The Rinse Cycle

The trickle grew to a stream, and within seconds I was fully submerged in the river of snow. I braced my two tools slightly above my shoulders, intermittently loosening my grip on one or the other, willing warmth and feeling up to my hands. My head hung down against the flow, my back taking the brunt of the constant barrage of loose snow and ice pellets. My hood was cinched tightly over my helmet, but snow still found its way into my jacket. Quickly blinking my eyes open, I’d catch glimpses of my front points embedded deeply in the soft, thin layer of neve covering the ice below. As the flow subsided, I began to make out the path of my blue rope. From its figure eight on my harness, it snaked off through three generously spaced screws. Below, a large snow fan encased in rock walls eased off to the glacier. Connie sat tucked off to the side just below where the snow steepened to ice. She held the rope firmly and was watching intently. I had known her for just a short couple of weeks, but felt an unwavering trust, I knew she was holding me strong. I howled like a monkey, expressing sentiments that can’t quite be put into words, and she howled back.

Connie and I met at our mutual friend’s living room in northern British Columbia. Less than 24 hours later I followed her straight line down a short and narrow couloir in the Howson Range, before finishing her figure eights down the rest of the run. I caught up to her in the flats and we were buzzing together as we started to go up for another. I believe that with any good partner, it’s love at first sight. 

With time to kill, I jumped in Connie’s 98’ Tacoma, Tilly, and learned the intimacies of her clutch and transmission as we headed north. A week on Haines Pass turned us into great partners. We sat through rain while we read to each other and roasted bananas full of chocolate over the log burner. We crossed the border into Alaska and ate fudge and kelp salsa by the harbor. The weather cleared and we skied good and bad snow, tried for a few peaks, and were even successful on a couple. When our supply of Old Milwaukee started running low,  we drove halfway to Whitehorse and stopped at the beautiful Paint Mountain, the local crag. While we got to know some classic routes and a few characters in the vibrant climbing community, the mountains loomed large to the sSouth. We couldn’t help but stare at the obvious couloir splitting the drainage flowing north of Mt. Martha Black. From head on, it’s steep, straight, and pinches up to a sliver where it meets the ridge. Down low, it narrows into a tight gully and rolls over significantly. From 20 kilometers away, I suspected it was choked with ice. 

We skate-skied the slight downhill away from the truck at first light the next morning, picking up speed on the cold hard packed Auriol trail. The path flattens out before crossing a shallow marsh, which, misleadingly, appeared to be well frozen. Almost immediately upon entering, the ice started to crack beneath my skis. I slowed myself with a turn as gently as I could before awkwardly stepping backwards like a wounded goose. Feeling awake and lucky with relatively dry feet, I followed Connie as she bushwhacked around the edge. We made quick progress, skate-skiing as much as possible before we left the trail and began traversing west and up to tree line. Strolling along parallel with the range, we peered into drainages like two kids walking in front of one candy store after another. We ripped skins on a broad ridge before dropping into the next valley. Taking a high line, we held our speed as best as we could, sharing mischievous glances as the line came into view. Shattered rocks and crystals decorated the snow through the weird moraines and up to the small glacier at the head of the cirque. We zig-zagged up the fan, the long white line rising above us. Despite its northern tilt, the higher and less sheltered part of the face was still in the sun, but not for much longer. 

The sound of falling ice shifted our attention upwards; we stopped still in our tracks and watched. It tumbled into the much more broken couloir to our right, picking up loose snow, rocks and more ice as it made its way down. It had gathered sizable mass by the time it reached the fan below—almost a mirror image of the fan we currently stood on—and gathered into a sizable avalanche. 

Before a word was spoken between us our skins were being ripped and within seconds we were skiing down the fan, out of exposure and into the light. Boots off, puffy on, skis and pack fashioned into a cot, and we were soon blissfully resting away in the sunshine. Our closest star can mercilessly cause death and destruction, while simultaneously ensuring life and the pleasures that come with it. We rose when the sun had left the face entirely, leaving it cold and still, our bodies warm and energized. Connie trenched up to the top of the fan, I followed steadily, trying to save my legs for the pitch looming above. It seemed much longer and a little steeper than I had thought. I should have brought more screws. Racking up quickly, I tried to maintain the warmth from the boot pack and started climbing. 

Trying to follow the path where the ice was least covered, I climbed mostly by feel. Every few body lengths I’d chisel away at the styrofoam snow and try to sink a screw into the blue ice beneath. I placed two screws and ran out above it before the first onslaught of spindrift caught me by surprise. It came and went, I twisted in another and pressed on. As I worked my way up the perfectly vertical head wall of ice, the second wave began. It grew much stronger than the first, but remained manageable. I seized the next break from the flow and climbed as fast as I felt comfortable until the grade began to ease. Suddenly the line went tight, I was out of rope. Connie ripped the single nut anchoring her to the rock buttress, and began moving upwards as I did the same, the rope tight between us. 

I was on deeper neve now and couldn’t find ice beneath me. I saw a blue smear running over a small rock gully to my left, and reached it just as Connie neared the steeper ice. The thickest part of the smear took two stubby screws almost to the eyelet. I shoved a cam in a horizontal crack to my side and connected it all with a sling. There was no rope to pull up, so Connie started climbing again. I looked around for a bail anchor, the rock was mostly friable choss with nothing that I could sling in sight. Connie fared much worse than I in the rinse cycle. She gave up waiting for breaks as the onslaught of spindrift no longer seemed to let up. Climbing often blind through the flow she followed the pitch with speed and style, but arrived at the belay a wet and snow-caked mess. I made a couple of satisfactory V-threads as Connie warmed herself back up. 

Above us, 600 meters of steep snow still guarded the top of the line, but the descent anchor was ready, bailing stared at us in the face and tempted our resolve. It was now 4 p.m., we were cold, wet, and a good ways from Tilly. We agreed that there was no reason to push it if we weren’t feeling it. But we were feeling it, so we pushed it. 

Our intentions, drives, and restraints in the mountains seemed to align, along with our decisions. Perhaps it was the similarities in our life experiences. Both of our families moved from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere when we were young, each of us towing two younger siblings with us. Maybe it was our mutual love of carving down improbable patches of snow high on inspiring mountains, feeling the cold rush of wind as we played amongst the giants. Hard to say not knowing. 

Counting steps and trading off every few hundred, we beelined it for the top. I was in front when the walls began to squeeze in dramatically; the ridge seemed tantalizing close. I could see the sun shining over the other side, my bones longing for a thaw. I took another step and my boot punched through the dense upper snowpack straight through to facets—loose, unstable snow. I tried for a couple more steps but there was no support. Continuing seemed reckless. I took a few steps down to Connie and we began a cold but much anticipated transition. The sun shone less than 10 meters away. 

I followed Connie’s careful jump turns through the narrows, before we opened up a bit through the main section. The skiing was rowdy and engaging, and our position was breathtaking. The rock walls confined our vision to a vertical slice of the world to the North. From the fissure at the head of the cirque, the drainage spilled out to the Dezedeash River Valley. It was early May, Pine Lake is still frozen in front of Paint Mountain, snowy peaks rolled off to the horizon beyond. We fixed the line and Connie stretched the 60-meter rope, rappelling the entire pitch. I pulled half the rope up and started down on both strands. The thought of stopping in the constant spindrift to set another anchor in the buried ice didn’t appeal to me. Twenty-nine meters down I pulled onto the ice, untied the stopper knot from one of the strands and began to climb down, taking the other strand with me. Down climbing ice feels unnatural and slow; it’s awkward to swing tools and kick crampons low. As if to amplify the ridiculousness of the situation, when I paused to let a wave of spindrift rinse me, the avalanche transceiver in my pocket began to ring like a telephone. Since it’s been turned on for over 12 hours, it assumes any reasonable skier would be long finished by now, and must have forgotten to turn it off. I joined Connie off to the side as the rope slithered down to us. 

We raged down the fan and surfed the mellow glacier together down through the moraines, following the serrated sun/shade line that sliced down the gut of the valley. Softened by the long and bright day, the snow was just beginning to refreeze. A condition our friend Emily half-jokingly calls “the second corn cycle”. She claims it’s much harder to time than the first, and typically provides a more bountiful harvest. Feeling the tingles of good timing, we held our contour on the fast snow and escaped out of the range, up onto the broad shoulders we traversed much earlier. The long northern sun spread its golden evening light as we danced around clumps of shrubby pine growing at the edge of the alpine. We criss-crossed dozens of hare tracks, slowly descending into thicker forest. We found the Auriol trail marked with the fresh and distinct imprints of its last wanderer, ole slew foot. The frozen marsh, which almost drenched me at first light, had become a large pond by last light. Tilly seemed to float the long downhills into Haines Junction as the ragged summits ignited to the north.