| THE FRIEDRICHS FAMILY WEB SITE Contact: Marty.Friedrichs@Gmail.com |
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| Bryan's Climb in the Brook Range Alaska August 2009 |
| In August of 2009, three friends and I hired a bush plane to fly us from Cold Foot, Alaska to the western bank of the Alatna River, deep in the Brooks Range. He was instructed to come back in two weeks to pick us up. From here we hiked 2 days (covering about 12 miles) up the Ayogamahala creek to a basecamp below the Arrigetch peaks. |
| THE FRIEDRICHS FAMILY WEB SITE Contact: Marty.Friedrichs@Gmail.com |
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| Our main intent was to climb the West Ridge of a striking granite spire named Shot Tower. After setting up camp and resting for a day we left the tents at 4 am on the morning of our intended climb. The scramble up to the base of the ridge took two hours. We then began climbing as two teams of two; one positioned a few hundred feet above the other. |
| A long day of wildly spectacular climbing and scenery followed, including a final pitch of aid climbing just below the summit on an overhanging slope |
| This was then followed by an equally long, but decidedly more tedious night of rappelling and hiking back to our tents (possible in Alaska due to days with the endless daylight). We finally collapsed at 6 am the following morning after 26 hours of straight climbing. Over the next few days we attempted another mountain and climbed a new, small, 4-pitch climb on a little bump of rock above camp, but mostly just sat around eating and gawking at the views. |
| We managed to hike out in a day, motivated by the thoughts of showers and our dwindling food supplies, and were picked up at the same location we were dropped off two weeks prior. Our pilot was the human outside our own group that we saw in these two weeks. - Bryan Friedrichs August 2009 |