[TR] Mt Elkhorn Vancouver Island - South Ridge 7/18/2007

[JanD]

Trip: Mt Elkhorn Vancouver Island - South Ridge

 

Date: 7/18/2007

 

Trip Report:

Shortly after climbing on Mt Colonel Foster, my friend Max and I decided to try to climb Elkhorn. The original idea was to climb the impressive East Face via the "Into the Sadistic" route (500 m, 5.10b, IV).

 

Mt Elkhorn is the second highest peak on Van Isle (2192 m). It host some great alpine climbing and scenery. It is located along the Elk River Trail (ERT) and its neighbouring peaks are Kings, Rambler, and Colonel Foster. It has a classic shape.

The left hand skyline towards the peak is the North Ridge (5.8 400 m III)

 

Approach is either to the northwest ridge or to the South Col.

NWR:

Hike along the ERT for a couple km and turn left at the Elkhorn sign to cross the Elk River. Then it is a steep trail up into the alpine.

SC:

Hike along ERT until you cross the Elk River on bridge (10 km) then hike up trail into alpine between Elkhorn and Colwell. You can camp right on the Col. There should be water at camp unless you are really late in the season.

 

Our trip:

We hiked in to NWR in an easy day (6 h) and camped. We were pretty lazy and took some breaks. You can be faster but the trail is pretty relentless, so it's nice to tak your time.

It was raining. Yeah, what a great "summer" this is so far. Went to bed, got up at 3. No vis and some rain. Back to bed. Got up at 7. Blue sky!!

 

Too late for Into the Sadistic though. We decided to try the South Ridge instead. This is a cool feature that does not get climbed very often. In the pic it is the right hand skyline. It reaches the summit after 600 m of low 5th. Sounds like some soloing fun.

 

Well, there was the approach though. We had to traverse below the mountain from the NW Col to the South Col. That involved following a marginal trail, loosing a whole bunch of altitude and climbing back up. Not so great. 3 hours later we stand at the South Col with weather deteriorating fast.

 

We start soloing up low 5th on great rock and the ridge looks awesome.

The south summit is mostly obscured by valley fog coming in fast. We want to do some climbing at least though. There are several challenging steps (upt to 5.7 I'd say) but some of them could be avoided by going around them. We just wanted to climb at least something, so we did not always go for the easyest option...

 

At some point you start up an impresive ridge with about 300 m of awesome climbing (maybe 5.4). The cool thing is that it is all pretty much low 5th. Not harder but also not much easier. All on solid rock with the exception of one step that can be avoided on the way down.

 

We got up a to within maybe 50 vertical m of the summit. At this point the weather was not looking good. Sometimes the vis was almost zero. We worried about all the downclimbing we had to do before the rain would start. So we retreated. Here is Max comming down the lower part of the low 5th ridge:

 

We did one 30 m rappel. This was the only point where we found old rap slings. I don't think this side of the mountain sees much traffic at all. The rest was downclimbed or avoided by stepping off the arete.

 

Once on the snow we boot skied down a fair ways and then traversed back to camp.

 

This was the bushwack from f&^%(ing hell. It started with pouring rain. Then more fog and poor vis. We lost the faint trail at some point and started bushwacking up steep forrest with devils climb, old avi debris, broken up by some rocky benches that we had to climb. I remember swinging my axe like Conan, driving it into soil and old trees to get some purchase on the slippery rock. My boots were filled with water and everything was wet. Classic BC mountain experience.

 

Cheers, Jan

 

Gear Notes:

One 60 m rope, axe, some leaver slings and rap rings.

[G-spotter]

i heard that Sadistic doesn't go to the summit?

[JanD]

AFAIK that is correct. There is the South Summit and the main summit. Thay are about the sam altitude but then there is a large notch between. I am not sure if anyone has traversed the mountain. Some people call it traverse when they come up the NR and descent the NWR. But it would be cool to do NR and come down SR.

Then you would have to deal with that notch. I'll ask around and see if I can find out.

 

Does ITS look ever cool though. So does the East Buttress which is unclimbed AFAIK. It looks real steep at the lower end.

 

Gotta go back I guess.

 

Edited July 23, 2007 by JanD

[TREETOAD]

Way to go guys. Elkhorn was my my first summit, the approach is a bit of a character builder eh? Nice work. Too bad the weather got so crappy this weekend.

[JanD]

Here is a good pic of the NR-SR of Elkhorn from Lindsay Elms:

(left is north)

 

The headwall on the north end of the notch was clearly visible from our high point (the white arrow) and it looks steep.

 

Jan