In mid-April, Eric Shaw and I flew into the Ruth Gorge, hauled a luxurious basecamp up to the Root Canal, climbed ~1.75 routes on Moose’s Tooth, and skied and floated back to the car in Talkeetna. Thirteen-days. In three acts:
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| Mt. Dickey. This face is 5,000 ft. tall. |
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| Our route |
ACT I
“Old-school” said Caitlin Palmer, co-owner of Alaska Mountaineering School, when she unlocked their gear store for us in the morning. In the afternoon we found out what that meant: carrying 80 - 90 lb. of gear per person up a 3,000 ft. ice fall was really hard. We took a gully that bypassed the most cracked-up section and had to haul, as in big wall style, two packs each up a 30 ft. mixed pitch that’s probably covered in snow at other times. We made several loads, caching things here and there. Bedtime at our basecamp came around 2:00 AM on the second day. Thus, getting to the base of the routes was the hardest part of the trip.
Modern practice for climbing this face on Moose’s Tooth is to fly into the root canal when there’s a good weather window, climb the next day, and fly out the following day. Or perhaps stay longer to admire the views.
In retrospect, we should have gone up to the root canal with a light setup and a few days of food. But it was nice to eat pancakes and bacon like everyone else.
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| Eric, carrying loads up to the root canal. Later this day we enjoyed a 10 PM ski down to our cache: four minutes of turns in the evening light, between huge granite walls. |
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| Moose's Tooth summit selfie |
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| Eric descending Ham and Eggs |
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| Afternoon turns!! |
ACT II
A baseball-sized chunk of ice fell 200 feet and hit me in the face when we were ~1500 feet up Shaken, Not Stirred. It was an inch from breaking my nose. I was bleeding from two cuts and lost all motivation to continue.
The crux was a mess of overhanging sugar snow. Eric went up some, found unprotectable rotten ice underneath, and we bailed. Ham and Eggs was the same way two days prior, but the climbing was easier so we went anyway.
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| Descending Shaken, not Stirred. |
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| Our basecamp. We brought a pyramid tarp but never put it up. |
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| Pancakes and bacon! |
ACT III
The ski and float out were marvelous. It took three days and half of one was spent stationary, waiting for a storm to clear. My favorite part was weaving between granite boulders on the edge of the Ruth. Eight miles of gorgeous rocks and views. The boulders looked great for climbing. I imagined a fly-in alpine bouldering session some future summer.
I broke a ski tip falling on the hard crust among the boulders. Fortunately, it still worked okay for the remaining ten miles over the pass in the Tokoshas and down to the river.
Eric’s ski gear was archaic. He had really heavy four-buckle boots that didn’t bend backward. His skis were twin-tipped from high school. The bindings were—I don’t know the technical term—huge, clunky plastic contraptions. Yet he could keep up a good pace.
He’s also a great Class V whitewater paddler and an expedition canoe instructor. “There are 20 something different canoe strokes,” he told me. Sharing the Gnu with him was similar to what I imagine sitting in the passenger seat while a pro racecar driver takes you rallying in your own car to be like.
The final moment: Having no better alternative at the Talkeetna Air Taxi bunkhouse, we both climbed onto a one-person platform and shared our two-person sleeping bag, which was soaking wet from the previous rainy night.
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| Waiting for the storm to clear so we could descend the backside of Dickey. We shivered under this tarp for a few hours then put the tent up again. Eventually, the sun came out and we were skiing in baselayers. |
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| The red dots show our route along the Ruth and up to the Tokoshas. As seen from the summit of Moose's Tooth |
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