[TR] Mt. Queen Bess - SE Buttress / Good Queen Bes

[peas]

Trip: Mt. Queen Bess - SE Buttress / Good Queen Bess

 

Date: 8/4/2007

 

Trip Report:

This trip started for me with an email from Cam on another uneventful, rainy, cabin fever filled weekend evening. Attached to the email was a beautiful photo of the SE Buttress of Mt. Queen Bess and Mike Down's 1981 CAJ account of his first ascent of the route with Don Serl. My girlfriend Chris was wonderfully understanding of me canceling some holiday plans at the last minute, so I was in! I wasn't aware of it at the time, but a second and potentially free ascent of the route has been secretly coveted by a few Coast Range climbers. Cam, Jay and Pete were happy to have me along if only because I would reduce their flight costs. So more than 5 years of thinking about it for Cam and less than one week thinking about it for me, with Jay and Pete somewhere in between had us getting ready for this long trip that would take place over a slightly longer than long weekend.

 

The plan was to start driving after work on Friday, arrive at Whitesaddle Air early on Saturday morning and the base of Mt. Queen Bess shortly afterward. Each of us had to be back at work on Wednesday morning so we'd have a couple days to make the most of life. Thankfully almost everything fell into place and we had a great trip.

 

After a day where it seemed more likely that I'd still be working at 9p.m. rather than leaving at 5p.m., I wished my coworkers a happy "So long suckers!" and was on the road, pretty much on schedule. Work tension ebbed and excitement for the upcoming climb waned. One of the only notable events on the drive up was passing a bitchin dune buggy with "Git Er Dun" written on the side. The slogan was adopted for the trip and was used when even the smallest obstacle was overcome. "Hey Pete, did you fill up with gas?" "Yeah. I got er dun." The other event of the drive up was the surprisingly heavy rain that we experienced through Williams Lake.

 

We crashed on Whitesaddle's driveway at about 3a.m. and woke up to helicopter blades early on Saturday morning. It turned out that we were 2nd in line behind a group of geologists and they were the only ones flying out that morning due to the helicopter helping to mop up after the lightning from the night before. Our trip was quickly going south.

 

Cam's friend Steve works at the Nature Conservancy in Tatloyoko Lake, so to make the most of our day, we paid a social visit on Steve's busiest day of the year. Steve was one of the aforementioned covetous mountaineers so he shed some crocodile tears and put us to work. Since our party consisted of 3 engineers and a physicist, we were put in charge of making a bridge over the mighty Homathko River which was really only a few meters wide where we were to put the bridge. We got er dun with a distinct North Shore touch.

 

Now that we were official Nature Conservancy volunteers, we made ourselves at home in the beautiful, new Nature Conservancy cabin and spent most of the afternoon napping. In the evening we were rudely awakened by a phone call from D. King and were soon on the way back over to Whitesaddle. A few tense moments were spent willing the Cariboo Forest Service air controller to stop calling for helicopters and then we were whisked away into the mountains.

 

Our inner crag rats were a little disappointed and our inner hard men were a little relieved when Mike couldn't drop us off right at the base of our route, but instead had to drop us one ridge system to the west. Overall it was for the better since our final camp spot offered a great view of the sun setting behind the Waddington Range.

 

The flight in gave us a good view of the route and it looked steep! That quick view wrecked my confidence and I was starting to think I was in over my head. Nobody else looked like they shared my feelings so I tried to keep them to myself. A quick dinner, quick packing and quickly to bed had us up early on Sunday morning.

"How's the weather looking Cam?"

"It looks like it's time to get up."

left me with no other options than to suck it up and get out of bed.

 

Jay and Pete were climbing as one pair with Cam and I climbing as the other. Pete started the first lead at around 7:30a.m. The first pitch leads up a low angled ramp/corner then up left over some steps to reach a plush ledge. Pete was leading up through the steps and in a "brilliant flash of latent energy" he launched a microwave sized block down at us. Jay and I booked, but Cam looked like he was trying to hypnotize the boulder into not hitting him. Both strategies worked and the rope was o.k. so no harm done. I managed to lead the pitch without re-testing Cam's boulder dodging strategy.

 

Pitch two included an aided pitch from the first ascent and was the subject of some debate on the approach. There is a steep crack line directly up the crest of the buttress, but an easier looking line past some slabs through a small roof on the left of the buttress. From below we weren't sure whether the slabs would be climbable. We chose the easier looking line and the slabs turned out to be one of the best sections of the pitch! The rock is nicely textured with lots of small knobs and dykes. The granite is fine grained and very high friction. The slab section even offered up a few cracks for protection. The roof proved to be less trouble than expected with decent finger locks and hand jams, then some more face cracks and corners lead to a nice belay ledge. We found an ancient fixed cam so we most likely followed the line of original ascent and it went at around 5.9.

 

Pitch three started off with a short steep corner and was followed by face cracks and features up onto the ridge crest. We broke down the belay and walked over to the base of a headwall for the next pitch.

 

A large offwidth/chimney split this headwall, but we took some fun shallow cracks to the left then traversed back right to the ridgeline.

 

Next was some of the most fun climbing on the route. A few rope lengths of simulclimbing over a nice variety of features on the same solid rock. Great views, nice exposure. Everything you could hope for. This block ended below the last headwall of the ridge.

 

The next pitch included the 2nd aided pitch from the first ascent. A wide crack slowly thins and ends at a small overlap. Stepping down and left leads across somewhat tenuous and crumbling slabs then up to regain the overlap and some good gear. A few more thin moves left to get to the base of a short overhanging hand crack. Straightforward but physical climbing goes through the overhang then up onto face cracks that lead to the ridge. Probably around 10a.

 

The climbing up to this point is some of the best alpine climbing I've done on some of the nicest rock I've come across.

 

After this pitch we simulclimbed two more blocks to the summit with a little bit of mixed climbing along the way. The rock in this last section wasn't as nice as the lower sections and the climbing was not as high quality. We reached the summit at around 2:30p.m.

 

There's a small cairn on the summit with a neat old BCMC register made from a flare. The dozen or so entries in the register read as a who's who in Coast Range climbing. Munday, Pigou, Kafer, Beckey, Sherman, Suddaby, Serl, Down, Redekop, Fairley and of course now Burbee, Hudson, Shute and Wilson. Who hasn't heard of them? Scotch and beer waiting in camp ensured a short stay on the summit.

 

We retraced most of the last two blocks of simulclimbing with one short rap. One 70m rap down the south face put us at the top of the large diagonal gash of the Kafer route. No snow in the gully meant some chossy downclimbing that I could have done without. A better option would be to stay on the south face and deal with the 'schrund and crevasses.

 

A beautiful sunset behind the Waddington Range was a perfect conclusion to a great day.

 

After a lazy breakfast on Monday morning we wandered over to Diadem with a trundling break along the way. Jay, Pete and I climbed the snow/ice slope on the west side of the north face while Cam skirted around to the south side to join up with the ridge. Nice peak with great views of Queen Bess.

We packed up camp that night with the hopes of getting flown out but ended up going out on Tuesday morning instead. The drive back to Vancouver was marked by steadily deteriorating weather and by the time we hit Vancouver it was raining. Pretty typical for this summer.

 

Overall a great trip, a great route and a FFA. I highly recommend this route to almost anyone. Too bad we couldn't have spent a little more time in the area.

 

As an addendum, since Pete is an enviro hippy, we plan to buy carbon offsets for all of the fossil fuels that we burned on the trip. After spending a couple days up in the beautiful glaciated landscape it was quite a realization that a lot of the beauty won't be around for the next generation and that they might not be so lucky as to go on such an extravagant trip.

 

Gear Notes:

-70m ropes

-doubles in finger to hand sizes

Edited August 25, 2007 by peas

[G-spotter]

 

I hate you by the way

[hefeweizen]

While I can visualize based on my own experience (and often do instead of being present to work or the current conversation I'm involved in) what this route probably looked like: some pics would make it that much easier if you've got 'em.

 

Nice job to you and your friends.

[fishstick]

Great effort! In my limited experience, the morning view of Queen Bess from the Niut range is one of the best sights in the entire range.

 

GB

[Ponzini]

Right on! I've seen QB while skiing on the Homathko but haven't touched it (yet). That summit cornice/serac is intense when viewed from the North!

[peas]

Now with pictures. More to come once I get some pics from the other guys.

 

Mt. Queen Bess from near Diadem. The SE Buttress is on the right. We descended down the face in the centre of the photo.

 

A close up of the SE Buttress from below.

 

Cam, Pete and Jay on the summit.

 

Sunset behind the Waddington Range from camp.

 

Diadem from camp.

[AlpineK]

 

I hate you by the way

 

Exactly.

[peas]

suckers.