LOCALadk Magazine

LOCALadk 22 tions and lifestyle forever. Our trip to Alaska would test the skills we had prac- ticed in our time in the ranges of the Northeast, and, for me, would provide confidence and closure after losing a friend and mentor to the same mountains we sought to test ourselves in. Weighing in "You the boys from New York? You're up." That casual call from our pilot, Tim, was in surprising contrast to the urgency of the situation. We had, just a few hours prior, weighed and tagged our +200 lbs of gear, and it was now time to load it all into the plane before our weather window closed. Staying in the Air Taxi's free bunkhouse the night prior, we interacted with two other teams of climb- ers, both attempting to fly into a different part of the range. Neither team had seen a weather window and had been trapped in the bunkhouse for nearly a week at that point. As we loaded the plane, we joked, albeit with some superstition, that it wouldn't be a real adventure until something went wrong. Touchdown As we flew, the granite spires and snow swept slopes of the range grew closer. Our plane banked as it weaved through mountain cols. Finally, Tim and the Otter led us through Pika Pass — a stone window, framing our temporary home. Tim swung the nose around and began his final descent towards the snow and ice below. Before long, I, Jake, and our mountain of duffle bags, skis, and pulk sled were the only things left in the endless expanse of Alaskan wilderness. It's difficult to comprehend the enormity of a 2,000 foot tower of granite. Harder yet to describe the reality of standing amongst dozens of them, lining the cracked and jagged desert of snow before you. I have been a skier longer than I have been a climber, and, as captivated as I was by the rock, I found myself draw- ing lines between the walls. Pinstripes of white cut through stone. I had long fantasized of leaving my own arcing lines down these mountains. If they would let us, it wouldn't be a fantasy for much longer. Pika Basecamp Our basecamp consisted of three holes dug into the glacier. Our sleep tent, a cook tent furnished with benches carved from the snow, and the bathroom, which hosted our Clean Mountain Canisters (CMCs), AK A our poop buckets. Struggling to keep our eyes off the mountains, we clumsily set up camp. It was already late in the day, and as I finished working on the sleep tent, Jake made food to fuel a hopeful first-evening-ski. Our comical jinx from the runway would soon strike. The main stove, on which we planned to cook all of our food and melt all of our snow for drinking water, had broken. Somewhere between the confines of the bunkhouse and the snowy dunes of the Pika, our stove had been rendered useless. Before we had time to accept this unfortunate reality, we were swept by another blow. The quickly moving weather which we had heard about was doing just that — moving quickly. Within a couple hours of being dropped on the glacier, we were overtaken by a snowstorm that would leave us tent bound for nearly four days.

• Cover