Let the Games Begin!

I exit the grocery store with Ryan Johnson my climbing partner and host for this trip. We enter into the cold sunlight and look up to see spindrift avalanches cascading down over the ice climbs on Juneau mountain. Somewhere along the halfway point, gravity is met with a strong updraft and forms a standing wave of snow. It makes for an interesting site and I’m glad my next task is the liquor store and not one of those pitches of ice up there. Despite the good weather, I’m enjoying the chill day, although not the chill of the day. I’m suffering some from my attempt to keep up with the local beer drinkers   yesterday and I feel cold and crappy.

Sometimes just getting the adventure going is an adventure in itself. Ryan’s float plane from the mining site he’s been working at, flew away before landing.   This put me arriving in Juneau before him. As well, one of my bags didn’t arrive. Ryan’s parents picked me up from the airport so fortunately I wasn’t left high and dry. I even managed to sneak out for some ice climbing my first day and despite a case of the screaming barfies (a painful re-warming of the hands once they have gone numb to the cold), it was great to get out on some ice. I could smell the salt water and from the climbs we looked out over the channel of sea water than runs past Juneau. “Ha, I’m climbing on the beach after all” I thought to myself.

I thought this mockingly, as my wife Lisa was planning a trip to climb in the warm Mediterranean sun in Greece following my return from Alaska.We have been alternating trips this year as our son is in high school and we no longer have the flexibility to travel like we did home schooling. I couldn’t help but reconsider my own plans when she proposed that idea; Alaska, winter, ice… sounds cold and scary. What’s a matter with me anyway? Why seek such adventure and suffering?

7:30 rolled by, then 8:00 PM. No word from Ryan. His parents were doing what all parents do, worrying some and trying to wonder what had happened to him. After a month working in the mines, maybe he just got a little to drunk at the airport?? 9:00pm rolled by and as I was getting comfortable in bed and settling into an episode of South Park on my Andriod phone, the phone rang. It was Ryan. His driver’s license had stuck to the face of his cell phone and he was unable to locate it when going through security at the airport. While desperately trying to produce it for the TSA officials in his frustration, a few f-bombs slipped out. Meanwhile an overzealous TSA official got offended and the resulting confrontation left Ryan handcuffed in an airport security room for 4 hours.

The next day we shopped and prepared for our departure. $300 of groceries, $75 of margarita fixings, and small mountains of gear are spread across the living room and kitchen. We’ve got a helicopter booked for the morning, the ice conditions are looking great, and a forecast of 5 days of good weather awaits us. We were off to some “secret stashes” of ice near the Taku river, south of Juneau. Promises of giant, never before climbed, continuously steep lines of ice await us. Tomorrow morning, it’s game time!