Alaska's Mendenhall Towers (Hardwear Sessions)

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Sam Magro and Ryan Johnson, recipients of the 2008 Mugs Stump Award, tackled Alaska's Mendenhall Towers this spring. They completed the first ascent of the north face of the West Tower. Here's a brief account of the climb. You can find a slightly different version on Climbing.com.

By Sam Magro

The trip was a perfect 16 days. We landed in good weather, then we were socked in for 7 days straight and received between 15 and 20 feet of snow. It was an absolute neccessity that we took shifts to shovel out our tent every 2-4 hours depending on the amount of snow fall and wind. If we had not we would have been literally buried alive. It was an amazing display of Mother Nature's power. Further more it demanded that we respect these unhospitable Mendenhall Towers and their unclimbed north faces.

On the 5th day the shoveling became a bit ridiculous. We were barely getting any sleep. The night before was quite exhausting...so we decided to go subterranean. We dug all day and created an ice cave palace 15' below the surface. Our battles of shoveling was finally subdued. We still had to push snow out of our tunnel each morning like a couple of gophers.

Our spirits stayed positive and the sun finally fell on our soaking wet lives. We took a day to dry out and did a nice ski tour/ scouting mission. The next day we climbed, Ryan took a big fall on the ice we hoped to climb (it was unclimbable). The lines we spotted were merely grime filled corners with moss/dirt filled knife blade seams for meager gear. The next day we tried the same line, when we realized....we came to climb ice not sketchy snow covered, hard to protect rock.

I down climbed off a loose lost arrow and we were back across the Bergschrund. It was 11 in the morning and a beautiful high pressure system was upon us. The time was now to climb.

We climbed an M4 entry rock pitch to get over the Bergschrund and on to the line we thought we were going to just check out for the next day. As soon as we started up we realized, now was the time. We continued 1,300 feet on neive ice/rock up to AI4 and M5. Our Bivy was a perfect overhanging cave. Practically the only flat spot on the whole route. A bit of luck was on our side. As we nestled in, the mountain began to shrug off the days spindrifts/small avalanches. We sat content with our choice to bivy and take it all in opposed to suffering through the night hours. The sun set was a good sign for the following day "red sky night sailors delight" We could see the ocean, and all distant ranges from our one room hotel.

Sausage and cheese was our meal and we slid into the one sleeping bag we brought with us. A bit tight, but toasty warm. That next day the northern lights greeted our awakening, another sign of good weather. We began climbing by 6 am over the steepest most difficult section of our route. The terrain was steep and sustained at AI4 M4/M5 with one pitch of A1. By 6 pm we had pulled off the steeps on to the summit ridge. The view was spectacular with over 100 miles of visibility. Ocean and islands to the Southeast with mountains in every other direction as far as the eye could see. I have never seen a range so impressive and inspiring. I then realized climbing in these peaks is worth the shoveling and worth the wait. With the sun on our faces for the first time in 2 days we began our decent.

We had expected to rappel the face but instead ran, down climbed the West ridge in perfect decending snow conditions. The only thing we left on the mtn was on pickt and a sling (and a few brown friends). We were back to our cave by dark after having climbed just the route we had hoped to climb up this dazzling unclimbed north face.

The next day was to be our last sunny one and we took it all in from a nice couch/patio we had created outside of our cave. The storm was back on us the next day, we were thankful for our gift of good weather and decided to pack it up opposed to waiting out another round. As I write it is still socked in at our old home up high.