Way behind on writing. Let me catch up.
On August 3rd, we didn't stir until nearly noon. This was the 3rd day of a trend of sleeping later each day and hiking later each evening. It wasn't really a conscious plan, but by August 3rd we were justifying our long sleeps by saying it would put us on a night travel schedule for climbing Isto.
It was a gorgeous morning, blue skies with only a very few white cumulus clouds. The valley at the fork was bright green, the sheer rock walls on all sides were gray and red and black, and the sky was brilliantly blue. There was a light breeze from the north which kept the mosquitos away.
We spent an hour and a half fixing French toast. That required making bannock out of bisquick in the frying pan and then dipping the fried biscuits in the French toast mix and frying it again. It was a time and fuel intensive operation and it seemed to burn up more energy that it was worth. But it tasted damn good when we finally ate it. It was gone in about five minutes.
Finally camp was broken and we were packed and by about 2:30 or so we were hiking up the east fork of the Okpilak. It was a most pleasant walk. The valley floor is deep green with lush grass six inches high in places. The river runs in a narrow channel near the south edge of the valley. The valley walls are closer here and very steep. Many sheer rock faces which cannot offer lodgment to boulders are interrupted occasionally by small crumbling side drainages which invariably are topped by hanging glaciers. We found several tiny streams of very clear, cold, delicious water. We never carried water while hiking, except when we were traveling on the glacier below Mt. Michelson. Instead we kept our cups handy and dipped into the many small streams we crossed everywhere. This water was about the best water we had found, comparable to that which I drank in the stream which ran below the glacier on m y hike from our Mt. Michelson camp back to basecamp. Pure and cold, an appreciated change from the milky rock powder-laden water we found in the main river.
These tiny side streams in the tundra are so much different from the streams I am accustomed to. They do not seem to necessarily follow the best course downhill. They do not have gravel bottoms. They are usually only two to six inches wide and just as deep. They do not cut a recognizable channel; they cannot be seen until one is almost on top of it and hears it gurgling. It appears that someone has taken a razor blade and cut a neat channel for the water. The sides are straight down and the grass grows to the very edge. The water flows at a level almost equal with the top of the tiny channel. The sides and bottom appear to be smooth clay. Occasionally, a miniature waterfall will disrupt the straight perfect flow and a bowl, perhaps a foot in diameter and just as deep will present a perfect opportunity for filling a cup or water bottle.
We hiked about two miles from our camp to a point where a rather stable sidestream cut a canyon 20 feet into the granite. This was the stream we needed to follow to reach the glacier below Mt. Isto. We descended into the gorge and for a short distance were able to walk along the boulder strewn stream bed. But after only a hundred yards or so, the stream cut up to the edge of the canyon wall and, unable to cross the stream, we were forced to climb up a steep unstable slope out of the canyon and back down again where the stream swung to the opposite side of the gorge. We did this two or three times, each time scared that a step on a loose rock would send one of us rolling down the slope or bring a pile of boulders down on top of us. The scree was most unstable near the bottom, making the climbing up and climbing down the most harrowing part of our detours. We had found that by climbing to a level 200 feet or more above the stream we could hop around somewhat easier - but still not easy - on larger, slightly more stable granite boulders. After we had traveled up the stream a half mile and had climbed up and down two or three times, we decided to stay on the slope and sacrifice the much easier but discontinuous walking on the flat stream bed. We slowly picked our way the next mile until the streams gorge flattened out somewhat and we could once again move down and walk along the stream. At this point, the glacier finally came into view a quarter mile away and a quarter mile above where the map indicated it terminated.
We all 3 took different paths from this point. Jack left first and headed up near the top of the rubble before moving upstream toward the glacier. I began by following the stream. The bed was wide and flat here. There were several large mounds of gravel in odd places, and I could not imagine what forced had put them in that arrangement. As soon as I tried to climb one, though, I discovered that it was not a gravel mount at all. Instead, it was a huge chunk of ice which had obviously been calved off the glacier and which was covered by a layer of gravel an inch or two deep. Climbing it was impossible. Every step exposed wet solid black ice. One such mound was completely hollow with a huge ice cave opening on one side.
We finally found a small flat spot on a narrow surface moraine near the bottom of the glacier at about 10:00 p.m. This was the night Jack uttered the sentence that we repeated 1,000 times again: "It's a tough old place."
Our plan was to sleep laterite in the mid-afternoon, fix a big breakfast, and climb Isto during the night. As it turned out, we awoke to fog, rain, and snow and spent the day drinking and trying to fix my stove. Tent-bound again. At one point, we decided to run an experiment. We decided to hide the watch and not look at it again until the sky cleared. Then we would try to estimate the time. It was 10:17 p.m. when we stashed the watch in my boot.
When I awoke on 8/5 the skies were still mostly cloudy, but the fog had lifted and there appeared to be reason to hope the weather would improve. I hiked on the glacier a ways to see what I could see and particularly to get a look at the route we had planned to take up Isto. We had planned to travel in a southerly direction up this glacier to a ridgeline which would then lead northeast to Mt. Isto's summit. However, from a highpoint on the glacier I could see that this route led over, or through, a tremendous icefall and, even assuming we could get past that obstacle, the ridge we had hoped to follow was very sharp with steep couloirs providing the only access to the top.
When I returned to the tent, I suggested that we instead climb up a tributary glacier which rose to the east. This would lead to an apparently level spot at about 7,000 feet and a more promising route up Isto's north ridge. This would also allow us to return to the Okpilak Valley by climbing over a pass into the Area Creek drainage. If the weather stayed good, we could make an evening assault on the summit. If the fog and snow returned, we would at least be camped 1,000 feet higher on the mountain.
We began packing. We each guessed the time. Mike said 2;00 p.m. Jack said 3:30. I said 4:00 p.m. It was actually 1:00 p.m.
The map showed that the glacier we needed to get to was joined with the one we were on. But, in fact, they weree separated by 200 yards. That meant we had to get back on the crumbling schist. It was sunny and hot and hard work, but in a short while we reached the bottom of this higher glacier. The terminus was steep and the weather turned against us as soon as we got our crampons on.
We climbed through wind and driving snow up to the large flat spot just below Isto's north face. We found a good spot for the tent. We set up the tent and got moved in but quickly discovered that the wind was going to be a problem. We climbed back out of the tent and turned it around so that the door was turned away from the wind. We used ice screws, ice axes, and metal tent stakes to hold the tent in place.
We obviously were not going to be able to climb to the summit that night, so we got settled in. We were getting worried about time. We had only 5 more travel days to get back to our landing site to meet Walt Audi, and we figured it was a 4 day hike from here. Even if we don't slow down because of weather, that meant we had only about one more day before we would have to give up on Isto and start heading back to basecamp. The weather just had to improve. This is a tough old place.
