The Tusk Attempt, Chigmit Mountains. In June Fred Beckey, Craig Martinson and I made an attempt on the Tusk, an impressive 1000-foot tower in the Merrill Pass area, about 100 miles southwest of Anchorage. We turned back at about the same point as Steve Hackett and Barry Kircher in 1971, with perhaps two-thirds of the tower below us. Both of the other two had been hit by rockfall but were not seriously injured. Beckey called the decomposed granite the “worst rock I have been on in 20 years.” We did climb to two summits, possibly the first ones reached in this remote range. They lie just west and south of the Tusk.

Eric Bjornstad