[TR] South Peak of Old Settler- West Buttress 8/14/2004

[adrianburke]

Climb: South Peak of Old Settler-West Buttress

 

Date of Climb: 8/14/2004

 

Trip Report:

Ticked one off the list on Saturday. Lee and I went in to Old Settler and climbed the West Buttress of the South Peak. Don Serl first put us on to this one with his Best 6 of BC list. We had gone in a few weeks earlier, but had brought the wrong map and ended up taking a wrong turn 5 km in. Now we were back to finish the job.

 

The approach and map in Alpine Select is an approximation at best. If your going in, do yourself a favor and print out the FSRs on the BC Basemap Viewer - it has every last road on it and makes the approach unmistakeable.

 

The Talc Creek bridge is out so we had to hike the whole road in. 9.5 kms into the beginning of the "trail". The turn off after 5km is heavily overgrown with Alder, as you can see in this pic on the way out:

 

 

The "trail" is pretty much a bushwack with some flagging, followed by a very steep, dirt climb through the trees reminiscent of the last bit of the approach to Habrich. It doesn't seem like very many people have been up there since the bridge went out in 2003 - we had to blast our own trail.

 

 

Lake Daiphy is a nice place to stop. Would even be a good place to bivy if you decided that 21 kms of hiking, 2 hours of bushwacking and 2000 feet of climbing and descent were too much for one day. To help our in a day strategy, we only brought one lieter of water each -- plus the Sweetwater water filter. That was a great idea, as we ended up drinking about 7 liters apiece over the day in the 30+C heat. There were plenty of streams plus the lake on the way in. The 1 liter each on the climb was a little light - next time I would bring 2 each.

 

 

The West Buttress runs up the left edge of the dark red rock of the South Peak. This rock is very solid - about as solid as Squamish granite - but with great friction like Red Rocks sandstone. Really fun rock to climb on, even at the 4th, low-5th level. We ended up climbing two pitches of solid 5th to start, but probably started too far right. Once back on the right path on the left edge of the buttress, the vast majority of the climbing was 3rd and 4th with occasional 5th steps.

 

 

Time to simul climb!

 

 

It took us under 3 hours to get to the summit. Doing the correct 4th class pitches at the beginning probably would bring it down to 2 hours of simlul'ing.

 

Here's a shot looking up at the last few hundred feet of simuling to the summit:

 

For the descent, we scrambled and rapped (two 30m raps) down the South side. Kinda of a gnarly descent after such fun climbing, with lots of loose scree, boulder hopping and generally knee knackering stuff.

 

All in all it was a good climb - I can agree with Don that it is the best 4th class/low 5th climb I have been on in BC. The rock is very solid and frictiony and good fun. The approach on the other hand was a bit long for a couple of hours worth of climbing. The blisters on my feet still hurt. Think we'll wait for the bridge to be repaired before heading back for any other Old Settler routes.

 

Fun in Harrison:

 

 

Cheers!

Adrian

 

 

Gear Notes:

single 8.8 rope

nuts, 6 micro to small cams

water filter (Sweetwater)

Lots of PowerGel

 

 

Approach Notes:

Talc Creek Bridge is out

9.5 km walk on FSR

1 hour bushwack up to Daiphy Lake

30 mins Scree climb to base

[Don_Serl]

how long, car to car?

sans bikes, it sounds? any reason why not?

cheers,

[Dru]

What did you rap coming off the south side - the chimney?

[adrianburke]

Don and Dru - we brought bikes the first time we tried this and they were great on the way out - but on the way in they sucked. I think that the overall energy expended was less by walking. I am not a very experienced mountain biker, and found the road too steep to ride. We walked the bikes most of the way - which took too much work. So this second time we opted to walk it all and it seemed like less energy all around. A little longer without that fast ride out, but....

 

We left at 5:45AM from the truck (slept at the start Friday night), at the base of the rock by noon and on the top shortly before 3PM. The descent took awhile - we basically reversed the South to North traverse described in the guide - steep 3rd class to some rap slings, an overhanging rap, then a second (would have been one 55m rap with two ropes). Then scrambled to the col and down the scree to the lake (pain in the ass!). We got back to the car at 10PM, but we hung around the lake for an hour or more recovering from the heat. Long day all around - I am doing more and more of these 16-18 hour days and for some reason thinking I want to do more.

 

Anyway... cool suggestion Don - great fun on that cool gabbro rock...

 

Adrian

[Dru]

an overhanging rap? for the benefit of other parties repeating, i will say that if you stick left on descending south and follow the obvious fault/ledge system that aside from a 10m chimney downclimb that is 4th class the rest of the downclimb can be done as 3rd class. it sounds like you may have been further to the right but i guess that late in the day you did the right thing for just givin'er instead of scouting around for the downclimb.

 

here's a trivia shot of snoboy and fern downclimbing the chimney i speak of

[adrianburke]

Dru... once we were down at the col, we could see 3rd class ledges on the East side of the peak. It did seem that we could have gone off the East side right at the top and not had to rap, but once we started rapping we were committed. There were rap slings, so we couldn't have been the first.... not that it's always smart to follow other people's leads!

 

 

Adrian

[adrianburke]

Wow... that does look way easier than our way. Like you said - sticking further left would have put us where I saw the ledges once we were down.

 

Cheers,

Adrian

[Dru]

It all goes to the same place in the end

[Don_Serl]

It all goes to the same place in the end

 

actually, dru, if i understand adrian correctly, it DOESN'T all go to the same place. you're talking about descending south off the south peak (i.e., dropping off the peak directly); they went NORTH over the central and north summits to do the traverse before bailing. that takes longer - just depends on what the "objective" for the day is...

cheers,

[snoboy]

- we basically reversed the South to North traverse described in the guide -

 

I would read this as they went N-S, ie they did end up in the same place... also I don't think that they would have been able to see the east side ledges from the col if they had headed N.

[Dru]

what snoboy said, they went south, but came straight down the ridge crest instead of following the descent ledges east of the crest!

 

[slothrop]

This route sounds like BC's version of the West Ridge of North Twin.

[Dru]

Pretty much except it's a grade harder. About like climbing WR N Twin Sis without the 3rd class ledge options on that route. Very similar rock.

 

You wouldn't want to get off the Settler by downclimbing this route, for instance!

[adrianburke]

 

Dru and snoboy are right.... we went N-S, reversing the typical traverse direction.

 

Adrian

[dberdinka]

This route sounds like BC's version of the West Ridge of North Twin.

 

A far more apt comparison would be to the South Face of Ingalls Peak. Similar climbing at a similar grade. Except it's like four of them stacked on top of one another and you are the only surviving climber after a nuclear holocaust.

 

Looking forward to the road reopening in hopefully good condition. Mars Western looks like a sweet! climb.

 

Awesome beach for camping down at Harrison Lake as well.

[fern]

Mars Western looks like a sweet! climb.

 

choss

[Don_Serl]

adrian,

oops, my bad. i missed the part about descending south in the TR, saw the "reversed N to S traverse" bit in one of your replies, had a brain-fart, and "knew" that you could ONLY traverse S-N if you climbed the S peak.

tks to dru, now everyone knows the easiest way down...

cheers,

[Dru]

Awesome beach for camping down at Harrison Lake as well.

 

For camping on East Harrison FSR you must bring:

1) a shotgun

2) a boom-box so's you can play Eminem all day long

3) an ATV to ride around on dusty logging roads on

4) your fat gut

5) some skanky Surrey chick

6) a dome tent from Canadian tire

7) some smashed up pallets to have an illegal fire, OR better yet cut down a living tree and try and burn the green wood using lighter-fluid

8) at least 24 Molson's or Labatts per person per day

9) bag of weenies, bag of marshmallows, can of beef stew per day per person

10) no garbage bags! just leave it piled at your campsite or spread around in the bushes

 

11) paper plates to write your name and location on. leave a trail nailed to trees!

 

[adrianburke]

True that! We commented on the at least 100 cars along the E. Harrison FSR and the piles of garbage everywhere. Deee-sguting!

 

It would be a totally nice beach - except for the damn humans.

 

Adrian

 

"Hell is other people" - Sartre

[layton]

Awesome beach for camping down at Harrison Lake as well.

 

For camping on East Harrison FSR you must bring:

1) a shotgun

2) a boom-box so's you can play Eminem all day long

3) an ATV to ride around on dusty logging roads on

4) your fat gut

5) some skanky Surrey chick

6) a dome tent from Canadian tire

7) some smashed up pallets to have an illegal fire, OR better yet cut down a living tree and try and burn the green wood using lighter-fluid

8) at least 24 Molson's or Labatts per person per day

9) bag of weenies, bag of marshmallows, can of beef stew per day per person

10) no garbage bags! just leave it piled at your campsite or spread around in the bushes

 

11) paper plates to write your name and location on. leave a trail nailed to trees!

 

 

Also paper cups and string for local calls,

a car flipper and burninator,

an old t.v. to toss out the window,

your victem and some plastic tarp.