Alaska 2025: Cassin, Messner, and other things

Alaska 2025: Cassin, Messner, and other things

By Wesley Perkins

Climbing the hanging glacier on the Cassin

Ever since I started skimo, I had dreamed of climbing Denali. I never realized that dream could become a reality until a couple of years ago, and I never realized it would be the culmination of my ski mountaineering and climbing passions. Two years ago, some skimo friends and I had dreamed up the idea of a Denali trip. We applied for permits but were denied because two of our group members were under 18. I spent a winter climbing in Hyalite, Griff spent a winter competing in the skimo world cup series, and Emmett flew, skied, and climbed. At some point in the winter, I got psyched on the Cassin, so I hit up the boys, we bought permits, and started planning.

One of my main climbing partners in Bozeman, Cooper Moore, was also psyched on the Cassin. We planned and trained for it together for a couple of months until he started having knee issues, which made movement in the mountains too difficult. A month before the trip, Cooper threw in the towel to avoid putting his body through too much pain. This was a huge loss for the team and I am bummed he could not come. However, one of my friends from Colorado, Max Kilcoyne, was also going to Denali and was planning on rope soloing the Cassin. We called and decided a party of two was a much better system. The team was ready for Alaska.

We had splitter weather for our first five days on the mountain. Unfortunately, we were not acclimatized, so we only went up to 18,000 feet before this window closed. We waited in our tent and skied laps out of camp while a small storm closed off the upper mountain.

Eventually, we woke up to clear skies, set the booter up rescue gully with our friend Wyatt, and headed up for our first summit of the trip. We clipped in, skied off the summit, and were surprised by excellent snow on the autobahn. Back in camp, we were greeted by an amazing sunset on Foraker.

The sun casting a pink hue on Foraker

The next five days after summiting, we were beaten down by a huge storm. We passed the time by hanging out with our friends Jared, Ty, and Tevis, who cooked us pizzas. Peter, one of our friends who we skied rescue gully with, baked his partner Vadim and Emmett a cake to celebrate their birthdays. Many afternoons were spent in the cook tent of Riley, Spencer, and Phil. Griff summited again via the West Buttress on a semi-clear day.

After our spirits reached an all-time low, we were blessed with a clear yet cold and windy day. The Messner hadn’t been climbed or skied yet, but looked enticing. We skinned up to the base, threw crampons on, and started booting up. Amazingly, the wind slab felt very stable and consistent across the whole line. A few inches of heavy powder blanketed the slab, making for seemingly great conditions. Emmett waited at the football field while Max and I summited again. We clipped in at the top in 40-mile-per-hour sustained wind and skied down to Emmett. We all navigated the first 1000 feet of sastrugi and found impeccable snow in Messner. We took turns skiing big GS turns down the entire face, lined up the bergschrund, and ripped into camp. This was one of the best skiing experiences of my life.

Our tracks down the Messner

Another 4 days of bad weather brought us to the window of high pressure that we were waiting for. Griff headed down to base camp to attempt a fast effort on the peak. Max and I geared up for the Cassin. We approached with two other climbers, named Dan and Danny, via the Seattle ramp. Several traversing and down-climbing pitches of low-angle ice guarded the entrance. Eventually, we were able to put skis on and meander over the crevasses, through the serac falls, and over the bergschrund to the base of the Cassin.

The Japanese couloir proved much easier than we had both expected. I guess it could be WI4 given the heavy packs and skis, but felt much more like WI3- in Hyalite. We reached the top, accidentally passed the cassin ledge, and chopped out a bivy below the crux rock of the route. The next day, we planned to get through all of the rest of the climbing. The 5.8 crux felt quite easy, except for our skis, which constantly got stuck above us or wedged themselves into the chimney. We pushed through the cowboy arrete, only placing a couple ice screws. The weather was amazingly clear, giving us a view of three climbers going up the East Fork of the Kahiltna. As we were still quite ambitious, we decided to eat one of our freeze-dried meals at the hanging glacier because we thought we could finish that day. I led the hanging glacier, which was around 30 feet of vertical dihedral ice with a small overhang at the top. Max topped out and led the whole first rock band. It was getting late, and we were quite tired, so we looked for a bivy. We chopped a very small platform into the blue ice beneath the second rock band. We clipped into a screw and spooned in our single sleeping bag to stay warm. That night, Max dropped the rest of his food off the mountain. Luckily, I had just enough for the two of us for one more day.

Max leading the Japanese couloir “crux”

We woke up and started the second rock band. I thought this was the crux of the route. The first chimney felt quite a bit more physical than the 5.8 earlier on the route. Then there was a small vertical band of rock with thin cracks, which took ice picks perfectly, leading to a sketchy snow-covered slab traverse. I was pleased with how well the Akila performed when bending the tool to jam it in the crack. Maybe we got off route here, but this was the hardest climbing on the Cassin. We topped out the second rock band and were greeted by 1000 feet of thigh-deep bootpacking, followed by 2000 feet of calf-to-knee deep, and finally sastrugi. We reached the Kahiltna Horn completely obliterated at 8:30 pm, clipped into our skis, and got back to 14 camp in 45 minutes.