Ryan Hokanson

Bagley Icefield

2009-05-09T23:24:00.003-08:00

Tory Dugan, Jason Kwiatkowski and I departed Anchorage on April 13, for a month of skiing and kiting on the Bagley Icefield...a huge icecap in the Wrangell St. Elias National Park.
We had amazing weather, pretty much sunny the whole time!
We managed to travel many miles with kites, and got a hand full of great ski descents as well...

We had mostly light winds, although one very strong session ended up working me over pretty good. Below is my kite control bar after a 20 minute battle with my kite. Fortunately I won.
We found mostly very poor snow stability, though we managed to ski one of the couloirs below...
Tory thinking it looks a little rocky...
Below is Tory getting ready to drop in...

We also skied a great peak about 14 miles west of Mount Saint Elias...called peak 9365. It featured 55 degree angles, many large crevasses and very firm snow conditions. Amazingly, it was sunny and calm on the summit, providing awesome views in every direction. Below is Jason on the down...
Skiing over bridges on 9365...
Below is Peak 9365. We skied the line just left of the rocks below the summit, the one just barely catching the sun. A classic steep ski mountaineering objective...
Kites in the air...

Kiting in to the setting sun...
Tory booting up another couloir...

Below is Jason, slogging with a smile as usual...

And Tory being Tory, of course...

Unfortunately, 15 days in to the trip I accidentally cut my right index finger with a pocket knife while modifying a water bottle. The cut was only 1cm long, but managed to cut my radial digital nerve and artery, as well as my flexor pollicus longus tendon. At first it was so swollen, I couldn't assess it properly. 5 days later, after the swelling went down, it was obviously not working. I called Paul Claus for a pickup, which I got 2 days later. I ended up having surgery in Anchorage 48 hours later.

In 20 days, we had traveled 100 miles and made 3 likely first descents, and perhaps the first ascent of Peak 9365. We'll probably never know for sure, and hardly matters. Jason and Tory carried on, got some better wind, making it another 80 miles to the lower Miles Glacier. My right hand is useless for 3 months, so I'm studying for the GRE exam and doing lots of trail running. Thanks to the Mugs Stump Award committee for postponing me and Sam Johnson's award to climb Mt. Logan until next year. Photo below by Sam Johnson: my finger, post-op.

Arrigetch Peaks Slideshow

2009-03-08T19:47:00.005-08:00

I should have put something up sooner, but I've volunteered to provide the 'entertainment' at this month's American Alpine Club Meeting. I'll be showing slides of the trip I did with Sam Johnson last August in to the Arrigetch Peaks of northern Alaska. 6:30 at the BP Energy Center.

Marcus Baker

2009-02-26T12:19:00.013-09:00

Chris Flowers and I both had last Sunday free, and decided to go skiing. It was clear that morning, so we took off in his Super Cub. Looking around the Chugach, we noticed Marcus Baker was clear so we had a look. It's hard to pass up the highest peak in the Chugach on a nice day, so we ended up landing around 9000' on a side glacier.
Above is pictured our route. We cramponed up hard old blue ice on the summit pyramid following the sun/shade line in the above photo...left of the prominent rib facing the camera.
Very firm neve transitioned to old, cold, hard blue ice. We were wishing we had brought some ice axes.
Below is Chris on top...we were in the Chugach Mountains, but could see peaks in the Wrangells, Alaska Range, and Aleutians
We've recently had some significant wind events, so not surprisingly the top few hundred feet was like concrete, but low enough angle to ski. Below that came the steep blue ice so we belayed each other skiing for 2 pitches, then did 2 rappels on our skis.
We got back to the plane after dark, but Chris didn't hesitate to launch. It was my first time flying off a glacier through the mountains in the dark, but everything worked out great as Chris had a good plan to turn off all the outside lights and fly above all the mountains straight back to Anchorage. Here we are, encroaching on Merril Field's airspace...back in the ANC.

Autumn

2009-01-05T22:38:00.008-09:00

I've been pretty lazy about posting photos this fall...but it's been a good one. It's been clear but cold here lately...I don't think it's been above zero for the past week. Below are a collection of photos from the past month...starting with Jason Kwiatkowski skiing in -20 conditions outside Girdwood. Going up 'Supercouloir'...decent skiing but whoever named it that has clearly never heard of Fitzroy.
Tanya Leinicke and Jon Cobb getting ready for the first pitch in Eklutna, with Bold Peak in the backround.
Bill Billmeier testing the strength of his new yurt at Bench Lake.
Me and Sally on the shortest day of the year...Turnagain PassSolars enjoys another day of ski touring.
Sally and Brita celebrate solstice
Jon Cobb clearing trail in the Talkeetnas
Jon and I making the best of 20 below...putting in trail.
More logging...
Target practice

Flight photos

2008-11-03T13:23:00.004-09:00

I have been working since August for Guardian Flight, a Medevac service here in Alaska. We've had some awesome days in the air, flying over various random parts of the state. Here are some photos I've taken out the window. Below is the Prince William Sound with the Sargent Icefield above and left of the fuel tank.This is on a flight going from Fairbanks to Skagway. I think one of those peaks is Mt. Logan and the other is either Fairweather or St. Elias.

Looking down at Inner Lake George , on the climb out from Anchorage heading east...
More Chugach mountains...
Below is a photo of Anchorage with the Chugach Mtns in the distance, taken from somewhere over the Susitna Flats...
Chickaloon logging operations with Jon Cobb...

Arrigetch!

2008-09-01T11:40:00.002-08:00

Sam Johnson and I spent the second half of August in the Arrigetch Peaks. After some rain the first couple days, it was perfectly sunny and warm for the remaining 10 days. We flew in from Bettles via a vintage Beaver on floats, landing on Circle Lake pictured below. It's actualy more J-shaped. Our pilot Scotty from Brooks Range Aviation nailed the landing. Below is Sam on one of our reconnisance hikes. We climbed the striking sun/shade ridge in the backround, to the left of Sam. The formation is known as West Maiden, and the ridge is the North Ridge (5.9, ca.3000', grade V) first climbed by Bob Dugan and John Markel in 1982.

Camp 1, on the hike in...

Below the North side of the Maidens...the route being the prominent sun/shade ridge...After warming up on the N. Maiden, we turned our sights to Caliban, picured below. We were intrigued by the East ridge, which makes up the right skyline in the photo below. Our route was previously unclimbed, and involved 16 pitches and 4 rappels.

Below is Sam, starting up the 4th pitch of our route. We were forced to engineer our way around 2 of the towers in the backround, and climbed up and over the other two. It was a great route, and has excellent position as Caliban is the highest peak in the Arrigetch. Amazing granite, too!
We ended up calling our route Pillar Arete 5.10, grade V, 16 pitches and 4 rappels on route.

Anaktuvuk Pass to the Detrich River

2008-08-17T11:20:00.000-08:00

Sally and I did a trip in early August, hiking from Anaktuvuk Pass to the Dalton Highway, in the Brooks Range. It was awesome...we covered about 60 miles in 6 relatively casual days, then hitch hiked down down the Dalton to Fairbanks. Below are some photos:

Below is the village of Anaktuvuk Pass, where we started. It's a subsistence community of about 300 people, mostly Alaska Natives. It's located on the continental divide, about 110 miles north of the arctic circle and is fortunate to have daily air service from Fairbanks.
Peregrine Pass and Grizzly Creek

Whiskey Gulch Fishing

2008-07-15T20:38:00.013-08:00

Sally and I went down to Whiskey Gulch, near Homer, to go fishing with her Dad for a couple days this past weekend. We went out 2 days, and got 11 halibut and 3 king salmon...which amounted to 80lbs of king salmon and 90lbs of halibut between the 3 of us. We'll be eating lots of wild Alaska fish this winter. Below is Barry's boat, with our kings in it.

Sally and her 55lb king salmon
Whiskey gulch beach scene...

Sally and Barry with Barry's king...

Denali 2008

2008-06-20T05:43:00.000-08:00

This June my friend Patrick Knoll from Missoula came for a visit, and we spent 17 days skiing on Denali. Although the conditions were not particularly conducive to skiing, we had a great trip and did find some good snow. Below is the Talkeetna Air Taxi otter at base camp.
A pilot's eye view of base camp on the Kahiltna.On an acclamation day, we got to the 17K' camp and Patrick was feeling the altitude. He stayed there and helped the NPS rangers do some work, while I couldn't resist climbing and skiing the North Summit via the Black Rock Couloir. Below is a photo Patrick took of me climbing up.My view from the top of the North Summit...pretty much a perfect day.

A self portrait just before skiing the Black Rock.

Looking down the Black Rock with my tracks. Notice also Mt. Foraker in the distance and the 17K' camp below.

Our summit day dawned stormy at 14K' camp, but we decided to go out for a ski, and check out conditions on the Orient Express. There was a lot of blue ice everywhere, but less in the Orient. Thinking we'd 'just go up a little further', Patrick left his skis at around 16,000' at some blue ice. When we got to about 18K', we popped out of the clouds and in to the sun. We couldn't help but want to go tag the top. Unfortunately, by the time we got to the summit ridge, we were in full storm conditions. Unable to see even our feet, and clinging to the ridge in over 60mph winds, we decided to turn back around 100' from the top. Since I had brought my skis all the way up there, I decided to ski from the Football Field, at around 19,500'. The Orient was very firm neve snow with a little blue ice, but still skiable. Below is me on the way up.And Patrick at a rest stop on the way up the Orient...

Eklutna Traverse

2008-05-14T09:32:00.004-08:00

My girlfriend Sally and I did the Eklutna traverse the other day, in a single push. The weather was tolerable, but certainly not clear. We had a great time, and moved fast. Here she is late at night, on the Whiteout Glacier.

Chamonix

2008-05-14T08:20:00.014-08:00

A couple weeks ago I returned from skiing in Chamonix. It was great, though quite stormy with about 2 meters of new snow during the 18 days I was there. I only spent a couple nights down in town, opting instead to camp out up in the Valle Blanche, Alaska style. I met up with Greg Collins, who had been there awhile already.

Below is Greg skiing the Jeager couloir on the E. Face of Mt. Tacul after about a meter of new snow. 100kph wind and continuous spindrift preveted us from going to the tippie top. Great skiing though, about 55 degrees in one section but mostly less.Below is Greg rappelling in to the Cosmiques Couloir on our second good day. This is a very popular run, and sees hundreds of people per day since it's easily accessed from the Aiguille du Midi. Again, it had snowed another couple feet the night before, and we were the first ones in it that day. Unfortunately, Greg took a hard fall and a tumble while skiing, pulling a calf muscle...so he was done skiing for the trip. Greg skiing out the Glacier after the Cosmiques.The East face of Mt. Tacul. I focused my energy on some of these couloirs. The Jeager is the furthest right couloir , and looks like it doesn't top out on the ridge (but it does). I ended up skiing the Diablo Couloir, just below the sun .Greg had left so I took to taking photos of my stuff in various places. Finally it got nice and I skied the Giravasutti Couloir on Tour Ronde on a perfect sunny and windless day. The next day was overcast and very windy, but I managed to ski the Macho Couloir from Col du Diablo. It was very steep and rocky, and the snow was pretty crusty and bad. A lot of work for crappy skiing. The next day was sunny, but again windy. I climbed the Diablo Couloir on Tacul, which required climbing a couple water ice steps down low, then rappelling them on the way down. This photo is taken from the top, looking down about 1000m of 55 degree pencil hard snow.

Finally my last day and it's again tolerable weather. I'm tired, but I force myself out of the tent late and take off to ski Mt. Blanc. I end up doing the Mt. Blanc Traverse, which involves climbing Tacul, then Maudit, then Blanc. This photo is taken from the top of Mt. Tacul, with Madit in the foreground and the big Blanc behind. The line up Maudit is right up the sun/shade line, and ended up being really good skiing on the way back. It was a long day which made for an awesome end to my trip!

Valdez 08

2008-03-19T10:01:00.004-08:00

I had a few really great days skiing around Thompson Pass this past week, an area just outside Valdez. My friend Dayton and I drove around on several different glaciers, looking for fun stuff to ski...and a couple of the days Skine came too. We did a lot of exploring and route finding, and end up traveling to many areas that not even the heli skiers go very often. Most of the places we went were about 20-30 miles from the road, in the heart of the Chugach Mountains. Here are some photos:

This is me on top of one peak we skied. We came up the Tonsina glacier, which is below and left of my elbow. My Mom made the water bottle insuator!
We skied the peak just above and left of Dayton.
On the Tsaina Glacier...trying to decide what looks best.
Classic couloirs high on the Deserted Glacier

Party on the Heiden Glacier...Derek, Eli and some other folks from 19 and 46 mile.

Kotzebue

2008-02-07T11:04:00.000-09:00

I spent 3 weeks working in the ER at Maniilaq Health Center...the hospital in Kotzebue, AK. Kotzebue is located about 23 miles north of the Arctic Circle, on the Chukchi sea. It was very cold there, about -35 at 'night'. We got a few hours of sun every day, but it stays pretty low in the sky. It's actually quite dry there, and doesn't get much snow, but when the wind blows it creates very bad ground blizzard conditions that make travel impossible. It was an amazing place and I hope to go back this spring again, and get out hunting with some people I met there. Below is Easter and her little foster son Joe. Easter made a Parkee for me...and I spent a lot of time in her home with her and her husband.I worked 17 twelve hour shifts in 21 days, and that included flying back to Anchorage for 48 hours. I took all the following photos one nice day...my only day off while I was there. It's about -25 out. Below is looking out across the ocean towards the Brooks Range mountains and the Kobuk River Valley.

2 stroke graveyard
After days of intense wind, everything gets a good coating of rime.

Cold Boats

Arizona

2008-01-01T23:50:00.000-09:00

This past holiday season, I went to Arizona to visit my Mom and her husband Rick. It was a great time to get out of AK, and enjoy some warmth. My Alaska friends Skine, Glen and Anna were also down in Arizona visiting family, so we all met up and went rock climbing for a week at Cochise Stronghold. Below is a photo of Baboquivari, which Skine and I soloed an easy route on...up the left skyline.Below is Sheep Head, a formation we did a bunch of routes on. Great sunny, warm climbing.
Glen's Dad and family live nearby, and came out with a bunch of horses one day. I leared a lot and will hopefully get to do more horse riding. It's an interesting way to travel!

Big Chief

2007-11-30T21:48:00.000-09:00

Today we skiied Big Chief, with pretty good snow conditions. We skiied nearly 8000', including a bonus run off Seattle Ridge. Here's Kellie and Hugh on Seattle Ridge, above Turnagain Pass. Big Chief is the pointy peak above and right of Hugh's head. We skied the N. Face, behind the right skyline.Arriving at the summit of Big Chief
Hugh on the way up, with Seattle Creek and Turnagain Arm (the ocean) behind.
Kellie on the way up Seattle Ridge. Our car is below at the pull out, and all the sunlit slopes behind are excellent skiing.
Hugh on Seattle Ridge, getting ready to drop in.

Cabin

2007-11-27T06:19:00.000-09:00

I've been spending most of my free time this fall building a cabin. It's been a good learning experience for me, and fortunately I've had a lot of friends to help me since I'm not at all a builder. Here's Glen helping with the foundation. Below Jed and Glen are doing some custom chainsaw work. In fact, the whole place is very 'custom'. I'm lucky that my friend Jed owns a nice chainsaw mill. He milled 5 beams for me to use, which came from right nearby. Below Jon Cobb and I are working on the ridge pole, which is a nice spruce beam that Jed milled for me. Working on the roof required the use of a climbing rope and grigri for safety, since it's about 30 feet off the ground at the ridge. I ended up puting the plywood and steel on the roof alone, which would have been impossible without the use of a Grigri. (photo Jack McKenna)

Below is the most recent photo I have. It was very cold out there this day, around zero F, and I'm glad to be at the point where I can hook up the wood stove! Time to get the windows in!! Extra challenge and fun is added by the fact that the road is now snowed in for the year...snowmachine access only until May! (photo by Kite Messiah, Jason Kwaitkowski)

Latoks 2007

2007-08-22T16:51:00.000-08:00

Just returned last week from a great trip to the Latok group, in the Karakoram of Pakistan. Jermey Frimer, Ken Glover, Sam Johnson and I spent 3 weeks there trying to climb granite mountains. We had pretty bad weather overall, only two high pressure windows of 4 days each, where travel was possible above 5000m or so. Lots of good exploring with the spotting scope, bouldering, scrambling, acclimatizing...but no important summits. Sam and I made two good attempts on an unclimbed line on Latok II. The first one with Ken was an 18 hour push, where we were turned around by rock fall and altitude. A day later Sam and I tried again and ended up climbing about 1000m of ice to a camp at 5900m, and spending 3 days and 2 nights there waiting for good enough weather to go to the summit (7108m)...but too stormy. It was an awesome trip, and the people we met in Pakistan were great, never an ill will. I'd love to go back. Next year Inshallah!

Welcome to Pakistan!

Balti porters, the guy in the blue sweater always looked pissed, but he was still nice.

Rajabazar, which is a huge market in Rawlpindi. We walked around here for hours looking at all the stuff.

This is your standard Pakistani truck, used for transporting anything and everything. Almost all of them are decorated like this.

Here's our basecamp at 4500m, or almost 15,000' elevation. Nice to have grass and running water when you're surrounded by glaciers!

Sammy taking a break on Latok attempt #2. We enjoyed great ice conditions on the way up, and were able to quickly solo up 3000' of this stuff.

Ken got the flu on the 3 day hike in, so Jer and he stayed back to rest...which left Sam and I to acclimatize together. We climbed a couple peaks up near Latok IV, scrambling some nice granite features up to 5.7, and sleeping on the summits in clear weather, at about 5500m. This was our first high pressure window, warm and sunny every day.

Sam up high somewhere. To his left you can see where two glaciers come together, and our basecamp is located right where they merge, right up against the rock butress.

The west face of Latok II.

Our camp at 5900m on Latok II, where we spent 3 days and 2 nights waiting for good weather to go higher.

Cruising around the glaciers on a hot sunny day.

Here's Ken just below our mixed climbing crux on attempt #1. It was pretty spicy, but with good gear. Unfortunately we found a large amount of old fixed static rope and poly cord left by the Huber brothers on their previous trips to the W. Face. Bummer.

Advanced base camp, near the base of Latok II.

Sam at the bottom of our last rappell, after bailing from our 3 days at 5900m. You can see the bad weather, and seracs above! Yikes!

The weather was bad enough we ended up leaving basecamp a couple days early, to make time to visit Husche, the home of our awesome guide Little Karim. Here's Sammy having fun with some school kids.
Here's our legendary guide Little Karim, in front of the peak Jer and Ken named after him. Luckily, those guys actually climbed something while Sam and I were suffering on LII. They ended up climbing the ridge on the right, leading to the highest summit. A link to a write up of that to come soon.
A random friendly guy we met in Husche.

A village near Husche, and the home of Abaas, another friend we made. We had lunch here at his house with the Canadian women't expedition we were traveling with, as Abaas was their guide on the Choktoi.

Buckskin Glacier

2007-05-24T14:12:00.000-08:00

Chris Gibisch and I just spent 3 weeks on the Buckskin Glacier, climbing various things. Above is the S. Face of 8010, where we climbed the right-leaning chimney system that leads directly to the summit. We did 10 pitches of fairly difficult climbing, and got to the top in a raging snow storm. We saw no signs of previous parties, and rapelled the route.
Above is Chris standing at the base of the Couloir between the Mooses Tooth and Bear's Tooth. We climbed this gulley to the ridge at night, then spend the next day trying (unsuccessfully) to summit the Bear's Tooth. We slept and ate in the sun, waiting for it to get cold again so we could begin our descent safely. It looks short, but the route is over 3000' tall!
Above is Chirs leading a pitch on 8010.
This is the Bear's Tooth (left) and the Mooses Tooth (right). We climbed part of a route on the Mooses Tooth that consists of a right-trending chimney system above the biggest snowfield at the bottom. We went up about 3500' before being turned around about 400' below the skyline ridge by warm temps.
Me and Chris after realizing that we had gone through half our whisky supply only 5 days in to the trip. Ooops!

Chris having fun on one of our stormy attempts.

Big League

2007-03-28T22:47:00.000-08:00

Miles and I skiied Big League the other day, which consisted of shin deep light powder snow over a very stable snowpack. The run has some cliffs in it, so it's important not to ski it when there's a possiblity of avalanches. An awesome day, although I had to talk my way out of being arrested when I entered Alyeska Ski Area to get back to my car. Apparently you're not allowed to do that...state law or something.

Left is Miles just after jumping off the initial cornice, with the ocean in the backround. If you look closely you can see our tracks in this photo. The whole face is almost 4000' tall!

Nelchina Glacier

2007-03-20T22:47:00.000-08:00

On March 20th, Christian Beckwith, Miles Raney and I drove 3 snowmachines 50 miles up the Nelchina Glacier to Mt. Valhalla. The next day we went to the top and skiied down some very icy, nasty terrain. Some of the worst skiing I've ever done, with a few decent turns thrown in. It was -30 F per thermometer on the top, and blowing a good 40-60mph. Difficult to even stand up on the top. We made it down just fine, except for a little frost nip. The machines had difficulty starting 2 days later when the storm was over and we wanted to leave. Mine ran so poorly that we had to abandon it on the glacier. I've since gone back and retrieved it. An amazing place with a lot of skiing potential.

My face got smashed with a ski but I'm OK now.

Captain's Chair

2007-03-18T22:47:00.001-08:00

We skied Captain's Chair...

Valdez Skiing

2007-02-20T21:36:00.000-09:00

These are photos of Kelle, taken over the last 5 days skiing on Thompson Pass, near Valdez AK. We enjoyed (mostly) sunny days and stable snowpack, allowing us to ski a few really good lines. The W. Face couloir (one of them) on Diamond was full of light powder, and skiied really well all the way to the Richardson Highway...a 6500' run! We also skied RFS and Python from the tippie top...all with great snow. The best part was that there were no Helicopters yet!!

Python

2007-02-16T00:50:00.000-09:00

I thought these photos that Kellie took of our run down Python were cool. That's me at the very top.

Chickaloon Ice

2007-02-01T13:03:00.000-09:00

Jon Cobb, Jed Workman and I went ice climbing up the Chickaloon River. Driving the snowmachines up the river was pretty straight forward, but then while hiking up a side creek to some climbs, Jon fell about armpit deep in fast moving ice water. Unfortunately, he lost both of his ice axes under the ice, despite going back in the water (neck deep) twice to look for them. Her perservered though, and ended up doing a couple climbs despite being wet.

Welcome to AK!

2007-01-24T14:09:00.000-09:00

Here's me skiing along the ridge of Tincan. Kellie and I skied the line straight down from the highest summit visible...called Tincan Proper. An excellent 2400' line covered in 80cm of 4% powder...kinda unusual for costal AK.