Tantalust, Part III: Finding Jim
< Tantalust, Part II: Dreams and Reality “Spring… we have a problem…” I slowly inched my way back from the edge, my body stiff, my heart beating up out of my throat. I turned to Spring and I could tell that she understood from my body language that something was wrong. I scanned around for options and couldn’t see any, today was not supposed to be like this. “Thanks Ron” I whispered in reply as I came down the ladder from the sleeping area in the Cabin that morning. Ron was gesturing towards a fresh pot of coffee he had brewing, instructing me to help myself. It was some time after 5am. Myself and Spring had been lazy stirring awake, but when we heard Ron in the kitchen getting coffee ready for us, we got up quickly. We got our breakfast ready and sat down to eat it. I couldn’t tell yet if it was still dark out or if there were just dark clouds low in the sky. As we ate breakfast, relatively slowly, Ron shared a little anecdote with us, he said “You know, when I used to climb Mountains, the time we set to get up at, was the time everyone got up. There wasn’t any waiting around either, we got going right away”. I understood the moral of his story. There is a maxim in mountaineering that goes “It’s later than you think” and Ron was right. If we had a hope to accomplish our lofty goal of summiting Mount Alpha today and then traversing to the Haberl Hut then we needed to get moving asap, but I was stalling as I still wasn’t sure about the weather as it was too dark out. As the dull light of the morning spread I could see across the lake that the clouds were still hanging low on the peaks that rose above it, obscuring their summits from view. Ron returned from a trip outside and said that it was raining now. Myself and Spring made the decision to forgo our attempt on the East Ridge of Alpha. The rock would likely be slick from the rain and the low ceiling of clouds would mean that visibility would be poor, similar to the conditions we had encountered the previous day. We still needed to make the Haberl Hut by that night though so we set out as soon as we’d finished breakfast. After a few minutes of hiking away from the Tantalus Hut we paused at a fork in the trail. Turning right would put us on the route to the East Ridge of Alpha. We took one...
Hiking: Tips and Tricks
Sometimes, the best tips and tricks are learnt the hard way, so I thought I’d compile a list of some of mine that I’ve picked up over the last few years from hiking and backpacking through all four seasons and from valley floor to mountain top. Tie your shoe laces properly: This is a bit of a life hack as you can utilize it outside of hiking. If you find your boot laces start to loosen every few hours when you’re hiking you probably learned to tie a granny knot instead of a square knot when you first learnt to tie up your shoes. I realized this mistake myself and went searching for a solution. Not only does this method guarantee you tie a square knot, but it’s also a lot quicker. I also find this method of tying up my shoes a lot easier with large winter gloves on than the usual method. Use a Buff: You need to buy a buff if you’re hiking and camping. It has so many uses through all 4 seasons of the year. It can be used as a; Balaclava, Face mask, Neck gaiter, helmet liner, Beanie, Headband, eye mask, wristband. I never leave home without it. Stuff don’t Roll: If you roll up your tent or sleeping bag before putting it in a sack then stop. Stuff it into the sack. I used to roll up everything and I needed to use a 65L pack to go on an overnight trip. When I switched to stuffing everything I was able to get a much lighter 32L pack and still bring the same items. Here’s why, when I’d roll up my sleeping bag I needed a sack that had an opening large enough to fit the entire sleeping bag inside it all at once. These sacks were so large that I couldn’t compress any additional airspace out of them. When I switched to stuffing I only needed a sack with an opening that would fit whatever part of the sleeping bag was bunched up in my hand as I fed it into the sack. I went from using 25L compression sacks to using 8L compression sacks. On most overnight trips, even in the Winter, I can use one 12L compression sack for all my spare clothes, jackets and winter sleeping bag. Here is Spring @ pebbleshoo quickly unstuffing her sleeping bag from her compression sack on one of our recent trips. Start using Compression Sacks: I use a the OR compression sacks, the heavier ones. They’re burly and can take a beating while still being pretty light. They save you weight though by...
Athelney Pass: The Park that never was
“Why isn’t this place a park?” I uttered those words as myself and Spring had just found a large rock that would be comfortable to sit on as we unpacked our lunches. We where sitting atop “The Elephant”, an unofficially named volcanic plug of rotten rock. A few kilometers away we could just about hear the whoops! of elation as 4 of our friends were reaching the summit of Ochre Mountain. We shouted out to them, not sure if they could hear us, and settled in to spend a few minutes soaking in the views before heading on to our next peak of the day. “Athelney Pass” I said to myself “… what a place!” The previous day myself, Spring and 5 other friends had spent 8 hours with heavy packs on our backs hauling our camping gear 15km’s up Salal Creek. For the most part you can walk on river rocks to follow the course of the creek, at other times you need to deke into the forest to avoid where the creek abuts the shore. It had been a hard approach hike. On paper it looks relatively easy by our standards with only 800m’s of elevation being gained over those 15km’s. We’d previously camped on Panorama Ridge in Garibaldi Provincial Park which was a 15km hike one way but with double that elevation gain and we had found that to be a breeze. This approach hike was a different kind of hard though. It was mentally fatiguing. On most trails we can just turn our brains to autopilot, but for walking on these polished river rocks we had to always be vigilant in our foot placements. Stepping on the wrong rock could mean a rolled ankle or worse. We could never really let our minds rest, we had to always be paying attention about our next foot placements. We eventually reached our campsite, beside a dilapidated mining cabin, and pitched our tents. The valley had lost the sun by the time we finally arrived and the mosquitoes had come out in their droves to feed. Nevertheless, we couldn’t help but feel like we’d arrived somewhere special. We looked out towards the large Ethelweard Glacier across from us, and turned in for the night. The next morning a few different objectives for the day were discussed. Myself and Springs plans didn’t really match up with anyone elses so just the two of us set out together. Everyone had decided to stay on the West side of Athelney Pass. The peaks on the East side of the Pass look considerably more intense and would likely require glacier travel gear....
Wedge Mountain: North East Arête
On the first weekend in June, 2013 myself, Spring and our friend Ben decided to try a classic Alpine Mountaineering route in Garibaldi Provincial Park called the North East Arête of Wedge Mountain. Myself and Spring had been to this peak before. Two years previously we had reached the summit of Wedge Mountain as a day trip that took us over 15 hours and required thousands of meters of elevation change. Back then we were still pretty green in our Mountaineering abilities so we didn’t even consider the NE Arête as an option to reach the summit so we took the West Ridge, which is considerably less classic as an ascent route due to it being a long, tedious slope of loose scree, talus and general Type 3 fun. Still, on that trip I took the following picture, possibly my favorite picture of all time so Wedge Mountain has a special place in my heart. We planned a revisit with Ben to attempt a more aesthetic route, but this time we’d do it in a more Mountaineering style by splitting the trip over 2 days, and getting an early alpine start from a base camp near the foot of the peak. We set up our tent at Wedgemount Lake and introduced ourselves to some other parties staying in the modest shelter nearby who had intentions to climb the North East Arête also the following morning. We had dinner lazily and turned in early for the coming alpine start which would have us up and ready well before sunrise. The next morning we awoke, and after getting some calories and caffeine into us we were off. We moved briskly but immediately I noticed something different to this start than other alpine starts I had done before. It was no later than 4am but it was warm out and the snow underfoot did not have the satisfying crunch that I expected. Usually, snow in the alpine in the Spring softens up through the day and then hardens up again overnight as the temperatures drop. This snow had clearly not gone through this cycle as there had been no winds overnight and the freezing level had stayed high. It was a bad sign about conditions we might face higher on the mountain but we pressed on. There was still the chance that conditions higher up on the mountain might improve as it was less sheltered from the wind and more likely to be within the freezing level. Shortly thereafter we met up with the other parties that had started earlier than us as we roped up for glacier travel. We would need...
Joffre, Matier and personal milestones
On Easter long weekend, a year ago in 2012, we wanted to do something that would test our ability but would also be enjoyable and mostly fun. A few ideas had been thrown around. The Garibaldi Neve traverse? The Spearhead traverse? All of which seemed like a lot of hard work. We decided to do something a little bit more laid back, have a campsite we wouldn’t have to move for 2 nights and bag some reasonably close mountains with only moderate amounts of elevation gain. We decided on doing Joffre Peak via the Aussie Couloir and Mount Matier via its northeast spur . Fast, light parties can easily bag both of these peaks as a day trip car-to-car, but we decided to spread it out over 3 days and 2 nights. We’d consider doing other mountains in the vicinity also depending on where we’d get to build our camp. Information we received on the way in would ultimately dictate our camps location, more on that later. We arrived at the Cerise Creek Trail Head after 11:30am on the Friday. It was going to be a relatively lazy day so we didn’t push to get there super early. As I swung my ~40lb pack onto my back and started out on the trail I thought how relaxing this weekend was going to be. The weather was awesome and the trail in was nice and broken so we could move at a brisk pace. As we hiked in I started to think back to around the same time of year in 2010 and how much things had changed. Two years ago almost exactly from that weekend I was packing the last of my items into my suitcase and getting ready to leave Ireland for good and move to Canada. I look back on that person and wonder who he was. He was over 70lbs heavier and his interests could be described with one word; sedentary. He’d never touched a glacier, words like couloir, bergschrund and randkluft were unknown to his vocabulary and he could barely climb a few flights of stairs without getting winded. A relaxing holiday was lying on a beach in Thailand, sipping Margaritas and munching on crocodile samosas. Anyway, I continued to think back for a while, and before I knew it we were outside Keiths Hut near Cerise Creek. I’d initially thought to just stop for a second outside it, drink some water, then continue on but I remembered that I was bringing my, then, new MSR Reactor Stove with me and I hadn’t even bothered to test it out yet to see if it was working. So...
