The Epic Gate's Hike

This weekend I went with a group that climbed to the top of Gates mountain, the tallest mountain in the Northern Brook's range! Gates Mountain peaks at a whopping 7775 ft. We started at about 2000 ft. elevation, mostly slogging through tundra the first day. We intended to leave around noon or 1 pm on Saturday, however science comes first and our departure was delayed till almost 5 pm. (image left, pre-trip packing in the dining overflow tent). After a short drive out to our departure point, we hit the tundra running (well, not exactly) and excited for our big adventure. The fires raging in Alaska have socked the mountains in with smoke this past week, however we woke Saturday morning to a beautiful day. Yet, within an hour of hiking dark clouds rolled in and it began to rain. We kept reassuring ourselves that once we get to the mountain, the clouds will blow over, but as the evening wore on, the clouds became darker and the little blue sky left when the shower initially began, was just a memory.

The goal for the first night was to hike to a large flat region in the ridge we were following to the top of the mountain. There were a few difficult scurries up talus slopes in the lower part of the ridge which increased elevation stepwise. One of the RA's here, Sarah B., keeps what she calls "toolik minutes" where she films a short clip of life at toolik in the lab or the field. We decided to do a series of toolik minutes to document our journey up Gates. The following video was taken after climbing up the first "lump" or rather slope in the ridge.

My apologies for sounding a bit loopey in this video, I think the cold and exhaustion was getting to me!

We made it to our campsite at around 1 AM. Tired and cold, we decided not to summit that night. The hope was to set up camp and then summit, watching the sunset from the top of Gates. However, the late start and the cloudiness/rain dampened our spirits to continue that night. After we set up camp, the clouds began to clear up, and we were greeted with a beautiful sun set/rise (it doesn't actually get dark yet, but it looks dusky for a while).

It was freezing that night and we were a bit concerned that the water we lugged up with us in large containers would freeze overnight. Although we had enough tents, 5 of us decided to squish into a 4 person tent to huddle for warmth. After changing into mostly dry clothes and snuggling down into my super warm sleeping bag, I was almost immediately asleep.

We woke the next morning to another beautiful day and a layer of ice over our tents. We were a bit slow to get going, but after a breakfast of bagels and peanut butter, finally got camp packed up and were ready to go to the top!

The hike to the summit was difficult. We were on a fairly narrow ridge with a fair amount of scrambling and climbing up and over large rock formations. It was fairly technical and there were parts that I was a bit worried about losing footing and careening down the steep slopes on either side of the ridge.

Me posing infront of the glacier before our acent to the top!

Looking down at the glacier! I love the tracks you can see in the ice surface resulting from the debris and the flow of glacial ice.

We had some problems going up and unfortunately part of the group split away before we got to the top, but we still made it! Needless to say, the view was spectacular and we couldn't have asked for a better day. The brooks range makes me think of the title of one of Tracey Kidder's books, Mountains Beyond Mountains. Because it is really just that here, mountains, mountains, and more mountains!

Gates from afar as we hiked out on the second day. We followed the ridge in the right of the photograph up to the top.

Spoomerang Glacier~!

This past Sunday I went with a group hiking up to Spoomerang glacier. The rain had finally given way to a beautiful (and hot) sunny day. The wind was pretty low, so a bug net was a necessity for the hike. We ended up actually summiting 3 times during the day. The initial hiking plan involved us hiking up Rouche Mountine valley toward an un-named peak (which we referred to by its elevation of 7010) where Spoomerang glacier is located, summiting the peak, following the ridge down and around to Trevor valley, skree skiing down, and then hiking down valley. However, when we initially started our way up Rouche Mountine valley, Jason suggested that we attempt to avoid the tundra slog by climbing up to one of the ridges bordering the valley. We would then ridge hike toward the spoomerang glacier. Once we reached the top of the ridge, we realized that it really would not make for very good (or safe) hiking. However, the view of the valley from that high up was awesome, and made for a great photo spot!
After all that work, we unfortunately decided to head back down to the tundra to follow the original plan. By early afternoon we made it to the base of peak 7010. It was time to go up! We hiked up, up, up, and more up. It was amazing how high the peak seemed to be. I kept thinking we were almost there, and then I got to the next rise and found another one just beyond it! It was fairly nice hiking. Although we were climbing up talus slopes (lots of rocky material), the footing was fairly stable for majority of the trip up. We paused before the final push up to the top, what we joked was "basecamp." By then we could see the glacier beneath peak 7010. To be honest, I was so tired at that point, that I didn't even get a picture of the glacier. However, it was named by my predecessor, Will. Apparently when they hiked up to the glacier last year, he couldn't decide whether it looked like a spoon or a boomerang, thus the name "spoomerang" (since we all know how alike the two are ...). Anyway, we eventually pushed on from basecamp to the peak, which needless to say had some great views.
After we made it to the top of peak 7010, we took some group pics (I still have to get these from Elissa) and then began our long venture back home. Peak 7010 led to a long ridge of carbonate rocks that led around to slopes of black shale (and more skree skiing!!). At the end of the first ridge, there was a tall rock formation that looked kind of like a castle. We decided to climb up the fist peak of the castle. At this point we were all a bit tired, and I think we were getting kind of punchy because at the time, we decided that the first peak must have been the castle's guest house....and we had to storm the guest house of the castle!

This is a picture of our castle from the top of the guest house!

Afterwards, we decided it was time to head back... by then it was almost 8:00 and we still had quite a long way back. We continued our ridge hike to the black shale skree slopes and skree skiied all the way down! It was so much fun and definitely made my day! The hike down Trevor valley followed the skree skiing. We made slow progress through the rough terrain of the valley sludging through the soggy tundra and climbing over boulders. It was a rough end to the day.. We finally made it to the road by just past 11:00 pm and got into the trucks to head back to camp. Although ending the hike exhausted and hngry, it was still one of the best hikes I have been on yet!