Baleful Peak Epic
by Jack Duggan, Scree 9/80

The renowned "poet ranger of the Chugach", Garnett Rohm, organized a 4th of July week-end attempt on obscure Baleful Peak, which is located behind Bold and Bashful Peaks in the Eklutna Lake area.  It was first climbed by Vin Hoeman and Art Davidson in the sixties and probably hasn't been repeated by anyone since.

Heeding the lessons learned from last year's soggy 3 day debacle attempt, Garnett artfully arranged a last minute conflict and left Gunnar, Jeff, Al and I to "go it alone" in the 5 a.m. downpour which greeted us in the parking lot.  Luckily, a closed donut shop opened their door for us or we might not have found solace top continue.

It was still raining Thursday evening when we reached the top of a long scree slope, after marching the length of the Eklutna Lake road and the East Fork trail, so all five if us poled into my two-man tent for a quick supper and sleep.

Friday, the 4th, dawned cloudy but dry and we made good time up more scree and snow to the "Horseshoe Ridge" that had been our undoing last year.  This time, with better visibility, we quickly found a gully (the wrong one as it turned out) and descended into the Baleful Peak "inner sanctuary" of soft wet snow and cruddy rock.

After the de rigeuer routefinding argument we climbed an avalanche-tracked snowslope on the far side of the basin to regain the ridge nearer the twin summits poised at the far end of the "Horseshoe".

Higher up we traversed several snowfields finally entering a narrow gully which three times before forced us to share space with wet sluff avalanches; one of which surprised Al in an exposed spot where he could not jump aside and nearly took him on a speedy ride downhill.

Topping the ridge in bright sunlight we were treated to a panoramic view in all directions except the one we were headed in which was obstructed by a rotten rock gendarme none of us were eager to try.  Eventually, Gunnar put up a very good lead and we passed this obstacle without incident excepting the large rock which, when dislodged, chopped my.9 mm rope into two nearly equal pieces.

We continued along the rotten rock ridge until 9 p.m. when we stopped at the only flat spot wide enough to pitch the tent, ate and crawled in for a few hours sleep until 1 a.m. on Saturday morning.  The wind had risen considerably when we awoke and we fiddled around until almost 3 a.m. before moving up the ridge to the nearer of the two high points which are separated by a seep knife edged gap.  The further high spot beckoned to no one but Gunnar because of the threatening weather.  Dave sighted along his water bottle (?) and announced that the other spot looked to be a few feet higher.  After a mutinous exchange we roped up and descended..., and descended...., and descended, - until blistered and wizened, we finally limped back into the parking lot at 11 p.m.

Special credit for our safe return goes to Dave who was the only one of the five of us to remain awake during the long drive back to Anchorage.  Fortunately for us all, Dave was behind the wheel at the time.