Recce Mission.

Our first night in the Ruth Gorge was a bitterly cold one with an unrelenting northerly windy blasting our camp. To add to this, my thermarest has sprung a leak, so I had a less than perfect nights sleep.

We woke this morning to clear skies and took the opportunity to go for a recce mission down the glacier to check out the conditions on Mt Church, Mt Grosvenor, Mt Johnson, Mt Wake, and Mt Bradley. We also spent a while studying the mile high East face of Mt Dickey which we are camped beneath. Locals in Talkeetna weren't lying when they said it had been the snowiest winter in a long while. There are exceptionally big cornices and heavily loaded snow slopes all over the place, which is less than ideal!

Whilst skiing across towards Mt Church I nearly had a close encounter with a crevasseÉ.there was a loud, deep 'whooomp', before a big snowbridge collapse just to my side leaving a gaping cavern inches from my feet. The snow pack seems quite poor too in places so we will need to give things a while to settle.

Just in case you haven't noticed yet from the blog, we have along with us two other team members. Firstly Adrian Samarra, a cameraman who has joined us from Hot Aches, who is hoping to capture the essence of attempting new routes in Alaska on film. Secondly, Johnny Baker has escaped sunny Dartmoor to be our basecamp bitch, cook, and also rope up to Adrian so they are mobile on the glacier. Johnny is normally a devout and committed vegetarian but the cold conditions have driven him back to the ways of the carnivore after only one day in the hills.
Tomorrow we may go and check some other ideas out, so fingers crossed we find some good stuff.

Jon