Mt Fairweather

Mt Fairweather (15,325ft)

June 22, 2018

Eric Gilbertson, Steven Song, Greg Slayden

~24 hours Haines to Haines

June 19 – Flight Seattle to Haines, too windy to fly to glacier
June 20 – Attempted flight to glacier, snow too slushy to land, wait in Haines, hike Mt Ripinsky
June 21 – Waiting in Haines for freezing levels to drop
June 22 – Flight to glacier, summit Mt Fairweather, back to base camp
June 23 – Flight to Haines and return to Seattle

Mt Fairweather is notorious for being perhaps the worst-named mountain on earth. It was named by Captain Cook in the 1700s when he spied it from the ocean during a rare spell of fair weather. However, the weather is normally terrible. Groups have been known to spend weeks stuck in tents riding out snowstorm after snowstorm, never even getting above base camp. Some groups never even set foot on the mountain, after waiting too long for a weather window.

Mt Fairweather is the tallest mountain in British Columbia, and one of the top 50 most prominent mountains on earth, though, and is a worthy objective for many mountaineers. The standard approach is to fly by ski plane from Haines, Alaska to around 9,500ft on a glacier just north of the peak. The West Ridge route is then the standard route to the summit.

Greg and I started planning our trip back in the Fall. Greg had attempted Mt Fairweather twice already, and been turned back each time due to route conditions or other factors. I know of several people who have attempted Fairweather at least three or four times before succeeding. After reading past trip reports, we concluded the main reason expeditions fail is, of course, the weather. The summit is high enough that it’s probably a good idea to acclimate before summitting. However, acclimating takes time, and weather windows don’t generally last long enough to allow for proper acclimation.

The general strategy of many past attempts has been to wait in Haines for a weather window, then fly to the glacier and establish base camp. Over the next few days groups establish one or two higher camps to acclimate, then once acclimated, they wait for another weather window to summit.

Many times, though, groups have spent the good one or two weather days at the beginning of the trip acclimating,

then once they’re acclimated, the normal bad weather returns. By the time another weather window opens up, it may have been so long that the group is ready to just fly back to Haines.

Our strategy was to forego the high camps and do one fast-and-light push from base camp to summit and back on day 1, before the weather window closed. This would not allow for any acclimation, but that was the risk we were willing to take. Personally, I’d gone sea level to the summit of Mt Blanc (15,781ft) in less than 24 hours with no problem, so wasn’t concerned about Fairweather. We would then try to fly out as soon as we got down, to avoid getting stuck on the mountain.

We didn’t want to be stuck in Haines waiting for a weather window for a week, so we planned to wait until the forecast looked good, then buy a last minute flight from Seattle to Haines for a smash-and-grab ascent. While the normal season for Mt Fairweather is in May, my constraint was I had to wait for final exams at Seattle University to finish June 12, so that was the earliest I could leave.

To increase speed and safety we planned to ski. A group of two would be good for flying onto the mountain in one trip, however it would be pretty risky if either of us fell in a crevasse. Mt Fairweather does not see much climber traffic – many years there are no successful climbs – and we would certainly be all on our own in case of an accident, possibly for a very long time. We were on the lookout for quite a while for a third climber to join. It was difficult, though. We each have plenty of friends who want to climb Fairweather, but they can’t all just buy a last-minute flight on a random weekday and tell their bosses they’ll be gone for the next week or two starting immediately.

Steven had a flexible schedule and was interested in joining, so by early June we had a team together and started waiting for the weather to open. I’d been monitoring the weather on Mt Fairweather since early April, and I noticed that once every two weeks or so, there would be a good 2-3 day high pressure window. But mostly the weather was just snowy every single day.

By June 10 it looked like a window was shaping up, and we might just be able to make it if I graded my final exams really quickly and immediately jumped on a flight. We were ready to pull the trigger on Monday morning for a Tuesday afternoon flight, but when Greg called up the ski-plane pilot Drake for his opinion, the forecast shifted and turned a lot worse. An “atmospheric river” was predicted, and we didn’t want to get stuck in that. So the waiting continued.

Finally June 19-20 looked like another weather window, and Drake confirmed he thought it looked good. On

Monday morning, June 18, after final confirmation from Drake that he could probably fly us up then, I pulled the trigger and bought us flights. I bought fully refundable flights on Alaska Airlines to Juneau. We had no idea whether we’d be stuck on the mountain in a storm or get off quickly, or change our mind the next morning if the forecast changed, so the refundable tickets allowed us flexibility on schedule. I got a pretty good deal, too, since I booked with the Alaska Airlines credit card, and had a companion fare discount.

Tuesday morning Steven drove down from Vancouver just after returning from another crazy climb in the Rockies the night before. He picked me up and we met Greg at the airport. We left for Juneau at 1:30pm, then transferred to an Alaska Seaplanes floatplane flight to Haines, landing around 5:30pm. The original hope had been to fly onto the glacier that night.

We walked over to Drake’s hangar at the Haines airport, but unfortunately he said the wind was too strong, and we’d have to wait for the next day to fly in. Many variables all have to be perfect at the same time for the flight onto the glacier to work out. Clouds have to be low enough or high enough or non-existent, there can’t be precipitation, wind has to be low, and the freezing level has to be low enough that the snow isn’t too slushy (as we later found out).

Greg had booked us a room at a hotel in Haines just in case, so we called up Captain’s Choice and got a ride the five miles into town. Captain’s Choice is the only hotel we could find that would give rides to and from the airport, which would be critical to get back quickly to capitalize on a weather window.

The next morning around 5am we got the call from Drake that the weather looked good for another attempt, so we quickly packed up our stuff and got a ride to the airport. The plane wasn’t big enough to take all of us with all our gear (100 pounds each including 10 days of food), so there would have to be two trips. Greg went in first, while Steven and I waited on the runway. The flight was supposed to be about 40 minutes each way, so we were expecting Drake to return in about 90 minutes.

Right at the 90 minute mark we saw Drake returning, and quickly changed into our ski boots. However, Greg was still in the plane. Drake said they made it to the glacier, but the freezing level was up at 13,000ft and the snow looked extremely slushy down at the landing zone at 9,500ft. Moreover, the wind was too turbulent for him to do a test landing. He didn’t want to get stuck in deep slush, so had to turn around. He said he had never seen those conditions before, and was very surprised. So, we had to wait until the freezing level dropped, which could be a few more days.

We had come in a perfect sunny weather window, but it was too perfect! The locals in Haines said that day was the

warmest in the past four years. With no risk of flying out that day, we called up Captain’s Choice to book another night. We had all day and dry weather, so went on a short day-hike up Mt Ripinsky, a 3,000ft+ mountain overlooking town. To make it official we started by touching our toes in the ocean. It was hot and not even windy on the summit.

That evening I went to the public library in town and got a few hours of consulting work done on the computers, before going to bed. The next morning Drake said the freezing levels were still too high, so we needed to wait around a bit longer. I spent all day working in the library, while Greg biked around town and hiked up Haines Hill. We ate a big dinner at the Thai restaurant, hoping to be prepared for a big day the next day.

The next morning at 5am we got a text from Drake to be ready to roll at 6am at his plane. When Steven read the message we immediately jolted into fire-drill mode, and got a ride to the airport. I took the first flight this time. The skies looked cloudy, but we broke through the clouds to an amazing undercast. Mt Fairweather was sticking up out of the clouds in front of us, and we could make out Mt St Elias and Mt Logan in the distance. Drake said he’s rarely seen that view, and we had really lucked out with the weather.

The temperature was a few degrees below freezing as we approached the glacier, and after one circle to test the wind Drake touched down at 9,300ft. Amazingly, the snow was hard as a rock! All the slush had frozen over a foot deep. Drake had never seen conditions like this, and was quite surprised. This would actually be ideal for efficient travel up the mountain. We would move up and down very quickly, which was critical to our fast-and-light plan.

We unloaded all my gear and Drake took off to get Greg and Steven. I quickly set up our big base camp tent and started

making snow walls. It was tough to chisel through the ice, but I eventually made good bricks and had a 3ft tall wall started around the tent. Ninety minutes came and went with no plane, and I was starting to get worried. Finally, after 3 hours, Drake arrived and dropped off Greg and Steven. Apparently there was an issue with the gas pump malfunctioning at the Haines airport, and then when everyone was halfway to the glacier they had to turn around for another mechanical issue. So, even if the four weather variables line up perfectly, a mechanical issue with the plane can still thwart an attempt to get on the mountain.

Drake took off at 10:15am, and after quickly throwing all the gear in the tent and roping up, we were moving by 10:30am. With the sky clear, temperature warm, no wind, and solid snow conditions, we didn’t want to delay at all, in case a storm came in. We packed the bare minimum, with the only emergency gear a stove and a shovel (to dig a snow cave in case we got stuck in a blizzard).

Steven led the way skinning up. We moved fast, easily navigating around one huge crevasse at 10,000ft, and taking our first break a few hours later around 11,500ft above some avy debris. We determined that it was too steep and icy to continue skinning higher, and the iciness would make skiing down dangerous. So we ditched the skis and continued in crampons.

We were aiming for the col between the west and main peaks, and this is the area where route conditions have

turned groups back. The crevasses can span the whole valley here, and this is where Greg had been turned around before on a previous attempt. We had heard from Drake, though, that a guided group of 10 climbers had summitted a few weeks earlier, so the route might still be good. Even though it was a low snow year in Haines, somehow the glacier was still in good shape on Fairweather.

Steven navigated up the valley, and we had no trouble with crevasses. There was one 10ft-wide snow bridge we

crossed that might melt out later in the season, but there were plenty of alternatives to get around this. I placed wands throughout this section just in case visibility deteriorated, and Greg and I each were recording GPS tracks we could follow back in a whiteout.

After about 5 hours we crested the ridge around 13,300ft and took a food break. The skies were still clear above us and undercast below. I’d heard it was possible to see the waves breaking on the shore below, but we would get no such views today. From here the route simply followed the ridge to the summit, though it still looked crevassed.

I took over the lead, and Steven took over wand-placing duty in the rear. I wound around a few crevasses, and actually noticed the faint outline of footprints at one point, likely from the guided group weeks earlier. In one section we had to scramble up a steep icy/snowy step that required using the pick of my whippet, and then it became more mellow. High clouds were started to roll in, and I was getting concerned our weather window was closing.

It was decided that Steven and I would move up quickly breaking trail to the summit as a rope team, while Greg would follow in our footsteps. I picked up the pace, breaking trail at times in shin-deep snow, but at other times in icy rime. By 6: 20pm, just under 8 hours after leaving camp, we topped out on the summit. The high clouds had held off, and we were surrounded by an amazing undercast, with only peaks above 10,000ft sticking out.

We picked out Mt St Elias and Mt Logan in the distance to the north. I’d been on Mt Logan a few years earlier, and

remembered looking south toward Fairweather that day, though I think it was in the clouds then. The temperature was cold enough that we quickly changed into our down jackets, but the wind was light enough that we were comfortable hanging out for a while. We were doing pressure breathing to help with the altitude, and even though we’d gone from sea level to 15,300ft in just about 10 hours, we were still feeling fine. Surprisingly, I hadn’t needed my ice ax all day, just my whippet.

Greg crested the top around 8pm, and we took a bunch of group pictures. I knew from experience that on these fast-and-light no-acclimation summit pushes altitude sickness can set in rapidly. I once took a nap at 18,500ft on Pico de Orizaba after not acclimating properly, and that was definitely a bad idea.

We all roped back together and descended down the mountain, hoping to get back to base camp fast before any storms came in. This was only a day after the summer solstice, so the sun was still high in the sky. But it was starting to hit the high clouds, and made for a colorful semi-sunset. We carefully cramponed down the rime ice and slowly downclimbed the icy step. Back at the col I was out of water, so quickly whipped out the stove and melted a liter.

We followed our tracks and wands back through the crevasses, and soon reached our skis near the avy debris. It was darker now, but not dark enough to need headlamps. The ski descent back to camp was fast and fun on the icy crust. We skied well around the big crevasses, and reached camp around 11:40pm, pretty close to 13 hours after leaving.

I started up my stove and started melting snow for dinner and drinking water, and Greg left a message on the satellite phone to Drake that we’d be ready to fly out in the morning if the weather held. We were all crammed into the tent and asleep by 1:30am.

It never really got that dark, and by 6am we were out of the tent

packing up. Amazingly, the high clouds had dissipated and it was another bluebird day with no wind. Drake landed around 9:45am and Steven and I took the first flight out. There was a thick undercast again around 10,000ft, but Drake managed to find a hole to fly down through just outside Haines. After dropping us off he quickly fueled back up and picked up Greg, returning by 12:30pm. Somehow we’d managed to capitalize on the weather window, for a roundtrip Haines-to-Haines time of around 26 hours (depending on which flight the clock starts and stops on).

Our gear was already packed up, and we were already at the airport, so Greg went inside and got us tickets on the next Seaplanes flight out, at 1:30pm. The plane was just big enough for us and all our gear (with no other passengers), and we made it to Juneau at 2:30pm. I went to the ticket counter, and there was just barely enough time to squeeze us onto the 3:30pm flight to Seattle, which only had 4 remaining seats.

We got back to Seattle at 6:30pm local time (5:30pm Alaska time), which meant it only took 21.5 hours from summit to Seattle.

Video from the trip:

© 2018 – 2020, egilbert@alum.mit.edu. All rights reserved.