Mt. Rainier
The highest point I had been too before I attempted Mt.Rainier was the summit of Wedge Mountain at 2892m’s, in Garibaldi Provincial Park, B.C., and I remember feeling a keen sense of achievement at having scaled that height. Just knowing that it was the highest summit in the park made it feel like more of an achievement for me, like I had conquered some invisible force, a force that as you reach higher becomes more and more oppressive. Rainier, which stands at just over 4300m’s (14,411ft), was now going to be the tallest mountain I had climbed to date. Despite the many mountaineering trips I had taken in the last few years, the trip to Mt. Rainier felt like something outside of the scope of anything I had known. This was a big mountain and it felt like it deserved a deep respect of it’s own. “….the most luxuriant and the most extravagantly beautiful of all the alpine gardens I ever beheld in all my mountain-top wanderings.” - John Muir As I stood at the Paradise visitor centre looking up at Mt. Rainier on that hot August afternoon, I couldn’t help thinking of how close it seemed. It looked no farther than a stone’s throw away. Rainier just stood there in all it’s glory, streaks of grey rock showing through the late summer snow, deep crevasses gouging the glacier that tumbled down within my view, brightly colored wild flowers dotting the grassy meadows in the foreground. Standing alone in all it’s immensity with no concern for the tiny creatures standing below looking on in awe; standing there thinking that we could somehow conquer this mass of stone and ice. But as usual the mountain doesn’t care that we are there or that we care to struggle and gasp our way up it’s flanks. It is just there, and it was in my own mind that I felt this sense of the mountains willingness to accept us, allowing us to pass and giving me the opportunity to test myself. I remember looking at the winding path that made it’s way in the direction of Camp Muir, comparing it to previous hikes in my mind, thinking it wouldn’t take long at all. The mountain after all looked so close, like a super-imposed image on a screen, but no matter how long I walked that image remained the same distance away. My sense of scale was becoming more and more obscured. At that moment I remembered a quote I had seen in an outdoor store earlier that year regarding the Himalaya, it said “everything is so much bigger and so much farther away than you can imagine”....
Tantalized by the Tantalus
King Tantalus, for various atrocities, was banished to the underworld where he spent his days up to his neck in water with delicious fruits hanging over his head which were wafted away whenever he tried to grasp them, or that whenever he bent down to get a drink, the water receded before he could get any, hence the word “tantalize”. Apart from a few trips into the northern reaches of the Tantalus Range, I’ve had a run of bad luck just trying to get into the central and southern area of this range. Things have just never lined up properly. Poor weather putting the kibosh on a heli ride the morning of departure about a year ago, last Fall at late notice our landlords needed our apartment for family, causing us to have to move out the weekend of a planned trip. A few weeks back another trip was cancelled due to worsening weather. There have been countless other trips in the pipeline that have just gotten postponed or cancelled for one reason or another. I was beginning to wonder if I was being subject to the same punishment as King Tantalus. Which brings me to a trip I planned in the middle of July in 2012. I live in the small coastal/mountain town of Squamish and pretty much since the day I set foot here I’ve been looking over at a cirque that towers over downtown Squamish with impressive looking waterfalls cascading down through bluffs and ending in the Squamish river. It wasn’t until a trip up another local peak, Mt. Mulligan, last year that I realized there was a lake up there, Echo Lake to be exact. My ice ax was also crackling as well as my helmet. Realizing that this possibly signifies an imminent lightning strike I dropped low to the ground Over the past year it’s been an interest of mine to collect information about this area and its surrounding peaks. I emailed a few people who have all been in this area of the Tantalus and got some responses. To say that information is sparse though is an understatement. For an area close enough to Squamish that you can still hear the horns of trains passing through downtown it’s crazy that there is so little information about it. This adds to its allure though so forgive me if this report describes the trip more than the route. I’d hate to deprive others of the same experience. My rough plan was probably ambitious: Friday: Hike to Echo Lake Saturday: Hike to either Niobe/Pelops or Lydia/Niobe col Sunday: Exit via Lake Lovely Water Anyway, ominously on Friday the 13th, 6 of us met in...
Crown Mountain: Powder Pushers
Mid last week we got wind of a planned trip to investigate and possibly climb Crater Couloir on Crown Mountain. It’s been on our radar for a while so we immediately put our names down to go along. Some details changed and due to a few of us needing to be back in the city earlier 4 of us, Spring, Leigh, Dean and Adrien ended up planning to start hiking at 4:30am it meant a 3am wakeup alarm on a Saturday but c’est la vie. We approached via the Grouse Grind trail, a leg burner that stops for most at the Chalet at the top where they check their watches, record their times and never venture further into the backcountry beyond. For us, the Chalet would be our first pitstop. Starting in the dark, and trudging up this trail that turned from soil, to ice, to snow it was a novelty to burst out into the open and be surrounded by the fully lit up Grouse Mountain Resort. We refilled our water bottles in the Chalets restrooms, changed some gear around then headed out on the corduroy groomed trails towards Crown Mountain, where we left the groomed and broken trails behind. We made good time from here and passed Dam Mountain, Little Goat Mountain and then continued down to Crown Pass. As our plan was to do the Crater Couloir we started descending towards the Hanes Creek Valley at this point. About half way down we noticed a rather large and wide runnel that had been formed recently by a slide released from the bluffs above to our left. It was enough of a pause to question whether we should attempt the Couloir at all. Conditions weren’t good and we all knew it would be a heinous snow treadmill up the couloir so we decided to leave it for another day. We decided to attempt the summer scramble route instead. Once we regained Crown Pass we began following the Tree Markers that lead the way along the summer trail. Simple sections that I’m sure are easily bypassed when there isn’t any snow ended up taking considerable amounts of time. An ice layer about a foot or two beneath the snow caused numerous problems in steep sections as the snow on top of it would slide and would also not compress to allow us to make footholds. To add to this, due to the snow, the runouts in quite a few sections of sidehilling were pretty bad. Nevertheless, we pushed on, swimming and plowing through the powder. We gained the final ridge to the summit and decided to don our...
Pelion Mountain: Pupils of Chiron
Pelion Mountain, like most of the peaks in the Tantalus range was named according to a Greek god theme… It was by legend one of the last holdouts of the race of centaurs in the Archaic era, and was where Herakles (Hercules) was tutored by the wise centaur Chiron, who was known for his learning. - bivouac.com On Saturday, the 12th of May, Dean along with Adrien, two climbing friends of myself and Spring pulled up outside our place in Squamish around 9am. Our goal for the weekend would be Mount Pelion in the Tantalus Range. From the pickup spot we could see bluebird skies over Alpha, Omega and Thyestes, the stoke was high. Myself and Spring quickly loaded our gear into Deans Jeep and headed out. We started out on the Sigurd Creek trail shortly after 10am. We’d be snow pitting it so we didn’t have tents. Nevertheless, I’m sure each of our packs weighed around 50lbs at least with all the heavy metal you need to carry for mountaineering. We tried to move as fast as possible on the trail. We got within 700m’s of the first checkpoint, a lookout at ~900m’s elv. before the snow started. Thankfully it was still early enough in the day that the snow was still firm and held our weight. We would not be as fortunate on our return trip. I was glad we were still under the tree canopy for another few km’s. The heat in the open was stifling. We roughly followed the summer trail and in no time at all we were at the Sigurd Creek crossing. Good news! The bridge that had been in disrepair in seasons past was still intact. Bad news… we had no way of using it due to high snow banks. We contemplated a few options, but I think everyone wanted to use a snow bridge of some kind if possible rather than expending the energy to try and make a means to cross the creek. We followed the banks of the river for a while upstream before we came to what seemed like a recently collapsed snowbridge. It looked iffy I won’t lie. It was compromised underneath by the running water and softening up quickly in the sun. Dean crossed it first to test it. Then I, as I’m the heaviest in the group. This was referred to as “Leigh-proofing”. The bridge passed my test and everyone else crossed without incident. In no time from there we were below the glacier between Ossa and Pelion. We headed up to climbers left of of the glacier and onto the NW ridge. At...
Video: A year worth living
In the past year myself and Spring, bloggers on this site, bought our first pair of rock shoes, our first ice tools, our first pair of skis and our first mountain bikes. We haven’t led a sheltered life, just one without much interest in exploring mountains, until now. This is a short (~4min) video I put together trying to capture some of the moments of the last year. I find making them is a great way to take stock of the year, what worked and what didn’t and set in place a focus for the coming year....
Mt. Baker, N. Ridge: Anatomy of an Attempt
“At one point or another we’ve all cited percentages or experience levels and shrugged away risk. Given reasons for why it can’t happen to us, why it won’t happen…” I lay awake, semi in and out of my sleeping bag. It’s hot. I’m trying to sleep as I know I need to be awake and alert again in a few short hours. I want so bad for the temperature to drop, so that I can sleep, so that the snow underneath my tent and for miles around me will firm up. But there’s no wind, no sound, just dry, dead air and the dying light of the day. I’m listening to a podcast called “The Dirtbag Diaries” on my mp3 player. This episode is called “Anatomy of an Accident”. In it the author details a near fatal accident he had high in the mountains in a steep icy gully, he examines the simple mistakes he made during that trip early on that had a domino effect eventually leading to his accident. “Geez, this is the last thing I need to be listening to right now!” I say to myself. I hear a serac calve off Colfax in the distance, the impact shatters the silence across the entire mountain. It’s not the first serac we’ve seen or heard fall this day. “Maybe this is exactly what I should be listening to right now…” I let this episode finish and then try to get some sleep. It’s fitful, it never seems to get dark outside, the temperature is always uncomfortably hot and before I know it, it’s 2am and time to get up and ready. I give Dean and Adrien a wake up call. Spring is already up. Everyone moves in silence, boiling water, eating whatever calories we can paw at in the dull light, getting our harnesses on, prusiks dressed and checked, clipping all our gak where ever it will fit. We split into two rope teams of two and head out into the eerie glow of the near full moon to cross the Coleman Glacier. Only minutes have passed and we’re already jumping the first of a plethora of unavoidable crevasses, ice axes at the ready to arrest any sudden snow bridge collapses. I think to myself “I didn’t even need that coffee this morning, this is enough of a wake up”. At times it feels like tiptoeing past sleeping giants. Huge pillars of broken ice the size of houses, yawning crevasses the depths of which my 100 lumen headlamp can’t even attempt to see to the bottom of. As I inch across one of a few 3 foot wide...
