1997 Alaska Expedition: The First Trip Supported by the John Lauchlan Award

A trip report by 1997 John Lauchlan Award recipient Grant Statham.

Grant Statham and Tim Pochay were one of two teams who both received the first John Lauchlan Memorial Award in 1997 to head into the Kitchatna Spires in Alaska to venture up the unclimbed north pillar of Gnomen Spire.

This particular piece from Grant Statham explains the importance of the John Lauchlan Award, the character that was the man himself, and the value of exploratory climbing.

The following piece first appeared in the 1998 Canadian Alpine Journal.

Kitchatna’s in a storm. Photo: Grant Statham.

GNOMEN SPIRE AND THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE

It wasn’t all that far along in my youthful, energetic quest to climb that the name John Lauchlan began to appear – quite regularly it seemed. Of course, at the time I had no idea who John was, or what he had really done out in the mountains. I simply read the stories, absorbed the spirit and then ran out to try and live through my own adventures.

As time and my climbing experience both continued to move along, the legacy of John Lauchlan became a part of my learning curve. I’d seen the pictures and read the stories, and now I was living out my dreams on Slipstream, The Pencil and The Maker; climbs of significance that reached far beyond my mind. I’d become good friends with some of John’s old friends, and now I heard the stories from a personal side – of Gangapurna and the Grand Jorasses. Perhaps more than anything though, I learned of a contagious enthusiasm that wove its way through an entire community.

Tim on pitch 3 of Gnomen. Photo: Grant Statham.

I was just a pimply faced kid learning to tie a figure 8 when John – and any chance I ever had of meeting him – died on Polar Circus. The essence of his life however, would endure and in 1996 a committed group of people created the John Lauchlan Award. This exciting gift was “instituted to support and perpetuate the bold and adventurous spirit that characterized John Lauchlan and his mountain exploits”. This was an awfully mouth watering proposition for the likes of me; it didn’t take much convincing from Tim Pochay for us to focus our energy on winning this prize. For me there was a lot more to this than just a climb, or a bunch of money. I saw it as a path to express my respect for someone whose spirit I shared.

So it was that I found myself in the Kichatna Spires in May of 1997, staring up at the enormous, unclimbed north pillar of Gnomen Spire. Indeed, this objective embodied everything I felt the award should represent: innovative, exploratory, lightweight and bold. The reality of this trip however, wasn’t nearly as exciting as the images beforehand. We tried as hard as we could for the first five days of perfect weather, but just couldn’t put it together. Mini-epics shadowed us. Then the misery of expedition gambling hammered down and we spent the remaining three weeks tent bound and shovelling.

Tim and I failed completely in our objective to “bring home” a giant new route in the name of John Lauchlan. However, this failure served only to further inspire me and reinforce what is most important and continues to give me direction: it’s not the mountain, nor the route on it, but the spirit that feeds these objectives which defines who we really are. More than anything, I’m proud to have carried the spirit of John Lauchlan into the mountains and to have thought about it a lot – realizing that had John still been alive, he certainly would have visited the Kichatna Spires long before I did.

My sincere thanks to the Canadian Himalayan Foundation, Infosat Telecommunications and those behind the John Lauchlan Award for all helping to get this trip off the ground.

LOGISTICS AND TIMELINE

1. We flew in and setup our basecamp on the Cul-de-Sac glacier, directly under the north faces of Kichatna and Gnomen Spires. Perfect weather.

2. Immediately started climbing the north pillar of Gnomen Spire, which is a steep granite pillar which we hoped was loaded with ice runnels. Its wasn’t. We climbed several hard pitches low on the route, each of them scratchy and scary because of no ice. We eventually bailed after Tim had a frightening hard runout that he could not protect and had to down climb. So much for Gnomen Spire.

3. Next we tried a new line directly up the north face of Kichatna Spire. This is a beautiful, unclimbed long waterfall to the summit. We crossed the bergshrund and climbed several ice pitches until confronted with a school bus sized snow mushroom blocking the way. We considered all options to get around it, but eventually had to give up as we were scared to even touch it. While rappelling over the bergschrund, our snow bollard anchor broke and Grant fell 10 meters onto his back inside the bergshrund, then got hit on the head by the bollard! He was ok, so climbed out and then lassoed the ropes back up to Tim so he could get down too. So much for Kichatna Spire.

4. We then focussed our attention on a steep SW facing (warm) wall on an unnamed peak that was directly above our camp. We climbed four excellent granite pitches in rock shoes to get check it out, then fixed our lines and returned to basecamp. Our plan was to haul our gear and portaledges up the next day and commit. The next day the high haze came over the sky and we could not get psyched. We jugged to our high points, pulled all of our gear and returned to basecamp. Totally rejected, now with no plans.

5. The next day it started storming and continued with only a few breaks for almost three weeks. We only escaped basecamp once to ski around and check out Middle Triple Peak and when we returned to camp in the storm our tent was destroyed. Our flight out was 5-days late and we had no communication as to what was happening. Finally, in desperation we climbed to the summit of a nearby peak in a clearing spell and made our briefcase sized sat phone work. That stopped our families from worrying. While we were on the summit, we heard and watched the plane land in front of our tents. We screamed and yelled and ran down, praying the pilot would hear us. He did, and that afternoon we were back in Talkeetna.

The first John Lauchlan Award recipients, from left to right: Grant Statham and Tim Pochay.

The John Lauchlan Memorial Award

The John Lauchlan Memorial Award is a cash and mentorship award designed to assist Canadian climbers.

The award exists to perpetuate the bold and adventurous spirit which John Lauchlan exemplified in his climbing exploits. Specifically, the award strives to promote the development of Canadian climbers through the support of worthy expeditions and mountainous adventures. The JLA encourages climbers from all backgrounds and from any community in Canada to apply.

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1997 Alaska Expedition: The First Trip Supported by the John Lauchlan Award