Mount Root. On May 30, Silas Wild, Sam Grubenhoff, Jim Urvina and I made the first ascent of Mount Root (10,570 feet), which we believe had been the second highest named but still unclimbed peak in North America. We were flown from Yakutat to 6700 feet on the Grand Pacific Glacier. A side lobe of the glacier rose directly above our camp. Weaving around crevasses, we cramponed up 1500 feet to the crest of the lobe. We crossed the bergschrund on the only snow bridge that connected the glacier to a 40° couloir. We climbed 1500 feet in the couloir to where the snow ended. It appeared that it would be fairly easy rock from there to the summit, but we had still to cross a nasty ice-filled gully, the crux, since we had left crampons and ice axes behind at the beginning of the rock. We still had a little more scrambling on rock and a hundred feet of moderate snow to the summit.

Warren Guntheroth, Mountaineers