Check the link for pictures of the Mt. Silverthrone climbing expedition.
Will is back from his climb of Mt. Silverthrone(13,000') so I am back on my blog with so many entries swimming in my head that never got written. Being technology challenged
I had to wait for his return to find out why my blog wasn't working. I've decided the younger generation comes equiped with a mutant gene that allows them to figure everything out. As it happens my blog fixed itself ( don't know how) only I didn't know it because I didn't check. Just gave up and decided I had to wait for him to fix it.
Will and his friends arrived back after a two week expedition tired and hungry. Between the three of them they ate a full pan of Lasagna, a full loaf of Italian bread, Ice cream fudge sundaes, and even polished off a full loaf of Zucchini bread on top of all that. Listening to their anecdotes I was glad I was hearing them after the climb when they were home safe. Like the avalanche they photoed coming their way, and the night spent in a snowcave they had to build on the top of the mountain because it was too late to start a descent or the one about the park rangers that tried to talk them out of the climb because no one had tried that route before and any way climbing season was over.
The one I enjoyed the most though was the one about the Japanese tourists and the guide. They had walked back the 30 miles or so from the mountain and were winding their way across the mile wide McKinley River when they noticed a group of Japanese tourists watching them from Wonder Lake. When they were safely across the guide came up to them and asked "Are you Jan"s friends?" You have to understand they are out in the wilderness 100 miles from anywhere and she finds them. Yes they were Jan's friends and Jan had said if you find them bring them back to the lodge. So they loaded all their climbing gear onto the tour bus to big delighted grins on the Japanese and headed to Kantishna lodge where they were fed and treated to real beds. Alaska may be the biggest state but its a small town where everyone pretty much knows everyone else if you grew up here.
Will's comments on the climb
We walked in 30 miles from Wonder Lake to climb a new route on Mt. Silverthrone's 4000' west face, following a couloir Joe Puryear and Mark Westman attempted in 1997 before turning back in bad weather. They later made the first ascent of the face via a different couloir and followed the north ridge to the summit. The 'new' route takes a straight line from the glacier to the summit, and descends the north ridge. 
We left camp on the Traleika at 6am and hurried through the runout zone of the seracs at the head of the glacier's east fork, where the route begins. The climbing was uninterrupted 50 to 60 degree snow and ice, which we simulclimbed with pickets and ice screws. We weren't faster than the weather and lost visibility in the afternoon, but continued up to escape. One of us was sick from altitude and recovering from a 30' fall off a knife-edge ridge we wandered onto somewhere on the face below the summit, so we moved slowly. We topped out in a whiteout and storm at 7pm. We dug a snow cave at 13,100-something feet, 10 or 20 yards south of the summit, and waited there until morning, listening to the wind and unsure whether we would be able to leave. At 6am the wind and blowing snow was still bad but visibility had improved so we hurried down the north ridge. The easy descending ended at Peak 11,270 and we simulclimbed down the steep ridge, arriving sometime around 12pm at the descent gully noted in Puryear's book.
Full story in photos at Picasa .
Gear Notes:
four alpine ice tools
four ice screws
three pickets
60m 8mm rope
shovel
stove
foam pads
Approach Notes:
1 day driving, etc., from Wasilla.
2 days to McGonagall Pass.
1 day to the head of the Traleika. We camped on the medial moraine, 3 miles from the route.
10 hrs up, 6 hrs down (not counting hiking to and from camp; we could have camped closer but liked the moraine).