Three Sundays on Bellicose
by Willy Hersman, Scree

Trips that fail don't make it to print as often as the ones that succeed.  It's the way we view failure, I guess, but there's something learned on each trip to the mountains, summit or not.  It's the details that help others in the future, why else write about it?  Just as frustrating as accounts that are long on gibberish are the ones that amount to something like, "And then we were on the summit."  There's a touch of ego in it that says, "I figured it out, so can you."  Anyway.

I was looking for a climb around the first of August when Jim Sayler said he and Karen Cafmeyer were headed to Eklutna Glacier to try Benign and Bellicose.  Never gave those peaks much thought before but it sounded challenging, so on Aug. 1 we three rode our bikes around the lake and hiked up to Pichler's Perch.  Next day we headed across the West Fork of Eklutna under partly sunny skies towards the SW ridge of Bellicose Peak. (7640').  The first ascent had been done by this same ridge in 1963 by John and William Busman, who gave few details except to mention one rappel.

Things went well.  We ascended the long scree gully to the gap at 6350' early in the day.  The route was a moderate scramble on lousy rock, dipping below the ridge to the east at times.  At 7100' three towering gendarmes blocked the way to the easy looking summit block. The climbing called for a rope, so off I went on Jim's belay.  Within 10 minutes I found myself dangling over the east face, victim of Chugach crud.  I had barely touched the rock which chose that instant to disintegrate.  I hung for a moment thinking of Pat Murray and two broken arms in a bout with rotten rock a few years ago.  I readjusted my helmet and went back up.

Somehow the towers looked less inviting, the gullies deeper, the rock more rotten.  We decided to find a different way around, rapped to a lower point and looked a long time, but basically we would have needed more rope to do the job of fixing our return from the summit. Okay so the Bousmans' had more courage.  We went down in sunshine, and to make us feel better did the 7th ascent of Moonlight Mt. (6250').  On the 3rd we went home bypassing Benign for another day.

Now Bellicose was getting under my skin a little.  A call came a few days later from Stuart Grenier, who had just returned from Japan.  He would go back with me to give it another try. A four day trip, we could get another summit or two as well.  Greg Higgins said he wanted to do the peak also, but on a long day from Eklutna Lake.  He would look for us.

On August 7 Stuart and I camped just beyond Bombardment Pass (5050'), overlooking Peters Creek, in the rain.  On the 8th we climbed Mt. Rumble (7530') via Hoeman's gully (large S gully, go right where it splits, climb nearly to top, go right along easy scree and snow to upper gully, scree and scramble to top).  Greg would be on Bellicose the next day, so we waited.  On the 9th, Stuart and I headed over Rumble Pass (5050') and down easily to "Wall Street" Glacier.  Incredible view; the biggest walls in the Western Chugach are in this deep valley.

Our objective was the NW ridge by way of The Shroud (historic name given to the hanging glacier on Bellicose's west face).  We cramponed up a long 40 degree gully, the only obvious weakness in the wall, safely away from the hangers of The Shroud.  I looked up and saw Greg shortly before noon.  Hoots and hollers followed and we thought he saw us.  He was in a difficult spot on a rock face above us; something like a little fly silhouetted against the blue