[TR] Mt. Colonel Foster- Culbert Route 8/5/2006

[peas]

Climb: Mt. Colonel Foster-Culbert Route

 

Date of Climb: 8/5/2006

 

Trip Report:

With the long weekend coming up, many emails were going back and forth between Graeme, Mark and I about what to do. Graem's constraint was that he had to be in Campbell River on Tuesday for a bike trip, so attention quickly focused on Vancouver Island. And what cooler thing to do on Vancouver Island than Mt. Colonel Foster! The Culbert Route on the East Face looked pretty classic, so our decision was pretty much made for us.

 

Sailing waits, sleeping in the Horseshoe Bay parking lot, huge breakfast queues, porpoises playing in the wake of the ferry, a stop in Campbell River, some driving finally and the Flaming Lips had us at the trailhead by mid afternoon on Saturday.

 

At the trailhead you are required to pay $5 per person per night for camping and there is a sign up saying that camping at Landslide Lake is no longer permitted (according to a sign at the 2nd sandbar campsite, camping at Foster Lake is no longer permitted either).

 

The trail in was uneventful. A long, relatively flat walk in the forest. The first views of Mt. Foster come at Landslide Lake and are quite impressive. The trail from Landslide Lake to Foster Lake is the "worst trail ever" (Simpson's Comic Book Guy) since it covers about twice the elevation gain that it needs to, sometimes going up, then back down within 20 horizontal meters of trail. We were bad and ignored the posted signs and camped at Foster Lake.

 

We were moving as it got light, and after a relatively easy schrund crossing, we started the route to the left of a diagonal chimney, mostly scrambling through easy face climbing. About three quarters of the way to the snow field Graeme got the unenviable task of unprotected face climbing, followed by an unprotected traverse to a not so great anchor. Thanks Graeme. Graeme handed over the reins at this point so it was my turn to lead. A nicer crack system lead us into the gully and after that I got what was coming to me when I had a very poorly protected lead to the base of the snow field. In hindsight, I should have just gained the snow in the gully since it would have been faster and safer. In the section from the schrund to the snowfield, we probably could have saved a considerable amount of time and effort by staying closer to or climbing in the diagonal chimney gash.

 

There was plenty of water running from the bottom of the snowfield, so we drank up and filled up. We didn't encounter any other water until reaching the South Col on the descent.

 

The next bit of climbing went pretty much according to the Fairley guide, except with fewer initial pitches right above the snow, due most likely to longer ropes. We simul-climbed the easy stuff that diagonals to the left, but would have been better off just soloing since the climbing was easy and there wasn't much protection to be had.

 

Back on the ridge crest is where Graeme took to driver's seat again. Graeme's turn was cut short after a couple pitches when it sounded as though Grameme was attacked by some strange mountain animal. Apparently the sound we heard was Graeme expressing his displeasure at taking a fall which he stopped himself by grabbing some bushes.

 

At this point we were at the chimney to the final headwall. We ended up on the opposite side of the summit from where the original line goes up, but I'm not completely sure where we went wrong. In any case, the climbing was up to 5.8, with sparse protection and questionable rock at times. We generally just followed a chimney/gully and the face next to it until we hit the top which took us about six pitches.

 

By the time we hit the summit it was close to sunset. We quickly checked into the summit register. Nice work to Joe Bajan's sone who summited Colonel Foster at age 13! Initially I was keen to start descending, but then I came to my senses and we decided on an uncomfortable night near the summit. There is a nice rock ring if you traverse South from the summit for about 50m. Luckily we had decided to throw in my sleeping bag at the last minute "Just in case." It was still cold regardless of how much huddling (not cuddling) went on.

 

It's a good thing that we decided to bivi at the top because the descent is definitely not trivial. We chose the southern gully indicated in Stone's guide and ended up doing about six rappels using two 60m ropes. We didn't find much rap tat in the gully, so I can't imagine that this is the most popular descent route. If I were to do it again, I'd try a different way down.

 

The trudge back to the South Col and down to camp was pretty tame, but tiring. Running water was available partway down from the South Col.

 

At camp, we quickly packed up because we still had hopes of catching a ferry back that night (fat chance). Unfortunately, Mark had left his crampons at the base of the climb the day before, so he went back up to get them. Even more unfortunately, Mark came back empty handed since the schrund had opened up a lot since the day before. I hope someone gets to the crampons before they end up in the glacier. We cheered Mark up with some tea and a meal, and we were soon on our way down.

 

We arrived in Campell River to find Graeme's Dad on the phone, orchestrating a search with the RCMP. The search was quickly called off and the beer was pulled out. Our appologies to the Brown family for the stress we caused. No ferries to be had that night.

 

The last kick in the pants was one more sailing wait on Tuesday morning on the way back to Vancouver. Luckily, Mark is a student and my work schedule is flexible so a pink slip wasn't waiting for me when I got in late.

 

We brought a fairly full rack, but didn't use a lot of it. Most of what we could place was in the blue to red metolius size. We also brought a few pins, but only placed one. I'd bring a smaller rack next time. Crampons were useful for the approach, but insteps would have done fine. No crampons needed for the descent.

[G-spotter]

[Huckleberry]

Hey...I was on Colonel Foster from August 26-29. My climbing partner and I went up Expressway, which links up with the Cataract Arete and the Summit Glacier.

 

The start of Expressway is pretty close to the Culbert Route, and it just so happens that the location we chose to get off the glacier and onto the base of the Colonel was the same location your group did....The first thing we noticed was the pair of crampons sitting there. We contemplated taking them out with us and leaving them somewhere. We also contemplated returning to pick them up after the climb. However, as mountains go, the Colonel was a challenge and we didn't return to Foster Lake until 2:40am the following day.

 

Our first day took us 15 hours to get to a nice ledge just below the Arete. The second day took us a full 24 hours to summit, get down the South Col and back to Foster Lake, and get back to my truck before we were reported MIA.

 

We also found the descent to be pretty challenging, in terms of finding the route down. We only had to do one rappel to get off of a rib and into a ravine, from where we climbed back up onto another rib. It's hard to say exactly where we descended seems we did so in darkness. Fortunately, we made it down!

 

Our route must have been different than yours because we used out crampons frequently - once on the summit glacier and several times on the descent.

 

In any case, the climb was well worth it and is waiting to be done again...this time with more finesse (and better timing).

 

Maybe your crampons will still be there for you.

[peas]

Wow! Sounds like you had quite an adventure. Nice to hear that the crampons are still there. I doubt they'll make it to next summer though.