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sky. We continued, the exposure becoming more apparent with each step. Stuart balked. We took a break; above us Greg had disappeared. Stu had misgivings about the drop below and didn't want to push it; I was on my own.
I continued on crampons to The Shroud, where everything became clear. This was the way! No difficulties above; a clean shot to the ridge on 50 degree snow and an easy looking walk to the top. But there were crevasses. Three or four big ones split my intended path, still bridged, but how well? I hooted and hollered for Greg, but no answer, in fact no sign that he was above. A sentence from an old Hoeman article came back to me, "Dave Johnston and I looked...from an aborted attempt on the NW ridge on Bellicose." There were no other details of their failure, but something had stopped them, and it would stop Greg. I looked at the mouth of the bergschrund and it seemed to say, "Okay how macho are you?" 900' to go, I headed home.
For two days I worried about Greg because we hadn't seen him on our descent. He finally called me..."I thought you guys were yelling at me from Rumble!" He never saw us, just voices bouncing in the hallway of the Chugach.
Now that should have been the end of the story. Maybe next year, I figured. It's not good to let a mountain get to you, but it happens. August 14 I'm on the bike again, heading to Pichler's with Tom Choate and Mike MIller. It rained all day the 15th, but Sunday skies looked better. Across the Eklutna we headed, delayed a few minutes for a broken crampon (who needs the front points anyway), and over the 4350' bench to the valley between Benign and Bellicose. Sunshine ended for the day as we strolled up scree to the NW ridge at 5650'.
We rappelled to wet snow on the W face and traversed south to The Shroud where the bergy was still waiting for me. Roped now to Mike and Tom, I crossed safely and kicked wet steps up the moderately steep slope to regain the NW ridge. We couldn't see a thing but it mattered not; we passed below two gendarmes on the snow and finally reached a cheval ridge at 7400'. Tom took the lead along the short rock section, followed by fresh snow and soon Mike was digging out the register. The only entry was June 1976, Brian Okonek and Dick Griffith, who had stood on the summit at the extremely prudent hour of 6 a.m. (Bousman's cairn, if any, was probably destroyed in the 64 quake). This is undoubtedly the easiest way to the top, but would be a spooky winter route if the snow wasn't right.
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