Devil's Paw in Alaska: Brette Harrington and Gabe Hayden climb West Face

Over two days last week Brette Harrington and Gabe Hayden successfully forged a new line up the West Face of the Devils Paw, the enormous granite peak that just out of the Juneau Ice Cap located in the Boundary Ranges, straddling the border between Canada and Alaska,

After having envisaged the line last summer, conditions finally proved favourable this September. Harrington and Hayden climbed for 12 hours non-stop, past sections of extremely steep granite, to reach the summit at 18:30 and then began abseiling back down the face. After a short and somewhat cold bivy on a ledge at 3 am they continued the 20+ abseils, and returned to the base of the mountain at 9:30 am that morning.

The new route has been called Shaa Téix’i, which translates as Heart of the mountain and checks in at 1300m, 5.11a. This is Harrington’s second visit to the huge Juneau Ice Cap in just a couple of months: in June she added some new routes to other nearby peaks with Caro North and now she told planetmountain.com "This was the line I had been waiting to climb all summer."

Brette Harrington thanks: Arc'teryx, La Sportiva

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