[TR] Labour Day Summit- Labour Day Buttress 7/23/2005

[peas]

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.

[jordop]

Cool Photos?

[peas]

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

[Dru]

Good stuff, those Rexford climbers have a TR on ClubTread. One mildly experienced leader and two other climbers who had never put a harness on or climbed 4th Class before.

 

[Dru]

BTW to get off Labour Day we traversed skiiers left across ledges on the southwest face and finished on the south ridge, no need to rap but some bush and class 4 downclimbing.

[peas]

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.