Peak 7035 in Tracy Arm.

 

Peak 7035 with False Summit to the left.

If you walk into places where nobody has walked before, it’s expected that you encounter things are not expected. Even in Alaska, it's work to get to a place where no human has walked. Our attempt to climb Peak 7035 was most definitely that. Peak 7035 has never been climbed and it remains unclimbed after our attempt.  You can quit reading if you’re the type that thinks conquest of summits is the only metric of success. We didn’t get to the summit and even if we had, mountains are never conquered by climbers. Unless we come with strip mining equipment, mountains are ambivalent to small lives of humans.  

Alder thicket

My friend Mike invited me to try and climb Peak 7035. It’s on the north side of Tracy Arm at the junction of the North Sawyer Glacier Arm of Tracy Arm and the South Sawyer Glacier Arm of Tracy Arm. Say that fast five times. Tracy Arm is a complex maze of fjords about 60 miles south of Juneau and it’s part of the Tracy Arm/Ford’s Terror Wilderness Area. About 100,000 people visit Tracy Arm because it’s a popular tourist destination for cruise ships and boat tours. It’s a bit like being in Yosemite Valley during the Pleistocene when there were glaciers dropping seracs into a valley floor and icebergs building up. Some of the walls in Tracy Arm rise 5,000 feet off the sea in places. Tracy Arm has almost no on-land visitors because there are only a handful of places where the beach isn't a cliff of some height. Trails don't exist. 

Mike’s plan was based on a newly uncovered “ramp” exposed as the North Sawyer Glacier receded. From near the toe of the glacier it seemed possible to scramble up slope to a ridge leading to the peak. The north end of ridge is about 4,000 feet in elevation and rises to a significant false summit (6745). Once you reach the base of the false summit, our plan was to maneuver around the east side (back side) and continue toward the true summit.  There were considerable unknowns because nobody has ever climbed to the ridge and nobody had even seen the back side of the false summit. It has been seen from planes of course but not close enough to be useful information. Satellite imagery and maps made for satellite imagery show a hanging glacier or a snowfield on the back side but imagery for glaciers suck often. Glaciers are melting too fast for maps to keep up.

We boated out early Sunday morning and got to the toe around 10:30 AM. After getting the boat anchored and unloaded, we started uphill at 1PM.  From there we scrambled uphill through scree for a few hundred feet and soon encountered an alder thicket. These alders were bushes rather than trees.  

I enjoyed  primary forest succession, the process of an ecosystem developing from bare ground to old growth forest. Primary succession starts at bedrock and the first phase is to develop soil. Secondary succession is more common and it usually follows a clear cut or a forest fire. Mosses and lichen are the first to colonize bedrock in primary succession. Alders are often the first trees to grow on exposed bedrock because they don’t need much soil. Alders create their own nutrients from the atmosphere.  Furthermore, alders adapted to avalanches by evolving the ability to bend downhill and flatten out when hit by a megaton of snow. Thus, an alder thicket in an avalanche zone is a jumble of sticks; most no more than 4 inches, often a foot apart, and they are growing up, sideways, and even down. Most alders in this thicket were no more than ten feet tall. We found alders in spades and while I appreciate the role alders play in the ecosystem, walking through a dense thicket makes me empathize with a fish caught in a gill net.  We were each carrying a 45 pound pack with an ice axe sticking out, the perfect tool to catch a branch. 

Base camp

 In the next six hours we wiggled through, pushed over, and jiggled past alders (and some willows) to a camp at 1,700 feet. Our plan was to climb to 4,000 feet on the ridge but we were completely knackered. Mike found a boulder about ten feet tall that was just above the height of the thicket.  This was our base camp and where we spent the following night as well. This boulder had a view to die for. Somewhere in the hike I punctured my sleeping pad so I slept two nights directly on a rock.  There was swarm of mosquitoes guarding the rock. We cooked some food, had a bit of bourbon, and went to sleep. The tent worked great for keeping out the mosquitoes.

Sunset from base camp

The following day we headed uphill again and about 3,000 feet we encountered alpine tundra vegetation and remnant snow. This was a huge relief. The views kept getting better and that was hard to believe considering the view from our boulder.  We reached the ridge at about 2PM. 

The ridge is not a knife edge but about 200 yards wide.  From the ridge we got our first glance at the back side of the false summit and saw a very impressive icefall. At this point we took some photos and took a nap in the sunshine. The downside was the icefall meant this trip was not going to go the summit. Climbing an icefall was not in our plans. Nevertheless, it was a very cool icefall and the views from the ridge were spectacular. The view had added gravy in knowing that we were standing in a place where no human being has ever stood. Up until five years ago, one had to scale a 500 foot cliff to access that ridge. 

Mike with Glacial Icefall in background

It’s difficult to describe an alder thicket to anyone that hasn’t fought through one. I have heard them described as “Spaghetti Trees.” You are a meatball ready to get eaten and meanwhile you are stuck in the dimensional space. The thicket snags, pokes, traps, and knocks you off balance all the time. Because the alders were higher than our heads, we rarely got a view of where we hoped to go. We likely meandered a lot. We both questioned our judgment in taking on the thicket because it wasn’t our first bushwhack and we knew it could get difficult. This was more than we expected but we didn’t have any information on what to expect.  We did not encounter any Devil’s Club and that stuff is next level malicious. Devil’s Club thickets make me briefly believe in God because only an evil deity would create something like that.  Looking at the panoramic view across from the icefall, makes me believe that the Nature itself is the only God I need. After an extended lunch and a nap  on the ridge we turned around, climbed down the snow field, and fought our way through the alder thicket to our boulder base camp. The mosquitoes were still there. We cooked food and shared a can of Long Island Ice Tea. By and by we went to sleep. That was Monday. Tuesday we headed back down into the alders again and got to boat about 11 AM. 

Selfie from the ridge, Mike (R) and Carl (L)

We loaded up the gear and took a slower trip through Tracy Arm looking at the scenery. I would like a kayak trip in Tracy Arm because it seems the smaller your boat, the more you see of the scenery. We were in a sixteen foot skiff and cruised slowly beneath a dozen or so waterfalls that fall from thousands of feet above.  Once we got out of Tracy Arm we turned north and got to Juneau a little after 5 PM.

On the boat ride home, I kept thinking that I would likely never go back to climb that mountain. I was freaking worked. I am 61 years old and it’s hard on the body. Mike is also 61 and he was also super tired though he generally travelled faster than me. Since returning to Juneau, I keep thinking of how climbing that peak could be accomplished. Trying again next year isn’t completely out of the question.

 Thanks for reading to the end. Unlike sports like football or hobbies like pickleball, nobody won and nobody lost. 

Video of the view from the ridge at about 5,000 feet. 

https://youtu.be/Zk0tvuCS4FI?si=jp-UyOIrHSB4zGVI