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....
