Respect Your Alders

In Alaska, the “Last Frontier State,” the Tikchik domes are not uniquely remote. Because Alaska rises sea level to 20,000 feet in a short span, and has fewer roads per mile than the Amazon Basin, harsh conditions, and a short season, it holds many unclimbed peaks and undeveloped climbing venues. Even the Ruth Gorge and the Devil’s Thumb, in southeast Alaska, have virgin granite walls. And “popular” areas like the Alaska Range’s Kichatna Spires only get a few expeditions a year. “Many peaks have 6,000-foot, unattempted faces guarded not only by technical difficulties, glacial river crossings, and miles and miles of churnedup moraines, but also by weather,” says the Fairbanks alpinist Jeff Apple Benowitz. Alpine temperatures can drop to -100 F with wind chill, and Anchorage itself receives 16 inches of rain annually. As Michael Wood and Colby Coombs write in Alaska: A Climbing Guide, “The weather defines the character of climbing in Alaska.”

Tikchik Lake sits in rolling marshland 150 miles west of Lake Clark and Lake Iliamna, at the tail end of the Alaska Range. But it’s not free of hazard. “There’s a vacuum of firsthand knowledge in the frontier areas,” says the lifelong Alaska climber Glen Deal. “You’re not just going on a climbing trip. It’s wilderness, which means food-rationing issues, bears, and remoteness.”

Tuesday, July 8 (Day 12): Rain pattering on nylon. My back is sore, and I feel like I’ve been climbing. I stick my head out of my bivy sack and look around the Wing. It sags, and the stuffsack I’ve been using as a pillow is wet. Wind rustles the walls, scattering raindrops. I retreat back inside my bag.

We spend the morning in the Wing, reading Cosmo and Foreign Policy. Madaleine and Kate say that with another day’s cleaning, their route might go at 5.11. Reluctantly, they admit it might be quality. That afternoon, we hang around a beachside fire. Moisture blackens the cliffs, and we do pullups on a paddle rigged between black spruce, loon calls echoing across the misty waters.

Thursday, July 10 (Day 14): After another day’s “gardening,” Madeleine and Kate go for the send, while Althea and I head to the dome adjacent Wikchik — dubbed Junior Dome by Althea for its size (and as retaliation for my facetious Wikchik name). We beach the boat and bog-skip to a corner system. I pull through the initial offwidth, and then stem and jam up a stepped dihedral, finding thin gear in a right-hand crack.

“Hey, it’s almost like climbing!” I yell.

“You are climbing, silly!” Althea says and then starts whistling a tune.

I step right onto a small ledge, and then follow a short slab and mantle onto a vertical grove of juniper and blueberry bushes 150 feet up. I sling and equalize alder bunches, and then belay up Althea. “What do you think the shear strength of Vaccinnium is?” she asks.

“What’s Vaccinnium?”

“These low-bush blueberries,” Althea answers. “I think I’ll write a scientific report.”

Next, a grassy ledge leads to a two-pitch system of squeeze chimneys. We drop harnesses and gear at their base; a free-solo squirm up clean rock leads to the summit.

Back at camp, we learn the other girls sent, too, and their route was stellar: a three-pitch corner with a Houdini crux — Talking with My Bug Head Net Bitches (5.11). The next day, we hope to check out the main formation’s slabby prow — the aerial photo of which inspired our trip.