Bold

Bold Peak sits dramatically at the head of Eklutna Lake, it’s long north ridge stretches half the length of the lake and its north face sitting high above the water.  The most common route up the 7,000’ peak lies on the backside of the mountain; there’s a long gully that becomes a valley which leads to the high slopes of the south side of the peak.  I’ve climbed this mountain 4 times in my life, twice solo, so I felt comfortable planning to ascend on my own again during the day-long break from historic rain that mid-July afforded the state of Alaska.  

2008

The first attempt I made on Bold was with future cabinmate Peter Illig in 2008 in the summer between high school and college.  I got a random phone call from Peter inviting me to walk around Eklutna Lake to try Bold Peak.  This trip was formative, as I’d never attempted a mountain of this scale before. It was also formative because I’ve since vowed to never walk around Eklutna Lake again because the return trip was so. Incredibly. Miserable.  We walked 8+ miles with heavy packs and camped at the airport, the next morning we walked another 2 miles down the road and attempted to climb Bold via Stiver’s Gully.  We failed to take the correct fork in the gully and dead-ended at a waterfall with nearly-vertical grass growing to the right and decided to turn around AND walk all the way back to the parking lot that night.  This was the first and only time I tried nutella, spam, and pilot bread together because it was what we had and I was very hungry, and it wasn’t as disgusting as you’d imagine.

2010

Not counting the time my bike tire popped a first few hundred feet from the parking lot (we went up one of the Twin Peaks instead), the second time I attempted Bold was a successful ascent in 2010 with Paul Huske.  We ended up at the same dead-end as with Peter, but as I’d recently become a climber we stubbornly decided to climb the grassy cliffs to the right of the waterfall.  While this was terrifying and not my best decision, we did find the fixed ropes once we topped out above Stiver’s Gully.  We summitted in a cloud but were able to check it off our list. 

2015

Kiro and I climbed Bold in 2015.  I’ve never been more proud of Kiro than that day, the round trip is 30 miles with more than 6,000’ of vert.  I was planning on stashing my gear and putting him in my backpack for the bike back around the lake, but he determinedly trotted all the way back. Kiro didn’t walk for 3 days after the trip, it was definitely too big of a trip for him but in the ignorance of my youth I didn’t think about that before committing us both. I was also just a few days post breakup, so I wasn’t thinking great. I’m not aware of any other dog who had climbed this mountain in a day from the parking lot.

2016

The third time I climbed Bold was in September 2016 with Galen, we had originally planned to attempt Bashful but the fresh snow soured our plans.  The trip was fun and easy as we were both young and in great shape. The fall colors were begining to emerge as we biked around the lake in the evening. We bivied near the lake and had a clear sky, Galen did some night photography which was one of the first pricks of interest I got in the hobby. I recall waking up the next morning with everything damp—next time, I’d camp a bit further away from the lake. We did not get a particularly early start and were on the summit around 6:45PM.

2018

The last time I climbed Bold was 2018 and my life was in a very different place.  I had a lot of internal struggles I was managing, dealing with changing relationships and drifting in life, spending all day on Bold Peak was a nice way to settle my mind.  I set out under overcast skies and climbed through the clouds before I reached the summit.  This time I bought my little camera with a lot of zoom, so the photos were higher quality than previous trips.

2026

8 years later in 2026, my life is so much better.  I have a fantastic life with a wonderful wife in our beautiful house, a stable job with reasonable hours, endless household projects to keep me fulfilled, and excitable furry companions who make our house feel like a home.  

And yet.

There’s nothing quite like delving deep into Alaskan mountains and moving through rugged terrain, far removed from society.  Front Range runs don’t scratch that itch, though they’re fun.  This is the struggle of the aging mountaineer, trying to find balance between settling down and growing roots in town, while somehow feeding the ageless dragon that demands vert and varied terrain over a long distance.

——-

I had been watching the weather and snow conditions on Bold since late June when I climbed Benign.  I was waiting for a window where the snow in the valley bottom has melted but the snow higher up was still present. 

With more than a week of rain forecasted from July 11 onward, July 10th would be my last chance to get up the mountain for a while.  I made these plans months ago; I’d been saving the end of the 14th (and final) book in the Wheel of Time audiobooks for this trip. For perspective, the entire series is more than 450 hours. I needed a solid 9 hours to fully listen to the most climactic chapter of the series (nearly a quarter of the book), this day would see much more time than that. I set off from the Eklutna Lake parking lot at 6AM on July 10th and hit play on Chapter 37: “The Last Battle”.

The bike around the lake was quick.  There were what I call “vibe clouds” hanging out above the lake, but through holes in the sky I could see clear weather dominated the upper elevations.  I parked my bike 10 miles from the parking lot near 3 other bikes stashed in the woods. I later found out these folks were climbing Bashful this same day.  I followed the trail along the east Eklutna River fork but lost it in a boulder field; I took a left when I should have stayed right!  I had to bushwack my way back to the trail because I stubbornly refused to turn around, after which it was easy walking until the Tee with Stiver’s Gully.  Both Bold and Bashful share this approach, there is one good trail from the Tee to the Gully and many bad trails. 

Stiver’s gully is the primary access to Bold Peak’s summit. It’s a long gully with a few horizontal breaks between scree slopes. The scree is fairly good quality, there are long patches of firm but walkable scree, as well as looser scree that make descending more enjoyable. The gully tops out in a dramatic fashion, with a series of ropes leading climbers to the grassy slopes above. The true “top” of Stiver’s Gully is a messy chute of hard unforgiving scree, the grassy slopes are the nice alternative to finishing the Gully proper. At the very top of the gully is a divine grassy plateau.

At the base of the Gully I took a break.  Bear horn and bear spray put away; bandana for gathering sweat taken off, helmet on.  I’ve never worn a helmet on Bold, but as there was an accident in 2025 from a falling rock (on the day Claire and I married, coincidentally), I decided I would now climb big peaks with a helmet. The ascent was faster and easier than I remember, there are roughly 3 steps to ascend in addition to the final gully climb to the ropes. The creek that flows down the gully (but can be heard) is buried under scree for the lowest step and emerges somewhere around the second step.  The creek claims roughly a third the width of the third step, above above that takes up half the gully as it descends from a waterfall.  Rather than ascending to the side of the waterfall as I had in my earlier youth, I turned right after the third step and climbed up the steep exit gully to the ropes, naively thinking “this time I won’t need the ropes” as I do every time I climb this mountain. 

Wrong again, I pulled myself upwards over the hard scree with the help of the ropes.  Strangely, without the ropes the slope would be less intimidating, but the fall potential is still real and I was grateful for the fixed lines.  Once I reached the second rope, I took a look over the ridge dividing this gully from the one I climbed on my first ascent and was amazed at how steep that route was, though it was on good vegetation and not hard scree/rock. 

I climbed out of the steep rocky section and onto the grassy slopes above.  This true top of Stiver’s gully is a large steep bowl with hard scree and one exit that I have traversed across in the past.  However, every time I do I have some regret because the fall potential is great and the traversing is difficult due to the hard scree. After testing how shitty the gully traverse would be (results indicated “quite shitty”), I recalled my previous ascent and turned around to climb the grass to the top of the gully to avoid the scree entirely. Sometimes memory is location-dependent.

I emerged onto a grassy plateau from which dreams are born, the sun had just reached this area.  Flowers and butterflies abound this plateau and it was the first time the sun kissed my skin this day.  I spent a good half hour refueling and relaxing, taking some time to spread some of Kiro’s ashes.  This may be my favorite part of the mountain now, only rivaled by the next valley.  The view from this plateau is glorious, there’s 9 miles of valley to the south and thousands of vertical feet of mountains to gawk at. Everything has perfect lighting in the morning—in the evening all these peaks will be shadowed.

After leaving the plateau, I hiked to the top of the next little hill and stayed on vegetation as long as I could until I descended scree to the valley bottom.  This next valley is my favorite valley in the world.  It’s a little slice of heaven, a blog from the 2000’s (which I cannot find) called it “God’s Valley” and it truly feels like a miracle.  Sitting at 4,000’ elevation, this little oasis of green is contrasted by the stark scree on all sides; this little sliver of life endures impossibly, like there was a spell was cast to make this one particular patch of ground fertile.

After “God’s Valley” it’s back to scree slogging.  For a few miles. 
This content is why folks come to slogsomewhere.com, after all. I slogged a lot.

I rounded a corner at 4,700’ and headed up the valley, staying to the left to avoid losing elevation.  I caught a snow gully to climb at 5,000’ (just as I planned) and gained 500’ of elevation until the underlying snow became too icy to safely ascend further.  I thought I saw a person at the top of this gully but it turned out to just be a rock and I’m pretty sure I had this thought on one of my previous ascents. I traversed across the snow gully to the spine of the ridge at 6,000’, with 1,500′ more elevation left to gain.  Not much to say for the next section; if you stay on the spine, the travel is a bit easier because there’s solid rock and not just scree.  I reached the broad summit (7,522’) a little after 4PM and did a bit of a tour looking for the summit register.  Unfortunately I couldn’t locate it, I suspect it is currently buried under snow. I hung out on top and finished Chapter 37, which was incredible.

On previous ascents, I was usually on top between 6-7PM, so I felt I was doing good on timing! I started to doubt whether I’d see Claire before she went to sleep, though. 5 hours to get back to town seemed unreasonable. I took photos on top and rested/ate for about an hour, as the weather was fantastic and so were the views.

The goods:

The High Chugach:

I’ve been watching the moraine at the base of Mt Palmer melt over the years. There’s a cave formed by meltwater from a higher, disconnected glacier.

The clouds tend to flock to Bold’s north side in the afternoon, so with clouds gathering around me I started down, continuing the Wheel of Time.  I made very quick progress due to the scree and snow, I think I dropped 3,000’ in an hour and fifteen minutes because I was able to glacade down the snow.  God’s Valley had no daylight remaining, so I didn’t stall here and quickly boogied over to the Plateau, still illuminated by the waning sunlight.  I took a long rest here to refresh my spell slots, preparing for the descent.

Just as I arrived at the plateau before the sun, I departed the plateau shortly before the sun left the grass, traversing across and down into the shadows towards the exit gully.  I swapped my camera and poles for work gloves and slowly descended the ropes.  I mostly wrapped the ropes around my hands and lowered myself slowly.  In the past I’ve body belayed, but as I’ve gotten older that method has seemed less enticing and twisting the ropes around my arms would tear holes in my clothing.  I’d like to use work gloves to lower myself down the rope, but I’ve been developing carpal tunnel this summer after a lot of yardwork, so my grip strength is diminishing as the carpal tunnel worsens. After an annoyingly tedious descent, I quickly descended the exit gully and was almost running down the scree of Stiver’s Gully as Rand faced the Dark One in the Wheel of Time. I decided to pause and save the last hour of the book for the bike back.

I made it to the base of the Gully shortly after 9PM.   I found a better trail than the one I followed back to the Tee!  I did get lost at one point: I thought the trail crossed the creek via a fallen tree and, after bushwacking around and failing to find the trail, I realized I shouldn’t have crossed the tree-bridge.  I was hit with a sense of déjà vu, as I was pretty sure I’d made this mistake the last time I was up here 8 years ago.  Sometimes memory is location-dependent. I went back to the tree and confirmed the trail clearly continued after the fallen tree, on the same side of the creek, and somehow my eyes missed this very-obvious trail.  Anyway. Note to future travelers: there are many paths off the main East Fork Eklutna trail.  Don’t be tempted to gain elevation or stray far from the river for the first mile.  The trail will start heading inland eventually and it will be obvious, if you lose it you did something wrong and should go back.

It took me about an hour to reach my bike taking the correct trail the entire way, I took a short break by the river 2 minutes from the bike drop.   

The bike back to my truck was slow and sore.  I had been texting Claire all day, letting her know I was doing well.  This time I was sure to keep her appraised of my location even once I reached my truck.  I texted her on the way home, arriving well after 1AM.  I took a shower, made a quick dinner, and used the awesome leg massagers we invested in a few months back to help my legs recover.  It was good to be home once again.  With my two main objectives for the summer checked off, my eyes still flicker towards Bashful to someday make an ascent of the highest peak of the Chugach State Park.  At least I’ve got the approach dialed in!

Timing:

1:15 Bike in
1hr hike to Stiver’s Gully
2.5hr to the plateau above Stiver’s Gully
0:30 rest
3 hours to 5,500’, 2 hours to top)
1h on top
4h down to bottom of Stiver’s Gully
1:15 hike to bike
2h bike back around lake

Roughly this comes out to 18.5 hours truck-to-truck. Lots of folks can climb faster, but speed is less important than enjoyment. I’m 36 (which is getting old in the mountaineering world) and take lots of pictures; once I realized I was not going to get home before Claire went to bed I no longer felt any need to rush. It was the nicest day of the summer so far! I soaked my feet in the little creek by the parking lot before starting the drive home, happy to have finished the Wheel of Time mere miles from where I started. There are no beginnings or endings to the wheel of time, but this was an ending.