Bugaboos TR
I spent the last week in the Bugs with Kristin, MtnHigh and Drew. We left last Saturday, slept in the forest outside of Radium and then hiked in on Sunday. MtnHigh and Drew chose Applebee Dome and Kristin and I stayed in the posh confines of the hut. We effectively split into two separate parties for the remainder of the week, separated by about 1000’ vertical feet. We would keep in touch later in the week.
Monday – We got to the hut to rumors of a long stretch of perfect weather. Apparently, the Bugs got a long, two to three week stretch of almost ideal weather without the typical afternoon thundershowers. I also got a chance to meet BChaps at the hut, when he overheard me talking about our planned nude solo ascent of Snafflehound Spire.
Kristin and I decided to ease in a bit, so we focused on Lions’ Way, an easy 5.6 that ascends one of the Central Crescent Towers. We left the hut at 5:30 am and topped out after 7-8 pitches at 9:30-ish under perfect weather. We managed to get on the rock ahead of 10-12 folks from a guided ACC party. MtnHigh and Drew got a later start and summitted the same route later in the day.
The best beta is for the approach. DO NOT traverse in high. Stay low on the boulders and snow field until directly under the start of the route, then make a direct line up the snow, scree and talus. Once you find the start, the climbing is easy.
Tuesday – Feeling good from the previous day, Kristin and I decided to try the Southeast Corner of Snowpatch Spire, IV 5.8. The Kain Hut had a copy of the new guide kicking around, which bumped up the grade on the crux pitch and offered better guidance on the apparently confusing approach. Unfortunately, none of it mattered.
We left the hut at 5:30 am, 20-30 minutes behind a party of two from Calgary, boyfriend and girlfriend, names withheld to protect their privacy. 15 minutes up the trail, Kristin gets a severe and unexplained case of the dry heaves. 20 minutes up the trail we hear screams and shouts for help. The boyfriend was on the way back down the trail, because the girlfriend had been badly injured. He continued down to the Hut and I went up to see if I could do anything.
I found the GF lying in the boulders at the very SE corner of Son of Snowpatch where it meets the Bugaboo Glacier. She had a class 2 compound fracture of the left tibia and probably a fractured fibula as well. Her left ankle appeared to be broken in at least one or two places. She also appeared to have a broken jaw and several missing teeth.
I spoke briefly with her and determined she was not in shock and knew exactly what was happening. I tried not to move her too much but shifted her a bit so she could lean against me instead of the cold rock and then covered her with all the clothes we had to keep her warm.
30-40 minutes later, Jeremy, the hut manager, returned with the BF and several volunteers from the hut. One of those volunteers was a former ER doc from Calgary, who took control of the situation. Jeremy also put in a call to CMH, which immediately sent up a heli with 4 trained staff.
We splinted her leg, put her on a backboard and then a stretcher. From there we used a one of the big tires on the stretcher to gingerly wheel her down the boulder field toward a small platform. The CMH pilot did a fantastic job of landing that thing, hovering over a small flat spot while we loaded her in. Less than three hours after the accident, she was off to the hospital in Invermere.
We headed back to the Hut, frazzled from the incident. I carried one of their packs back to the hut, as Kristin had taken care of my day pack during the rescue. Once back, Jeremy asked me to return to the incident site to get the other backpack, which lay at the edge of the glacier, where he had tried to wash off all of the blood. On the way back, Kristin and I decided to try the route again the next day, given the right weather. I got back to the sight of the accident, found the pack lying next to the glacial stream that shoots from the toe of the Bugaboo Glacier and decided to move me and the pack away from path of rocks I had seen coming down the glacier during the morning.
Kristin showed up a few minutes behind, we put the pack in a garbage bag and started to walk off. Less then 5 minutes later, a one meter boulder launches down the glacier and lands directly where I and the pack had been a few minutes earlier. Close call. We decided to bag the route and save it for another trip.
The GF had apparently been on the low angled slabs that bypasses the glacier on the approach to the start of the SE Corner. They were unroped, scrambling on the slabs, when she pulled off a large boulder. The boulder rolled over, crushed her leg, and then rolled with her 25-30 down the slab back into the boulder field. I do not know whether she was wearing a helmet at the time, but she did not have it on when I arrived. That’s my best guest at accident reconstruction, but I could be wrong.
Wednesday and Thurday – Kristin and I spent the next two days fighting off the psychological remnants of seeing the gruesome accident. Wed. we decided to try the Kain route. We got an early start but moved extremely slowly on the scramble. By the time we got to the start of the technical climbing, the weather had started to deteriorate, and Kristin turned us around. We gingerly descended the Col only to return to the Hut under clear skies and fair weather.
That night we met up with MtnHigh and Drew. They had done Lions’ Way on Mon., NE Ridge of Bugaboo on Tue., and the West Ridge of Pigeon on Wed. In between, they had apparently figured out a new modern technique for slaughtering snafflehounds, involving a heavy rock, a stick, a string and a piece of cheese. Save the Snaffles!! We tentatively decided to climb together the next day on the Krause McCarthy route on Snowpatch.
We woke up on Thursday to questionable weather. Kristin and I got to the top of the Col at 9 am, the planned meeting point, only to find that MtnHigh and Drew had bailed due to the cloud cover. We decided to tromp over to the West Ridge of Pigeon. Two pitches up the ridge, Kristin again turned us around due to weather. At this point, I pretty much lost my shit, suffering from a combination of impatience, frustration and exhaustion. I didn’t disagree with her decision, because I would never force her up an alpine route against her will (at least not a second time), but my normally positive mindset took a 180 degree turn, and I pulled the plug on the entire trip.
We walked back to Applebee, left a note that we were out of there, and told them we would pick them up at the trailhead on Sat. at 3 pm.
Friday – By the time we got back to the trailhead on Thursday afternoon, I had calmed down a bit but still wasn’t mentally ready to climb again. Kristin was determined to get me one more good day before the end of the week, and she volunteered to walk up to Applebee to talk to MtnHigh and Drew about plans for the next day. She returned an hour or so later, announcing that I was going to climb the NE Ridge of Bug Spire, IV 5.7, the next day with one of the two of them. I went to bed extremely skeptical.
I woke up on Friday at 3 am with perfect skies, shooting stars and a minor display of the Northern Lights. I couldn’t resist any longer, brewed up and left for Applebee. I got to the Dome at around 5 am and rousted hungover Drew for his second ascent of the route in 5 days. Apparently, he had arranged a kind barter with their neighbors, who had packed in a case of beer! Unbelievable.
We left at about 5:30 and soloed the 4th class approach slabs all the way to the ledge at the base of the first pitch. We started climbing at about 8 am, and we topped out at 11:15. We got stuck behind one or two parties on the descent and made it back to Applebee around 3:30 pm.
That was one of the best days I’ve had in the mountains! Mentally, I needed a good day of climbing more than any other time I can remember. We got perfect weather, and the route, of course, is incredible - classic. I also got to lead every pitch as a bonus, and walked off that mountain feeling better than I had during any other part of the week. My thanks go out to Kristin and Pete for stepping aside during a bluebird day to let me climb and especially to Drew for strapping it on with a hangover to climb a route he had just done a few days earlier.
We walked out Saturday morning, ate like pigs, swilled beer and then drove straight back, arriving in PDX on Sunday at about 3:30 am. That car smelled like complete shit. The stench coming from MtnHigh and Drew made my eyes water. I think something died in our cooler.
The ‘schrund on the col looks like complete shit. The snowbridge is probably about 8 inches thick at this point and will likely go in the next week or so. The first person probably won’t fall completely through, but its still sketchy nonetheless. Chunks of the lip were falling off by the day. I ascended and descended twice and then finally decided to rap over the Col on Friday.
I had a tough week mentally but pulled it out in the end thanks to the help of my friends. I can’t wait to go back.
