[TR] Foley Peak - Southwest Ridge 8/23/2007

[cheamclimber]

Trip: Foley Peak - Southwest Ridge

 

Date: 8/23/2007

 

Trip Report:

Yesterday me and my friend Lorne decided to try the Southwest Ridge of Foley Peak in the Cheam Range. We left at 7:30 but on the way up the logging road a peice was all strewn with large rocks that would have bottomed out his car, fortunately we only had to hike about 1 KM of road before we reached the parking lot. We made good time up the trail and reached Williamson lake at approx 10:30. I had to re-coil the rope because it was being a pain in the neck but we quickly headed up the gravel slide to the Welch Foley col. Instead of heading for the very obvious pass to the right of the gendarme we took a gulley to the right of the pass in order to make a more direct approach to the mountain, the rock was very loose and slid a lot and was exausting work but at about 11:15 we reached the Col. A quickly phoned my sister and then we started scrambling towards the steep looking SW ridge. About halfway to the Ridge Lorne started feeling sick and said that maybe we should leve the gear and scramble the easy SE Ridge instead. Me being selfish and wanting the climb the SW Ridge told him to rest on a boulder for 15 minutes while I pointlessly scrambled around on the boulders, after the break he was feeling a bit better and I managed to convince him to do the route that we had come to climb. We quickly scrambled to base of the ridge and walked up the first peice of knife-edge ridge unroped. The next pitch involved scrambling around a corner to the left and into a small gully that looked very steep from below so we decided to set a belay. I led the pitch and placed a couple pitons but it was completely pointless because the gully turned out to be an easy climb that we could have saved time on by simul climbing. From the top of the gully we set up a good belay on a boulder and I set up towards the crux 5.5 crack. The pitch started with a short traverse to the right on a scree covered lege. At the end of the ledge I pounded in a piton and headed up the wall to my left, after about 15ft I reached another ledge to the left of the main crack and placed a really sketchy piton that probably would have ripped out like nothing if I fell any more than 6ft on it. I moved to right into the crack and looked for any places that I could place another piton in the next few feet. While I was doing this I spotted some gear left in the crack that I was climbing, I happily clipped into the first chock and hand jammed up the crack, i bypassed a hex that was placed in the crack as the cord on it was in bad shape but I reached a comfortable stance on a big foothold and clipped another chock in the crack. The next moves were incredibly easy and I reached the little gap on the ridge crest between the SW subpeak of Foley and the true peak. I thought a boulder nicely situated on the ridge would make a nice belay but when I gave it a quick push with my foot to test it out it rolled down the North face of the mountain! Looking for another boulder or rock prong to belay from I spotted an old but solid looking piton and clipped into it for a belay. Lorne seconded the pith fairly quickly stopping to remove a couple peices of gear on the way The rest of the ridge consisted of a short scramble on the left hand side of the ridge and a nice ridge walk to the summit. After not taking any summit pictures because we both forgot our cameras we headed down the SE ridge to the glacier and then back to col. WE scrambled back down the scree slope to the lake and descended the trail and road to the car. WE got back to the car at 7:00 and arrived back in Agassiz at 8:30. In all the climb was great and I enjoyed my first real technical climbing outside of the local crags. I was shocked because I can usually on-sight 5.10s easily enough when sport climbing at the crags but in the Alpine and placing my own gear a 5.5 felt more like a 5.8.

 

 

 

The Green Line is the Line of Ascent and the Blue line is the Descent we took.

 

 

I highly reccomend this route up Foley instead of the regular SE Ridge route.

 

 

 

 

Gear Notes:

I had half a dozen pitons and my 70M Rope. But I reccomend bringing some larger chocks and maybe a size #2 cam for the crux pitch.

Edited August 25, 2007 by cheamclimber

[G-spotter]

the gear you found was left by Shaun N. during a failed winter attempt a couple of years ago.

[cheamclimber]

Oh cool, how did the attempt fail? the gear went as far as the top of the crux, from there it was easy. must have been badly corniced or something.

[G-spotter]

I believe it failed because his climbing partner had to pick up the kids from Grandma's house at a certain time.

[cheamclimber]

HaHa, thats crazy, they were only a few minutes from the top. Unless they had to belay the last pitches in the snow.

[cheamclimber]

By the way..have any of you other guys done this route?