1991 & 1992 Yellowstone Ski Trips

Our 1991 and 1992 ski trips were both to the same area,
the Canyon area of Yellowstone National Park, so I’ve combined them into one entry.

We had thoroughly enjoyed our 1987 winter trip to Yellowstone but decided in 1991 to start the trip from the North Entrance (Gardiner/Mammoth) rather than the West Entrance (West Yellowstone).  In addition, rather than using the snow coach to take us to Old Faithful we used the snow coach to takes us toward Canyon Village, at the NE corner of the Grand Loop Road.

As it turn out, there isn’t (or at least not than) a scheduled run to Canyon Village.  For our 1991 trip, we arranged to get dropped off and picked up at the Norris Junction on the loop road and then ski the 12 miles to Canyon Village.  In 1992, we organized a trip with 7 other people (a total of 9) and hired the snow coach to drop us off at Canyon Village and then pick us up five days later.  The main snow coach used in the park then was the classic Bombardier Snowbus, originally designed in 1939.

The dramatic thing about active thermal areas is the substantial amount of rime ice that forms on vegetation and structures on account of the moisture pumped into the air from the thermal features which freezes back out on anything nearby.

While staying at Canyon Village, the Park Service asked that we pitch our tents in the campground area.  Fortunately, the winter warming hut and its restrooms were open 24 hours a day and only a short ski away.  We’d usually spend our evenings in the warming hut, taking advantage of its warmth and light to make the long winter night more pleasant.  Often times the most enjoyable skiing was at night when it is quiet and the white snow reflected whatever meager light came from the sky.

We’d do short trips from our camp at Canyon, skiing trails or roads.  The skiing is delightful because the snow is so dry it was easy to wax the skies for it.  Except for a short period at mid-day, when snowmobilers doing the Grand Loop would come in to refuel, we had the area pretty much to ourselves.  Park Service regulations restricted snowmobiles to the main park roads.  Unless we were skiing the road, to get from one location to another, we never had to contend with the snowmobiles.

To minimize the drain on vacation days, both trips were during the same period, between Christmas and New Years.  The extremely short days were the price we paid for that choice.

1989 Denali West Buttress

While we successfully traversed Denali during 1988 Muldrow Trip, Marcia did not have a summit to her credit.  After being stuck with 5 guys for nearly 5 weeks, she decided to go the other extreme and organize a trip with 4 woman instead. 

Three of the members, Cindy Luksus, Debbie Wolf and Billie Butterfield were friends of Marcia from The Mountaineers.  The fourth member of the trip was Mary who came recommended by John Arnold one of our Muldrow trip mates.  They chose to attempt the West Buttress route (the most popular) in June when the weather is warmer (by Denali standards).

They chose the expedition name of “Seattle Women’s Alpine Team” (aka, SWAT).  There was another all-women’s team on the mountain, “Chicks on Pricks” (the “pricks” being crampons) with whom they were occasionally confused.

They got off on a rocky start when after flying on to the glacier, it turned out that Mary brought along a severe cold.  Not wanting to slow the rest of the team down, Mary flew off the mountain after a few days but not before passing her respiratory ailment on to the others. 

They continued on with the expedition but each of them came down with the “crud”.  Between battling illness and poor weather, they abandoned their trip after 2-1/2 weeks having spent many days at the 14,000 camp and making a carry to the West Buttress at 16,200’.

1988 – Denali, Muldrow Traverse

The 1981 South Buttress traverse of Denali got me keen on seeing lesser visited areas of the mountain.  Even though the Muldrow Glacier on the NE corner of Denali was the only route climbed from 1913, the year of the first ascent, until 1951, the year the West Buttress was climbed, the Muldrow now comes in a distant second in popularity to the West Buttress.

One of the Muldrow’s drawbacks is its longer approach to the glacier before the climb begins. On the West Buttress, climbers land on the SE Fork of the Kahiltna Glacier at 7,200 feet and start from there.  For the Muldrow the start is from Wonder Lake at 2,100 feet and nearly 20 miles distant from the Muldrow Glacier. In addition, the McKinley River has to be crossed.  Depending on the river flow, that crossing is a major challenge.

Recruited for the trip were, besides Marcia & myself, Craig Rowley, Dave Sparks, Al Ellsworth and John Arnold.  To address the longer approach, we allowed for a 4 to 5 week climb and we hired a dog sledder to haul a substantial part of our gear to McGonagall Pass and the glacier.  We solved the McKinley River crossing by leaving early, the second week of April, when the river was frozen.  Since we were traversing the mountain and descending the West Buttress route, thus dodging a river crossing during the breakup or Spring floods.

The climbing was not extremely technical but the route finding through crevasse fields kept us on our toes.  We took way too much food (my fault as I planned out much of the food) which slowed us down.  To keep our pack loads down yet get everything from camp to camp, took multiple trips.  We ended up dumping substantial amounts of food in crevasses along the way.  Even today I can’t look at Danish butter cookies without thinking of the tins that went into crevasses at 16,000 feet.  The good side of our slower pace was that none of us had any major altitude problems on the trip. 

While we failed to summit the peak on account of bad weather on our summit day from the 17,000 camp on the West Buttress, we did complete the traverse and dragged ourselves and oodles of gear over Denali Pass at 18,200 feet.  The climb lasted 34 days, and, with the exception of a National Park Service climbing team returning from Silver Throne (a nearby peak east of Denali), we saw no other climbers until we reached the 17,000 camp on the West Buttress, nearly 4 weeks of solitude. 

		1988 Muldrow Traverse VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

1987 – Aconcagua/Argentina

The 1987 Aconcagua trip was Marcia’s and my first foray into organizing an expedition. Joining us were fellow Mountaineer friends Craig Rowley, Bob Bergstrom and Larry Anzalone along with John Arnold and Scott Darsney, climbers that Bob knew and recommended from a previous trip.

We planned for a 3-week trip flying from Seattle to Miami, Miami to Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires to Mendoza in one push. 1987 being before the current practice of airlines extracting revenue at every opportunity, we strove to get our many duffel bags onto the airplanes without paying excess baggage. One tactic was to demonstrate how light they were by having Marcia heft the bags onto the baggage scales. We figured the mostly male counter agents would assume that any bag hoisted by a female couldn’t be overweight.

At the frontend of the trip we spent several days in Mendoza getting our permit (at the time, the Argentine government required all foreign climbers to present a doctor’s medical statement and an EKG) and supplies. Finding white gas for our stoves wasn’t possible so we ended up with paint thinner for our stoves (MSR XGK). That fuel later created problems as it repeatedly fouled the stove’s fuel jet and its fumes were noxious.

Mendoza, though, was charming. The hotel we stayed at had a lovely courtyard in which we were able spread out our gear during the repack. The food and wine were excellent. Even today, I remember the meals featuring thick steaks and wonderful red wine.

Our original thought while in Seattle was to attempt the more difficult Polish Route rather than the Normal Route. After we arrived at the lodge (Penitentes) from which you choose the drainage to ascend, we quickly changed over to the much easier Normal route.

It is a 2-day trip from the road to the base camp, Plaza de Mulas. While mules carry most of your equipment, they travel separately from you, so you must carry your personal and camping gear to be self-sufficient for the walk to basecamp.

Once at basecamp, there are 3 intermediate camps before a summit attempt. To help with the acclimatization, you typically take at least 2 days between camp by carrying some gear to the next camp on one day, caching it, returning to the lower camp and then moving your camp on the second day.

The Normal Route is not technical, but its challenges are the altitude, your health (i.e., avoiding respiratory or travel illnesses) and the weather. First Craig, then Larry turned back because of altitude issues. The difficulty in getting the stoves to reliably melt water while spewing noxious fumes from burning paint thinner probably contributed to Craig’s and Larry’s turning back.

On our summit day, John, who was battling respiratory issues, turned back and Bob accompanied him back to camp. It was Scott, Marcia and myself who summited. We were the only people on that summit at the time but there was the body of a climber who had become disoriented on the summit in a white-out and died just a few days earlier.

The trip out took a couple of days. Scott and John remained on the mountain (I think John subsequently summited). While Bob, Marcia & I returned to Mendoza. Larry had stayed at the hotel until our return while Craig returned home.

The four of us (Larry, Bob, Marcia and I) toured Mendoza for a few days then returned to Buenos Aires. While Larry and Bob continued to the USA, Marcia and I detoured to the border of Argentina and Brazil where we visited Iguazu Falls. Afterwards we headed to Rio De Janeiro but by this time we were getting tired of carrying large duffel bags of outdoor gear through airports and headed for home rather than spend more time in Brazil.

1985 – Mexican Volcanoes

This turned out to be a pre-honeymoon for Marcia & I.  We became engaged in the Autumn of 1984 and scheduled our wedding for April 1985.  This trip to climb the 3 big Mexican volcanoes (Popocatepetl, Iztaccihuatl and Pico de Orizaba) near Mexico City was organized by our friends Roy & Peg Ellis. It was a large trip with eleven total (Roy & Peg Ellis, Bruce Pond, Bill Deters, Kathleen Sebastian, Ann Tibbets, Tamara McCollum, Chuck Coughran, Diane Hoff, Marcia & myself).

While the purpose was to climb the volcanoes, we did  tourist around Mexico City for a few days as acclimatization before trying the first two peaks (Popo & Ixta).  After the last volcano (Orizaba) we headed for a few days at the beaches of Puerto Vallarta.

Roy did a great job of organizing the trip and keeping us on track.  He was aided by having two trip members who spoke Spanish, Ann who had worked in Mexico for a period of time, and Bruce who was in Mexico already for an aid program.

We arrived in Mexico City the day after Christmas (1984) and it was real joy.  The holiday period extends from Christmas until Three Kings Day and the public places were all decorated.  Our hotel in Mexico City, Hotel Cortes, was a beautiful old style hotel across from major plaza.  It was 2 stories tall and its exterior was mostly solid and blank.  Inside there was a lovely open courtyard which all the rooms opened on to.  In the courtyard while enjoying an evening margarita, you could hardly hear the nearby traffic noise over the water cascading in the fountain. 

After Mexico City we drove in two rented VW microbuses to a lodge in the saddle between Popo and Ixta.  We did an acclimatization hike one day then left the next to climb Popo at 17,800 feet.  A few folks in our team weren’t feeling well on account of the altitude and had to turn back before the summit. 

A note on the “climbing”.  None of the routes we did required any technical gear or ropes.  We did use crampons in the morning on the frozen snow pack and carry ice axes for self arrest should you misstep and start to slide on the hard snow.

After a rest day at the lodge we took on Ixta.  People were getting more acclimatized and we all summited the 17,300 foot peak.

The last peak, Orizaba, is a half-day drive away from Popo and Ixta.  Additionally, we had to hire a local to drive us in a truck that last few miles to the climber’s hut at the base of the mountain on account of the road being too rough for the VW buses.  Orizaba is the highest peak in Mexico at 18,700 feet and the 3rd highest in North America (Mount McKinley in Alaska is 1st and Mount Logan in the Yukon is 2nd). Even though Orizaba is 900 feet higher than Popo, everybody was well acclimatized and summited.

It was time to vamos a la playa, so we were off to Puerto Vallarta for sun, sand and surf before returning to winter in the PNW.

		1985 Mexican Volcanoes VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL