Talisker Tusk

August 1, 2013

I awoke to the sound of heavy rain pounding on the fly of the tent. It was time to get up, but hearing that sound made me want to roll over and go back to sleep. My bowels had a different plan so I slipped into my rain clothes and stumbled to the outhouse. By the time I came back to the tent, the storm seemed to be clearing. I laced up my boots, hoping that we would still be able to climb today. After breakfast, the verdict was declared a go, so seven of us hitched up and started climbing the glacier. Our goal today was a funky fin of rock between Gwendoline and North Star. It is un-named so we have been referring to it as Talisker Tusk. We roped up to cross a substantial crevasse field and then arrived at the base of the peak. Matt scooted ahead to scout a possible route. He found a nice line so we roped up and pitched the climb out in a series of six or seven short pitches. The climbing was great and about 5.6 in difficulty which felt much harder in boots. One off-width crack had me stymied for a while until I realized that I could cam my boot in such that the heel and toe jammed against the opposite sides, making the ascent of this pitch easy, once the trick was figured out. Finally we reached the summit. We were not the first ascentionists, as there was a small cairn on top. We could not stay long as there were several big storms coming up the valley, so we began our descent after sharing a bit of scotch on the summit courtesy of Tana. It was Laphroaig, not Talisker, and now the Scotch mountain gods were angry and throwing lightning. We found a 4th class route down which we short roped and finally lowered/rapelled off the side of the peak onto the snow field. We quickly roped up and scooted across the glacier getting hit by the rain half way back. Arrived back in camp after about a seven hour day.

Talisker Tusk in view from the upper section of the North Star glacier.

The tusk looms closer.

Matt scouting out the route.

Climbing a slabby pitch. Interesting work in boots.

Summit of Talisker.

A second rope team arriving.

Tana on summit. Andy eyeing the bottle of scotch in her back pocket.

Getting the hell off the mountain before the storm rolls in.

Peter and I relaxing at camp, free from the wrath of Talisker's fury.

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