But Bill McKenna of Homer was intent on clinging to the last shred of winter. Face to face with the ice-covered bluff, he worked his way from beach to bluff top, one axhold at a time.
A rope and shouted communication connected him with Matt Sabelman, who stood below, waiting his turn to ascend the steep face and ducking from falling chunks of ice dislodged by McKenna's ax.
For more than 20 years, McKenna has been climbing. Rock, ice, mountains, boulders, in the United States, out of the United States.
"It's an athletic pursuit that I like. Certainly, you have to commit yourself to it, but the rewards are great," said McKenna, adding, "The risk is great, or can be, too."
Ask him why he climbs and the answer comes in a stack of photographs. In one, thick, jagged icicles hanging from a bluff at Tutka Bay support the weight of two climbers, their tiny shapes dwarfed by the frozen surface. In another, McKenna's helmeted head is tilted back as he scans the rocky surface of DNB, Direct North Buttress in Yosemite National Park. And in another, McKenna is seen working his way up the Moonlight Buttress in Zion National Park.
If the photographs don't stir a desire to experience life suspended from a rope, with fingers and toes defying gravity, then McKenna has trays of slides documenting climbs he has guided in Bolivia, with clients that look exhausted but elated. There are climbs where partners are injured, but still flash a smile at the photographer. There is a woman and man, 63 and 64 years of age, with celebratory smiles after McKenna guided them to the summit of Denali.
McKenna's is an intimate knowledge of rock, routes and the sport's evolution. He points out scars on a mountain made before new climbing methods were learned. He laughs at memories of spending nights strapped onto a portable ledge.
"You have to have lots of trust in your equipment and your ability to use it correctly," he said. "It's like any skill, the more you do it, the more you get proficient at it. It can't ever get just routine."
As a youngster, McKenna loved exploring the forests of New England. Wanting to learn more about being in the backcountry, he enrolled in the National Outdoor Leadership School, a program begun in Wyoming in the mid-1960s by mountaineer and outdoorsman Paul Petzoldt.
"That's where I first learned technical rock climbing and mountaineering," McKenna said. A three and a half month course, "Fall Semester in the Rockies," provided opportunities for winter mountaineering, spelunking (cave exploration), trips to the desert and time in Wyoming's Wind River area. "That got me off on the right foot," McKenna said.
"I never get sick of it," McKenna said, his infatuation with the sport driving him to climb at least once a week, if not more.
Homer has a small climbing community, including Sabelman and Kye Klamser, who teach climbing techniques on the Bay Club's climbing wall. Sabelman began climbing on rocks, but, with McKenna's instruction, is gaining experience on ice.
"A lot of this is trial and error," Sabelman said. "And experience is everything."
So is trust, when it comes to choosing climbing partners.
"You have to trust them to care about living as much as you do," said Klamser as she and Sabelman prepared to climb in the Turnagain area last weekend. "That's the scary thing for me. ... You don't climb with a ton of people. You get your partners and stick with them."
Klamser talked excitedly about wanting to summit Antarctica's Mount Vaughan when Norman Vaughan makes his ascent of the mountain that bears his name later this year, at the age of 100. She and Sabelman also talked about wanting to climb areas along the West Coast. McKenna is currently preparing to teach a course in crevasse rescue and planning for a week of climbing in the Alaska Range.
"(Climbing) has kept me out of so much trouble," said Klamser, who is only 17. "You go and you train and it's your life. In the summer, you're outside climbing. In the winter, you're on the ice or in the gym. When I'm not climbing, I'm training."
For Sabelman, climbing is an inner adventure.
"It's all about the rock, when everything else says you're going to fall, but your soul and spirit says you'll make it," he said. "It's a spiritual journey for me."
For McKenna, there is the thrill of exploration, both outer and inner.
"I like remote climbs, particularly in Alaska," he said. "For some (a mountain) is like a magical, spiritual place. For others, it's like a lump of rock to conquer. For me, it's somewhere in between. It's a religious experience being there."
McKibben Jackinsky can be reached at mckibben.jackinsky@homernews.com.
Winter-weary residents soaked up the sunshine on the beach between Ninilchik and Deep Creek on a recent Sunday morning. Clam diggers took advantage of a low tide to harvest razor clams, their cold-numbed fingers warmed by thoughts that spring was at hand. Barking dogs ran along the sand, enjoying their unleashed freedom. Couples strolled hand in hand, breathing in the salty air.
He tried ice climbing for the first time in Montana, but it was the bluffs rimming Alaska's beaches where he focused on ice-climbing techniques. In two decades, he has climbed all around Alaska, all around North America. And he has climbed in South America, flying into areas where runways are miles in length to accommodate the thin air.
We encourage you to add your comments. To prevent spam, comments with links are manually approved during the normal business day. Please be respectful of others with your comments, bear in mind anyone in the community may be reading your comments.
