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.  

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, O’malley was the biggest peak I’d climbed. It was also formative bcause I’ve since vowed to never walk around Eklutna Lake again because the return trip was so. Incredibly. Miserable.  We walked 8+ miles 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.  It wasn’t as disgusting as you’d imagine.

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. 

Kiro and I climbed Bold in 2014.  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’m not aware of any other dog who had climbed this mountain in a day from the parking lot.

The third time I climbed Bold was in September 2017 with Galen, we had originally planned to attempt Bashful but the fresh snow soured our plans.  The trip was fun and easy, we were both in great shape.

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, 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. 

8 years later, 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 removed from society.  Front Range runs don’t scratch the 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 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 Wheel of Time audiobooks for this trip and needed a solid 9 hours to fully listen to the climactic chapter of the series (nearly a quarter of the book).  So it was at 6AM on July 10th, as I set off from the Eklutna Lake parking lot I 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 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, 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. 

At the base of the Gully I took a break.  Bear horn and bear spray put away; bandana 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), 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. The creek that flows down the gully 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 waterfall as I had in my 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.  There is a large gully with hard scree that I have traversed in the past.  However, every time I do I have some regret because the fall potential is great and the traversing is difficult.  Much like on Benign, hard scree is more similar to rock and presents fall potental. After testing how shitty the gully traverse would be (quite shitty), I recalled my previous ascent and climbed the grass to the top of the gully to avoid the scree entirely.

I emerged onto a grassy plateau from which dreams are born and walked into the sun.  Flowers and butterflies abound this plateau and it was the first time the sun kissed my skin today.  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, only rivaled by the next valley.  The view from this plateau is glorious, there’s 9 miles of valley to the south. 

After leaving the plateau, I hiked to the top of the next hill and 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; impossibly, this little sliver of life endures, like there was a spell was cast to make this one patch of ground fertile.

After God’s Valley it’s back to scree slogging.  For a few miles.  Round a corner at 4,700’ and head up the valley, I stayed to the left to avoid losing elevation.  I caught a snow gully at 5,000’ and gained 500’ of elevation until the underlying snow became too icy to safely ascend further.  I traversed across the snow gully to the spine of the ridge at 6,000’, with 1,500′ more elevation 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 real 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.

The goods:

The High Chugach:

I’ve been watching the moraine at the base of Mt Palmer melt over the years.

The clouds tend to flock to Bold’s north side in the afternoon, so after spending an hour on top with clouds gathering around me I started down.  I made very quick progress due to the scree and snow, I think I dropped 3,000’ in an hour and fifteen minutes.  God’s Valley had no daylight remaining, so I didn’t stall here and quickly boogied to the Plateau, still illuminated by the waning sunlight.  I took a long rest here, preparing for the descent.

I departed the Plateau shortly before the sun left the grass, traversing across and down into the shadows towards the access 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.  After an annoyingly tedious descent, I quickly descended the exit gully and was almost running down the scree of Stiver’s Gully.

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.  At one point I thought the trail crossed the creek via a fallen tree, and after bushwacking around to find the trail I realized I shouldn’t have crossed.  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.  The mind follows similar pathways and I was once again hit with the realizeation that the trail continued after the fallen tree, on the same side of the creek.  It took me about an hour to reach my bike, I took a short break by the river.  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. 

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, arrived well after 1AM.  I took a shower, made a quick dinner, and used the normatech leg massagers we invested in a few months back.  It was good to be home once again.  With my two main objectives for the summer checked off, my eyes turn to Bashful to someday make an ascent of the highest peak of the Chugach State Park.  At least I’ve got the approach dialed in!

Speed Stuff:

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

Roughly this comes out to 18.5 hours truck-to-truck. Keep in mind, I’m 36 (which is getting old in the mountaineering world) and take lots of pictures.