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[TR] Joffre Range - Matier NW Spur 6/26/2011


wbk

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Trip: Joffre Range - Matier NW Spur

 

Date: 6/26/2011

 

Trip Report:

This trip has been a bit of long time coming for my wife - she's been working her butt off in the corporate world and has been looking forward to a little time off to finally get in the mountains this season. We were looking to go someplace new and since we were planning on Squamish, we thought somewhere up there would be cool. The Joffre range sounded promising so off we went with a decent but not ideal weather window.

 

We hiked into Joffre lakes on June 25th and climbed Matier early on the 26th with hopes of also tagging Joffre. The temps skyrocketed after we descended Matier so we bailed on the slush slog up the SE Face of Joffre.

 

The Upper Matier glacier is a cool spot but with all the snow this year (there is a ton up there), it would have been great to have just started from Keith’s hut. Nonetheless, a ripping adventure!

 

Route Notes:

Booting up the left side under the lower icefall is relatively safe right now if temps are low enough and you move fast. It froze overnight for us (just barely) so we donned crampons above the lake and moved quickly up to the upper glacier.

We had hard neve crust with some soft snow under in many spots of the NW Spur route of Matier. We had two tools as we were planning to do the straight up North Face route which looks fun! With two tools we were able to move up pretty quickly. We placed pickets higher on the face and stayed well clear of the summit cornices. We ran into Tyler (Canadian) and Matt (Kiwi) on the upper face… Matt had no crampons so Tyler was kicking monster buckets for him! Solid work and we felt privileged with crampons and double tools!

 

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Lindsey stoked on the approach… it’s short but the abundantly rocky and rooty trails is a bit of pain with heavy packs.

 

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(Left to right) Joffre NW ridge (foreshortened - can't see summit), Matier icefall, Slalkok (Rex's Pillar) and the Stonecrop Glacier

 

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Always time for junk shows in the alpine

 

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Looking out from the Matier icefall (south and west)

 

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Move up your body

 

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Views on the upper glacier

 

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Interesting cloud layers

 

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Joffre

 

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Matier

 

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Making progress on the route

 

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High on the route - Tyler and Matt behind Lindsey

 

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Lindsey on the summit. We were soked in but at least it kept the snow hard and made cramponing fast!

 

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Me dorking out at the summit

 

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Descending

 

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Eating them shits

 

Gear Notes:

We took a glacier rope, two pickets, three ice screws and a few cams (didn't use screws nor cams) as we didn't climb the North Face route.

 

Approach Notes:

Joffre Lakes Trail

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