Respect Your Alders

During our first climbing day, Althea and I managed a licheny, two-pitch crack system on a smaller crag. Kate and Madaleine pulled off three pitches. But the nine days that followed — leading up to today — we took climbing gear for long, soggy walks, mainly finding mud-packed flaring cracks buried in moss, scary slabs, and crumbling white overhangs. Still, occasionally we’d spot a good crack, and that kept us searching. So far, we’ve scouted three of the five major formations and most of the dozen smaller ones, walking a combined 40 rugged miles.

Now Althea and I head toward a 400-foot dome I call Wikchik Dome — kind of like Wick Chick, but facetious because the rock looks terrible. I pull on my head net as we enter an alder patch. “Hey, Bear!” yells Althea, to scare away any nearby, unseen browns. Wading through ferns, I slip in a hole and jack my knee.

“Holy crap — those corners, Em!” says the psyched Althea. (Althea’s psyched 98 percent of the time. The other two percent is sleep.) “This is Mecca! It looks like the Chief!”

I look up at the block-filled corners and white rock that, here in the Tikchiks, has the consistency of kitty litter. This dome resembles a smaller, chossier, more vegetated Cannon Cliff. If that’s the Chief, I think, I’m canceling my August trip to Squamish. If that’s Mecca, then send me to hell. I’m sick of climbing. Or maybe just the lack thereof.

Nevertheless, we go for it. We build a tiny smoke fire at the base to ward off bugs, and I explode my wet gear onto a mat of lichen and moss, hoping for a moment of sun. Seconds later, the rain starts and my gear — still wet — goes back into the pack.

At 6 pm we rope up, having scrambled 250 feet of fourth-class juniper, birch, and alder. Althea starts up, bug net over her helmet and bear spray tied above her chalk bag. I follow, wandering across the loose, blocky gully, and pulling up past a fun 5.7 bulge. At the belay, hanging below twin hand cracks, I decide to like climbing again. We race thunderstorms up 5.9 to the top, finishing the third, final pitch around 10 pm. As we run down through the tundra, storms break loose over the Wood River Range, to the northwest. Beams of light pierce through steamships in the sky, reflecting silver on Nuygkuk Lake. We paddle home in a downpour. As we pull up on the beach, “the Wing” — our group tent — is lit by headlamps, and we can smell dinner.