Climbing Development

 

Sydney and Jane at Sea Cliffs, February 2014

Juneau isn’t Moab or Yosemite. We need to get out and develop some easy to access climbing areas, places you can access with a short drive or hike and not spend most of your energy getting there. Last summer I became friends with a geologist  and climber named Kevin who came to Juneau to work for one of the mines and he asked “Why haven’t you folks developed more of your local crags?” 

Good question.  

One answer is that it’s a lot trickier to do here than it is down south where you can drive right up to the cliff and there are thousands of climbers willing to jump in and help. Some of the rock around here is choss and brittle and that is especially the case near town.  There seems to be an inverse correlation between rock quality and how difficult it is the access the rock. We don’t have much road access compared to other states or much of Alaska so to find spectacular climbing you first must bushwhack in or climb to the icefield.  Untold numbers of rocks grow moss in forests here completely unseen. There are not thousands of climbers to help develop crags either.

Mendenhall Glacier. It's a lovely place but you wouldn't want to climb here. 

As I write, avalanche risk prohibits any sane person from going high into the mountains to ski and it is raining concrete blocks at sea level. It’s the middle of January and it shouldn’t be this warm even though it shouldn’t feel this cold. The wind whistles outside like a freight train and it’s 44 degrees but it feels colder because the wet sinks into the bones. Many cliffs along the sea are brittle and dirty as well. There is a granite zone five zone about miles inland but in most cases you either have to climb thousands of feet on foot or take a helicopter to get to it, it’s covered in snow eight months out of the year, and it’s raining half the time during the summer. A good bit of the icefield is in the granite zone. 

Lemon Glacier and Juneau Icefield from the top of Cairn Peak, Photo Pete Boyd.

The icefield can be spectacular but it is not easy to access by any stretch.  I posted already about Split Thumb and Solva Buttress. Herbert Glacier’s terminus ends in the granite zone and it only takes thirty minutes to get there from the highway on a bike but Herbert’s cliffs are largely undeveloped. There is a basalt zone about thirty miles north of town at the Sea Cliffs. These are wonderful cliffs but they are forty feet at most and the developed area is not very expansive. There are some great boulders at Tee Harbor north of town but they are in the woods in the shade so it takes a day or so for them to dry out after rain. It rains here they say.  

Sydney reading by the fire at Herbert Glacier.

There are undoubtedly other places to climb rocks that haven’t been developed. Boulders and cliffs dot the forests and hills all over the place if you look closely and their rock quality varies immensely.  When you first find a cliff, it’s usually coated in moss.

Summit of Mount Ernest Gruening, another place worth a revisit.

An alternative answer to Kevin’s question is that we should develop more.

I call this Miller’s Pillar because Dylan Miller wants to be the first to climb it. It sits in the middle of the glacier on the west slope of Mount Ernest Gruening. 

Somebody developed the Sea Cliffs and I am glad they did. The Sea Cliffs are short walls that look out onto Lynn Canal and beyond the Chilkat Mountains. After work in summer evenings you can go out there and climb while watching humpback whales, sea lions, and seals frolic. Make sure your belayer doesn’t get distracted; it’s a lot to take in. It stays light late in summer but at some point the sun will set over the Chilkats and the whole of the sea and sky will turn bright orange and red. 

Check out Paul on this Tee Harbor climb. 

People cleaned the boulders and Tee Harbor and now it’s a great place to go. Juneau is a small city sitting in a very vertical landscape. Mountains jut from sea level to near 7,000 feet right out of town. You can strap on a pair of boots and within hours find yourself wandering ridge lines and peaks with views that many spend a lifetime seeking and never find. When the snow is right, the skiing here is close to orgasmic. The snow isn’t always right but it’s right more days than I can count.

Slopes at Eaglecrest

Juneau climbing is underdeveloped but that is both a curse and a boon. It would be great if somebody had already scouted the cliffs out the road for more climbable sea cliffs. It would. However, I am quite excited that one of these times I go looking new cliffs; I am actually going to find a “brand new cliff.” It’s quite possible in Juneau to actually discover a new wall and climb something that has never seen shoe or cam. Imagine that!

In the near future I plan to focus some attention on finding new rock out Herbert Glacier way. Sometime next summer I am planning a boulder cleaning party in the woods near my house in North Douglas as well.  I figure climbers will come and clean a cliff if I announce on facebook that I built a fire and put some beer in the creek to chill. If you build it, they will come and they might bring brats. I would love to cruise the shore north of Echo Cove and see about the rock quality of some cliffs there.  It’s the same geologic zone as the Sea Cliffs.  There is a long cliff band on the back side of Dean Peak that I would love to check out. Getting there will be a bushwhack but it looks so cool from a distance and it’s in the granite zone. I would really love to get up to some of the summits in the icefield again like Solva Buttress. There are actually more spires in the Juneau icefield than I can count and some of them have never been climbed by anyone.

Dean Peak as seen from a boat in Lynn Canal, May 2015. I am interested in the cliff band on left. It's up Sawmill Creek.