Mount Baker: Ice Climbing
“Did you see the BCMC call out for a trip to the Mt Baker seracs to do some ice climbing? Do you want to sign up?” This was the question I received in a text from Leigh one morning in October. I texted back within seconds saying “Anniversary at Baker!” It just so happened that the Thursday before the trip we would see our 8th year wedding anniversary come and go. This seemed like the perfect way to see in another year of adventure together. We signed up for the trip and started dreaming about climbing ice again. The only type of ice that Leigh and I have climbed before has been waterfall ice, some in the Rockies and some in the Coastal Range, so climbing glacier ice was going to be a new experience for us and it was going to take some time to knock the rust off of our recently acquired ice climbing skills. We set up top-ropes at the first wall of ice we could walk up to on the glacier. These first climbs proved to be more difficult than anticipated, and everyone, albeit 1 or 2, had to shout “take” more than once on their way up. There were several bulges and overhangs to contend with and the density of this ice was proving to be very hard and made for some very ginger tool placements, as no crampon or ice pick was really sinking in. All part of the learning process and also part of the beauty of ice climbing, no two walls of ice are ever the same. Once we had our fill of these climbs we decided to make our way over to an area where 2 from our group set up a few more ropes. We had to weave around gaping crevasses, jump over cracks in the ice and down-climb some sections just to get to the climbing area. It was unnerving but so much fun at the same time. It was really starting to feel like we were on another planet with such an other-worldly almost eery feeling. The only sounds apart from the odd shout of “on belay” or “climb on” was the groaning and cracking of the glacier. I walked the final narrow ice bridge towards the crevasse where the top-ropes were set up to see that you had to rappel into the hole if you wanted to climb. I felt a reluctance at first, as my first instinct is to always avoid being inside a crevasse, but I had to find a way to push through it and I joined Leigh and our friend Scott down below. Did someone say...
Tantalust, Part V: Epilogue
< Tantalust, Part IV: Risking Adventure The roar of the propeller blades and engine was deafening. As we lifted suddenly off the ground the Haberl Hut, where we’d lived for 3 nights, became a speck on top of a rocky ridge below us. “Want to check out the Rumbling Glacier?” We’d met this Helicopter pilot before. He had flown Ron and his friends up to the Cabin to do maintenance on it. While he waited for them to finish we talked to him about our plans. We had mentioned the heavily crevassed “Rumbling Glacier” on the East side of Mount Tantalus and how we had hoped to see it up close. Even from afar the huge, jagged seracs and crevasses that make up most of its mass can be made out. Now that we were flying out, he remembered our wish and offered over the intercom to take us on a close flyby of the glacier. This was a surprise to us as we had only booked a flight directly down to the Tantalus Hut, but we both instantly nodded “Yes” and gave him a thumbs up. To see this immense, fractured glacier up close, as we hovered above it, was amazing. I’ll likely never set foot there and this glacier will likely disappear in the next few decades so I felt privileged for the experience. After a few moments we were whisked back to Lake Lovely Water and after a brief detour around the lake we got dropped off on a rocky bluff near the Tantalus Hut. As the Chopper took off again and left us behind I understood the energy and stoke those climbers had exuded when they were dropped off up at the Haberl Hut. That short flight in the Helicopter had felt like a shot of adrenalin right in to my chest. We grabbed our heavy packs and began to make our way towards the Tantalus Hut. We’d packed our last day pretty full. After effectively resting at the Haberl Hut for the past 2 days we felt itchy to get moving again. The plan was to dump our unnecessary equipment in a storage container in the Hut, then hike up and scramble to the summits of 3 peaks nearby; Iota, Pelops and Niobe. After that we’d hike back down, retrieve our stashed gear, hike down to the Squamish River and then float our Canoe downstream for several kilometers and take out near the “Watershed Grill”, a restaurant that sits above the banks on a wide bend in the river, where we’d meet our friend who was going to pick us up. Back at the Hut...
Tantalust, Part IV: Risking Adventure
< Tantalust, Part III: Finding Jim I stirred awake. I could hear Spring outside, in the kitchen area of the Cabin, preparing breakfast. I hadn’t really slept, the sleep I did get was restless and fitful at best. I woke up periodically and looked around to remind myself that I wasn’t out sleeping somewhere on those glaciers. My shoulders felt stiff and knotted, from bearing the weight of a heavy pack and a stressful day. I joined Spring outside. The clouds still hung low beyond the large windows, dulling the morning light. There was an unease inside me that wouldn’t abate. The previous day had been hard, really hard. The mental fatigue from it still lingered. An Alpinist I met while ice climbing in Canmore last Winter, and subsequently added on Facebook, did some serious climbs in Alaska this past Spring. When he returned he posted online about how amazing his trip had been, and mentioned the obstacles he had overcome in a very matter of fact way. Weeks later though he posted a picture of the journal he had written on that trip which told a very different story. A story of fear, of exhaustion, of doubt. In retrospect he could only remember how much fun the trip had been, but his journals kept him honest when reflecting. I took inspiration from him and kept my own journal on this trip. Reading over it now is like looking at the scrawlings from the mind of someone else. It would be easy for me to gloss over the trials in hindsight and make light of them. In retrospect, they weren’t that difficult. In retrospect I know that we left the Tantalus Hut and arrived at the Jim Haberl Hut 12 hours later and successfully navigated some heavily glaciated terrain. The experience of that day was very different though and merely stating the facts would be disingenuous. I didn’t know if the fringes of snow that I’d step onto would hold, I didn’t know if the choices we made would work, I didn’t know if we’d have to sleep out there, if we’d find the Hut, if we’d get trapped by a dead end and an irreversible route, if we’d get injured by any one of the objective hazards we had to contend with, or worse, die. That constant uncertainty and worry whittled away at my core all day until nothing was left but a shell. I sat in the Hut for most of the morning, looking at old, tattered magazines but seeing nothing but the events of the preceding day. Sometime in the afternoon on our first day in the...
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...
Tantalust, Part I: my little Everest
To say I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the Mountains would be an understatement. While other mountaineers likely dream about far off high places in the Andes or the Karakoram, I spend most of my time thinking about those right on my doorstep here in British Columbia, Canada. You see, I’ve lost the taste for commuting. I imagine I will travel to other mountain ranges in the future to test my mettle but for now I just don’t want to invest my time in Planes, Trains and “those aren’t pillows!”. Coming from Ireland, a quaint Island on the edge of Europe, going anywhere new usually required hopping on Planes and wasting hours of my life in Airports. It seems self-evident now, but a quote I read many moons after leaving Ireland eloquently describes the epiphany I had that fateful day when I decided to leave, for good, the home I had grown up in: “Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.” ― Seth Godin I was living and working somewhere that I couldn’t wait to escape from for a few weeks of every year. Time was ticking by and I was about to enter that financial quicksand that is the 30’s grind of getting a mortgage, having some kids and getting into a lot of debt and then trying to work my way back out of it. There had to be another way. So, “why not go on a permanent vacation?” I told myself. Why not live in the kind of place that I’d like to escape to? It’s seems straightforward enough but it’s surprising how many people I meet that pine over a vacation location they hated having to leave who have never investigated if they could move there. The idea of a “Holiday” now seems so strange to me. I’ve been in Canada for 3.5 years now and apart from a few days just over the border in the US to visit some mountains I haven’t been to any other countries, and apart from one work related flight I haven’t been in any Airports either. For me now, the summits of Mountains have become the Capitals that I wish to visit, and the Ranges they lie within the Countries whose borders I wish to cross. One such Range abuts the very town that I live in. It stands like a medieval fortress, flanked by a wide treacherous moat, with high, dark Watchtowers on all sides. The Tantalus Range. I had been making plans to travel East to visit some Peaks...
