thing about a Helio Currier is the leading edge wing flaps, that are aerodynamically balanced to independently clunk forward if the wing stalls, to suddenly give it more lift, or something like that. When it happens in turbulent winds, the loud clunks of each wing's independent forward edge flaps randomly clunking forward and back, are rather dramatic, and flying the plane is like guiding a bucking rodeo bull to a delicate chair at a tea party table. I would have been impressed with Ron's white knuckle thrashing-about on his side of the plane, trying to stay on his side of the airplane and also fly the thing, if I weren't so fascinated with the unusual cloud formation rolling over the ridge above us. We planned to be climbing up there the next day. I didn't even know until after we landed that my climbing partner in the back seat was throwing-up the whole time from the first slam of the wind until touch-down. You don't often get to look at clouds with that much fury staring you in the face without their trying to rip your face from your shoulders.We did touch down, with a bit of drama. Ron, he just shouted for us to hurry and throw our stuff out of the plane and close the door, while he fought the controls at near full throttle just to keep the plane on the glacier at one spot. These airplane pilots who own their airplanes, sometimes don't appreciate the spectacular mountain scenery. The cloud formations up on the ridge, looking down on us, were worthy of pondering with an analytical gaze.I shut the door, and was a bit startled to see the airplane as suddenly rise away from us vertically, lurch forward a bit, turn, and get blown out of there faster than the departure of a government bureaucrat being asked a question.Granted, the wind was a bit brisk, but nothing a person couldn't crawl against. It was mid day, in the dead of winter, in the heart of the Alaska Range, or a bit at the east end of the heart, on the north side, kind of the left auricle near the aorta, from one's own perspective. Too early to camp, and where we wouldn't have wanted to try, for the same reason the airplane couldn't stay there very long. It wasn't all that desperate, since we just got there, full of energy and all, and there hadn't been time for much to go awry. My climbing partner quickly recovered from his esophageal opinion of the most recent moments of flight. We leaned forward, and just before reaching the horizontal position, were able to move against the wind, up glacier. It was really easier than it sounds, since the closer we got to the steep north side of the mountain, the less the wind was able to reach all the way down to us on its little venture to the north. But it did take us a few hours to get a short distance.We got to a place somewhere out in the middle of the glacier below the unclimbed ridge of our choice. We weren't all that sure how close we were, on account of visibility problems, on account of a certain portion of that cloud stuff curling down the slope and lacing across the glacier about eye level. Calculating from the approaching darkness that we were where we wanted to be, we dug-in forthwith. It was a classic flat glacier cave. We dug a trench, then dug in from the side of it. This time it was a square box shape, without much head room, but a castle compared to a tent. We noticed that the wind blew the snow away as we threw it out. When we finished, the only indication of the cave was a bamboo wand we put at the entrance of the trench.Next day we set out a line of bamboo wands on both sides of the cave, in case visibility wasn't so good when we returned, and the cave being otherwise not distinguishable out on the flat glacier. We then toddled on up the mountain a ways, on a route no man had dared to challenge before us, for lack of any man's interest in such an obscure climb. We pitched our tent on a small spot we hacked out of the ridge, sleeping between the roar of the rime ice avalanches crashing down the faces on either side. One of those faces was the famous ridge between the summit and the perhaps equally high north peak of Rabbit Mountain, which is on the map with that name, but you won't find it. We were looking at the vertical side of the ridge. The other side was steeper.Next day we reached the summit, after the usual spots of climbing interest along the way. Crevasses at the bottom of vertical ice are common on steep mountain-side glaciers, and always amusing. A bit nippy with the December wind being what it was up there on top. We looked to the right, and we looked to the left, and we reverently offered the ancient mountain climber's summit dissertation: Yeah, okay, lets get back down off this thing.Sometimes you can get a day of good weather in December, but not this time. By the time we reached the bottom of the ridge, the ground blizzard along the flat glacier was as robust as they get. We couldn't see our feet. We took off our crampons and put on our skis and headed out to the center of the glacier, where we left our cave marked by a string of wands. We got there, somewhere out there, and saw nothing in the fading light. We preferred to find the cave, rather than dig a new one, since a lot of our stuff was in the one we already dug. This was one of those times when you looked down-wind no matter which direction you were moving, on account of the wind would freeze your facial skin, then peel off layers, if you looked up-wind. This made it a bit difficult to look for the wands. After aimlessly wandering about a bit, roped-up of course, each yelling at each other that we each thought the cave was in different directions, we methodically trudged along a grid pattern, by lengths of rope, marking each corner by wands. We were pretty much at the point of it qualifying for the old desperate story, albeit as usual, since we could not really function too much beyond stumbling around in the wind, with our hands under our arm pits and our ski poles dangling.We huddled for the decision to dig a cave, or maybe ski back to the base of the ridge to find respite from the wind, when we noticed a wand right beside us. That is embarrassing when it happens. Then came the debate as to whether this was a wand we had just left on our grid search pattern, or one on the line leading to the cave. During the astute analysis by our keen minds, it slowly became noticeable that it was the wand at the corner of the trench leading down to our cave.You know the feeling of getting back home after a month long vacation. That's nothing. We dug down to that cave, pushed in the snow-block door, and started the party. If I had that cave right here, I’d start the party and not bother with the upload button.