Sanford from the road

 

8 days 

Charlotte, Erin, Sebastian and I started out from the Chistochina River rest area. Last fall Erin, Sebastian and I had ended a packraft traverse at this rest stop, and it was cool to be back but heading onward in the other direction. With the low snow year in the southcentral area and a lack of information on this area, we weren't sure what expect: would the Copper be frozen? would be able to get onto the toe of the glacier? would the snow bridges cover enough? Our first question was answered when we were able to skin down the Chistochina, join with the Copper, and start up Boulder Creek. There was no snowmachine track in and the snow was a little glumpy the first day. It was uncharacteristically warm, so we were wearing sun hoodys and stopping to use skin wax. This first and second day we travelled around 10 miles each day and made camp by the river. We were able to drink some water in the creeks that were open and save on fuel. 

The third day we finished out the Boulder Creek section. Travel was great here, with a snow dusting from the first two days of our travel over ice. We turned right to follow Sheep Creek. We had some bush navigation, and some carrying the sleds over creeks. We went up and over a knoll since there was the new dusting of snow over the tundra and rocks, on the way down we stayed following the creek due to increased snow coverage. Around 4,700' there was flat tundra and rocks. We cached our sleds, 2 days of food, 3 days of fuel, trash, and extra shovels at 5'. We went up a pinch point, onto a plateau, then up another filled in gully to ice with patches on snow. We moved up to almost 6' and made our camp on the ice. There were patches of ice, some hardpacked snow, and some of the recent snow dusting until 6,500'. 

The next morning we went towards walkers left and went up a small ice fall (picture below from down glacier). We did a diagonal up working slightly right, and then a diagonal working left over the top part. At the top we continued straight beyond another more open crevasse field to our right, and then cut across a flatter area above it to the walkers right. The picture below is a screenshot of our gaia track in blue with the lower elevations at the top, the other tracks are ones Charlotte drew for our potential route. 

 

We continued up another slope, crossing a couple of crevasses perpendicular and camped a little above 9'. We debated continuing on but decided for acclimating and the such this was a good stopping point. This was the only time during the trip where we had impaired visibility, with wind and snow blowing around. This was the first evening we set up the mid and fully enforced the tent. The ice wall above our camp was super cool. Pictures we've seen from other years show this covered in snow. 

The next morning (day 5) we went up the middle of the slope above us. At the top there was a wind lip and some larger sastrugi to get over. Sebastian popped into this waste twice in this area. The first was a crevasse, but we weren't sure if the second was wind snow drifts with air pockets or a mix. Once we were above this we spent quite a bit of time navigating upwards and walkers left. There were many narrow cracks that were barely bridged, in some spots with just an inch of powder. We had two more slight punch throughs by a few inches, one that was a surprise and one crevasse that we knew was there while we were trying to cross the narrower part of it. We never punched through a hard pack area and we couldn't get a probe through these areas either. Overall the cold, low precipitation, windy environment reminded me more of crevasses in Antarctica than any other Alaska area I've been to. This 10-11' elevation area had a lot of crevasses in pretty flat terrain with thin snow bridges covering them, with minimal sagging. But this was the first time to the higher altitude Wrangells in the winter for all of us. 

The wind was pretty constant in this area, and we weren't sure if protection would be less higher. We made camp at 11,800'. Once we started ascending a little the crevassing seemed minimal, and we probed for areas with enough snow to set up the mid. Looking down from our camp, we weren't sure if heading more walkers left up the crevasse field would have been easier to navigate. On the way down we didn't find this necessarily easier, but it could be that many years with more snow this area does not slow people down. Most of the crevasses we crossed were pretty narrow in spots. 

Camp had a consistent katabatic wind, picking up in the evening. During the night I slept cold in my -40 bag on a closed foam and high R value inflatable pad with my puffy pants, puffy jacket, all my other layers, hoods, socks and down booties with a hot water bottle. I usually sleep warm so it seems it could have been cold. 

The next morning (day 6) we started out at 9a, straight up. We came to a couple crevasses, one open and two very wide and walked across to the left managing our rope tension three times. If I did it again, I would work more left on the way up. This navigating took some time. When we made it up to around 14k we discussed if we had enough time to continue up. We also discussed some crevasses that did not look super filled in above us, where some crevassing met perpendicular to each other. We weren't sure with the pitch if skiing roped up would mean injury, but if the crevassing wasn't filled in we might not be comfortable skiing over them. Some people might be less conservative with their risk management than us for this. We skied back down to our camp. It was sastrugi at first, but was dust on crust lower which was fun. We roped up for the middle part where the larger crevasses were, always great practice skiing roped up. We debated switching to two teams for skiing ease, but preferred the safety of catching a fall with more of us. 

Day 7 we packed up and went from 11,8' to 3,4' over around 16mi. There was breakable crust in the middle, powder-ish low, and then lots of ice patches. We were able to ski the whole way down. We carried our skis across a flat tundra area, carried the sleds on packs after the cache (except me, we had 3 sleds), and took our skis off to cross sheep creek lower down. There had been more melting out of Sheep Creek while we were gone. At the end of the day we skate skied on the dust on crust. 

Day 8 we finished the 18-ish miles out in a little over 6 hours. We skate skied the whole way. When the snow pack was turning a bit warm, we ran into a snowmachine track that had been put in during our absence. With this we were able to skate ski all the way to the Copper. The sled people skate skiied with their packs half the way and dragging their packs in the sleds half the way. Skate skiing with 50lb-ish shifting on your back was power hours for someone who doesn't do cardio. It was 40degrees at the car and we were in no gloves and sun hoodys. Overall was a great trip with great weather and company. Really beautiful area, and walking in was super fun. It felt nice to go from the highway up to 14k and meander our way through terrain to get there.