bench lake: Geology work: Rainy Pass

From Bill:
Got some last minute work from my friend RC breaking rocks and collecting dirt. It sounds unglamorous but it involves flying around in helicopters in remote parts of the Alaska range, traversing cliff faces and hauling around big bags of rocks. Pretty fun, definitely a break from the routine. This machine is the A-Star, fun flying.

RC and I were work buddies for a few days because we aren't scared of things that people should be, like rotten exposed cliff traverses and rockfall. On the 2nd day the clouds came in but our Kiwi pilot Sam was supremely unconcerned as all of us passengers were sweating bullets. Flying in thick fog in unfamiliar mountain terrain was a new experience for me, but Sam and RC knew the area, and through the magic of a badass pilot and GPS we ended up exactly where we wanted to be.

At the end of the day no climber can resist 5' of rock climbing- probably a first ascent!

Off in the distance on the flight back- the Kichatna spires. Mostly unexplored, big granite icy peaks, what more could you ask for, right?

Lunchtime...back to front: Dale, Kyle and RC. The other folks: Phil, Andy and Zach (no pictures unfortunately) were on the other side of the peak collecting samples.

And then the weather came in- we were almost out of food and snowed in, less than 50' visibility and darkness loomed. As our time for pickup came closer we began to laugh defiantly in ther face of a potentially bad situation. No, none of us brought adequate bivy gear or even headlamps, of course not. A funny bit of group enabling ensued and the grand plan was to walk into the dark back towards the lodge over a whole lot of Alaska terrain. Thankfully, the weather parted enough for our pilot to pick us up on time. No problems, right?

A few days later everyone else took off for Anchorage, Phil (the head honcho who hired me) Kyle and I flew around into the Tordrillos to collect dirt and put it into little bags.