Attempt on Mount Kimball, Eastern Alaska Range. Mount Kimball (10,350 feet) is fully 500 feet higher than its nearest contender in the eastern Alaska Range, although many of the lesser peaks east of the Richardson Highway have been climbed. A serious attempt on Kimball in 1959 (A.A.J., 1960, 12:1, pp. 112-3) and another by F. Beckey, A. Davidson and S. Foster in June, 1966 were stopped by bad weather and snow conditions. Fred Beckey, my wife Grace and I hoped to be early enough to beat these conditions this year when we were flown in to the Chistochina Glacier on May 20, but after we had explored over the 7650-foot pass at its head to "Pitfall Glacier” at the head of the west fork of Robertson River, we were hit by heavy snowfalls and not until the 24th could we dig a snow-cave high camp under the 8950-foot north col of Kimball. Such quantities of snow fell that night that the north ridge was rendered impossibly dangerous. Fred did not even want to look at it, but Grace and I went to the col and decided to climb the north peak on the other side of the col. When the steep slope cracked ominously, we retreated, but we snowshoed around to the gentler north ridge and reached the 9850-foot summit in a miserable white-out. The 30-mile snowshoe trip to the Richardson Highway on rotten spring snow, which included many open-stream wadings, was very fatiguing, but we reached the highway at Summit Lake on the 29th.

J. Vincent Hoeman