Big New Mixed Route on Mount Foraker

We quickly descended 5,000 feet down the Northeast Ridge, and then stopped in a convenient crevasse to melt snow out of the wind. We had planned to continue descending via the Sultana Ridge variation, but when we exited the crevasse we were greeted with complete whiteout and 50 mile-per-hour winds. After a brief attempt along the ridge, we returned to the protected crevasse. A little while later, we tried to start out again, but again realized we had no chance to continue along the Sultana Ridge in the blizzard.

Back in the crevasse, we discussed our options. We had half a canister of isobutane left, a handful of energy bars, no sleeping bags, and no tent or sleeping pads – staying long was out of the question. We spent the night sitting in the crevasse, shivering and hoping for the weather to improve. When in the morning it was just as bad, we decided our only reasonable option was to descend via the original Northeast Ridge route, established in 1966 by a Japanese team, as it would be much less exposed to the wind than the Sultana Ridge. We had no information about it, and I don’t think it has been ascended or descended in at least a decade, although probably two or three.

p>Slowly we fought our way down the 1966 route. Low down, the original route traverses off the rib into an extremely broken icefall, underneath seracs. We decided it would be safer to stay on the rib, and began rappelling directly down the unclimbed rock buttress instead. It was sometimes quite tricky, and included a couple completely overhanging rappels, but finally we made it down to the glacier. Once far enough away from the face that we felt relatively safe from avalanches, we stopped to melt snow once more, and then began the long post-holing session back to Kahiltna basecamp. When we finally reached basecamp, we had been awake for about 71 hours, and I was hallucinating a lot. The toes that I had frostbitten during the ascent had re-warmed during the descent, and had been excruciatingly painful for most of the descent and hike back to basecamp.

My frostbite looks as though it will heal up just fine (although I might not manage tight rock shoes for a bit!), but in basecamp I could not yet put on boots, and Bjørn-Eivind retrieved our camping gear and skis from the base of the route with the help of our friend, Chris, from Colorado. The whole climb and descent felt massive, and made the Cassin feel like a small, non-commiting route by comparison. We named our route Dracula, and the numbers are: 10,400 ft., M6R, AI4+, A0. June 13-15, 2010.

Southeast Face Route Lines:

• GREEN: Southeast Ridge (bottom not shown), 1963, 10,400 ft.
• RED: French Ridge, 1976, 10,800 ft.
• YELLOW: Infinite Spur (bottom not shown), 1977, 9,000 ft.
• PINK: False Dawn, 1990, 10,400 ft.
• ORANGE: Viper Ridge, 1991, 6,000 ft. (climbed only to junction with SE Ridge)
• BLUE: Dracula, 2010, 10,400 ft.