"Arrigetch," in Inupiat, means "fingers of the hand outstretched."
I can't remember when I first heard of the Arrigetch Peaks, a geographically small group of mountains in the Endicott Mountains, a sub-range of the Brooks Range, the northernmost mountain range in the United States. But ever since I saw my first photograph of a spire called Shot Tower, I knew I wanted to climb it. In many ways, I felt that my climbing career was simply training for my first trip to the Arrigetch.
I've felt ready to go for a few years now -- indeed, I've climbed bigger, harder mountains in other places. But it's expensive to get to the Arrigetch, and with no guarantees of good weather, I hadn't browbeaten any of my regular partners into going with me.
When I suddenly found myself in the right place at the right time for an opportunity to go on a National Geographic-funded climbing trip to the area as part of a future documentary about the National Park system, I jumped at the chance.
Though Shot Tower rises just 6,096 feet, it is one of the most famous and most striking peaks in the Arrigetch, a thin granite spire that offers no passage to the summit without technical rock climbing. Shot Tower is also the only commonly climbed peak in the area, perhaps due to author David Roberts proclaiming it the best route he ever climbed. That's saying something. Roberts, of Massachusetts, is considered the dean of American climbing literature, according to Wikipedia, and has done a number of first ascents in Alaska, including the West Ridge of Shot Tower in 1971. That's the route we chose for our ascent too.
Four of us climbed Shot Tower, which is probably climbed once or twice a year these days: two videographers from California, Josh Helling and Trevor Hobbs; a climbing friend, Clint Helander; and myself.
The granite in the Arrigetch lends itself beautifully to climbing -- when we first entered the valley, we looked at many of the walls and deemed them unclimbable. However, once we'd had an up-close look at the rock, we saw that it offered climbable features in unexpected places. We began to see possible routes where we hadn't imagined any before.
But it isn't just the rock that appeals -- the Arrigetch is one of the most dramatic group of mountains I've seen. The thin, tightly-packed granite spires are an oddity in the typically gentle Brooks Range, and, in spite of the relatively small footprint of the Arrigetch, the walls, ridges and summits could keep a climber busy for a lifetime.
Blessed with a sunny, windless day, Shot Tower didn't put up much of a fight. Speaking strictly in terms of difficulty, it was almost an anti-climax, taking us only seven hours to reach the summit.
But oh my, what a place!