Exploring Edge Effects: Pika Exit I

Looking up Granite Glacier.

In adventure and ecology alike, transitions are well worth a dedicated exploration. So often, we pay to get plunked down in the midst of wilderness, and, when we run out of time, get abruptly whisked away. We see little of the intervening spaces other than perhaps absent-mindedly gazing out the window as we hurtle past via airplane, train, or truck. As a result, I often find myself caught between two worlds when I return. Neither my backcountry body nor my backcountry brain have quite adjusted to urban amenities and demands, from hot showers to hunching over a computer screen. It becomes easy to compartmentalize your memories into a box that’s different from your daily life, since there’s little continuity and only those absent-minded daydreams to link the two. But being able to embrace a transitional space strengthens and enlivens what happens on both sides.

In the world of spatial ecology, an ecotone – a transition zone between two discrete biological communities – provides a useful parallel. Baked into this definition is an understanding that what happens between places can be as important as what happens within a place. Ecotones can be jarringly abrupt (think of dense forests next to a paved parking lot), imperceptibly gradual (where dwarf shrub and alpine tundra trade off), or somewhere in between. Along an ecotone, the usual rules of ecology often function differently: for example, biodiversity in an ecotone might exceed what’s predicted for either neighboring biome. These quirks are called edge effects. Especially if you slow down and explore these transition zones from a biological pace and perspective, you’ll gain a better understanding of how critical edge effects are to the places both behind and ahead. 

I should note that my push to the edges is inspired by others and far from original. The idea of a traverse-oriented trip, rather than a destination-oriented trip, has been the long-term focus of several intrepid adventurers: Luc (thingstolucat.com), Roman (packrafting.blogspot.com), and Hig and Erin (groundtruthtrekking.org). These folks almost exclusively opt for epic human-powered traverses, noting how things gradually change along the way rather than taking a shortcut to a particularly impressive, Instagram-worthy site. 

As ski season wound down in early June and the taller mountains still beckoned, Sarah and I flipped the usual Alaska Range equation: we stayed at our “destination” for about 8 hours total of a four-day trip. 

I’d experienced the sudden plunking-down-and-whisking-away a few years ago on the Pika Glacier, about 20 miles south of Denali basecamp. Conditions on our two-week trip were evenly split between tent-thumping storms dumping feet of snow and cold, clear skies with all that new powder to ski (and break trail) through. We happily adjusted to the slow (glacial?) pace of glacier life and endless, essential tasks: shovel out tent; repair windwall; melt snow for water; adjust harness, Kiwi coils, carabiners, and prusiks; set skintrack; and, finally, revel in a few glorious turns before nearing the bergshrund and cautiously tying back into the rope.  

A highlight from my previous Pika trip, April 2019. Sultana (Mt. Foraker) in upper left; the Throne in center; the Trolls and camp in right.

On that trip, we and our pilot (Dave at Sheldon Air) made the call to pull the plug a few days early, during a last clear afternoon ahead of another multi-day storm. We stomped the runway and suddenly found ourselves hurtling over snowy summits and re-emerging rivers. As I stared out the window high above the thunderous Chulitna River, I daydreamed about the rapidly changing landscape, from granite to ice to tundra to alder, all connected by glaciers and glacier-fed rivers. 

Now, in 2021, I realized that I could make good on those Alaska Range dreams. A traverse represented for me a culmination of the skills I’ve developed over the past six years: the basics of backpacking and backcountry navigation, glacier travel and avalanche assessment, and packrafting and running whitewater. Associated with each of these skillsets was the comfort of having the right gear and knowing how to use it. On the flip side, also associated with this myriad gear was the discomfort of having to carry all of it. The sum: one of the most physically demanding and rewarding trips I’ve ever experienced in my life.

We began by sharing a flight with three of Sarah’s coworkers, Lower 48 trad climbers ready to test themselves on the Pika’s classic routes. Talkeetna Air Taxi was busy with flight-seeing tourists, and we loitered around town until Clay was able to squeeze us in at the end of the day. The sudden plunk down on the Pika was just as exhilarating as my previous trip out there, and somehow recognizing the peaks and features around us made it even more exciting.

Hauling gear to basecamp.

Alaska Range alpine start.

After double-checking everyone’s rope set-ups, we probed out a campsite and lazed around on a beautiful night with swirling clouds. Over years of leisurely starts to backcountry ski tours, I’d made more “alpine start” jokes than actual alpine starts, so it felt noteworthy and thrilling when we set our alarms for 3:30 AM. This being Alaska, we were greeted by broad daylight as we silently left camp, breaking trail down to Exit Pass, our intended route. 

We’d gathered as much beta as possible about known exit routes, with at least four options (from S to N: Grizzly Gap, an unnamed pass, Exit Pass, and Triple Crown Pass) that would get us off the Pika and down to the Granite Glacier. Denali mountaineering rangers and guides seem to most often go for Grizzly Gap, but this has the most vertical relief, and we wanted to minimize our exposure to both the wet slides and the rockfall typical of early summer. We simply didn’t have enough information on the unnamed pass, and Triple Crown Pass would require a roundabout approach that transited a second glacial system. This left Exit Pass. Although we’d heard that Exit Pass could be brutally difficult (including from Alaskan backcountry legend Roman Dial), we were hoping for full snow coverage to carry us over the cliff band that emerged in mid-summer.

We’d asked Clay for a peek at Exit Pass during our drop-off so we could scope out conditions, and we got conflicting looks: from afar, Exit Pass looked completely cliffed out, but on a sharp banked turn that we assumed was directly over Exit Pass, it looked steep but snowy to the bottom – exactly what we hoped for. In the plane, we took a photo for later reference, shared a thumbs-up, and felt a palpable sense of relief as one of our first cruxes appeared to ease up.

However, on foot, the shadows of doubt crept back in. After a few hours of snowshoeing down-glacier, we kicked our way up to Exit Pass and stared dubiously at the convex slope below. We stretched out our Kiwi coils and tied in to the rope ends, allowing us the longest distance between pitches. After setting a picket backed up by Sarah’s seated belay, I faced the slope, plunged my ice axe, and kicked in my crampons. Thanks to our alpine start, the snow was still firm from overnight drop in temperatures. So far, so good. We got to the end of pitch 1, and I set a picket as Sarah took me off belay. I prusik-belayed her in, and we repeated the process as the convexity stubbornly refused to resolve. We were befuddled by an exposed rock band in mid-slope – this didn’t line up with the photos we’d taken the previous day during our flight. Could this whole slope have slid sometime last night? How else could we have missed all these boulders below us?

Gingerly kicking our way down Exit Pass.

As if to heighten our uncertainty, thick wet clouds rolled in, obscuring the peaks around us and limiting our visibility to a few hundred yards. We inched our way down, belaying each other, until we ran out of snow. I leaned out over the rock band and saw a narrow funnel with perhaps a 20’ drop to a debris-covered apron leading down to the Granite Glacier surface. We slung a refrigerator-sized boulder and took turns rappelling down – thankfully, our protection held and we descended uneventfully. Once safely below, we glanced over our shoulders at Exit Pass and the mid-slope cliff band, still confused at how we hadn’t seen that when flying over just 12 hours earlier.

Rappelling the last funnel to the apron above Granite Glacier..

The upper reaches of the Granite made for smooth travel, and the clouds gradually began to lift. An hour or so later, we curled around to the base of another couloir leading up to our right and recognized the top rock pinnacle from our photos. Sure enough, a steep but smooth snow band led all the way to the top edge of the Pika Glacier – we’d simply photographed the wrong descent line. The snowy one we’d spotted while flying in was the unnamed pass – we’d snowshoed right past the best option, stubbornly stuck on getting to Exit Pass rather than realizing that other routes might be better. 

Looking back at Exit Pass. As we discovered, the mid-slope cliff band is exposed even in early June.