Blitz on The Gift click to zoom © Mark Twight Ruth Gorge, Alaska Range — Taking advantage of weather patterns allegedly caused by El Niño, and assurances by Park Ranger Darryl Miller that the winter in the Alaska Range had been "extremely mild", Jonny Blitz, Steve House and I flew on to the Ruth Glacier on February 28th, 1998. The first few nights at our 4400' base camp were quite cold, -25° to -30°F, but temperatures moderated thereafter, probably never dipping below -5°F for the next 10 days. The camp received approximately 10 hours of daylight, increasing by seven minutes per day, and just five hours of sunlight, as the sun rose from behind the Hut Tower and disappeared behind Mount Wake. click click click click click After some reconnaissance and ski touring we chose a line on Mount Bradley. Our first attempt ended in a retreat. Ice conditions were not ideal, much of what we counted on being ice was thin ice over powder snow or simply frothy snow plastered on the rock. I made a false start on pitch 2 before backing off, and traversing around the offending difficulties. Jonny ran out of rope and ice and eventually had to belay off his tools, after spending a lot of time searching for anchors. Steve made two attempts on pitch 4 before finally hanging his pack on a screw and leading through without it. Unfortunately, these mistakes ate up the daylight and after deciding no one was psyched to lead the 6th pitch, and with no way to aid climb around it, we retreated. "A free-hanging icicle... House made three moves before it snapped off above his tools..." On March 7th we attempted the line again. The 6th pitch, though dangerous, wasn't as hard as expected and led from one dead end gully to another. We climbed 10 pitches the first day, fixing a rope and bivouacking at the bottom of the 9th. The pitches through the headwall on day two were hard enough that we only climbed four of them before another bivvy. The most striking pitch on the route was lead by House, "The Super Giant Waterfall of Love," the 14th. Steep, bottomless snow led to moderate mixed climbing into a cave behind a free-hanging icicle. House pulled on to it and made three moves before it snapped off above his tools. He rode it down, ripping the first piece of gear before simultaneously hitting the snow slope and being stopped by a good cam. After a rest, he climbed back into the cave, onto the remaining ice, and through to a steep, but thin, pillar. The pitch was very sustained, with dubious protection for 35 meters to a semi-hanging belay below a huge chockstone and snow mushroom. This took him over two hours to lead. On day three we opted to leave the bivvy gear behind and go as fast as we could for the top...or to where difficulty stopped us. "Fast" being a relative term as the 15th pitch (A3) took Blitz three hours to lead. But the gully opened up above it and we made good progress to another dead end below another massive chockstone. Two difficult mixed pitches got us past it on the right, and led to more moderate snow. As darkness fell we confronted yet another chockstone but managed to sneak through "The Glory Hole" behind it on 90° ice. At 8pm we reached the col at 8700' — 400' of easy snow separated us from the summit, but true to my nature, we started rappelling, reaching our bivvy at 1:30am. We arrived in our base camp after a leisurely descent the next afternoon, March 10th. "The Gift (That Keeps On Giving)" follows a huge gully system west of "The Pearl", a difficult rock route put up by Andy Orgler on the most obvious pillar dominating the south face. "The Gift..." is 3200' high, 23 (60 meter) pitches if you use the rope all the way. Thirteen of these pitches are "hard". The technical ratings are 5.9, A3, WI6 xx. Our Grade - a Texas "two star" is as ambiguous as any other Alpine Grade and means absolutely nothing. The route would probably be a death trap in warmer conditions, but it IS Alaska so you never can tell... — Mark F. Twight, Mountain Zone Contributor All photos: Mark Twight Collection

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