First Mountaineering Patrol

I'm back at Wrangell-St Elias for another season as a backcountry ranger. This year we started off with a mountaineering patrol out into the Granite Range, south of McCarthy. The patrol went really well. The weather cooperated for most of the time that we were out there and we managed to climb eight peaks in eight days. None of the peaks were really high by Alaskan standards but we had a great time and did a lot of team building and planning for this season.

I'm excited about the potential for the backcountry program here. It was incredible to stand on top of these peaks and see mountains stretch away as far as we could see. If you were to go west from where we were the mountains stretch for hundreds of miles. It's a hard place to really wrap your head around, its just so massive.

Our camp on the glacier.

Looking out towards the Jeffries Glacier and Bagley Icefield.

Mt St Elias

It can't all be hard work.

Mt St Elias on the horizon, our tracks to the pass are also visible.

Steep snow climbing.

More steep snow climbing.

You can see our tracks on the upper ridge of what's called Tokyo Peak.