peas

Did anyone catch the article on the Slesse Plane crash in this past Saturday's Globe and Mail Focus Section? The 50th anniversary of the crash was on the 9th of December, so the daughter of one of the passengers on flight 810 wrote a short article for the Globe. One of the main focuses of the article was that the people who died there haven't been given much respect over the years. Logging of the park, looting of the personal effects of the victims, mistreatment of remains, families being kept in the dark, etc. The part that is relevant to this forum is that the article wasn't particularly flattering to hikers or climbers. The author didn't come out and say it, but it seemed as though she felt that people shouldn't climb Slesse as a sign of respect for the people who have died there. That part of the article irked me a bit, but I haven't been able to explain why yet. I'd like to write a response, but haven't been able to put together why the thought of barring people from the area bothers me so much. Did anyone else read this article? Any thoughts?

The recent torrential rains have taken out a number of logging roads in the area. Also, there were locked gates on a number of logging roads in that area this summer. Be sure to check access before you try to climb there.

Wow! Sounds like you had quite an adventure. Nice to hear that the crampons are still there. I doubt they'll make it to next summer though.

None of the pictures turned out all that well, but for what it's worth. This is a shot of the North Face of Viennese from near Nursery Pass. This is a shot of Viennese from the bivi site. Derektissima climbs the right hand side of the buttress, then follows the textured rock up over the roofs and onto the slabs. Mark climbing a few pitches above the snowfield, just where the climbing started to get a little more serious.

Climb: Mt. Colonel Foster-Culbert Route Date of Climb: 8/5/2006 Trip Report: With the long weekend coming up, many emails were going back and forth between Graeme, Mark and I about what to do. Graem's constraint was that he had to be in Campbell River on Tuesday for a bike trip, so attention quickly focused on Vancouver Island. And what cooler thing to do on Vancouver Island than Mt. Colonel Foster! The Culbert Route on the East Face looked pretty classic, so our decision was pretty much made for us. Sailing waits, sleeping in the Horseshoe Bay parking lot, huge breakfast queues, porpoises playing in the wake of the ferry, a stop in Campbell River, some driving finally and the Flaming Lips had us at the trailhead by mid afternoon on Saturday. At the trailhead you are required to pay $5 per person per night for camping and there is a sign up saying that camping at Landslide Lake is no longer permitted (according to a sign at the 2nd sandbar campsite, camping at Foster Lake is no longer permitted either). The trail in was uneventful. A long, relatively flat walk in the forest. The first views of Mt. Foster come at Landslide Lake and are quite impressive. The trail from Landslide Lake to Foster Lake is the "worst trail ever" (Simpson's Comic Book Guy) since it covers about twice the elevation gain that it needs to, sometimes going up, then back down within 20 horizontal meters of trail. We were bad and ignored the posted signs and camped at Foster Lake. We were moving as it got light, and after a relatively easy schrund crossing, we started the route to the left of a diagonal chimney, mostly scrambling through easy face climbing. About three quarters of the way to the snow field Graeme got the unenviable task of unprotected face climbing, followed by an unprotected traverse to a not so great anchor. Thanks Graeme. Graeme handed over the reins at this point so it was my turn to lead. A nicer crack system lead us into the gully and after that I got what was coming to me when I had a very poorly protected lead to the base of the snow field. In hindsight, I should have just gained the snow in the gully since it would have been faster and safer. In the section from the schrund to the snowfield, we probably could have saved a considerable amount of time and effort by staying closer to or climbing in the diagonal chimney gash. There was plenty of water running from the bottom of the snowfield, so we drank up and filled up. We didn't encounter any other water until reaching the South Col on the descent. The next bit of climbing went pretty much according to the Fairley guide, except with fewer initial pitches right above the snow, due most likely to longer ropes. We simul-climbed the easy stuff that diagonals to the left, but would have been better off just soloing since the climbing was easy and there wasn't much protection to be had. Back on the ridge crest is where Graeme took to driver's seat again. Graeme's turn was cut short after a couple pitches when it sounded as though Grameme was attacked by some strange mountain animal. Apparently the sound we heard was Graeme expressing his displeasure at taking a fall which he stopped himself by grabbing some bushes. At this point we were at the chimney to the final headwall. We ended up on the opposite side of the summit from where the original line goes up, but I'm not completely sure where we went wrong. In any case, the climbing was up to 5.8, with sparse protection and questionable rock at times. We generally just followed a chimney/gully and the face next to it until we hit the top which took us about six pitches. By the time we hit the summit it was close to sunset. We quickly checked into the summit register. Nice work to Joe Bajan's sone who summited Colonel Foster at age 13! Initially I was keen to start descending, but then I came to my senses and we decided on an uncomfortable night near the summit. There is a nice rock ring if you traverse South from the summit for about 50m. Luckily we had decided to throw in my sleeping bag at the last minute "Just in case." It was still cold regardless of how much huddling (not cuddling) went on. It's a good thing that we decided to bivi at the top because the descent is definitely not trivial. We chose the southern gully indicated in Stone's guide and ended up doing about six rappels using two 60m ropes. We didn't find much rap tat in the gully, so I can't imagine that this is the most popular descent route. If I were to do it again, I'd try a different way down. The trudge back to the South Col and down to camp was pretty tame, but tiring. Running water was available partway down from the South Col. At camp, we quickly packed up because we still had hopes of catching a ferry back that night (fat chance). Unfortunately, Mark had left his crampons at the base of the climb the day before, so he went back up to get them. Even more unfortunately, Mark came back empty handed since the schrund had opened up a lot since the day before. I hope someone gets to the crampons before they end up in the glacier. We cheered Mark up with some tea and a meal, and we were soon on our way down. We arrived in Campell River to find Graeme's Dad on the phone, orchestrating a search with the RCMP. The search was quickly called off and the beer was pulled out. Our appologies to the Brown family for the stress we caused. No ferries to be had that night. The last kick in the pants was one more sailing wait on Tuesday morning on the way back to Vancouver. Luckily, Mark is a student and my work schedule is flexible so a pink slip wasn't waiting for me when I got in late. We brought a fairly full rack, but didn't use a lot of it. Most of what we could place was in the blue to red metolius size. We also brought a few pins, but only placed one. I'd bring a smaller rack next time. Crampons were useful for the approach, but insteps would have done fine. No crampons needed for the descent.

at least mec does. valhalla and climb on most likely too.

Yeah for some guy who took forever soloing Uncle Ben's.

We noticed a few rap slings below the roofs and some looked pretty new. Perhaps yours? I ended up doing a lot of traversing back and forth in the crackless section in order to find the lines with the most pro. I also set decent anchors where I could get them just to ensure that I wouldn't come to the end of the rope without gear or anchor in sight. Probably why we ended up doing the harder part in three pitches rather than two. I don't remember a condemned looking bridge anywhere along the way. Or is that the foot bridge across the stream at the end of the road? I'll put the few pics that I took up when I get my camera back from a friend. I don't think that I took any pics of the scary stuff, since I had other things on my mind.

Climb: Viennese-Derektissima Date of Climb: 7/1/2006 Trip Report: While on the Viennese to Clarke traverse in the Chehalis last summer, the one feature that struck me the most was the summit slabs on Viennese. After checking in the Alpine Select, it looked as though Derektissima was the one climb that went right up the centre of the slabs. With that in mind, Derektissima was slotted in near the top of my list of things to do. This past weekend Mark (the guy with a truck that can get through the Chehalis tank traps) was free and wanted to go climbing, so we headed out for Derektissima. The drive up was uneventful, but the FSR between Statlu Lakes and the Grainger/Nursery Pass trails is pretty gnarly. Not really surprising, but eye opening nonetheless. Anyone who doesn't value their paint job or trailer hitch should be able to make it up the road with a high clearance 4wd vehicle. Finding Nursery Pass is very straightforward, but does involve some pretty thick shwacking between the end of the FSR and the beginning of the snow/talus that leads to the pass. Luckily for us it was mostly snow to the pass. We camped at the foot of the climb on Saturday night and got a good look at the route. The rock ring of the bivi site was just clear of snow, and water was easy to get from this site. Nursery Pass was also covered in snow, but there was no readily available running water there. We were on the rock at around 5:30 on Sunday morning, but started a little to climbers left of an easier, more direct line, so spent some time faffing around on the first couple 4th/easy fifth pitches. After that, the climbing up the the first snowfield was straightforward, albeit a little dirty and a little runout, but at mid fifth, runouts weren't a huge problem. There was plenty of water flowing off of the bottom of the snowfield. The initial pitches off of the snowfield are pretty easy to find and climb, but where Derektissima heads off from Variazioni, things start to get a little vague and loose. We climbed up to what looked like a nice left facing corner with juggy holds, but what it turned out to be was a left facing corner with death blocks stacked in it. After some more faffing, we avoided the loose blocks by climbing grooves to the right, then traversing over toward the top of the corner. From here, the climbing gets steeper and scarier. We pretty much headed straight for the "incredible shrinking roofs". The roofs had been shrinking all day up until this point, but unfortunately, they began to grow again as we got closer. We climbed two pitches that felt like hard 5.9 to 10a. They probably could have been strung together, but I was a little sketched out from the shitty, sparse pro, so broke them up into two pitches. The scariest pitch I've ever lead got us underneath the roofs. I found a rusty 1/4" bolt that didn't inspire much confidence and ended up traversing to the left for quite a way. Two more cams that felt like they'd fall out if you looked at them too hard, some wobbly, delicate climbing and a bit of runout and some victory cussing got me to a thankfully solid anchor underneath the roofs. We had brought a few pins along with us that I probably could have used to protect this pitch better, but I wasn't about to bust them out of my pack, mid sketch. In hindsight, I should have broght them out when the climbing got scary, and had a better time. Oh well, next time. After that pitch I was quite frazzled and not looking forward to the roofs, but it turns out that they were a jug haul and really fun. This pitch also got us onto the summit slabs, which was quite a relief after the oppressing atomosphere under the roofs. I didn't ever find the fixed pin, semi-hanging belay described in the book. The climbing on the summit slabs was great. 60m pitches of 5.6 to 5.7 cracks. And true enough, if they were in Squamish, they'd be grid bolted and crawling with climbers. After the 3rd slab pitch were some more roofs that I didn't want to deal with, so I exited to the right on some nice holds, did some face climbing to some more cracks that suited me more than overhangs. This 4th pitch lead to the ridge. A bit of mid 5th simulclimbing lead to the summit at a little after 6p.m. The descent is pretty straightforward and the guidebook describes everything well. We were back at camp below the climb at a bit after 10p.m., about 17.5 hours after leaving camp. We had some awesome glissading down from Nursery Pass the next day, and came across some really fresh bear tracks in the snow. When we got to the truck, we caught up to Todd and Derek and gave them a lift down to the Statlu Lake trailhead. On the Chehalis FSR, we ran into some friends who had done the Tuning Fork on Sunday. They didn't quite find their campsite on Sunday night, so hadn't had much sleep and looked pretty destroyed when we caught up with them. Some ice cream seemed to raise their spirits quite a bit. All in all, Derektissima was a great climb and I'd recommend it with a few reservations about scariness. Gear Notes: - 1 set of nuts - double cams from yellow Metolius to yellow camalot (yeah yeah, heavy rack) - a couple kbs and some las that we didn't use. - we both had ice axes that were comforting, but not necessary. The snow was still pretty soft.

Anyone else notice this little tidbit in the new Squamish McLane guide? Anyone know what the question is?

According to bivouac, the Hurley is open.

I tried to convince my climbing partner to try it on Saturday, but he wanted to do the Pup's Buttress instead. Too bad, BOB looks like a nice one.

How did you approach? I heard that the logging camp was pulled and that the road is still gated, but I forget how much that increases the approach by.

Where is that exactly??

Nice. I did this route last summer with a bit of a different approach, so here's what I did for comparison. We parked at the Shortcut creek bridge, then crossed the bridge on foot. There were small game trails on the other side and the bush was pretty open, so there wasn't much schwacking. The terrain up to Rugged Lake isn't too bad, and the lake itself makes it worth while to get up there. The approach from Rugged Lake to the base of the route didn't involve much side hilling, but it was a lot longer than the time given in McLane's guide. Thankfully the route itself is much shorter than given in the guide. So I'd say it's debatable which approach is more worthwhile. I found the description of the climbing to be about the same as you found it.

I got a scratchy phone message yesterday afternoon from the top of Judge Howay. Pretty cool that they made it up. Now they just have to make it back down. I think they can paddle down the Fraser on the way back, which should make things easier.

I was in there a couple weekends ago, and I think that the main part of the glaciers/snow fields has pretty much sloughed off by now. I wasn't analyzing in too much detail, since I didn't plan on being back in the area this year.

Climb: Chehalis-Viennese to Clarke Traverse Date of Climb: 7/30/2005 Trip Report: Having heard and read a number of legends about how great the climbing in the Chehalis is, a friend, Mark, and I decided to check it out first hand. The Viennese to Clarke Traverse looked like a nice intro to the Chehalis that would give us a good look at a number of the mountains in the group. On Saturday we headed out from Vancouver and the drive was uneventful until the infamous cross ditches. Mark's old Toyota truck handled all of them fine, and only scraped once on the way in. Beyond the trail to Statlu Lake, the road looks like it gets a little more serious. Apparently someone headed up farther on Saturday night and had to take a couple runs at the hill. The other thing worthy of note is that gas is super cheap in Mission compared to Vancouver (81c/L vs. $1/L). Hiking up to the alpine basin below Viennese was quite a slog and doing it on one of the hottest days of the summer so far didn't make things any easier. One bonus was that the blueberries and huckleberries were the best I've ever seen. We ate so many berries that we pretty much skipped lunch. We stopped for a short swim in Upper Statlu Lake before continuing on to the thrash up to the basin. The description we had said look for flagging through the bush, but we didn't find any on the way up or down. The bush section is short enough that it is tolerable to just point uphill and thrash. The McLane guide mentions 4th to low 5th near the waterfall that looks doable although Mark didn't feel up for it. There aren't a lot of flat spots in the basin, so we ended up flattening out a snow patch to sleep on. On Sunday we were up and off early. We started off with Viennese rather than 6500 since we were worried about the amount of time we'd take. Almost immediately after gaining the ridge on Viennese, you can look about 15 pitches down the North side of the Mountain. Some nice gut churning exposure. The 5.8 or 5.9 bit near the summit had me up and worrying the night before, so I was a little tense as we neared the summit. I took a wrong turn after traversing the 4th class slabs mentioned in the McLane guide and ended up below some overhanging blocks above a nice crack. I reversed the crack an climbed the wall to the left and on to the summit. The climbing here was more like 5.6 rather than 5.8. With that monkey off my back I relaxed and really started to enjoy things. On the West side of Viennese the slabs that lead to the summit from the North side look amazing! Recourse was fairly uneventful, but nice scrambling. We brought the description from Matt Gunn's new scrambles book. The crux crack felt a little harder than what a typical scrambler would do. It may be possible to work around it though. There were a few patches of snow on the East Ridge, so we were able to drink up and fill our water bottles. The East Ridge of Clarke was the most fun climbing on the whole route. The 5th class climbing starts right out of the notch with Recourse, and last for about three 30m pitches. Some of the 5th class sections can probably be avoided, but they're fun and not too hard. This climbing was definitely harder than the moves on the East Ridge of Viennese. There is a cool rock window, which you can see from the basin, just above the notch that looks over to Bardean. After hitting the summit of Clarke, we headed over to the sub peak to the West so that I could take some unobstructed pictures of the Judge and Robie Reid. Both mountains look very impressive from this perspective. From there we scrambled down from between the two peaks of Clarke. No rappels needed as mentioned in the McLane guide. There is also a scramble route described in the Fairley guide and Matt Gunn's guide, so you really don't need to rappel if you don't want to. The return to camp involved endless boulder hopping back to camp. Neat views of the alpine terrain between Clarke and Ratney from here. We ran into a group of 4 who had planned on climbing Viennese and Recourse, but ran out of time. They'd camped at the trailhead the night before and didn't get up early enough to complete both. Altogether, it took us about 10.75 hours camp to camp, and we should have done Peak 6500 to start with. Oh well. Next time. After a short nap, we headed back down to Upper Statlu Lake where the bugs seemed to be a little better. It rained pretty hard on Sunday night and by Monday morning the brush was soaked. The awesome blueberry bushes on the way in were now responsible for soaking us to the bone. At least we didn't do the schwack down from the basin in wet bush. We returned to Vancouver along highway 7, looking for our crazy friends who are trying to do Judge Howay by bike from Vancouver. They either were already past or had wisened up. Most likely already past. The climbing was awesome! Nice textured granodiorite, splitter cracks, incut holds, awesome exposure, great views. The Chehalis definitely lived up to my expectations. I'd like to go back and check out some of the routes on the North faces of Viennese-Clake, on Bardean or Grainger. The lesser touted peaks in the area like Ratney, Stonerabbit and the numbered peaks look pretty cool too. Definitely an area that could keep you busy for quite a while. Gear Notes: 4 hexs small to red camalot size, red Metolius tcu, one each of red-yellow camalot, one set of nuts, 4 slings, approach shoes, one 60m double rope used as a 30m rope. Used most of it, although never placed more than 2 pieces of gear on a 30m pitch.

I have a couple adventurous (stupid?, masochistic?) friends who are trying climb Judge Howay self propelled from Vancouver. They left on Saturday from Deep Cove and were planning on biking (with a canoe in tow), paddling (with bikes in the canoe) and slogging their way up the Judge, then reversing their trip back to Vancouver, returning next Saturday. Any bets on whether they make it? Anyone see any crazy cyclists towing a canoe, or canoeists with bikes in the boat on the way from Deep Cove to Stave Lake? For those of you with bivouac accounts, one of them is Damien McCoombs of Alpha by bike notoriety, and the other has been on a Meslilloet self propelled trip with Jason Addy. I don't think Jason has posted it on bivouac, but he finally made it up self propelled this past winter or the winter before.

Thanks. I was also planning on climbing some of the other peaks. Any useful info?

Does anyone have any info on the Tombstone Tower in the Sky Pilot Group? I found Kobus Barnard's CAJ article, and I think the Fairley guide makes mention of it, but beyond that, I have no info. Anyone?

I think that the BCMC has satellite phones available to their members as well.

Yeah, by looking back up, that looks like the best descent from the summit. I briefly checked out descending the notch between Labour Day and Station D, but it looked pretty steep, requiring rapelling. I wasn't sure what the snow situation was beyond the first bulge, and didn't want to test it out. Maybe with more snow it would be a friendlier descent.

no photos. What with all the extra crap I brought along, I didn't bring my camera. I wish I would have though.

Climb: Labour Day Summit-Labour Day Buttress Date of Climb: 7/23/2005 Trip Report: Labour Day Buttress went on my list of things to do after I saw it last summer and Dru's TR last week brought it to the front of the queue. My girlfriend, Chris, and I had a lazy Saturday morning in Vancouver, then hit the trail at about 3:30pm. We ate dinner and slept at the Propellor Cairn, with some cool views through cloud windows to the Cheam Group. No views of Slesse, so it was quite a surprise for her in the morning. The moon was quite bright and I was awake and ready to go at 2:30am, thinking it was sunrise. Chris told me to check the clock and I sheepishly went to sleep for the next few hours. We set out on Sunday at about 7am and reached the toe of the buttress at around 8:30am. The buttress itself was a lot lower angle than I expected, with the accompanying bush. Keeping to the right lowers the angle and the exposure. The crux of the route was a 15m, 5.6 to 5.7ish fist crack on the right side of the buttress at a little less than mid height. The only other somewhat technical climbing was a 15m right to left trending ramp a couple of 30m rope lengths above that. The rest was consistent 3rd-low 5th bush and rock scrambling. Chris wasn't feeling super comfortable so I set up a quick belay on some sections. In total, the climbing took us about 5 hours. It was nice and sunny on the summit with great views. I realized I'm a little Canada focussed when it comes to mountains, because I couldn't ID many of the U.S. peaks. Time to brush off Red Fred. The descent was fairly long, and a there was a lot of tedious talus hopping involved. We decided to head down to the Labour Day-Station D col, but make one short rap at the end. From down low it also looked possible to descend the opposite end of the peak, in line with the ridgeline. From there we followed Dru's descent description, and were back to the Propellor Cairn within about 5 hours after leaving the summit. On the way out I heard a WOOOO! coming from Slesse, which I assumed meant that someone had just summited. I tried to return the woo, but my throat was too dry, so it came out as more of a croak. We then turned off our brains and plodded down to the car. On the way down we could see some headlamps on the Rexford approach. It looked as though they were in the cutblock, which doesn't look like it would be fun by headlamp. Cool climb all in all, but a little bushy. I'd recommend it for anyone who wants amazing views without too much technical difficulty. Erik Frebold has a good writeup of the climb on bivouac (minus the ice axe and crampons recommendation) Gear Notes: Used: One 60m double rope, halved to be a 30m. red-blue camalots used for protection, only ever placed 3 pieces on a pitch. Stuff we brought along for the walk: another double rope, my rock shoes (Chris used hers), lots of other cams, nuts and slings, crampons and ice axes.