BLOOD FROM THE STONE

East Face of Mt. Dickey
Ruth Gorge Alaska
Ueli Steck, Sean Easton
March 2002
5.9 A1 AI 6+ M7+

Hello all. Just got back from a great trip to Alaska and thought I would share a few photo's . . . I went into the Ruth Gorge on March 14 with Ueli Steck from Switzerland. The bad weather forecast never materialized and we flew out on the 21st having sent what we came for. We called the route "Blood from the Stone" because we figured that us being able to climb it was as likely as being able to squeeze blood from a stone. The route is not really visible from the ground and you can only really ever see the next pitch as you are heading up it. The snow/ice was just barely thick (or thin) enough to allow us to continue, amazingly a groove/crack system runs the length of the face and collects ice and spindrift hammered snow which is present for all but 100m of rock climbing. In total we spent four days, two nights (figure that out) on the East Face of Dickey in the Ruth Gorge Alaska.

The stats: 27 60m pitches (plus 500m steep snow) on a 1600m vertical face.
Difficulties: M7+, many AI6+ 90 deg snow pitches

This was an amazing route of the highest quality, I hope someone has the experience of repeating it one day. Take care and see you out there,

Sean

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Absolute freedom is found in total commitment.

At a certain point, the realization that your survival is more likely if you continue rather than retreat dawns upon you.

At this point, the ground releases its claim on you and all energies, physical and mental, can be directed towards the summit.

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Ueli and I found this point at the end of our third day on Mount Dickey. Located in the Ruth Gorge, Alaska, Mt. Dickey's East Face is more or less five thousand feet high. My Swiss friend Ueli Steck and I had arrived here at the tail end of the Alaskan winter in hope of finding the alpinist's vision of a perfect line. It would have to be possible in alpine style, requiring no more gear than we could carry on our backs. It would have to go fast and allow climbing in plastic boots and gloves. We envisioned a line of thin ice and snow snaking its way for thousands of feet through sheer granite walls, always possible to climb, but just barely.

Sometimes you get lucky, and it was our turn.

We left basecamp with our material possessions stripped down to the absolute minimums. We took the simplest, highest-quality gear available. The only unnecessary item was Ueli's toothbrush, although I did appreciate his minty fresh breath when talking at the belays. We began our push by ascending the ropes we had left fixed on a previous attempt before a storm pushed us down.

For the first three days, we followed an ephemeral vein of snow/ice. At times it faded out to no more than frost pasted on rock, but short mixed sections linked it together and brought us to our second bivy. Faced with a crux pitch and the setting sun, we worked at chopping a ledge into an icy corner. We hid from spindrift in our bivy sacs for a restless night. Below us lay three thousand feet of technical climbing, another two thousand loomed overhead. While retreat was not impossible, I do not doubt it would have consumed our entire rack and merited an epic status. We were finally out there. No communications device, no contact with the world, only two climbers

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way up a remote Alaskan peak. I imagine this is what it feels like to be in outer space.

Rising in the morning (you can’t wake up if you haven’t really slept) Ueli dispatched of the crux in an awesome display of psychological control and difficult physical climbing.

I found the concept of the leader trusting his belayer to catch a fall being reversed, on this climb it was the belayer who needed to trust the leader not to fall on him.

Each pitch was a 60m rope stretcher, interspersed with few pieces and the belayer positioned beneath the leader.

The black rock capping Dickey was featured and solid. Unlike the granite below it also offered adequate protection and excellent edging for tools and crampons. Using a small portion of our allotted 12 hours of daylight we passed through this and arrived at the final AI6X pitch.

My dulled picks broke apart the facetted ice. The final pitch was overcome, not only because I could climb it, but because I had to. If we had been at a roadside venue I could imagine backing off, here our level of commitment makes that unthinkable. The situation required my best effort, and because that’s what I gave, I got it.

Ueli and I un-roped at the final anchor, one bolt in the only piece of rock on the upper snowface. Another hour of climbing and we arrived at the summit. A blend of satisfaction and completion flooded over me. These are the feelings that I hoped would stay with me, that I could carry the richness of the experience and the lessons learned back into the confines of modern society, where the summits are not always so apparent.