Alaska season underway-first dispatch in from Ruth Gorge.

We have start­ed our Alas­ka sea­son with a trip into the Ruth Gorge. After an ascent of Mt. Bar­ille, guide Dave Ahrens and Mark Heber­lein will be review­ing some skills as part of a Ruth Glac­i­er Expe­di­tion Train­ing Course before mov­ing onto to big­ger objec­tives in the Gorge that may include the Moose’s Tooth and Peak 11,300. Stay tuned for their dispatches.

Here’s the first dis­patch from Dave after they flew in recent­ly
We were able to fly into the range on Sun­day evening, albeit rather late. Mon­day was spent review­ing glac­i­er skills and scop­ing out the approach to the Japan­ese Couloir on Mt. Bar­ille. We had a bird’s eye view of the route on the flight in and were both psy­ched to get after it on Tues­day. The route looked to be in excel­lent con­di­tion with firm snow, so we decid­ed to go for it as soon as we could.

Mount Bar­ille, Ruth Gorge Alas­ka. Dave Ahrens photo

Mis­sion accomplished:

It end­ed up being a fair­ly big day and we arrived back in camp after about 17 hours on the move. Today we’re enjoy­ing a relax­ing morn­ing and hot pan­cakes before set­ting out to do crevasse res­cue train­ing and look at oth­er objec­tives. So far the weath­er has been great. Will be in touch again soon.