When I woke up it was already Thursday. Trading day! Ben and Freddie were due to fly home, and Zoe was waiting by the side of the runway in Talkeetna to get onto the glacier. “Not that I don’t like you guys, but what a good trade!” I joked while we were waiting. When Zoe stepped out of the plane her eyes were shining as brightly as the pin on her chest. She had finished her last ski exam two days before and was now the fourth American woman to get the full UIAGM mountain guide certification. On my side I had just done one of the best routes I had ever climbed. We had a lot to celebrate with the pizza and beer she brought with her.

The next morning we came up with a good celebration climbing plan. Zoe had been on Deprivation two years before and was super-psyched to give it another try. On my side, I was super excited to go back on the north buttress of Hunter for a second round.

Same time, same place. Sunday morning I was racking up at the schrund at 4, but this time with a nice warming kiss before heading for the pumpy, dead-vertical ice wall of the schrund. I might be getting soft, but there is something nice about kissing your partner before heading up a hard pitch. Or maybe I just spend too much time spooning with other guys at bivvies. We simul-climbed through most of the lower section of the route until the base of the Death Pitch. It didn’t take me long to understand the origin of the name. Twenty meters from the belay, with no screws in yet, on overhanging sugary ice, I was now desperately looking for protection. Unsuccessful, I pushed a screw into the crumbly substance on either side of me, both for the sake of my mental state and Zoe’s, and stemmed my way up, trying to focus on my balance. The rope was totally stretched when I finally found a good anchor crack.

The day was superb. We were now swapping leads as often as we could to relieve the second from the pack, and barely nine hours after crossing the schrund we were already at the base of the third iceband, feeling super-good about our progress. Here the route does a 300-meter traverse left and then back right the same distance to the final crux pitches. In the process of rehydrating and fueling up for the labor ahead, my fingers slipped on the fabric of my DAS Parka’s stuff sack. As it was speeding between our legs my French roots caught up with me and a “CHRIST DE CALISSS DE TABARNAC!!!!” slipped through my lips. The parka cascaded over the seracs and disappeared into the abyss. Oh well! “That’s a big chunk of weight right there that we don’t have to carry up anymore,” I suggested to Zoe. She offered me her small puffy and we started to traverse. At the end of the traverse left, we fought the temptation of taking a shortcut up the Bibler exit on the Moonflower and decided to pay tribute to Mark Twight and Scott Backes by repeating their route in good style by heading back right. All that traversing ended up to be quite time-consuming. It was 7:30 p.m. when we finally got to the base of the steep ice pitches. So much for our good time. The sun was now hitting the face directly, and chunks of snow and ice were falling all around. There was no way we were going to bivy anywhere around there. Up steep hard ice it was. It took us all the energy we had left, but at 11 in glowing light we were standing on the top of the last rockband. “Hey, Max, what’s the name of the route again? I know it starts with a D, but I just can’t remember it.” I thought Zoe was kidding at first, but when I tried to tell her the name I had to think a couple of times about it before it came back to me. Deprived was definitely our state, but 300 meters of calf-burning slopes and two hours later we were reaching the cornice. We had been climbing for the last 21 hours straight, and we were both feeling sick to our stomachs.

As an oasis in the desert, a vertical crack appeared at the end of my headlamp beam. I poked my head in to find a perfect tunnel that led deep inside the giant Styrofoam-snow mushroom. It felt so secure in there that after minimal chopping I took my harness off and we jumped into the sleeping bag. We instantly blacked out for two and a half hours. When we opened our eyes a really bright ray of light was coming in from the crack. It was still nice out. To the summit I was going again. We crawled out and regrouped slowly in the sun. At noon I stepped foot on the same snowy bump along the ridgeline summit of Mt. Hunter. My tracks were still visible from couple of days ago. It might seem silly to some to try to find the highest point of a snowy hill after climbing so much hard and technical ground, but at that moment it really meant something to me, adding meaning to the whole experience.

The wind picked up as we headed down the raps on the Moonflower, but despite the cold of the spindrift pouring on me my heart was warm. The weather had allowed me to share this amazing experience with my loved one. I was the happiest man on Earth. The mountain could pour anything on me now.

Ascents:

• First ascent of the south face of 11,040-foot Bat’s Ears peak (3,000 feet, AI4+ M5+), April 30, with Freddie Wilkinson and Ben Gilmore.
• Two ascents of the north buttress of Mt. Hunter to the summit in a week:
• Free ascent of Moonflower Buttress (4,000 feet, AI6 M7), schrund to the summit in 40 hours, round trip from base camp in 52 hours, May 5-6, with Freddie Wilkinson and Ben Gilmore
• Deprivation (4,000 feet, AI6 95°), schrund to top of the buttress in 21 hours, to summit in 32 hours, round trip from base camp in 41 hours, May 10-11, with Zoe Hart.