Huntingtoin's Phantom Wall?

May 3, .



"I just climbed the southwest face of Mount Huntington in the Alaska Range with Clint Helander. Call it what you want: the third ascent of the Phantom Wall, a new variation, or a new bail, whatever--it was incredible!



Here's the skinny on our climb of the Southwest Face of Huntington. We repeated the crux pitches of the Phantom, but missed the summit due to very bad weather. So call it whatever--I'm calling it a fun adventure up an incredibly beautiful mountain.



Clint and I left our camp on the Tokositna Glacier at 4:30AM on May 2 under perfect weather and snow conditions. The "Death Valley" used by Jay Smith and Paul Teare looked, well, deadly and we agreed to not submit ourselves to this needless objective danger. So, the plan was to gain the technical climbing on the southwest face (the crux pitches of the Phantom Wall) via a snowfield that cuts across the face from the Upper Park on the Harvard Route. We simuled up the Harvard, arriving

below the Spiral in about four hours. A short downclimb and traverse led to the middle part of the face. From here, we climbed about six pitches of technical terrain (75 degrees, M6R, A2) along the right edge of a steep diamond shaped wall to gain the lower angle terrain above. We had some beta from Jared Vilhauer that was crucial to moving quickly over this ground. The weather started to break down (the first time the forecast was right in a week!) as we simuled up the middle of the face above. We soon lost visibility as winds picked up to 30mph and snow started to fall. We couldn't see the summit, so we kept going straight up. This landed us in the middle of the summit ridge, where we conceded to the weather and turned tail, deciding that our fingers were worth more than any summit. The descent down the West Face Couloir (Nettle-Quirk) was awash with spindrift, often reducing our visibility to less than a few feet in the darkness, but it went surprisingly quickly at right around five hours. For a final bit of excitement, I poked into the bergschrund and another crevasse in the course of ten minutes, eventually stumbling back into our camp at 3AM on May 3rd for a 22.5 hour roundtrip."



Kurt Hicks



Kurt's guiding web site:

http://kurthicks.com/












Mark Westman's photo from the facelast year





Congrads gentlemen and well done!

The Grand Canyon :: Navajo Point and Desert View

Navajo Point is the last viewpoint before arriving at Desert View. Quite Spectacular. Indeed.





And a closer view of The River.



And this is how it looks from Desert View. The exterior of the Watch Tower was being renovated the last time I was here and this area was not accessible. I think the little blue wheelbarrow adds something to the picture, I'm just not sure what!





A slightly closer shot of the same view as above.



Each one of the stones used in construction of the Watch Tower was reportedly selected by the architect Mary Jane Colter. She also determined where each stone was to be placed.





I did go inside and was going to go up but after the first few steps, my legs cried out “no way” so I turned around. I was completely enthralled by the interior and took plenty of photos the last time, which you can see here.





The view to the east, looking out over the desert. The Little Colorado Gorge lies a few miles away and the terrain is still quite rugged.



And so, as the road to Desert View comes to an end, so too does this Journey of mine... I've made it safely back to Indiana. I'm Home Again. Thank you to everyone who has followed along, I'm so glad you could join me for the ride...



For those of you who are feeling the need for a bit of adventure, my cousins Sue & Fred will be hiking into the Grand Canyon in a few weeks. Then they will be traveling in the West and in May will follow the coast north and “driving” to Alaska via the Marine Highway. They will be spending the Summer Up North! I wish them well in their journey and will be following along virtually, as many of you have been following me...

Shops

Many of the shops in Old Town were first residents, some over 200 years old. There are still people that live over their shops or behind them.

Blossoms

Close up of yucca blossoms

Coming soon

The enigmatic Antoine Moussette.
































A Season of Evenings

Walking through town just as the light began to fade, I had one of those odd moments when everything falls into a rhythm. A woman in very high heels had just unlocked her bicycle from a pole and began rolling it down the sidewalk toward me, her shoes clicking on the bricks and the hem of her coat fluttering in the breeze. At the same time a second-story window opened and there was the late Jim Morrison's drunken baritone singing "come on now touch me baby." The sound warped a little, carried sideways by the breeze. Just then someone down the street slammed their car door and the alarm went off, a persistent beeping without that edge of harshness it would have had, had it been closer. As I stood still for some seconds, letting the woman in the heels and coat maneuver her bike around me, all of these events became harmonised. Click-click, beep-beep, what was that promise that you made? Click-click, beep-beep, why won't you tell me what she said? The woman looked up toward the open window as she passed me, and suddenly I was flooded with a sense of deja-vu.




In the Russian language there is a word - a verb - to describe the onset of evening: "vechereyet" (вечереет). It's an archaic word, but still used on occasion. The closest English translation would be something like "evening is coming," but the mood is not the same. And it's the mood of that word that's important. You hear it, and you feel an "eveningness" gently setting in. It's an anticipatory state, fostering expectations of moonlight, cricket sounds, a chill in the air, perhaps peals of laugher in the dark. I remembered this word on my way home today. The sun had nearly set and when I looked at the time I saw it was 5:35pm. "This is the last week of October," I thought. A season of early evenings awaits.

Hay for Horses

Tuffee helping Lee unload hay for the horses.

Lost China Dishes

This is my set of china dishes. We certainly couldn't afford anything like this at any time during the 40 years we have been married. But I was lucky enough to find a set. No, I didn't buy them at a yard sale or anything, I actually found them.
We moved into a house in about 1976 and there was what I thought was a dog house in the backyard. It was only about 4 feet tall, but about 6 feet long. We just thought it was what someone had cobbled up for a dog house considering the height of it. There was even a sort of door on it. My dog didn't seem interested in going in it and I didn't want her to until I had a chance to clean it up some. In a few weeks I did deside to clean it so that it could be used. I moved the piece of board acting as a door and crawled in since I couldn't stand up right in it. To my surprise there was a large cardboard box in the back of the short shed. I had hubby crawl in and do a check for spiders, snakes, and dead bodies of any kind and he came back out pulling the box after him. Inside the box was this set of china dishes. There are a couple of the salid plates missing but other wise it is the complete set. It is made my Imperial China and the pattern is called Whitney, but couldn't find out when it was made. I found it on the internet under several sites for older china and it is running about $10 per piece now. I would guess that is about what it sold for new.

Birds & Squirrels

The Cedar Waxwings are back!!! I just saw a flock of them in my leafless River Birch (Betula nigra) by the creek. I hope they find the Yaupon Holly that's just outside my office window again this year. It was an amazing sight with all of those birds covering the tree. And loud!

It was this time last year that a Waxwing got intoxicated and passed out on my porch. I loved her.

Later today, when I went outside to see if they were still around, I saw that the squirrel is back into my bird food.In his defense, one of my feeders is just an old harrowing disk from a tractor that is nailed to the railing. The cardinals and some of the larger birds seem to prefer this to the feeder.

But dammit, bird seed is expensive and I'm not interested in feeding greedy squirrels!

So I went outside and dumped ground red pepper all over the seed again to keep him out of it.I did this for the first time last week and it works great. I watched from the window as the squirrel began to gorge on seeds (I'm pretty sure I was wringing my hands with anticipation as I did this). The heat from the pepper hit him all at once and he straightened up like he had been hit by lightning. Then he let out a yelp and scurried away in a zigzag pattern....it was great.

Now I know you are thinking I am mean. But really it's no worse than eating some spicy buffalo wings to you or me.

As for the birds, they don't even notice. They don't have the neural receptors that recognize the heat from peppers. In fact, birds have co-evolved with peppers to eat the fruit and spread the seed! And if you don't want to use up your kitchen spices, you can always buy seed that is pre-coated with red pepper.

It's nicer than a pellet gun, right?

Stay warm!
Kari

A drive on the Wild Side - Bear Country U.S.A.

We finally get to Bear Countrya drive thru wild life park.Elk - how do they keep their heads up with those antlers?? I guess the guy on the right is taking a break.Nice RackWe were told Kirby was Poodle/Shepherd but now I think he was Artic WolfFinally! We get to see a Big Horn SheepThe Bear was a little wary of these Timber Wolves, can't blame him they have a crazed look on their faces.Once again, the traffic in South Dakota is a Bear! Traffic was bearly moving!

Areal roadside attraction.Is it time to hibernate yet??Can't seem to get away from the Buffalo

After the drive thru there is a small zoo with other animals, mostly babiesThe LynxA baby Arctic FoxAnd then the Baby BearsThey are so darn cute.

I want her job!


Nowwe can highly recommend it to the guests

We continue on to Rapid City to do some shopping and decide to stop at Hart Ranch a member's only Exclusive RV Park that our friends, Pam and Harold travel around with Fairs and Carnivals promoting. On our way out we are delayed by yet another traffic jam. Gary almost had a Cow - we were barely MOOOving!


Shopped will we dropped and then had Dinner at the Fire House Grill

Pass by our favorite Bar on the way home.

Till Later,

Meanwhile we keep on Trek'n

Melissa and Gary

House Plants

Everyone in our family has always liked houseplants. Houseplants are plants that do well in the house. Many of the plants commonly seen outdoors don't do well in the house, and many houseplants won't do well outside but there are the exceptions as some do well both places. I got my love of plants from my mom and my grandmothers. My dad liked them but wouldn't have cared for them if Mom didn't. I was able to get some jobs in plant nurseries were I learned more about houseplants. I have always had some. At times there have been lots of plants and at other times only a few. Recently my sister came for a short visit and brought several big plants that she had been caring for since our mom passed away. One of them is the big Ponytail Palm or Elephant Foot Tree shown in the first photo. I remember when my uncle gave it to my mom and it wasn't more than 6 inches tall. That was about 35 years ago.Now it is about 6 feet tall. These plants originally come from a desert in Mexico so do well as houseplants since they don't need very much water. In fact they only need water about once a month. Its probably one of the easiest plants to care for as long as you don't over water it. If you do it will rot and die. When I looked on the internet I found it is difficult to start baby plants and it takes a male and a female to bloom and make seed. I don't know which this one is. I did see some photos that made this one look tiny.







Another plant she had that was Mom's is the euphoria shown in the last photo. This does have thrones on the edges of the almost 3 sided stalks but it is a succlent as it has a few leaves along those same edges. It, too, wants to be very dry, but it does stick if not careful and if handled wrong does have a white sap that leaks from it that can be irriting to some peoples skin. It is sometimes called a Milk Tree because of the white sap. But it not milk as we think of it. This plant, too, is about 35 years old. It is easy to take cutting from this one to make more plants.