I made this video of the time spent out in the Talkeetna Mountains constructing the Seth Holden hut. In 7 1/2 minutes it is tough to convey the effort and awesomeness of the volunteers and incredible experience we all shared in those two weeks. So I’ve been meaning to write about it in more detail. Finally, I’ve done it. Below is a full write-up of the project focusing on my experience and sharing many new photos of such an incredible place. I hope you enjoy!
In early 2018 the Mountaineering Club of Alaska (MCA) sent out a newsletter looking for volunteers to help with the construction of a new hut deep in the wilderness of the Talkeetna Mountains. North of Montana Peak, the site would be a an estimated half-day hike from the existing Bomber Hut, itself in rugged, remote Alaskan wilderness. The project would begin June 25, going for around two weeks, or as long as it took to complete the backcountry shelter.
Reading this, I was immediately planning out the upcoming summer to make time for such an interesting possibility. The area north of Montana Peak may as well be labeled “Here be Dragons” like the old world maps. Many of the peaks are unclimbed and a vast majority of the area untouched by human feet, aside from the occasional heli skier. Sure, a few bad-ass hikers and climbers venture back there occasionally, but a new backcountry shelter would open up some great opportunities for many to explore some truly incredible wilderness.
As a photographer for MICA Guides, I had the rare luxury of being able to essentially write my own schedule, though my income would take a major hit passing up two weeks or more of peak-season tours in a 4-month season. It seemed well worth it though, so I signed on for the entire length of the project, and continued to study USGS maps of the area, dreaming of what the peaks and valleys beyond the proposed location would look like.
I never knew Seth Holden, but during this project I would hear many stories of his adventures climbing and skiing around Alaska. He was a kind and caring man who passed away in a plane crash at 29 years old in August 2010. His father reached out to the MCA to help honor Seth’s dream of building a cabin in the wilderness “with plenty of water and good times” that he never had to lock up, and “he didn’t want it easy to get to.” A few proposed locations were discussed, and ultimately the location was settled on, even though only one person, Dave Staeheli, had actually walked to the proposed site before volunteers would be dispatched for the build. Seth’s father, Pete, and some MCA officials had flown over the site and made the decision.
Days before we were scheduled to set out, one of the volunteers, Katherine, had hiked to Reed Lakes, a popular day hike and the first leg of our route into the backcountry for the project. She reported encountering snow very early on in the hike, and recommended everyone have snow shoes. I reached out to one of the coordinators to ask if I should bring skis instead, but by their estimations they would be more of a hassle. I would regret following their advice to bring snowshoes, but only on the downhill sections as my borrowed snowshoes weighed much less than skis would have. Also I would have been the only person with skis.
It was much later in the year than snow usually sticks around Reed Lakes, but it had been a deep snowpack that winter. Without the last minute call for snowshoes, all us volunteers would have been in a world of pain. While all the building materials, tools, and most the food would be flown in by helicopter, we carried our own tents, clothing, gear, and food for 4-5 days (just in case the heli couldn’t fly as planned). With temperatures anticipated to be below freezing at night, and no idea of what camping locations may look like, no one packed light.
The first real steep bit came in above Upper Reed Lake. From the lake, you stare straight up at a cirque of seemingly impassible jagged peaks. Bomber Pass looms above you, but it isn’t immediately obvious which place is the pass from below. Choose incorrectly, and you may be cliffed-out on top.
Left: Hiking toward Bomber Pass – somewhere up in the clouds – from Upper Reed Lake.
The hike toward the pass was long and miserable, kicking steps with snowshoes isn’t easy, and neither is sliding backward down slippery snow.
Down the other side of the pass is Bomber Glacier, named for the B-29 wreckage that killed 6 of 10 crew members in 1957. Due to the remote location, the plane was never cleaned up. So drifting along with the glacier is an entire B29 Super Fortress worth of scrap metal and debris.
Descending was a bit faster than the uphill, but a new problem presented itself when the snow began to soften: falling through the snow into an empty void around the boulders below Bomber Glacier. Even with snowshoes on, many of us would often punch through to or knees or waist and fall over. With a heavy pack and now a snowshoe stuck under the snow, it took a significant amount of energy to roll over (preferably without breaking the stuck leg), worm your way out, then stand up in the awkward snowshoes and massive backpack.
Most of the lower was free of snow, so we had some relief from falling over ourselves and got our snowshoes off for a while. The plan had been to hike straight to the work site that night, but we were exhausted, wet from sweat and from falling in the snow, and had no idea if we would find any dry spots to pitch our tents once above that valley. So we decided to call it a night and dry out in the Bomber Hut nearby.
The helicopter planned to fly in early the next morning, provided there was decent visibility. Cory Hinds (MCA President and project coordinator) wanted to reach the site before the helicopter to ensure they found the correct spot, so he woke up around 5:00 a.m., only to crawl back in bed when it looked unsafe for a helicopter outside. Little did we know, they saw a different weather pattern from the Gold-Mint Trailhead staging area, and were ready to fly on schedule. Turns out there were some pocketed clearings east of Montana Peak, but to the west where we were was mostly low clouds. Not knowing this, we had a more leisurely morning than anticipated, and discussed staying another night at Bomber to wait for better weather. No one wanted to camp on the snow anyway.
We decided it was best to get someone to the site quickly, though, so Cory and I started hiking after a warm breakfast, only to hear the helicopter overhead 30 minutes after setting out. The others had decided to stay at the Bomber hut until the skies began to clear, and would start hiking if they heard the chopper, or within a few hours unless things changed for the worse. Since the weather took the helicopter east of Montana Peak, Cory and I had barely heard it so we were uncertain if our friends would be right behind us or not. Soon the weather began to clear, though, and turns out they did hear it and start hiking anyway.
Cory and I worked from Dave Staeheli’s beta on the easiest way over, though his descriptions from summer were not so easy to follow, so we just looked for an easy way toward Neltini Saddle on the GPS.
This ended with us adding a bit of extra distance onto the hike, and placing a few errant trail markers along our extended route, but as a bonus (for me, at least) it brought is right along the toe of the Wintergreen Glacier, so I walked out on it a ways so I could say I’ve been there. Check.
As we rose toward Neltini Pass, the route steepened significantly. From Neltini it’s short jaunt over to Ozone Pass and down the Nothern Cwm Glacier (pronounced coom, meaning calm).
Dave had described the opposite side of Sobriety Pass as one of the worst sections of the route, and he and others had looked at many options to bypass this pass because of it. The entire hillside was, in his words “vertical dirt.” Snow and loose dirt is easy enough to descend, but I knew the snow would be long gone by the time we would finish the hut, and we would get the full vertical dirt experience on our way out. Most of the worst parts could be avoided, according to Dave, with a bit of side-hilling in from the north on the way back up.
For now, though, I was anxious to get my pack off for a while and set up camp. From Sobriety Pass I got to see the helicopter flying in again (it made a total of 11 trips to supply us all the materials) and it gave me an idea of where the site was, though it was hidden by another hill below me.
As I was coming into view of the piles of crates and supplies dropped by the helicopter, it came in to set down the last of its loads, and land next to our new camp to unload some of our more experienced volunteers, including Pete Holden.
Cory and I were glad to see they had found some dry tundra to dump the supplies, and quite close to where they had marked on the plans (plans were made in the summer, and the big red ‘X’ Dave had placed a year before was under snow) because – as Cory had said that morning – without him there to communicate with the pilot, any place they decided to drop the first crate is where the hut was going to be!
We got to work straight away, the large dome kitchen shelter going up first, as well as tents for the tools and for us.
My new home was out between two lakes with a stream nearby, overlooking pure, wild Alaska
Once we were settled Sally got to work on her first of several amazing dinners for the crew, and everyone else got to work on prepping the site. While a few MCA members with plenty of construction experience would handle the planning and direction, most of us volunteers were here for the “rock crew.”
The design of the hut required 10 gabions, essentially metal wire frames to be filled with rocks, which would be placed over steel plates for the foundation of the building. Since we would be battling permafrost and didn’t have the ability to fly in a backhoe, they were a practical way to make a secure foundation above ground. Really the only downside is that 10 gabions – each 3 foot by 3 foot by 2 foot – would require A LOT of rocks to fill. Hence the rock crew.
If I remember correctly (and I probably don’t because it was some of the hardest work I’ve ever done) we had at least 6, or maybe 8, entire days that most of us spent harvesting and carrying rocks to fill the gabions. There were, of course, brief periods when help was needed to assemble large pieces of the hut, and we were all glad to do literally anything that wasn’t rock related.
Meanwhile, Cory, Catherine and Pete had the outhouse up and usable before the end of day one, and progress on the hut seemed to be moving quickly all around.
Oh yeah, and the outhouse came with one hell of a view!
Water was hauled from a nearby stream (well uphill of the new outhouse) and enjoyed unfiltered, straight from the source. I cannot overstate how incredible it is to walk over and drink straight from a river, knowing that in all likelihood less than 20 people have set foot within its watershed in the last decade. We filled water bottles with ice cold snow melt and dunked our faces directly in for a drink on the warmer days.
Early on, hauling water to the kitchen was easy with the help of a children’s sled, but as snow melted it became more difficult to drag the 6 gallon jugs up the hill.
Each morning we would wake up to breakfast ready to eat, thanks to the wonderful Sally, and get to work shortly after. Someone asked Stan on day two what the objective was for the day, and he simply replied “I’d like to get V.P. done today.”
We all looked at each other and when someone finally asked him what that meant, he replied with a simple “Visible Progress.” So that’s what we did. We would work through the day with a break for lunch and just keep trying to make progress on whatever we were doing. Work was done for the day only when the dinner bell rang.
And for after dinner… Broken Tooth Brewing had surprised us at the last minute and donated several cases of beers for the crew. Love those guys!
Sometimes in the evenings the infamous Tom Choate (seen here sporting his 1958 Mountaineering Club t-shirt) would read us all a poem from his Robert Service collection. His readings were a wonderful treat for all of us, and a few of them can be heard in the project video. Unfortunately I could not add all of them, but what a treat! Thanks Tom!
One of the coolest things for me was just hanging out with some true legends of Alaska Mountaineering history and hearing stories of past adventures, whether it was building previous huts, being snowed into a tent or hut for days and inventing new card games, getting lost in the fog and crawling around to avoid falling off a cliff, or a personal favorite: ski mountaineering naked and later being sunburned literally everywhere… but we won’t mention any names here! Ouch!
Occasionally, new volunteers would show up and others would leave, but we maintained around 12-14 people a day most of the two weeks.
Paxson Woelber stopped by and spent a night with us, he and two friends were on an exploratory mission down the Kashwitna River on packrafts (or at least that was the plan!). As far as anyone could tell that sort of trip had never been attempted from this far up the river, and they would be running uncharted water.
Anyone who has hiked the backcountry of Hatcher Pass probably knows Paxson as the humble-badass-genius that created the Bomber Traverse Map. If you don’t know about him, check out his work at winterbear.com. He has a link to download the map for free, and it is an absolute necessity for travel in the area. He also keeps a blog with much crazier stories than mine, so check out this one about the attempted Kashwitna run, it’s well worth a read!
Another welcomed visit came from Andy. Andy was a close friend of Seth’s and he had hiked out to spread Seth’s ashes and help out with the project for a few days. He’s an awesome guy, hard worker, and fast hiker!
Myself and Alexandria were able to accompany him part way up the nearby Mojito Glacier where he would spread Seth’s ashes.
At one point a resupply was called in when the generator was running low on fuel, and we were all happy to see someone snuck in a few more cases from Broken Tooth Brewing along with it! Catherine was extra excited about the resupply because she was set to hike out that day, and instead got to fly out with the pilot.
As we started to get close to the end, we wrapped up a bit early a couple days so we would have time to explore a little of the area. A few of us hiked up to another nearby lake for a nice view of the Kashwitna Valley.
On the last day, I hiked to the top of the small but prominent peak I had been staring up at for nearly two weeks. Mt. Besh (or Mt. Tom Besh, depending on who you talk to) is a craggy little summit that’s higher than it looks from below. Still a fairly quick scramble, there was one tricky section of sloped tundra over a short cliff with a high pucker factor. I learned I could stab my trekking poles into the slippery tundra, then step above it like a single-spike in-step tundra crampon. Solid.
The views from the top were spectacular, as expected.
Tom told me that it’s entirely possible less than 10 people have ever summited that particular peak. I did find some evidence of humans, as there was a summit register, but it was unhelpful as to the number of visitors as the papers inside had completely disintegrated.
Looking southwest, I could see our faint trial through the snow on the Northern Cwm, packed in by all the volunteers coming and going for two weeks. For those that know the area, Snowbird Glacier is the large white patch just right of center near the horizon. The Nunatak sits to the right, just above the closer ridge.
Back at camp I found Lee and Sally sunbathing on a rock enjoying the last day before the heli would come back to get the trash and fly out 5 of the last 8 of us. We snapped some photos of Pete putting up his custom made sign and had a beautiful evening in the sun.
Lee, Sally and I planned to leave in the morning to spend a night at the Bomber hut on the hike out. The weather had been fantastic for a majority of our time at the site, so naturally it turned sour for the last bit of work before we were done. We woke up to questionable clouds, and the heli was supposed to come in later. As we ate breakfast in the newly finished hut, kitchen shelter packed away, we heard the distant sound of a chopper. We hadn’t been able to receive word on the satellite phone, but the flight had been moved up on account of the weather turning south quickly. Since the three of us knew we were hiking out we quickly helped the others break down tents and pack bags to get them on the helicopter as soon as possible. The crew readied the first sling-load of gear, and there was some confusion on how many flights had been paid for to fly trash and tools out.
After the first load the helicopter came back, meaning they somehow got the okay for another flight, and picked up the next load. Then promptly set it back down. It was too heavy. By now it was raining steadily and we were all soaked. We unloaded lumber and anything that could stay at the hut or be more easily hiked out later and tried again. This time in the hasty repack, one of the trash bags split open on takeoff. Plastic wrap and styrofoam exploded out of the net when they set back down a second time.
We grabbed what we could of the loose trash and then took more things out of the net to lighten the load. Finally, the helicopter got off the ground and flew away over the horizon.
Lee, Sally and I were left in stunned silence, soaked through to the bone with a days food left each and trash scattered for half a mile in the wind. For hours, we gathered as much as we could find, occasionally returning to the hut to test out the new heater. Works like a charm!
We decided it would be a shame to leave the hut having not spent a night in it, so we should stick around and get the full experience. Also to dry out our clothes.
I sat in the loft and listened to the wind howl and the rain bombard the metal siding of the hut for a few hours before drifting off to sleep.
I left early the next morning, barely remembering to take any photos of the finished hut.
I would make the full hike back to the parking lot in a single 13 hour push, Lee and Sally taking their time and stretching out their snacks to spend another night in the Bomber hut on their way out.
Below Ozone Pass, still on the Northern Cwm, I was snowed on. Grizzly cub tracks lead the way through fresh snow up Ozone all the way back to Neltini Pass. I spent the rest of the day yelling “Hey bear!” all the way back to the parking lot, where, surprise, it was summer again.
Thanks for reading. This was a long one and it took me nearly two years to get around to writing it, but it was a truly amazing experience and so much fun to relive through all the photos as I write. So much thanks is due to everyone in the MCA and all the volunteers that helped with this and the many other huts scattered around the Alaska Backcountry. As we found out on the last day, it is so easy for the weather in Alaska to catch you off guard and a good shelter really comes in handy!
Pete Holden literally made his son’s dream come true, not only through the idea and a Herculean amount of work on his part, but also by funding a majority of the project. Through this hut he is not only honoring his son’s memory, but helping to open up uncharted territory in a vast wilderness of endless possibilities. He expects nothing from anyone in return. So get out there and experience this wonderful area, pay your respects, leave something behind that might help those that come after you, and share your stories in the log book. People read those – especially when they’re snowed in for days at a time.