the long version for the cheapskates like snoboy who didn't pay to use bivouac.com
I guess I must have looked at the picture of Slesse in Fairley?s guide a few hundred times at least before I ever even set foot in the Chilliwack Valley ( I used to have the Fairley guide in the john as reading material). In all those times I don?t think I ever once seriously looked for new routes, or if I did, I looked at the east face, which Bruce was so kind as to mention in his introduction was unclimbed.
The first time I ever actually saw Slesse?s east side in the flesh was in 1996 when I was doing my masters? research in the Chilliwack Valley. I drove up the Nesakwatch Creek road and went ?Oooooooh? and then spent a couple hours bushwacking around in bushy clearcuts.
In 1998 I tried the classic NE buttress with Mike Buda. We got rained off from the bivi ledge. It wasn?t a total loss though, we found a pack full of gear someone had dropped and split $800 worth of booty.
In 2001 I was working on the proofs of Alpine Select for Kevin McLane and was discussing Slesse with him. ?Yeah, look at this unclimbed buttress on the south here going to the third summit? I remember saying to him. ?Looks like choss, who?s going to ever climb that? was his reply.
Well, I mean, really, what a defeatist attitude. The buttress was small for the Slesse area but would have been a significant unclaimed prize anywhere else. Only against the massive east faces of the main and south peak did it seem less than significant.
The next time I discussed it was hiking up to Nesakwatch with Shaun. ?Hey look at that buttress on Slesse?.
?Yeah, it?s unclimbed.? ?Really?? ?Yeah. They aren?t making many more of those.?
?Well, we should go and climb it sometime then.? ?Yeah, it?s on my list of things to do.?
That same year I enticed Ray Borbon, also known as Captain Caveman or just the Capt., up from Washington for an adventure. We tried this buttress but Ray was sick with a cold and we bailed after making it to some ledges. These ledges had already been climbed: Len Soet and Phil Kubik had traversed them in 1978 as a variant start to the SE buttress of the S peak. We did about 6 pitches, mostly 4th class through 5.7 but with one tricky 5.9 traversing pitch that took me over an hour to lead and Ray an hour to follow.
Well the failure on this route which I had already decided to name ?Flight 810 Buttress? ate at me a bit.... to fail through no fault of my own was a bit galling, if it had been too hard that would have been fine, but to bail in perfect weather, with easy ground above.... Grrrr.
Anyway come summer 2003 and finally some good weather. Shaun was all busy with various secret projects of his and ours but since I?m single and he?s married I get to take weekends he has down for family business for other projects. So the weekend of July 26-27 was free. Now at first I thought I was going to entice my friend Jason Kreuger up from Oregon for some slab climbing. JK has never done a really long route (his longest is a 5 pitch sport climb at Smith I think) so we were going to run up Yak Check. Then,. I knew Fern Webb had not done Yak either and wanted to, and she knows JK, so we were going to go as a party of 3. Then JK dropped out with family issues (he?s getting divorced and needs to do the custody thing with his kids some weekends). So it was just Fern and me.
I emailed Fern, who had just gotten back from a 3 day blitz of Joffre Group peaks, asking her if she minded if we changed plans. My options were either drive through the night to Rogers Pass and do Sir Donald?s NW ridge, or go to Slesse. Fern picked Slesse so off we went.
We left my place in the Wack at about 4:30 AM and pulled into Slesse Propellor Cairn trail parking lot around 5:30. The lot was full of pickup trucks with American plates...getting the jump on the Canadian crowd who all apparently decided to do it on Sunday...
We hiked up the Prop Cairn trail. What a god forsaken slog up an alder-forested logging road - I get enough of that at work, thanks. At least it takes you to somewhere nice with nice views but I have been up there 3 times now with a heavy climbing pack, and it is no fun. We got to the cairn about 7:00 AM and took a break. Parties were visible on the NE buttress and E pillar. I took a moment to remember John Millar and Guy Edwards. Both had free soloed the NE buttress at different times. If I ever did such a thing I?d probably consider my climbing career complete, but to them it was just another day out. A more impressive story (to my mind) concerns a Rexford-Slesse link up they did. They had hiked into the base of the Pillar of Pi with designs on a free ascent when it started to rain. They decided not to go for PoP and soloed up the East Ridge of Rexford, over and down the west ridge and trail to Nesakwatch Creek. By the time they were in Nesakwatch it had stopped raining, so they climbed the Navigator Wall on the south peak. All in a day, I believe.
Fern and I cramponed up and traversed under the south peak to the ?South Spur Couloir? which bounds Flight 810 Buttress on the left. Our goal was to climb onto the buttress via the Kubik-Soet ledges, hook up with the point Ray and I had bailed from, and continue upwards from there. The problem was, we found out as we climbed the couloir, there was no easy way to get onto the ledge, but rather a broken arete and gully system looked like the best choice. We set a belay and I started climbing in my hiking boots up what looked like an easy chimney. It was actually, I think, the hardest climbing of the day. Steep, with big holds, but mossy and poorly protected, and off balance too. I nearly fell off once, and was pretty gripped by the time I got to the ledge atop the pitch. Fern came up quickly after me.
We were basically right at the point Ray and I had gotten to, so we set off upwards. A couple of third and fourth class, low angle scree and grass type pitches got us to a narrow ridge crest. Fern and I each then did a low 5th lead up the crest; Fern?s was particularly nice on a narrow arete with fun lichened face climbing up steps in the ridge. Another 3rd class pitch of grass and heather got us to the base of a steeper face. It looked like a crack and offwidth system was our best bet to get through this. I got the first pitch and it was fairly straightforwards. Big holds on an arete led upwards to the offwidth in a corner. I knocked off a chunk of rock unexpectedly, but Fern took shelter and it missed her (and the ropes). I could slide my #4 Camalot up the crack for protection, and there were enough face holds I could actually face climb instead of having to do a knee bar or whatever. The pitch ended on a nice grassy terrace.
Fern?s lead went out left of the continuation of the corner to avoid some blank rock and weaved around above. It took her a long time to lead and I?m sorry to say, I was so sleepy from the early start I actually dozed off for a second while belaying. Oops. My head nodded forwards, I snapped out of it, then looked around guiltily....sort of like falling asleep at the wheel.
Following the pitch I was impressed at the way Fern had run it out in order to prevent rope drag; also the way she had finished her lead up this knob studded vertical unprotected face in order to avoid a steep slope of heather and sand. Since I still had my hiking boots on I just kicked steps up the heather and found we had made it to the ?Crown? of 4 gendarmes which forms a sub summit on the buttress - I was looking down into a narrow notch separating us from the true 3rd summit of Slesse.
We did one pitch around a small gendarme and made it to a point directly above the notch, and set a 2-piton rap station. One 30m rappel got us to the notch and a heavenly snow patch (we were both out of water by now). It was about 3PM. We weren?t exactly setting any speed records.
Leaving our packs and most of the gear we hiked grass and scree up to a rock band which involved some class 4-low class 5 moves climbed 3rd class style up a hidden gully, then a rotten basalt dyke. A second grassy terrace led to the final summit pyramid. We scramble-soloed up this (again class 4-low class 5) and topped out on Slesse?s infrequently visited 3rd summit. This is quite near the point that Trans Canada Airlines Flight 810 struck on a cloudy day in December, 1956, killing all 62 persons on board....hence the route name. The actual summit is a boulder problem pinnacle with a single stone balanced on top.
Not really looking forward to the descent (already tired and sore) we rappelled and downclimbed and scrambled back down to our packs in the notch...maybe, in all my whining, I forgot to mention just how beautiful the notch is. It?s awesome. Great views. Soft green grass. Snow patch for water. Rock pinnacles all around. Goats in season. Definitely worth a visit.
At any rate, after soaking in the scenery, we scrambled and traversed over to the top of the South Spur Couloir. After a bit of debate, we decided rapping this was the best way to get down. We had lots of pitons, and didn?t have enough confidence in our crampons-on-floppy-hiking boots and 1- 3rd tool-each setups to be confident downclimbing this 300m 40 degree, bergschrunded bowling alley.
So we started rapping. Bit of an epic. On the first pull, the rope end got stuck just below the station behind a flake; Fern climbed a full pitch of snow up to it (using both our tools), dropped it, and climbed slowly back down. Did I mention we didnt have any snow pro? I belayed her on the other rope, but it was kind of a token gesture.
Then on the 4th pull, the same thing happened, this time the rope end got stuck between snow and rock in the moat. I had to take my crampons off, climb a pitch of polished rock, find gear, set an anchor, pendulum into the moat, free the rope, climb on tension back up to my anchor, take it out and downclimb the polished rock back to the belay. Then, when Fern was rapping off the 5th station (the one that had been our belay during my rope retrieval incident) one of the two pitons comprising it, suddenly pulled out, leaving her on rap from, and me hanging off, a 1 piton station. Oooooooops!
So after beefing up the station hurriedly with more tat and pins we made it down this last rappel (over the bergschrund) and then downclimbed the lower angle snow to the moraine and finally made it back to Prop Cairn near sunset. Surprisingly, or maybe not, some people we knew were camped there preparatory to a NE buttress climb the next day and we kibitzed a bit then set off down the trail in the dark.
More slogging, best glossed over. I am doing my best to forget it. Anyway we got back to the car at 11 PM. 17 and a half hour day. Long! I was fighting slumber while driving back to Chilliwack and we didnt even really eat dinner: Fern had some rice pudding, I had a scoop of ice cream. Got up at 10 the next morning and napped off and on the rest of the day.
All in all, this new route was not great, but ?OK?. In total from base to summit is about 17 or so ropelengths. Ray and I climbed the first 6; Fern and I linked from there to the top. 8 pitches from the K-S ledges to the Crown; 1 pitch along the Crown ridge; 1 rappel; some scrambling and 2 more (class 4-5, possibly worth doing roped) pitches to the summit. Probably about D IV 5.8 as Fern and I did it or would be D+ IV 5.9 with the direct start used by Ray and I linked to the rest of the route.
It sure was nice to finally climb this route, after all those years of looking at it and thinking about it!
Oh yes, if anyone wants an unclimbed route, the buttress south (left) of the south spur couloir is still unclimbed. It?s a slabby, grassy thing, rather unappealing - maybe a good winter route? Consider, though, they aren?t making any more unclimbed buttresses....
