Big new route on Mount Dickey in Alaska by Matt Cornell, Jackson Marvell, Alan Rousseau

Climbing alpine style from 31 March to 2 April, Matt Cornell, Jackson Marvell and Alan Rousseau established a bold direct line up the formidable East Face if Mount Dickey above the Ruth glacier in Alaska.

Rousseau explained to planetmountain that their new route tackles a line to the right of Snowpatrol and shares about 70 meters of terrain circa 1200m up the face, and ends by following for circa 200 vertical meters the rocky ridge first climbed by Tomas Gross and Vera Komarkova in 1977. The trio descended the standard West Face route of Dickey in 2 hrs 45 minute from summit to BC in the Lower Gorge.

Writing on his Instagram account, Rousseau explained "We found a lot of adventure on our three day push up the face. The route kept us engaged from first pitch to last, We had a ton of uncertainty on this thing. At least a dozen times on the route we looked up and didn’t know if we would find a passage through the next rope length. Fortunately we managed to scrape our way through and had some good (albeit cold) times along the way."

The new route is called Aim for the bushes, is graded AI6 M6X in its circa 1600m length and is now Rousseau's and Marvell's second route on the mountain's east face after establishing Ruth Gorge Grinder (AI6+ M7, 5,000') in 2019 further to the right.

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