Jackson Marvell, Matt Cornell et al. climb two new routes on Alaska’s Pyramid Peak

I first saw a photo of Pyramid Peak in 2016 and was immediately drawn to a central line on the mountain, thinking it looked improbable. Paul Robertson and I applied for a grant in 2017, which we didn’t receive. The Revelations are an expensive zone to access, so we shifted our sights to the Phantom Wall on Mt. Huntington.

In 2020 Matt Cornell and I made plans to travel to the Revelations to attempt Pyramid, but the pandemic shut them down. In 2021 we tried to go again; although Matt received the Cutting Edge Award to fund his portion of the trip, we were unable to get good-enough weather to fly into the glacier, and instead we tried several things in the central range.

This year, we left Bozeman on a road trip to Alaska in mid-March. Tired of having our sights set on objectives, we kept the mindset of chasing good conditions instead. When we arrived in AK a few weeks later, Andres Marin and Clint Helander had just finished their trip to Golgotha, and they were kind enough to share a photo of Pyramid with us. The conditions on the peak looked quite promising. After a flightseeing tour around the central range to check conditions, we shifted our ambition to Pyramid once again.

We spent a week hanging around Talkeetna trying to line up flights into the glacier while also watching a very stable-looking weather window grow nearer. At last, Talkeetna Air Taxi was able to take us to the R&R Hunting lodge, which sits only 25 miles from the head of the Revelation Glacier, and from there, Rob Jones flew us with his Super Cub to our BC on the glacier, ferrying our loads in five trips.

We landed on the glacier at the beginning of a seven-day high-pressure system. Base camp was set and we started scoping lines. The central line on Pyramid–which had drawn our attention for years–looked more involved than we had initially expected. Not wanting to blow the window aid climbing the first several incredibly steep pitches, we opted for a less obvious line of ice ribbons that connected features directly to the summit on the right side of the west face.

We set out from base camp the following day, April 10, with three days of food, a double rack and a light aid climbing kit that included many beaks. Looking through our spotting scope in BC, we had identified a route with several question marks that prompted the light aid rack.

I took the sharp end and we simulclimbed the first 210 meters of the route. Arriving at the beginning of the harder climbing, we broke into block-leading tactics. Matt led us next up to the first question mark of the route, a large leftward traverse to connect to some smears of ice. The traverse went down quickly as Matt freed the pitch: thin slabs of ice with sparse gear connected as if by miracle and deposited us at a belay stance with three tied-off stubby ice screws for an anchor. I got the next block, and I set off on paper-thin delaminated ice that creaked as I scraped by for two pitches. (We later learned that both of these pitches fell off once the sun hit them later that day.)

This block led us to the base of the next question mark, a massive rock scar corner that we dubbed the “crystal corner.” Matt took the first pitch of the corner, completing another impressive lead that often required M7 moves quite far out from gear. I then led the remaining pitch in the corner, which put us below a large snowfield two-thirds of the way up the wall. By then the sun was on us, and things were getting quite warm. Matt led up an obvious slot to reach the snowfield where we planned to bivy; this slot led us to a blank kitty litter slab with difficult route finding. We were forced to make a 5-foot rappel to gain the snowfield. (Once safely back in BC, we joked that we should have just jumped to keep our free ascent.)

On the snowfield, we dug a snow ledge for our two-man tent and watched the sunset while drinking water and slurping packets of freeze-dried meals. The next morning, we slept in till 8 a.m. enjoying the plush bivy we had built, thinking we only had a few more moderate pitches to the top. We left the bivy at 9:30 a.m. and simulclimbed a few rope lengths to the beginning of some more technical climbing. I took the lead on the last question mark of the route, a thin runnel that led into a left leaning roof.

From the ground, the roof had appeared to have a smear of ice underneath. Out of sight from Matt’s belay, I made several requests to “watch me close here, I might whip” as large amounts of faceted snow rained down. Fifty meters out, I excavated snow and entered the roof section, which I climbed with creative headlocks and smeared crampons. Fortunately, the lip of the roof had a smear of ice that flowed from it, and once I was on the smear, I quickly finished the pitch. Above the roof was a beautiful runnel of ice. Matt took off on the lead and rapidly dispatched two more pitches of vertical to overhanging ice that lead us to the summit slopes. After a few steps of mixed climbing, we found ourselves on top of Pyramid Peak, where we enjoyed a pot of coffee and began our descent. We down climbed a large chunk of the north ridge and then rappelled six rope lengths. The last rappel put us in a large snow couloir on the north side, which we descended unroped to the glacier. We named the route Techno Terror (AI6 M7+ R A0, 3,600′).

After two days of rest in BC, on April 14, we decided to attempt another route on the NW face of Pyramid with our friends Austin Schmitz and Jack Cramer who had been traveling with us to document the trip.

The line we planned to attempt next was an obvious snow and ice route with one question mark two-thirds of the way up. We left camp at 6:30 a.m. and booted 1,000 feet up the couloir that we’d descended during our prior climb. From the start of the technical climbing, 800 feet of 70- to 90-degree ice brought us to a snowfield that led to the crux of the route. This next portion consisted of perfect neve in a corner with difficulties up to AI5+. After these pitches, we arrived at the base of the steep rock step that split the couloir. I tried to free the pitch but got shut down once the wall got steep, so I resorted to aid climbing. Above this step, we continued climbing 70- to 80-degree ice, which led us to the summit slopes. We summited at 7:20 p.m. and enjoyed a few cigarettes on top before retracing our steps down the descent of the north ridge. We named the route Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em (AI5+ A2+, 3,600’). It was great to climb this route as a team of four after spending the prior month traveling together.

We spent a few days in base camp enjoying the views with clear skies. Then on one of these days, John Varco dropped out of the sky unexpectedly to give us our flight out of the range to a lake where we caught another flight back to Talkeetna.

[You can read more about Jackson Marvell’s adventures here, and a story about Matt Cornell’s exploits is here.–Ed.]