Contraserius: The Long Story: Part I

The Long Story

Part I

The peaks around the Scud Glacier (which include Mt. Ambition) lie on the eastern side of the Stikine region.The Stikine region is essentially as far north as Juneau, Alaska. The Scud Glacier is just inside the British Columbia border. From higher points in the area you can clearly see the Devil’s Thumb, Mt. Burkett and the Burkett Needle nearer the ocean. The weather in this area is surprisingly good and much drier than the aforementioned peaks.

It took Blake and myself two days from Washington to Tattoga, B.C. The first order of business was to find Dale our bush pilot. After signing some paperwork Dale’s first comment was “when is it you guys are coming out again?” Not the most reassuring comment from our pilot, who had just arranged that date and who would shortly be dropping us 50-miles from the nearest human being.

The following morning we arrived at the dock on-time only to find Dale frantic because he had another flight later that day. We grabbed our packs tossed them in the plane and promptly took off. No need for any safety information. Later in the flight Dale gestured to Blake to tie a rope around his waist when preparing to toss a bag out of the 2x2 ft. bomb hatch. Safety was obviously a priority.

What I vividly remember is placing my boots in the hatch before taking off. What I know is that those boots were present at the dock and had vanished when we landed. Somewhere, somehow we arrived without my boots and one trekking pole short. I felt angry and sick. I must have forgot to put the boots in the plane. How would I be able to climb with the crappy pair of tennis shoes I was wearing? Dale said that he might be coming back to the lake with another group later that week. If the boots were at the dock and if he came back he would leave them on the beach. There was nothing to do but try to climb. The money had been spent, we were in the wilderness and I needed to deal with this problem.

Regardless of the problem with the boots (or lack therefore of) we needed to get up to our food cache. We had dropped a dry bag full of our food for the next two weeks onto a dry glacier. To reach the glacier we waded, bushwalked and thrutched our way 10 miles up the Quattrin River Valley. The bag landed on a flat, wide open glacier but it still took us a couple hours to find it. Thankfully I took a video of the airdrop that gave us an idea of where the bag may have landed. Unthankfully our dry bag had landed on bare ice and rocks and exploded.Blake (who tossed the bag) is obviously a better carpet bomber than dive bomber. The largest piece of remaining dry bag was about 18 inches by 4 inches. Inside the dry bag we wrapped everything in tyvek which was ripped into two pieces. The glacier was a graveyard off ramen noodles, peanut butter, granola bars, beef jerky and all the remnant of our once proud food supply no reduced to meager rations. Like an Easter egg hunt we spent hours salvaging what we could and collecting every piece of trash. We spent an hour or so on a piton and stopper hunt finding them in small crevasses and up to 100 ft. from the initial impact zone.

It was only our first day and we had only faced difficulties. My boots were M.I.A., we’d lost about a third of our food, Blake’s camera was dying from an unsuccessful river crossing. Things could only get better… right?