Second of two parts.
Every year, the number of unclimbed summits shrinks bit by bit — in Alaska and across the globe.
That's why it was noteworthy that 12,388-foot Mount Malaspina in Canada's Yukon Territory, the highest named but unclimbed summit in North America, fell from the ranks of virgin peaks when exploratory climbers Camilo Rada of Chile and Natalia Martinez of Argentina stood on top of the 12,388-foot peak, not far from the Alaska border, in August.
"[It] all depends on what criteria you pick to define what's a mountain and what's a secondary peak," Rada said in an interview with Alpinist magazine. "If you pick any ridge of a high mountain, Denali, Logan, Foraker, St. Elias, etc., there are plenty of sub-peaks and rocky gendarmes that are much higher than Malaspina and are still unclimbed."
In spite of the ambiguity of what defines a mountain, choosing the highest named summit is a clear distinction. It was not the first attempt on the peak, however. A mostly Polish party attempted it in 1976 along with veteran Alaska climber Carl Tobin, now an Alaska Pacific University professor. Tobin, however, wasn't a member of the three-person group that attempted a ridgeline ending at Malaspina's summit and he noted that the team's primary objective was 19,551-foot Mount Logan, the second highest peak in North America.
The climbers attempted a traverse towards Malaspina from a ridge connecting it to the nearby Mount Bering. They turned around due to the "tenuous nature" of the icy ridge climbing.
"It was a great trip," Tobin recalled in an email. "The leader, Benek Uczmaski, was a great guy but overly cautious, I thought — but I was 22.
"My partners," Tobin continued, "were thoroughly impressed by Alaska ridges, to say the least. And, of course, they are impressive."
Rada and Natalia Martinez are founding members of Uncharted, a project, focusing on Patagonia and Antarctica, to map and determine the exploratory history of poorly mapped areas while climbing fresh peaks. Both now live in British Columbia.
"The Yukon is such an amazing area [that] we were very keen on climbing there," Rada wrote in an email. "To keep the idea of going to unexplored areas, we picked an objective that was unclimbed, and with our extremely limited knowledge of the area, Mount Malaspina seemed to be the perfect candidate … fairly prominent and located in a really spectacular area."
Arrigetch Peaks
The Arrigetch Peaks are a small pocket of towers in the western Brooks Range, unique in the range for steep walls of high quality rock. Though known to climbers for decades, the area remains rarely visited due to difficult access and fickle weather.
One team from Washington was lucky enough to visit during the stable weather that settled over much of the Interior this summer. Stephanie Safdi and Johan Ugander climbed a new route on the southwest face of the West Maiden, which they named Misty Maiden, and climbed most of a new route on Mount Arthur Emmons, but turned around just shy of the summit due to a rain squall creating a "black lichen slip and slide" in the final feet before the true summit. After a close call with falling rock during the descent of Arthur Emmons on the deteriorating glaciers of the Arrigetch, the duo turned their attention back to south facing routes. They climbed another likely new route on the southeast face of Camel.
Hidden Mountains
Tucked between the Tordrillo Mountains and the Revelations, the Hidden Mountains seem appropriately named. All the same, James Gustafson, Tim Plotke and Zach Clanton found their way there in July, attempting a route on a craggy peak that they nicknamed Talliktok, which means "hidden" in Inupiaq.
However, the large west face repelled their attempts due to loose rock, and the trio turned instead to the neighboring peak Uruyaq. They climbed 500 feet of rock up a ridge to the summit, the first ascent of the mountain.
Coast Mountains
The mountain range that makes up part of the Alaska/British Columbia border in southeast Alaska saw some climbing action this year. In late May, American Erik Bonnett and Canadian Max Fisher returned to a remote spire in Alaska that they had attempted via a difficult route the previous season. They ended up retreating and climbing the spire by an easier route in 2014. In 2015 they completed the route, finding sustained and difficult rock climbing for nearly 2,000 feet spread over two days — with a short night of shivering in between.
They named it Kooshdakhaa Spire (about 7,500 feet), after the shape shifting creature from Tlingit and Tsimshian mythology. They named their route "Otter Water Boogie Man," an approximate translation of Kooshdakhaa. Kooshdakhaa Spire is a separate sub-summit of Mount Agony (7,550 feet).
Shortly after completing that ascent, Fisher and Bonnett trudged a few miles into Canada to climb another new line they had spied on a prominent, unclimbed buttress. They found challenging rock climbing for approximately 1,200 feet. They named the route and feature Lichening Bolt Buttress.
So long as climbers value exploration, new climbs will continue to be done throughout Alaska. Clearly, the limits of what can be climbed in Alaska have not yet been reached.
Seth Adams is an Fairbanks-based climber, freelance adventure writer and photographer. Mark Westman and Steve Gruhn provided research assistance for this story.