Coast Range Adventure II September 1-3

What awaits?

Labour day weekend was fast approaching, and no plans we really materializing. The mostly grim weather forecast (showery on Saturday, ok on Sunday, big system with rain on Monday) put an end to the most enticing trip ideas. I kind of wanted to venture up to the Coast Range again, like last year, and maybe find some ice - but I didn't want to make a bushwhack approach in the rain, and get our asses totally kicked like Dave and I last year. Greg suggested the north buttress of Chamois peak in the BC Cascades as a nice-looking long moderate climb. However, it was notoriously "greasy" and difficult to retreat off of. Even if Sunday turned out nice, what would it be like after a day of rain? Probably not good.

Getting home Friday evening, I glanced at some maps of the central Coast Range, and spotted a high peak that seemed to be fairly close to a dirt road - maybe within day trip range? There were a few small patches of ice on the north slope of this gentle-looking (from the map) mountain. Hmm. A check of an old BC climbing guide (which generally included only the easiest ascent up each peak - that's all that had been done when it was published) said it was a 2-3 day return trip from Xxxx Lake, and "faster" from Yyyy Lake, which is what looked good to me. I called Greg up and asked if he wanted to drive way up there (I figured it would be a 12 hour drive minimum) and check things out, bring some ice gear. I myself wasn't 100% into the idea, so I was suprised when he said "Yeah, sure. That'll be as good as anything else."

Knowing that this trip would probably consist of an incredible amount of driving, along with a little wet bushwhacking, we decided to leave the next morning at 6am.

"What should we bring?"

We decided on ice climbing gear, a half rope, and a tiny rock rack. In case we found something to climb.

Our first obstacle the next morning was the US-Canadian border. We got there before it opened! Didn't know our crossing wasn't a 24 hour crossing. After a fifteen minute wait, the gates opened, and 2 questions later, we were off to our destination in Canada land.

Intense rain. That's what we encountered along the way to Hope. The wipers needed to be on full speed, and there seemed to be lots of cars off on the side of the highway. Maybe they just gave up driving in these conditions? Lots of hydroplaning later, we stopped for breakfast in Hope, and continued up the Fraser river. This is where you get to Chamois peak. Obviously, it was raining pretty hard there. Good we didn't go.

Things got better past Lytton, and soon we were in the "east side" sun, with only occasional shower activity. Still no views of the mountains though.

The road to adventure...

A quick grocery stop in Williams Lake, and we were off. I was hoping to get gas before leaving the highway, but at our intended gas stop, the power was out (probably due to the high winds), so the pumps weren't working. So with a questionable amount of fuel, we set off down a questionably long gravel road. I figured I could do at least 70 or 80 miles one way and still be able to get back to the highway. The distance we needed to travel was about 50 miles as the crow flies, but of course longer as the Phil drives. Oh well - here goes.

The road was in suprisingly good shape - we weren't sure if it would end up just being a "cart track" or something. Finally, the edge of the range came into view. Soon, we could make out a prominent mountain - we realized it was "our" mountain. It had a large patch of white on its north side - ice! Maybe we would actually be able to climb something! It looked like there was some fresh snow on the peaks - hopefully not too much, but they were dusted in white.

Some nice green river...

The road kept going, and finally, we identified the creek crossing and subsequent side road where our intended route began. To our suprise, this old side road was also driveable. So of course, we headed up in my truck on the "cart track" that wound through semi-open scrubland, gaining vertical we thought we'd have to hike. Actually, it was mostly distance, not vertical. After ten minutes, we passed another vehicle that was parked off to the side. Aha! maybe this is a really popular trailhead! A hundred yards later, there was a nice clearing, and the route deteriorated somewhat. Figuring we'd already gone further than we expected to, we parked here and set up shop.

Greg, chillin' at base camp.

A while later, we heard another vehicle approaching. It didn't come quite all the way to us. I walked down to it, curious to see whether these were climbers, attempting the same peak as us, and this is a really popular place, or - whether it was some Saturday night drunken rednecks. I caught a glimpse of a man exiting a white van, and walking around in the bushes in what appeared to be a bathrobe. Oh no, freaks!

I ran back to Greg.

"Are you sure it was a bathrobe?" That's what it looked like, I answered. We began to postulate what the man was doing. They were not pretty thoughts.

A short time later, we heard the vehicle disappear, and both Greg and I went down to check out the other parked truck, to see if we could identify if it came from climbers, hunters, etc... Doh! There was the white van again, and here comes the man in a bathrobe! Too close to run away now...

It turns out he was wearing a "Canadian Tire" sleeping bag - I guess he was cold. The other vehicle belonged to his dad (presumably), who appeared out of the bushes in more normal clothes. They were here for hunting. I asked them if they knew if this was the "trailhead" for Mount Xxxxxx. They said yes, and the older man said he'd been up it a couple of times (via the walk up route). At some point, I asked if it was "doable in a day", bug Greg and I now disagree on what his response was. I thought he said sure, Greg thought he said something to the gist of "yeah maybe, but it would be long day".

The mountain in question, and our area in general, seemed to be on the cloud/clear sky boundary. It was very breezy, and we fell asleep in our bivi sacs after eating supper.

That night, I dreamed we hiked up the easy route, because the north side ice looked too difficult. Then, from the top, it didn't look so bad, so we downclimbed through trees alongside it, and scoped out the route. I recall traversing in from the trees, and winding back and forth on the ice (which was only a 30 degree snow slope, about 30 feet wide in dense forest), and looking at the base of the route 100 feet below - looked difficult to access, I said to Greg (keep in mind that we're already on the route itself here - dreams are weird, ok?). One way involved traversing under overhanging seracs, and the other involved tenuous snowbridge crossings, except all the crevasses were filled with ice cold water - in fact the whole glacier had a lake under it - you wouldn't have a crevasse fall, but you would get soaked to the bone and get hypothermia!

Back in reality, we left camp at 6:30 the next morning, following a well-trodden path east, through open scrubby woodland. Hopefully we could find horse trails up to the alpine, but the bushwhacking didn't look so bad anyway. Soon there was the requisite stream crossing. Obviously this was a horse trail. 50 feet downstream we found the human (log) crossing.

Greg straddling across.

The trail turned right and started uphill. Right on! Soon, we were climbing up an open grassy ridge on the dirt path. Greg rudely pushed in front of me and proclaimed that my pace was too slow, and that he could only go at one speed, and he would wait periodically.

I saw Greg pause at a section above, and then head right. I arrive at the spot - the trail split here, one branch continuing uphill, the other begining a side-hill traverse towards our peak. I wondered why Greg didn't stop for group concensus here, but figured he had made the right choice anyway, so I followed.

Soon, the path began descending a bit. It began to look unlikely it would take us where we wanted. I brought this up, and Greg agreed, but we continued on a bit. Finally we stopped. I mentioned that we should probably head up the hill side - that's what looked best from the map - get to the top of the ridge above treeline as quickly as possible. Greg concurred, but said that he hadn't seen any branch off this trail that might lead us up there. Doh! He never saw the uphill branch.

I'm liking this!

We went back and took it. After a few hundred feet though, it faded into obscurity. The GPS showed it was only 500 feet to the ridge top, so we just continued up. This certainly wasn't bushwhacking in the Cascades sense - I don't think I ever had to use my hands or anything. Just occasionally push through two pine trees that were a couple of feet from each other. Californians might call this bushwhacking, but not Pacific Northwesterners.

A ptarmigan sits atop a hummock with a view. Ok, astute observers may observe that this photo appears "doctored". This is only true in the literal sense. The ptarmigan was actually there, but it flew off slightly before my finger pressed the shutter button. Digital media has succeeded where nature has failed.

We topped out and saw the next portion of the route in front of us. A hill blocked our way. To the right looked steep, to the left less so, but it had some trees. We ended up deciding to just keep going, and do what came naturally. The exotic feel really started to set in here - it was amazing. To me this felt like Africa, or Peru or something (I've never been to either of those places). It was like "Little House on the Prairie" land, with a backdrop of the French Alps. What astonishingly easy travel, through open range lands - so unlike the Cascades, or any other part of the Coast Range I've been to - even the "dry sides". It is truly easy travel here. Where is the dense steep green jungle I'm used to??? Anyway, what came naturally was to hike right over the aforementioned hill. Unfortunately, we then had to descend 700 feet on the other side.

While descending the steep grass, I spotted a blue object way below. Hmm. A footpath appeared next to it.

Most of the way down, on a flat bench, we approach the object. It was a blue cube, about a foot on each side.

Unfortunately, seconds after this picture was taken, Greg was pulverized into a puff of smoke when he touched the blue cube.

Greg was the first to touch it, and feel it. His conclusion: a salt lick. This might be obvious to ranchers, but not to us. Ya learn something new everyday. This marked the first time I've ever encountered a salt lick on my mountaineering travels. Hopefully not the last!

We crossed a small valley, and headed up the final long gentle open ridge leading to the mountain. We noted the time: 10am. Not great, I had hoped we'd be faster. It was looking like we might not have enough time to do any climbing.

Our approach outline in red

Once we were high enough, we began angling left, which we thought would put us near the lake below the glaciers. Sure enough, we crested a ridge, and there was the greenish blue lake, with the peak rising behind it. Absolutely beautiful.

What can one say about this photo?

We took a break at the lake and analyzed our options. We were both feeling pretty awesome just with the fact that we were here. And we were both feeling a little scared by what we could see of the north face so far. It looked steep. Certainly steeper and longer than any alpine ice route either of us had done before. This is not your standard Cascade "ice route" which is really just hard snow - this was hard transparent ice the whole way up. Furthermore, it was approaching noon. The day was almost half over. We were exhausted, after having climbed almost 5000 feet so far today, over about 7 miles. The steepness looked like it would require belayed climbing for much of the route, and this would probably take us several hours. With a strong storm front scheduled to move in Sunday evening, we couldn't risk being caught high on the peak. We had no bivy gear. No one knew where we were - not a good time to take chances. The wind was also growing increasingly strong, with big plumes of spindrift coming off the summit, and "snow-devils" whipping across the glacier. We'd also seen drifts of snow. With those high winds, it was possible for serious windloading up on the more moderate slopes near the summit. They looked well-covered in fresh snow.

Spindrift coming off the upper face.

With all these negative factors in mind, we continued on to the upper icefield, taking the boulder field instead of the glacier. I was worried about the regret I'd feel if we didn't try it - but now, writing this, I feel no regret. We probably would have been seriously hosed if we'd started up.

We "route-finded" our way up some loose talus. It really wasn't that steep - I'm not sure if I'm just becoming a talus wimp, or what, but I found it really sketchy. It felt as if each step was going to release the whole hillside of boulders beneath me. I backed off one slope, and found a slightly more secure option. Maybe Greg was thinking "what the hell is he doing? What's wrong with this way?" but I just had this bad feeling about the slope. I kept thinking back to the Silas Wild/Lowell Skoog accident report in ANAM, where Silas injures his ankle on a loose moraine on Mt Logan, a full days hike from the road. Anything like that would have been serious shit up here (especially with the storm that was to come through).

Finally, after some more annoying boulder hopping, we made it to the upper icefield, and had a full on view of the route. Bergschrund crossing (didn't look too bad), followed by several pitches of maybe 45 degree ice, interrupted in one spot by the ice cliff running across the face. The (up to 100ft high) ice cliff was between 80 degrees and vertical, except in this one spot where it pinched off into a lower angle, shorter section (maybe only 20 feet high). Up higher, the route narrowed and became steeper (looked 60 degrees, but was probably less) on a "tongue" of ice, before mellowing near the summit. It looked like you could finish off on a narrow snow arete on the right - absolutely beautiful!

North side of the peak. The easy way apparently follows the left-hand skyline. Note the narrow diagonal ramp on the right - cool!

But not for today.

We had been thinking we'd just do the walk up route, but that too was looking less enticing. The boulder hopping we'd been doing was growing tiresome, and was very slow. We couldn't imagine doing 2000 more feet of that to reach thh summit.

So I suggested to Greg that we just tool around on the glacier for a bit.

"That's what I was thinking too."

We popped on the crampons and got out an axe, and set foot on the icefield. The rope stayed in Greg's pack for the moment, as this looked like a very benign, uncrevassed "glacier". We saw some features that I've never come across in the Cascades. The snout was a jumble of little 2 foot "ridges", and in spots seemed to be composed of half rock. Very interesting. At a definite point, it changed character, and the rock component of the glacier dimished. There were still some ridges here, with frozen little creeks of water flowing between them. There was running water beneath, so we hopped from ridge to ridge so as not to risk getting our feet wet. I guess the dry conditions here produce different kinds of things.

We ambled up to the base of the face and took a few pictures. It looked a little less steep from here, and the bottom portion looked fairly moderate. Further over, there was a nice "practise wall" of sustained 40-45 degree transparent ice, maybe six or seven hundred feet high. It was guarded by an ugly, but passable, bergschrund. It topped out at an inconvenient spot along the ridge line. In between, was a narrow ice runnel that diagonaled up amongst the rock of the face, topping out a few hundred feet from the summit. Hardcore. Every slope above the bergschrund seemed to be smooth shiny steep ice. Ya don't see that in the Cascades to often. I'm really not clear on how this stuff forms - if it always melts down to ice, why doesn't it melt away completely after a certain number of years? Must think about this some more.

Windows Media clip - standing around under the north face. (168KB)

Bergschrund below the "practise face"

Fresh snow on the glacier

We spotted a col we wanted to get to, for the view. In the large expanse of glacier to cross, there was one, quite obvious, crevasse. It was mostly filled with recent snow however. This worried us a little - we were crossing sections where up to 8 or 12 inches of snow had accumulated - they might conceal openings. We did the wise thing and roped up.

We arrived at the narrow, very wind-swept, uncomfortable col, snapped a few pictures. It was not the view to the south that we had wanted, but it was still nice, looking into the basin further to the west that we had seen from the approach. In this cirque, there are no less than 10 ice lines that reach from the glacier to the ridgetop. We left the windy notch and descended down to the greenish-blue lake. We encountered the same features we saw on the other glacial tongue.

Heading back to the lake on mixed glacier/rock stuff

We took a break - the wind kept becoming stronger. Not consistent, it was in gusts. You could hear the sound of it approaching, and had some time to prepare yourself. But it became unpleasant. It blew ice crystals and dust off the glacier, like horizontal sleet. Circum-navigating the lake on talus, it once knocked me to the ground. That's the first time I've ever truly been thrown to the ground by wind. I can't imagine what it was like on the summit. Afterwards, when I heard the sound of the coming gusts, I crouched down and braced myself against the rocks.

Windows Media clip of the wind near the lake. (93KB)

Greg and I made the long descent down the approach ridge, which eventually turns from scree to grasslands. There was some evidence of periglacial features here - piles and circles and ridges of little rocks, sort of like tundra polygons I guess? We were constantly battered by wind. The place had the feeling of a cold, dry desolate world. It was amazingly beautiful. Once above the rangelands (above the countless cow patties and the salt lick), we saw no other trace of previous human presence. No paths, no cleared out bivy sites, no cairns, no GU wrappers, nothing.

We continued down in amazement at the beauty of this place. Definitely some of the most sublime scenery I've ever experienced, on a par with, or maybe even exceeding what I saw in Alaska's St Elias range. I'm not talking about the impressiveness of the mountains - certainly Alaska wins there - but the whole package, from jagged icy north faces, down to rolling high alpine meadows, to dry woodland, to deep blue lakes, beyond which lie the 10000ft peaks of the main range - wow! And not a soul in sight, and we didn't have to fly there!

We passed the salt lick, and this time, contoured around the irritating brown hill we walked over on the way in. We found a path that led through the foresty bits. We came out onto another plain. There were two horses grazing here. They saw us eventually, and ran off, only to come running back towards us, and then off again, vanishing from sight. Wild horses?

Windows Media clip - from the descent through rangelands (101KB)

Some horses were running around here somewhere

Descending back to the truck...

We reversed our route down the ridge and back onto the horse trails, and finally to the truck at 7pm. That mountain is just a little too much for a day trip I think.

We noticed that the mountains 10 or so miles to the northwest were now socked in. Here was the storm, finally arriving. Would it reach us, over in "dry land"? We ate a quick supper, and then retired to our bivy sacs. The wind seemed to have died down a bit.

Sure enough, I heard/felt the first rain drops on my bivy sac. It was the precursor to a very stormy night. The rain picked up in intensity, and the wind gusts came through stronger than ever before - I was worried our way out to the main dirt road would be blocked by fallen trees. We had no saw! (Luckily, most trees around here were less than 10 feet high) With my horrible bivy sac, I had an almost sleepness night. I had a feeling that conditions on the summit, 6000 feet above, would be pretty "deadly".

By morning, the rain let up, and the winds began to blow the clouds away. I was miserable, so when I heard Greg taking a leak at 5am, I said "let's get up and leave".

Once in the comfortable truck, we drove out to the main road. The sun was almost up - I thought we might drive to a view point and take some sunrise photos. And we did. Not quite the rich alpenglow we had the day before though, but still nice. There had been a significant amount of snowfall overnight.

Some sunrise pictures

Snow fell down to 6500ft Sunday night.

The 70 mile drive out to the highway was uneventful, except for the myriad cows on the road.

We had lunch at the White Spot in Williams Lake, and were served by a surly waitress, obviously having a bad day. It did not help that when she cleaned up the table next to us, she knocked the ketchup over, but its cap was loose, and ketchup spilled all over the floor. It did not help that Greg then shouted "Loooooser!". Ok, he didn't do that.

Till next time?...