Mount Kimball, Alaska Range. In August a party of ten from the Alaska Alpine Club hiked in sometimes drizzly, usually foggy weather from the terminus of the Can well Glacier at the Richardson Highway, across the upper Gakova Glacier and down an unnamed glacier to Slate Creek to a mining camp some 35 miles from the road. At Slate Creek the party was completed with its eleventh member who was flown in with supplies from Summit Lake. On August 25 we established a base camp at 6400 feet on the Chistochina Glacier seemingly directly beneath the precipitous slopes of 10,300-foot Mount Kimball’s southwest ridge. From here a two-pronged attack on the mountain was launched. John and Kathleen Davies, Jim Miller and Jerry Kreitner set out the following day to attempt the southwest ridge of the mountain. They managed to reach about 7800 feet but finally the very loose nature of the underlying steeply pitched rock and the sight of a couple of ugly gendarmes further up the ridge forced them to return to Base Camp that evening. Meanwhile Guy Tarnstrom, Dan Osborne, Jim Pray, Ed Wilkins and I set out for the north side of the mountain. (Patricia Thompson and Dona Miller remained at Base Camp.) Climbing a steep couloir, we soon reached the pass to the Pitfall Glacier; a long very steep traverse around to the right brought us to the upper basin. We placed our camp at 8900 feet just under the bergschrund below the north ridge. While camp was being pitched, a preliminary scouting party put in a couple of hundred yards of trail up the less steep part of the heavily corniced north ridge. The following day dawned clear and the five of us set out up the ridge. Conditions were quite good with perfect step-chopping ice on a firm base. After five hours of hard leads with much belaying we were a mere 300 feet above camp at 9200 feet. The climb had involved at least one nearly vertical lead up over a steep part of the ridge and a huge cornice which ungraciously gave way six inches from where the lead climber was about to place a belay. Deteriorating weather led to a unanimous decision to retreat. The following day we decided to get all the stronger members of the party on the north side of the mountain for a concentrated attack. While three headed down to Base Camp, Jim Pray and I made use of the good weather to climb the easy 9550-foot snow peak to the northwest. It was an easy climb which we believe was a first ascent, to the west of the mountain climbed by the Hoemans. That evening just as the others returned from below it began to snow in earnest and dumped three feet of snow on us. The next day, August 30, realizing that the ridge would be suicidal with the new snow, we began our retreat. We reached Slate Creek in two days. There all but three impatient climbers waited two days for the plane. The other three hiked the 25 miles over the tundra to Summit Lake.

Douglas Bingham