Big New Mixed Route on Mount Foraker

7/9/10 - In mid-June, Colin Haley and Bjørn-Eivind Årtun teamed up and established a new mixed route on the Southeast Face of Mount Foraker in Alaska. The route, Dracula (M6R, AI4+, A0; 10,400 feet), starts on False Dawn, but then veers left to a 3,000-foot, diamond-shaped granite rock wall. The lower portion of the route climbs up narrow snow couloirs to avoid numerous seracs. The team reached the summit after 31 hours of climbing, and planned a descent down the Sultana Ridge when a blizzard prevented them going any further. They opted to descend via the original Northeast Ridge and reached basecamp after another 40 hours. Previously, the team attempted a speed record on Denali's Cassin Ridge. Read Haley's first-hand account below.

Bjørn-Eivind Årtun and I have just come out from a 37-day trip to Denali and Mt. Foraker, which was partially funded by a Mugs Stump Award and the Norwegian Alpine Club (NTK). Here is a report of what we did.

We flew onto the Kahiltna Glacier on May 13 and immediately started up Denali’s West Buttress route to acclimatize. We soon established a basecamp at the 14,200-foot camp on the West Buttress to stay for a while. On May 21, we attempted to climb and ski the Orient Express route, but turned around and skied from 17,500 feet in the face of dangerous wind slabs. On May 25, we climbed to the summit of Denali via the Messner Couloir and returned to the 14,200-foot camp in 9:15 roundtrip. On May 29, we climbed to the summit of Denali again via the West Buttress route in 8:10 roundtrip.

On the evening of June 6, we departed the 14,200 camp 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 from the 14,200-foot camp). The forecast was marginal, and our attempt was preceded by a lot of new snowfall, but we had already waited too long for a good weather window. Rather than descend all of the lower West Rib route, we opted to approach via a variation to the West Rib, the Seattle ‘72 Ramp, established in 1972 by Alex Bertulis, Jim Wickwire, Robert Shaller, Tom Stewart, Charlie Raymond, and Leif-Norman Patterson. This approach worked excellently, and we were soon melting water in the bergschrund at the base of the Japanese Couloir.