western alaska bouldering conditions

[allapa]

Hey, there's no little forum for Western Alaska,

where wind pounds the granules into such submission that avalanches seldom worry, metamorphic little Tolkien tors poke above the sastrugi dunes as far as the eye can see, where we are sitting in our boring houses pummeled by wind again talking instead of real climbing,
local bouldering conditions at present are crispy, most boulders coated with about 13 cm of rime, you get a little cam here, a bit of piolet poignard there, look down and suddenly and you're into the damn spinal injury zone once more and things are OK again, but we must get back to the bigger ranges soon....

[allapa]

another cold April, sno-goed into Osborne, 4-20 (is there some significance to this date?), solo, climbed NE ridge, gotta be an FA, at least in those con-dishes, ice, tiptoeing on 45 degrees, don't fall or they will find your scarecrow body, mangled, several weeks of deathmongering and then a lingering memory with decreasing frequency, total mind odyssey, something about being in the middle of nowhere by yourself, lots of piolet en canard, summit towers well-rimed, there's absolutely no way to describe it with words, all that concentrating for hours and hours, cold, cold, cold, cold, my snow machine started back up, that's the crux, Osborne, head and shoulders the King of the Kigs, big Alaska at your feet, this was only in the past, it's all melted by now, an obscure rubble heap of gneiss guarded by miles of swamp, why brothers and sisters, why pull these stunts?