In the late 1970s, after meeting Mark in Chamonix, and Pat Carr as well as Mike Brochu in The Valley, we decided to plan a trip to do the sixth or seventh ascent of the Cassin Ridge the following spring.
So many things were different back then. For starters, there was so little available information. A couple of AAC journals, an essay in Mountain #28 by Alex Bertulis, and Brad Washburn's great photos were all we had. Planning your trip today there are numerous blow-by-blow accounts online, YouTube videos of crux moves, multiple guidebooks, and of course, route topos. Then came the the bureaucratic regulations which seem arcane today. So, when Pat Carr had to drop out that left us hunting for a mandated fourth, which subsequently had us adding an untested and quite unsatisfactory fourth, to get on the mountain legally. Then too, there was the day spent in Portland trying to beg, borrow, buy, or steal a mandated radio. The next day in Portland was spent drumming up the mandated and mostly fictitious, on-call rescue party. (Of course we also had to shop for food, with one of our party excusing himself to break up with a girlfriend; which meant that I planned the trip menu, loaded with frosted pop-tarts.) Finally, there was the dreaded and mandated Ranger inspection, which truthfully by then had morphed into a good natured, and quite beneficial chat. We got none of the adversarial greetings you got from the Baxter State Park Rangers in the 1970s, on your way into a week of ice climbing on Mount Katahdin. All this to go climbing!
Then once on the mountain there were the inevitable, "what the f**k were we thinking" moments. Really, half the group on snowshoes and the other half on skis? Did I really believe - until loading Doug Geeting's plane - that I would do the route with an expedition parka and a half bag? No back up stove? Four slings, three tube screws, and two pegs?
Of course, some things were spot on ... Mark proved to be a climbing partner for the ages, except for a few aberrations (i.e. half bag) light is right, a life-long love affair with fruitcake, and a half gallon of scotch was the best piece of gear to barter with on the glacier.
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