Anna Pfaff, Andres Marin, and Tad McCrea have completed a new route on the south face of Alaska’s 3,429m Mount Providence.
Last year, Pfaff, Marin, and Thomas Bukowski opened this new route up the 983m south face but had to turn around about 100m below the summit. They graded it V, M5, AI4, 5.10.
At the end of last month, Pfaff and Marin returned with McCrea to complete the route to the summit, which they did.
Anna Pfaff, Tad McCrea, and Andres Marin on Mount Providence. Photo: Tad McCrea
Mount Providence’s steep and technical lines are rarely attempted. According to Marin, the peak has been summited only once or twice before.
According to the American Alpine Journal, Samuel Johnson and Jeremy Piggott established a new route in 2004 up the western half of the south face via a striking couloir and rock buttress. The mixed climb brought them to Providence’s corniced summit ridge. They graded their 13-hour round-trip climb from base camp V, WWI4, M6.
In 2016, Andy Anderson and Kim Hall climbed a pyramidal rock buttress and up a couloir on Mount Providence. They didn’t quite summit but established an aesthetic line that they graded 800m, IV, M5, WI4.
Andres Marin wrote on social media about the route:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DJMXgrluvuB/?igsh=MTdnNjRpZG5qdHVtdQ%3D%3D
