Dru Posted May 30, 2004 Share Posted May 30, 2004 Climb: Art's Ass (Arthur Seat Mountain)-East Face - New Route Date of Climb: 5/29/2004 Trip Report: Up at Spences' Bridge, south of Cache Creek, there is this huge rock face split by scree gullies called Arthur Seat Mountain. Two routes were climbed there in the 1960's but obscurity, somewhat rumoured loose rock and vague descriptions seem to have ensured no serious activity since then. I see this peak all the time driving by to Marble Canyon or wherever and decided it might be worth checking out as an alternative destination for when it is wet on the Coast. Marble Canyon is a bit far for day tripping but Art's Ass (as Dick Culbert renamed it) is a 2 hr drive for me, same as going to Squamish. I went up in May 2003 to go solo it but after looking carefully through binoculars, decided it looked too hard and ran away. Time blurs memories and in late March 2004 Fern and I went back to check it out. It was too late for ice, too wet for Squamish, but Arts Ass was mostly snow free and dry. Having by this time figured out, with help from Don Serl, where the two 1960's lines go (S and SW buttresses, at left edge of the face) Fern and I set off up the next ridge to the right, the first ridge right of the S buttress original line, across a major gully. These gullies are huge scree chasms and one of the most prominent features of the mountain. Well we made it about 1200' up the ridge, all class 3 and 4 scrambling, and got to a notch with what looked like more technical climbing beyond. At this point we started running into deeper snow and a storm looked like it was moving in so we bailed via a nearby gully line. This we descended via snow down climbing and 5 rappels, one of which damaged my rope a bit. Basically we ran away. Now this failure weighed on me a bit especially since the climbing was easier than I had thought it would be. The rock had lots of loose features and gravel ledges but the underlying stone, some sort of greenstone, was pretty solid. This weekend looked like a great time to go back with rain forecast for Squamish etc. but sunny skies predicted in the Thompson Canyon, the driest place in BC. Fern had a sprained ankle and noone else was all that keen or could get here if they were keen. So I decided I'd give it a go soloing. I decided to up the commitment level by not taking a rope, slings or a harness. I figured if I wanted to bail I would downclimb the way I came up instead of rapping off. This was kind of a dumb strategy, not to mention commiting, but what the hell at least my pack would be light! I took a helmet, rock shoes and a chalk bag, 2L of water and some halvah and PowerGels. Plus a Gore Tex jacket just in case. On Saturday morning I woke up at 4 from some nightmarish dream about a spam virus running on my work computer and being unable to get the anti virus updated. Went back to sleep and woke up again at 9. Oh yeah, wasn't I going climbing today? Shit! Checked the Lytton weather site and it was reported as sunny. It was pissing down in Chilliwack but I figured whatever, drank some coffee grabbed my pack and ran out the door. I was past Boston Bar before I realized I hadn't eaten breakfast. Today was going to be a get-skinny kind of day living off my fat reserves. I left the car at about 12:30 (ALPINE START MY ASS ) and started hiking across the grassland benches to the base. The rain had stopped at Yale and it was sunny and windy (forecast gusts to 70 km/h). The sage was out, the grass was green, it was a pretty damn good day and the Ass was still there. The east face of the Ass from the approach. Line taken goes more or less bottom left to upper right. Some weird sights on the appropach kept me alert - a flowering prickly pear cactus, and a herd of bighorns. This is the very northern tip of the sage desert that stretches from California up the east side of the Cascades, and here wraps around their northern tip into the rain shadow of the Coast. Flowering prickly pear Bighorn sheep herd. So it took me about an hour to get to the base of the ridge and I scrambled along up the route until I reached the point where Fern and I had bailed. Looking up the route from the first notch. Crux chimney is visible at right above top of dihedral, with headwall looming above. So I downclimbed into the notch and 4th classed out the other side thinking "Hey this is easy!" Only about 60-70m further on though, I came across another notch, much steeper and deeper. This was kind of unexpected. I could've rapped in but didnt have a rope of course. So I tried to downclimb on some mossy ledges and got scared pretty quickly and climbed back to the ridge. Oh fuck, not good! Not really wanting to bail only 60m further on from the last attempt I decided to check out the steeper side of the ridge and was delighted to find this super loose exposed 5.4 traverse that go me into the notch. I was able to climb at class 4-5 along the ridge another 100m or so still in my approach boots. At this point there was a blocky gendarme where a granite dyke ran through the greenstone, with an overhanging headwall above. This looked like rock shoe time. I changed into my Boreals and after some scouting found a line that looked like it would go. I made about 3 or 4 5.9 bouldering moves up the overhang and into a 5.8 hand crack, then traversed right on ledges and got into a super stemming chimney. It had solid sidewalls with edges and I was able to work around several large loose blocks without weighting them and come out on a ledge at the top. Now the angle kicked back again and I put on my approach shoes once more and scrambled at class 3-4 up the ridge again until I approached the end of the ridge and the steep headwall. I really didn't know how I was going to get through the headwall. At the point where the ridge abutted into it it was about 200m high and steep to vertical. There were some highly visible large loose flakes. I saw one line that I figured I could try with a rope, belay and pro that nothing I thought I could solo. However it seemed like I could downclimb into the gully to my right and maybe find an easier way up. I 3rd classed from the end of the ridge down into the gully and checked things out. This gully had a Y shape and I was in the upper left fork. The left fork abutted a steep headwall but it looked like I could either climb the headwall or up the arete dividing the two forks of the Y. I climbed up the gully to the headwall and checked it out. It looked pretty steep and the arete looked much easier so I decided to give the arete a try. I 3rd classed up ledges to the point where the arete steepened to vertical and saw a line I thought would go. It didn't look easy but I saw no other real options. "A samurai makes his decision in the space of seven breaths. Once you have decided to kill a man, it is best not to take a long, roundabout way of doing it, but to dash in headlong. The way of the samurai is one of immediacy." Sitting at the base of the vertical wall I took 7 breaths, put my rock shoes on and started climbing. After climbing only about 15 feet I was incredibly scared, I had just broken a foothold, and I knew there was no way I was going to be able to solo this. In fact if I had been on a rope I would still have been sketched. So I managed to downclimb VERY CAREFULLY back to the ledge and spent some time shaking and cursing. I put my approach shoes back on and downclimbed back to a lower ledge and examined my options. Nothing really seemed good. I spent an hour checking out various potential routes and concluded I felt like climbing none of them. Oh fuck. I really did not want to downclimb all the ridge I had come up but what were my options att this point? I decided I would downclimb the gully I was in and look for escape routes out right. After downclimbing about 150m I found a way to link scree ledges across into the right fork of the Y. The right fork of the Y had no headwall and looked like it ran all the way to the summit. I decided to follow it. It was a pretty good line, mostly solid, with several chimneys and chockstones. There was one pitch of vertical, loosish 5.7 and several easier 5th class sections but I made good time to the final 50m exit dihedral which was both wet and loose, oh joy! My legs were really hurting from all the stemming and when I pulled over the edge onto the summit plateau my quads cramped up so much I could barely walk. I ate my last PowerGel, drank my last water and realized I had no real idea how to get off. It was now about 6:30 PM. I knew I could go south and descend forested slopes to the south of the SW buttress route but I figured it would be a long walk through bighorn country back to the car that way, so I decided to go north. I thought there were forested slopes the whole way back to the valley. I hiked over the summit and took a photo of evening light on Spence's Bridge 1400m below and then began to hike north. I lost elevation working through tangles of beetle-killed pine, vine maple, aspen, red cedar...what the hell biogeoclimatic zone am I in anyways, I wondered? I didn't think you could get aspen and cedar in the same forest.... I found my way through some bluffs and into a long, narrow scree gully. Several hours later I was down on the logging road and walking back to my car. I came around a bend to find this big black bear about 25m away and facing away from me unaware of my presence. After thinking about just hiding out I decided to try and scare it away so I started yelling instead. "I'M A MOTHERFUCKING LOGGER AND I SHOOT BEARS ON SIGHT AND ROAST THEIR CUBS OVER A FIRE" The bear stood up on its hind legs and squinted at me. "IM LOCKED AND LOADED, READY FOR BATTLE - CLAYTON MACK TAUGHT ME GRIZZLY KILLING BEFORE YOU WERE BORN - I'M GONNA CHAINSAW OFF YOUR MUZZLE AND FEED IT TO THE SQUIRRELS" I free-associated. The bear got the message and loped off into the bushes. Well, obviously you can't walk quietly along a logging road any more. I sang "Brown Girl in the Ring" all the way back to the car - damn you Boney M and Joe Simpson! I got back at the car at a quarter to 9 and burned rubber down the highway to the Canyon Alpine for a burger The guy who runs it knows me and asked what I had been climbing this time. I told him I had been on the big face up by Spences' Bridge. He shook his head and asked "Isn't that kind of loose?" I was forced to agree that yes, it was. STATISTICAL BULLSHIT: The route begins at 600m elevation and tops out at 1400m+ elevation. The line taken covers 1.2km horizontal distance for a total route length of about 1.4 km (thanks, Pythagoras!) The climbing was about 90-95% class 2-4 with three moves of boulder 5.9 off a ledge, a bit of 5.8 chimney and a couple half-pitches of easier 5th class. I definitely could not have done the 5.9 in approach shoes so am pretty confident of the grade. Overall I would compare this route to hiking up the Apron descent, soloing Memorial Crack, hiking up to the Ultimate Everything trail and finishing up the upper South Gully of the Chief in terms of style and difficulty. It was more or less line of least resistance the whole way. There are much harder potential options available especially on the summit headwalls. Basically the steeper the rock the more solid it seems. The whole mountain might be a good place to develop a mutipitch sport route. Got 600 bolts? Gear Notes: helmet, rockshoes rap line wouldve been handy Approach Notes: Park at km 1.3ish Murray Cr. FSR and hike across open sage terraces to base. Descend to north picking up Murray road near km 4. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jordop Posted May 30, 2004 Share Posted May 30, 2004 Way to perservere even when ya get bailed on! "The whole mountain might be a good place to develop a mutipitch sport route. Got 600 bolts?" Get the drill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
erd Posted May 31, 2004 Share Posted May 31, 2004 Dru, Good show old boy! Sounds like a fine time was had by all, a tale such as this is always a pleasure to read. I hope that a frosty cold one tasted never so sweet! I am reminded of hunting cape buffalo with only my guide. A tiny local chap, not a day over 80, who spoke not a word of the queen's english... We were following a wounded bull into the growing African dusk. The sun does not linger on the savanna, it falls quickly, and darkness is surely a death warrant, both for the buffalo as well as yours truely. Between the bull and the lions who were surely following us, my trusty .458 seemed like a child's toy. Oh! what have I done? My very life was in the hands of our lord, only my stiff upper lip and some luck will bring me home tonight. All because of a trophy.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted May 31, 2004 Author Share Posted May 31, 2004 Time home: 15 minutes after midnight. Time first beer drunk: 16 minutes after midnight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slothrop Posted May 31, 2004 Share Posted May 31, 2004 Good read, man. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cracked Posted May 31, 2004 Share Posted May 31, 2004 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mer Posted May 31, 2004 Share Posted May 31, 2004 Yeah! Did Fern sprain her ankle whilst out hunting cape buffalo? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EWolfe Posted June 4, 2004 Share Posted June 4, 2004 Art's Ass Great TR, Dru! A fine read. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted June 4, 2004 Author Share Posted June 4, 2004 i believe fern sprained her ankle while kicking a goat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alpinfox Posted June 4, 2004 Share Posted June 4, 2004 Nice work Droooooo! I figured you were up to something since you were conspicuously absent from your spraylord chair for a while there... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
olyclimber Posted June 4, 2004 Share Posted June 4, 2004 Great trip report Dru! I have taken those 7 breaths before Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted June 4, 2004 Author Share Posted June 4, 2004 Nice work Droooooo! I figured you were up to something since you were conspicuously absent from your spraylord chair for a while there... check the dates oh alpinfox, i was absent from spray because i was working in the mountains Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alpinfox Posted June 4, 2004 Share Posted June 4, 2004 Nice work Droooooo! I figured you were up to something since you were conspicuously absent from your spraylord chair for a while there... check the dates oh alpinfox, i was absent from spray because i was working in the mountains and I complimented you on your work. this climbing bidniz you wrote about in this TR is pretty nice too... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted June 4, 2004 Author Share Posted June 4, 2004 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G-spotter Posted April 16, 2006 Share Posted April 16, 2006 bump i went up there today and tried to climb the original 1960's culbert purdey route no idea if i was on route but it was fun. i threw rocks (holds) aplenty and saw a pigeon escape from a peregrine rain and snow held off until i made the summit first time ever laybacking, not dirty rock, but actual dirt the headwall is pretty tricky. much better options exist if you can onsight solo 5.10 it's probably Grade III 5.8 the way i did it today 9 hrs car to car more low 5th than the route the TR is for Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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