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Bird Peak
by James Larabee, Scree 7/90?
On the weekend of May 14 and 15 nine MCA'ers decided to tackle the SW ridge of Bird Peak. Bird Peak towers high above the north side of rapidly flowing Penguin Creek. The commonly climbed Bird Ridge lies further to the west and is not directly connected to Bird Peak. Bird Peak is identified by name in the SE corner of the Anchorage A7 quad.
Three climbers were compelled to make a one-day sprint of the climb; Tim Kelley on Saturday, Tom Choate and Steve Gruhn on Sunday. All three were amazingly quick and all three made the summit.. The rest of us were forced to endure two days of splendid sunshine and some of the best weather that I've seen in this part of the Chugach in some time.
On Saturday we followed an old logging road through Bird Creek valley. After crossing Penguin Creek we followed a fork that climbed along the north side of the creek. Eventually this ATV trait becomes a foot path which sidehills for a mile or two before fizzling into bands of alder. We found an excellent campsite in a grassy avalanche clearing that stretched completely down to Penguin Creek. That evening we had two visitors: Tim Kelley on his way home after picking off the summit, and a black bear that rolled in the grass 300 feet above camp.
Val Chabot and Wayne Todd earned special thanks (and a few pretzels) for blazing a step-kicked trail up a 700-foot gully that gains the top of Bird's SW ridge. From there we casually followed the ridge, stopping only to admire two mountain goats and for a long lunch. It was there at 4840 feet that Tom Choate caught up to us and then led the charge up the last 1000 feet.
Like so many other peaks, Bird's final challenge was choosing the highest bump to climb for the true summit. Tom had this problem solved as he stuck to the ridge line and climbed them all until he found the highest one. I, along with a few others, chose to take the low road and positioned ourselves underneath the highest point before climbing up. But the difficulty was in deciding which high point was highest. We had narrowed the choice down to two bumps and were 100 feet below the first when Tom began climbing it. I shouted, "Hey Tom, is that the summit?" He shouted back: "It's one summit. And there's another one over there." In Tom-ease, that meant the second bump was higher, so I changed course and headed for it.
A bit of a knife-edge and a cornice were our last distractions before spending a sun drenched hour on top. MCA members who got to enjoy the sun and the climb with me were: Tim, Tom, Steve, Vat, Wayne, Mike Paoletti, Riff Patton, and Roy Smith.
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