Our four mountaineers — Matt Farmer, Dawn Glanc, Kevin Mahoney and Bayard Russell — share their recollections of and thoughts on their ascent up unclimbed Peak 8290.

It is my belief that every mountain is climbable. It is also my belief that every mountain will not be climbed every time it is attempted.

I was asked to join the Big Expedition by Matt Farmer, Farmer as he is known. I barely knew Farmer, in fact just weeks earlier, we had met over burritos and beer in Bellingham, WA. At the same dinner I met Dawn Glanc. I knew of Farmer, in that we have mutual clients in the small world of mountain guides. He was well respected in the industry and my first impressions were that he was a great guy who was a straight shooter. Dawn also gave a great first impression and it seemed she had a passion for climbing ice and mixed climbing, so she was first-rate in my book. Farmer and Dawn were to be partners on the Big Expedition and they wanted me to join and bring a partner who was going to fit our team and had similar attitudes towards risk. Bayard Russell came to mind immediately.

Our objective was to attempt an unclimbed Alaskan peak (8,290') in the Fairweather Range of Glacier Bay National Park. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle created the Big Expedition to raise awareness of the challenges and importance of cancer research. Joining four individuals who have never before climbed as a group and had not known each other prior to the Expedition takes a lot of trust for the members and for the Hutchinson Center. Trust is integral to all interpersonal relationships. It allows us to bond and meet challenges without hesitation or doubt. We would be expected to assess the situation in the mountains, come to a consensus about how to handle it and carry out our plan as a team. That was our charge, now we had to carry it out.

The expedition started in Seattle June 11, 2008. We would have a day to shop, organize and pack. Then we were off to Gustavus, AK our jumping off point. Captain Jim would drop us off in Reid Inlet with his fishing boat. For a few hours on the boat it was easy to forget we were here to climb a mountain. Humpback whales were all around and seals were lounging along the shore. Once we were dropped off and the boat buzzed away our first task was to get 750 pounds of gear and food from the shoreline to the glacier where we could start to ski and utilize our sleds. This would take three trips over two miles of unstable moraine and a gain of twelve hundred vertical feet. On the very first carry I stumbled upon bear tracks, Grizzly tracks. I wanted to get a picture and gain perspective so I laid down my baseball hat next to them. I realized how big the bear was when the tracks were wider and longer than my hat with a visor. Plus the claws extended a few inches past the pads. It was a big bear. Each subsequent trip, I would peer with paranoia over my shoulder as I hauled salami, bacon, sausage, pepperoni, and beef jerky up to the glacier.

Once fully installed with our kit we went to work establishing camp. Within minutes I broke the toe piece of my ski binding. A few minutes later Dawn hollered something about a bear. At first it didn't register then I realized what she was saying and I joined the orchestra of shovels and ice axes and taunting with shouts of false bravado. Fortunately the bear took no interest in us, or our two hundred pounds of food.

We made it through the night eating Belly Timber bars and Snickers. The bear had given us a hall pass and we sorted out my binding. We were back in business. The next few days were filled with packing, moving up a long flat glacier, unpacking, eating and doing it again. A lot of sweat and blisters allowed us to establish base camp by day four at 5000 feet at the head of Reid Glacier.

After a few days of much needed rest, with rain and snow as the excuse, we carried our climbing gear up to the Reid/Gilmore col and scoped the route. The northeast ridge of Peak 8290 was our objective. To access our route we would need freezing conditions to allow us safe passage under the east face of the peak. The face was constantly shedding avalanches. The skies were clear and it looked promising for a freeze. We decided to spend the next day organizing for the climb and hope for a freeze the following night.

Sometimes everything can come together and you still don't make the summit. That is just alpine climbing. Eager for the climb we could barely sleep in the afternoon sun. By 7:30 pm we were all up and eating dinner and drinking as much as we could. With a final tweak of our packs we set off at 9:15 p.m. from camp. The snow pack had set up just enough under the 30-degree temperatures. Our first challenge was to gain the ridge. With our skis cached at the edge of the monster moat, we belayed each team member across the jumbled bridge and over to a flat area on the northeast ridge. Our plan was simple — carry bivouac gear to the base of the northeast ridge cache it and attempt the climb then descend the route back to the cache. The bivy gear would allow us to wait out unstable snow conditions for the traverse back to base camp. The teams would be Dawn and Farmer, Bayard and me.

Conditions seemed reasonable but there were still plenty of questions to be answered up high. The first pitch off from the ledge required a belay up slab rock with sugar snow plastered over it. From there we were able to put away the rope and solo together. The rock was freshly exposed to the elements after millenniums of glacial work had crushed, scraped, and ground the granite into a defined ridge of plates, flakes, talus, boulders, and sand that were teetering on each other in a fine balance that begged to be toppled. There was snow to sneak onto to avoid the layers of chaos. However, the snow was also precariously bonding together from the light freeze we were experiencing. The surface of the snow had an inch thick crust that would collapse under body weight and underneath was a mess of wet corn snow looking for a reason to give into gravity's pull.

Bayard and I climbed first and pushed ourselves through three discussions of "Should we keep going?" We would both agree that it seemed sketchy, but I was hopeful that it would get better a little further along. We connected islands of loose talus between slopes of 60-degree snow. Above hung a large but partially receded cornice. Optimistic was not the word you would use to describe our mental status. It was 2:30 a.m. and concerns of sunrise heightened as the colors in the northeast sky morphed from purple to red to orange. Once it made it to bright yellow, we were not safe on the slope. To the southeast hung dark clouds with precipitation already hiding Taylor Bay 40 miles away.

We had pushed it as far as we could to still feel like we had reasonable control over the situation. From about 400 feet and desperate traverse from the summit we turned around. Turning around shy of the summit is one of the more difficult decisions to make in the mountains. There is always baggage involved: disappointment, guilt, and self-doubt. Once you make the first step down it all dissolves into relief. Not relief for the end of the physical pain but relief that your mind can focus on one thing, getting down safely.

We joined Farmer and Dawn to let them know we were done. They had come to the same assessment and were just as happy to beat it out of there. We down climbed several hundred feet together, which was painfully slow with the encroaching storm or sun which ever arrived first. We decided it would be faster to fix a sixty-meter rappel and send three people down it and then I would clean the rope and down climb. This allowed the fastest descent for most people and kept them safe from rocks and snow that I would surely dislodge. We followed this strategy for several rappels, as the storm started to fill the air with snow, until we were safely back at our cache. Once there, we did not linger. We still had to get out from under the east face avalanche alley before the storm worsened. Anxiety is the best medicine for summit angst. We did not make it to the top and the conditions were such that we did not want to return. All emotional baggage about the lack of summit was dumped into the yawning moat as we rappelled over it and back to our skis.

Back in camp ten hours after leaving it, we breathed a collective sigh of relief and tipped a toast to the mountain with the last of our scotch. Peak 8290 was not going to allow passage to its summit without a steep toll, which we were not prepared to pay. Risk is inherent to climbing mountains. For some, it is cornerstone to the appeal. For me, risk in the mountains is to be embraced and cherished as a part of experiencing life in a very sublime and primeval way. Like coveting the forbidden apple, temptation has to always be removed from judgment when making decisions in the mountains.

Proud of our effort and content to let Peak 8290 reside unclimbed until she is ready, we packed up base camp and pointed our skis down glacier to return home.

Our trip left Seattle and headed to Glacier Bay National Park on June 13, 2008. Saturday morning, the day began with a long breakfast at the lodge. This would be our last meal for awhile in which we would be sitting at a table, drinking coffee from ceramic mugs. I soaked in the last moments of luxury and then headed down to the boat dock. Our expedition was about to begin.

The boat we were going to take to the Reid Inlet was the Alaska Dream, captained by Jim Kearns. The boat ride was about 3 hours. We cruised along the water enjoying the scenery of Glacier Bay National Park. We spotted quite a bit of wildlife along the way. We saw otters, birds and my favorite, humpback whales. It was an amazing way to start the approach to a climb.

Eventually we made our way to the shore of Reid Inlet. Jim landed the boat right on the beach. We eagerly jumped ashore and moved our gear onto the beach. The farewells were quick. We took many photos and said goodbye to Dan and Kit who had come along for the boat ride. The boat pushed away and you could see the look of worry in Kit's face. She waved goodbye with such emotion. As the boat engines faded into the distance, the trip was a definite reality. We were left on the beach with 21 days of food, skis, sleds, tents, sleeping bags, two full climbing kits and all of our own personal kits. Due to the risk of bears, we had to get the entire load at least one mile away from the beach and onto the glacier.

Instead of being overwhelmed with the task at hand, the team dove straight into the chore. We had so much stuff that each of us needed to carry 3 separate loads along the beach, across the streams, up the glacier moraine and onto the snow. We each loaded up our packs, popped in our iPods and began to walk up the steadily rising moraine. We traveled as teams of two to be "smart" about the bear. After 3 round trips we settled into Camp One as the drizzly rain began.

Camp One was very exciting. Within the first few moments we had a few events that we thought were going to stop the show. First Kevin broke a ski binding in a way we thought was unfixable. As we hemmed and hawed over the binding, I decided to duck on the other side of the rocks to pee. Just as I was undoing my belt, I turned to look down glacier and I spotted the Grizzly bear sauntering up to our camp. The bear was just 50 feet from me as I began to yell and get the attention of Farmer, Bayard and Kevin. We banged on shovel blades and shook our ice axes high in the air to look big and aggressive. The Park Service said that the bears would actually be more scared of us than we would be of them. We did not find this statement to be true. We continued to yell and scream at the bear. The bear slowly and casually wandered away, showing no concern for us. After eating a cold dinner of bars, we buried our food and all scented items 2 meters deep in the snow and went to bed with ice axes in close reach.

The next day we woke to rain. We dozed back to sleep and a late start brought sunny skies. After a long coffee session, we made a plan to move our camp in two loads up the glacier. We wanted to make a cache of food, but we had to do that away from the bear. Once the coffee motivation kicked in we divided the gear into four piles. We each divided our own pile into two separate loads and packed our sleds and packs for the journey. The loads we carried that day seemed very manageable. We arrived at Camp Two and enjoyed our first real dinner.

Day 3 came, and after another long breakfast and coffee session we were motivated for the day. From this camp on, we would move in a single carry style. As I had expected, the loads were very big and super heavy. My pack and sled combined were easily 100 pounds, if not more. I am not a woman of extreme girth, so I was moving a load that was close to 75% of my body weight. This proved to be the hardest part of the trip for me. Moving that amount of weight everyday for hours each day was very taxing on me mentally and physically. I tried my best to keep up with the boys, but that load simply slowed my speed to a crawl. With the help of my iPod, I somehow endured 3 long, arduous days of moving these loads. On the third day of slogging, we arrived at our base camp.

At base camp, we took a day to relax. We needed it. I needed it. I was tired and had a bad, bloody blister on my right heel that was as big as a half dollar. We hung in camp sleeping and eating our way through the day. It was also a white out all day, so resting seemed like a very reasonable plan. Even after a long morning session of coffee, the motivation remained low.

The next day we wanted to go to the saddle and scope the possible route options on Peak 8290. We woke to a white out, so we spent the early part of the day eating and drinking coffee. Sometime, late afternoon, the weather cleared and became bluebird. We strapped on our skis and grabbed the spotting scopes. We each skinnied up the slope to the top of the saddle. The trip was under an hour to reach the top of the saddle. From there we could see our route, and see down into the other valley. The views were awesome; the mountains seemed to roll on forever.

After some deliberation, we picked a route up the northeast ridge to attempt the summit of 8290. The ridge looked doable. We made a plan to leave camp in the evening and climb through the night. We had spotted a bivy sight so that we could rest on the route during the heat of the day, avoiding sun-baked slopes. A plan was made to climb the following night. Everyone got super jazzed and excitement filled the air. The game was on!

The next day we laid low in base camp. Again eating and sleeping the day away, to be ready for the summit bid that night. At 6:30 p.m. the stoves were fired up for dinner. We laughed and told stories over a de-hydrated dinner. After a dessert of chocolate, we set off around 9:00 p.m. for the climb. The weather was perfect. The skies were clear, winds calm and temperatures around freezing. It never gets dark in Alaska this time of year, so it was never any darker than twilight through the night.

Getting over to the climb was very interesting. Farmer set a skin track that traversed over to the ridge from the saddle. It was side hilling on a moderately steep slope. It was no-fall terrain, with crevasses and firm snow slopes. Bayard and I skied as far as we felt comfortable. He and I then took our skis off, strapped them to our backpacks, and boot packed up to the moat that would begin the climb.

The first objective of the climb was to cross a gaping moat and get onto the ridge. Kevin led out and set a high belay for the rest of us to get across to our bivy ledge. Once at the ledge, we stashed all of our bivy gear. We could see the summit was about 2000 vertical feet away. It looked as though it would be an easy jog to the summit. From this vantage point it looked like moderately steep snow slopes and some scrambling. Nothing looked too daunting. We had planned to climb in teams of two. Kevin and Bayard, and Farmer and I would be the teams. Around midnight we began to climb away from the bivy ledge.

What looked like an easy scramble did not turn out to be so. The snow slopes were a bit steeper, and only had a one inch of supportable crust over it. Under the crust the snow was mushy and the underlying rock was really unstable. The rock was perfect granite; however it was not a solid wall. Instead, the rock was loose, unconsolidated and very unstable. It was like climbing a house of cards. Some pieces were tiny and others were huge. They all seemed to be defying gravity and somehow staying stacked on the mountain. As you climbed, rocks of all sizes moved and shifted. There was no way or no place to protect ourselves. There was nothing solid to put gear into, so everyone was essentially soloing the climb. No protection means no errors can occur. One slip could result in a fatal fall. It was gripping to say the least.

We pushed on for a few hours up this deadly terrain. Farmer short-roped me to give me the illusion of safety. I knew that if either one of us fell, we would take the other down as well. Finally we reached a point at which the risk outweighed our comfort level. There was no way to provide safety to one another, and there was no reasonable way to manage the risks at hand. It was intense the entire night. The snow we were climbing had to remain frozen, or we would be in real trouble. If the sun rose, we would also have the problem of the rock thawing and becoming even more unstable. After a short discussion, the teams choose to turn around.

We still had to get back down, and that would prove to be no easy task. Reversing everything we had climbed would be even more dangerous on the way down. Falling rock and warming snow was a serious threat. A storm was also marching its way toward us, providing even more pressure on the team. It was not until we all reached the saddle safely that the sense of security returned. I felt as though we narrowly escaped a dangerous situation. It was a mixture of luck and wise choices that returned the entire team to camp. We arrived in camp at 8:00 a.m. We each knocked back some whiskey and then went to bed.

The route we tried did not inspire us to climb any other peak in the area. The overall rock quality was very poor. Rock fall and avalanches were a very common occurrence coming from the surrounding peaks. It seemed as though we missed our window for the proper conditions. We did not see any other reasonable objectives to try, so we choose to head out and back to the beach.

Traveling from base camp to our cache was a big day. It was downhill at first, so most of us would simply glide down the hills. I had very short approach skis on, so gliding was not really happening for me. It proved to be another very heavy and long day for me. After much frustration due to my struggles, I lagged behind. Finally, the team arrived back to our second camp site. We stayed at that camp for one full day as we waited to go to the beach and rendezvous with the Alaska Dream. We opted to stay away from the beach, because of our friend the bear.

Finally after 11 days, Dan and Kit arrived shortly after 8:00 p.m. with the boat to pick us up. Everyone was very happy to see each other. We were happy to see the boat carrying cold beer, and Dan and Kit were happy to see us all alive and well. We loaded the gear and the duffle bags into the boat and headed back to civilization. This time the boat ride felt different. We shared the highlights with the crew and toasted our drinks over and over. We had accomplished something big, and we were celebrating.

On the way back to the lodge, Jim stopped the boat so that we could whale watch. It was amazing to see the whales. This whale watching experience was the icing on our cake. It was beautiful to see the whales. They were so close; it looked like they were going to hit the boat. The sound the whales made when blowing out water, as they reached the surface, echoed through the night waters. It was a magical experience, and we were the only boat on the water enjoying it. Sometime around midnight we headed back to the lodge.

Looking back over the trip I have mixed emotions. I am very proud to have been a part of this expedition. I could not have gone in with a better team of people. We gave the mountain our best shot, but came up short of the summit. It is always hard to turn around, and as a perfectionist, that choice is something I will always play over in my mind. I believe in my gut that we made the right choice, and feel that because of our good mountain sense we all made it back to tell our story. This outcome will be easier to live with than the alternative.

I am now missing my favorite part of these big trips. We had so much fun on this trip. Jokes and laughter were a part of every meal. The thing I miss most is the simplicity of life while on the mountain. I miss being 100% engulfed by Mother Nature, and all the feelings that come with that. We had a very unique opportunity to be so far into the mountains, so self-reliant and miles away from other people. We spent time among a mountain range that few people will ever see. It was an amazing experience. This will truly be a trip that I never forget. We climbed a mountain for a good cause, and now we must each look toward the next mountain to climb.

For a couple of pairs of strangers we couldn't have gotten along better. We all had a blast from the first press conference to the final beer in the airport in Juneau. All the plane travel and all the load shuttling on the Reid Glacier was done with a smile and a joke. In the midst of finding ourselves in too close quarters with a Grizzly bear, with the very real possibility of getting all our food stolen, being followed for days and an early end to our trip, we were laughing at the absurdity of our situation - stranded in the middle of nowhere while sitting on top of more calories than that bear had ever seen in one place.

I will never forget the isolation of Glacier Bay and its mountains. It was a welcome change from the popular and crowded ranges we frequent where the importance of self reliance is diminished by the crowds. This spirit of adventure was the most important part of this trip for me. It's hard to express the joy of being so far from people in such an untraveled and pristine place.

The combination of the ocean and the mountains contributed to the uniqueness of place. The view from base camp was out to the bay across almost forty miles of flat, empty glacier. The relatively low elevation of the mountains allowed for a variety of wildlife uncommon to a climbing trip, from Grizzly tracks in the snow seven or so miles from the ocean to flocks of honking Canada geese getting turned around in the cul-de-sac of a valley we were base-camped in. Of course the mode of transportation to and from the glacier allowed for a more intimate perspective of where we were and what lived there. For people used to flying in and out of the Alaska Range, the 50 mile boat ride to the beach at the toe of the Reid Glacier was an absolute thrill. How often do you get to see humpback whales on a climbing trip, or sea otters floating on their backs with their young on their chests?

We all appreciated the singularity of where we were and what we were doing. This was a coincidence of character in the team members that was crucial to the success of the expedition right down to the minute details of life on a glacier. This trip was about so much more than just the climbing and we all knew it. The initial decision to ski to the mountain under our own power was what made the simile to cancer research complete. We could have just been dropped off a few miles from our objective, but that is not the case in cancer research. Trudging along, hauling and carrying over a hundred pounds of equipment over such a vast expanse is a sometimes painful, generally tedious process that requires a certain amount of concentration on the goal in order to endure. Although we clearly had the easier job, this understanding of the project on all its levels was clearly felt by those at the Hutch who were involved with the Big Expedition. Their excitement and cooperation was really what made this project special and made us feel part something bigger.