Jim Harris and I attempted to traverse Mt Olympus, Twin Peaks and Lone Peak in one day. The total route is 17,000ft of climbing and descending over roughly 23miles. I’ve never so underestimated the terrain and time it would take and at the end of a very long day the heat, route chosen and difficult scrambling shut us down with 2 out of 3 peaks.

Here is Jim on top of Twin Peaks in the 90+ temps. I’ll turn the time over to Jim and his blog to tell the story HERE.

Yes, there is an entire city of rocks.

I had heard of it, but never before been

If I were a rock climber and were to build a city I’m quite sure it would look something like this.

Andy Jacobsen was my guide.

We came to climb so climb we did

I’m just starting out, so this was like summer climbing camp.

Andy has been climbing for a very long time.

He would lead and I tried to follow.

‘Bloody Fingers’ was the highlight of our first day.

Here’s a look down!

Our patient climbing companions Ken and Toast.

Some rain ended lessons a little early. The Bread Loaves near camp were all buttered up at sunset.

By end of day one i was feeling much more comfortable on the rock and with my gear. A good mixed bag of climbing from 5.7, 5.8, several 5.10’s and Andy powering through a 5.11c.

Breegfast

Found our way to the ‘Drilling Fields’ wall and this beautiful 5.11.

I led my second pitch ever, a 5.10a sport route which was much more exciting than top roping!

Weather came in and we explored in the rain.

We stayed dry while AJ worked on this 5.12 overhang.

‘I can’t believe it’ was a really fun 5.10 that we both led. Here’s Andy working over the roof.

Toast on the prowl

It was getting a bit late and the rain seemed to clear everybody out.

We hoped on this 3 pitch route (5.10c I think) hoping to get up and off before dark.

Perfect route to end the trip and the day!

We rapped off at dusk and the moon came out.

Thanks Andy for showing me the ropes. It’s pretty awesome to enter into a new ’sport’ and have someone highly skilled show you the way.

My friend Jeremiah joined me for the warm-up and we scrambled the 3K ft South Ridge of Superior in relaxed fashion.

Jeremiah had to bail, so I crossed the road to Snowbird and headed up Peruvian Gulch aiming for Hidden Peak. This is a great trail that gets you close to 3K of vert, but you get to save the knees by taking the tram down! I do dusk patrol laps here quite a bit in the winter when I’m stuck in the office all day or the skiing isn’t great. They do a 6K race in the fall called the Hidden Peak Challenge, which is a great event that I plan on every year, but have only done once.

I took the ‘Ridge’ trail above the cirque from lookers right to left.

Elevation 11,000ft, temp not 99, but it was warming up. First lap was 1hr 20min at a brisk hiking pace.

I took the free tram down, ate some lunch, filled up the camelback and the legs were feeling good so I headed back up.

Water was flowing and I was able to cool off in fresh mountain run-off mixed with the piss of a thousand skiers.

Encountered an old friend that I dearly miss!

Great views from the summit

2nd lap was a bit slower at 1hr 30min. I kept missing the trams that come every 20mins so I had a nice rest up high in the breeze.

Caught old blue for another ride down. Rested on the tram deck and considered another lap. The clouds looked like they might provide some cover and feeling fine I set off for another round. It was later in the day, but the temps didn’t seem any better and the clouds dissipated shortly into the lower section. Oh well.

I took the ridge route again for it’s directness and the breeze. The flowers are nice up there as well.

I like how this one came out. That’s Superior in the background where the day started.

I had to pick up the pace to not miss another tram and made the third lap in 1hr 35min despite stopping to ’smell the flowers’.

Feeling pretty OK after lap three! Nearly 12K on the day with the help of staying hydrated, sportlegs and training I guess.

Back in the office enjoying the A/C and  feeling great this morning!

I’m lucky enough to have a good friend with a good eye that captured some of our adventures. And it’s fun to see how much he has improved over the few years we have been teaming up.  I went over to Jay Beyer’s house today and we sorted through hundreds and hundreds of images to pick out a few of our favorites from the memorable winter of 2010.

Early season in Southern Utah

Early morning blower on Cardiff Pass

Mini drop in the Twin Lakes Pass area

Booting the top of Terminal Cancer, NV

Giving the new AT set-up a test drive

Finding pow in the Ruby Mountains

Skinning up for more

Back home at the head of LCC

Surprises me that skiing pow never gets old

Off to Haines!

Filming for Powderwhore Productions

Jumping out in front of the camera on occasion

Sometimes it feels like I'm on another planet

Day one of an eight day storm

Digging out some of the 10ft of snow that fell

Time to rest up and do it again next year

Photo credit- Jim Harris

I first heard about the Revelation Mountains while reading a book on climbing in Alaska. For some reason they just stuck in my head as a place I wanted to visit. Maybe it was my Religious upbringing and the mystery around the book of Revelations these mountains were named after. There have only been a few expeditions to the area, most of which were climbers and most visits were thwarted with terrible weather. There is very little info or photo’s available on the range, but Google Earth and topo maps reveal the possibility that this isn’t just a ‘climbers range’.

Photo credit- Jim Harris

Four years ago Darrell Finlayson and I attempted an expedition there, but we couldn’t fly in due to poor weather. I couldn’t let go of this place and the belief that the ‘Revs’ really had potential like that of Baffin Island, which is some of the best couloir skiing on the planet. This winter I found a new pilot and a better way to approach and decided to give it another go.

The crew of Andrew McLean, Jim Harris and Courtney Phillips signed on for the fairly expensive expedition to explore the question marks we had of this far western edge of the mighty Alaska Range.

Trip photo’s HERE

Thanks to Mountain Hardwear, Black Diamond, Scarpa, Backcountry.com, Rob Jones and Joe Schuster for piloting and making the trip possible.

6 weeks of adventure on the road

7000 miles roundtrip

7 days driving (4 up, 3 back)

1 speeding ticket ($300 U.S.)

9 ski partners

2 locations (Takinsha and Revelation Mountains)

2 Hangovers

7 hours of footage from the PW crew shredding spines in Haines

5 showers (sorry no pics)

6 books (2 audio)

Dozens of large mammal sightings

10 foot snowstorm in Haines

1 very beautiful and understanding girlfriend. Thank You!

10 first descents in the Revelations, the most remote range in AK.

100 dollars spent at Alaskan Bush Company (no photos)(very understanding girlfriend)

2 times running out of gas in a Bush Plane (closest call of the trip)

29 nights camping in the snow

1 tired dude with an overgrown beard!

It’s nice to be home!

Thanks to Courtney Phillips and Jay Beyer for the pics.

We bounced up Lamouille Canyon on snowmachines and ditched them as quickly as possible to take to our feet. This is an amazing little range that doesn’t really feel like anywhere else in the lower 48. No, the bird in flight wasn’t staged, it just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Full Jay Beyer photo slideshow from the trip HERE.

So Jim Harris and I headed out to see how it looked.

It was a nice sunny day with very stable avalanche conditions.

Nobody had hit the summit yet, so we put in the booter.

Summit photo!

This was Jim’s virgin trip down the Northwest Couloir (you’ll always remember your first time, mine was several years ago with Ed Arriola and Darrell Finlayson). This was my 5th day on AT gear and the steep turns still felt strange and awkward.

Jim didn’t seem to have any issues at all.

We skied the chute proper and Jim cut over to check out the ramp. He reported that it was probably doable, but very thin snow cover.

We bailed on the variation route and decide to rappel.

Jim set up the rap and noticed some engravings on the rap anchors.

‘Happy Rappy’ and ‘Ski to Die’ were the blessings left by Andrew Mclean when he placed the bolts years ago.

The rap was pretty short, 25ft or so and reminded me of the year when it filled in completely and Dylan Freed skied it without rappelling.

The exit turns started out firm and softened up real nice towards the apron.

Classic line in the Wasatch!