Mount Kiliak and Other Peaks, Western Chugach. This 7450-foot peak near Mount Yukla up the Eagle River valley had been the last virgin 7000-footer near Anchorage since the ascent of Mount Rumble in 1966. Dave Johnston, his sister Jill, my wife Grace and I packed to the edge of the stagnant glacier west of it on September 14. Bothered by innoculations, Jill accompanied us only to the head of the glacier at 5000 feet the next day. After chopping steps in the steep snow to reach the cirque wall, we scrambled easily to the col on Kiliak’s north-northwest ridge 1000 feet below the summit. The rock became quite rotten and difficult, but by using the thin snow clinging to it and three pitons and three runners for protection, we reached the top by mid-afternoon. We traversed down the easier south side into the shadow of the 3500-foot northwest face of Yukla, but the brush and cliffs became so bad that we had to bivouac.

On July 21 Bill Babcock, Dave Meyers, Grace and I made a new route on Peril Peak (7040 feet) by gaining the long southeast ridge from the east and following it to the summit. We descended west from below the step on the southeast ridge as Parker and Inukai had in 1966. In late July a second ascent by a new route, the southwest ridge, was made by Larry Tedrick and Allan Tomich of Mount Calliope (6810 feet; first ascent by Bob Hansen and Bill Hauser from north-northwest on June 24, 1967). The same month Hans Van der Laan and his brother Roelf made the first ascent of "Flute Peak” (6610 feet) at the head of Flute Glacier, one of the glaciers where Bill Long was doing research this summer. Grace and I traversed easy Harp Mountain (5001 feet) on November 16 from northwest to southwest for a first ascent. The last independent peak in the Organ Mountain group, Hurdygurdy Mountain (5965 feet; a boxshaped peak with a cranklike west ridge) has been tried but remains unclimbed.

J. Vincent Hoeman