Climbers from Victoria B.C. spent a week at this area (near
Zeballos Vancouver Island) in August, completing one route
and extending another. Also several ascents of Wapiti Mainline
(5.11) on "Dale Earnhardt Dome". The "Wapitit Valley" is an
unofficial name for a side valley of the Nomash River Valley
accross from Mt. Rugged. The dome is visible from high on
Ruged as a 400 meter sweep of clean granite slabs.
I have posted some pics in the Canada secion on this website
and you can also see more at my personal website at
http://members.shaw.ca/eseedhouse/
and
http://members.shaw.ca/eseedhouse/wapiti.html
I'd have loved to insert a picture in this article but can't figure
out how to do that!
The routes on the dome so far are "Wapiti Mainline", 14 pitches
and 5.11a (but you can aid the hard pitch), which was
completed last year, "Taledaga Highbanks" and "Full Throttle".
"Taledega" was completed to the summit this year and the
rating is somewhere up in the 5.11's. The final push by Ryan
Fisher, Carla Bortoletto, and Dave LePard involved a bivouack
but it should go in a day fairly easily once a little more cleaning
has been done on the top piches. Grade III or IV in other
words and probably III.
"Full Throttle" does not go to the summit yet. I think about 10
pitches have been pushed.
All routes are bolt protected (placed on the lead) with a tiny bit
of trad pro on some. Mainlne has one nut placement to protect
an overlap on pitch two.
My GPS says the start of the Mainline route is at N49 deg. 59
min. 27.5 sec. and W -126 deg. 43 min. 40.4 sec. Altitude 657
meters. Access is via the Nomash Main logging road. Take a
right at the side road at just about exactly 50 deg. and follow
this spur until it forks at 50-0-7.8 and -126 42 38.9, roughly 300
meters altitude. Camp is here and you can get there in a two
wheel drive vehicle. Follow the left fork for about 3.5 kilometers
with an altitude gain of about 300 meters. From the end of the
logging road a trail goes up and accross the creek to the base of
the slabs.
Descent is via rappel to the top of pitch 6 of Mainline, then over
to the descent slabs and a long walk down over low angle bushy
slab to a 40 foot rappel off an overhang, then a nasty bush
scrambel down the edge of the slab and back to the base.
