Half Dome: Heavier, slower and almost free

If this doesn't sum up why I climb, I don't know what does! 5.9 jugs on pitch 17 of Half Dome at Sunset

I love climbing. I really do, and maybe that is why it frustrates me so (so so so) much sometimes. There is always another route, harder and longer, waiting to be done as soon as you clip the anchors on the last route you are still finishing. It is constantly motivating and driving me; and often times frustrating me. But in the end it is always inspiring and brings me to the most amazing places along side the most amazing people.

So this October has found me in Yosemite with my wife trying to pursue my life long climbing ambition of free climbing big walls. I have done almost all of the major formations in Yosemite, in a day, going as fast and furious as we could, pulling on gear and stepping on bolts with the summit being the main objective. But as I have matured with my climbing, and taken it to standards that I have never thought possible (I one day dreamed of sending 5.11a trad and have since done 5.13a trad) one form of climbing has always stood out as the highest form of climbing, in my mind. Big Wall Free Climbing. Maybe it was the Huber brothers doing multiple free routes on El Cap, or Lynn Hill freeing the nose in a day, or my late, great friend an climbing partner Micah Dash free climbing the Freerider, but I was inspired, and have gradually tried to build up to free climbing the big walls with in my reach.

Having done a few small alpine walls, 10 pitch lines in Squamish, and small walls in Zion free, it was time to try something bigger, and that was Half Dome. My wife and I had tried to do Freerider on El Cap a few years ago, but sickness and snowfall stopped us half way up. We figured this time around we would try something a little more bite sized, only 23 pitches instead of 35, and 5.12a instead of 5.12d++. We also figured we would do it over two days, and haul a small pack and sleep on the small but comfy Big Sandy Ledge.

Right off the bat are about 4 easier pitches, and then you get to the first free variation around a bolt ladder. A quick 5.11a traverse left to a heinous and awkward 5.11 dihedral brings you to a good ledge. Jasmin was leading this pitch and did a great job fighting through the Yosemite weirdness. The next pitch, dubbed the 'Higbee Hedral' after the pioneer of this free variation Art Higbee, goes at about 5.12a. It has a short, but fierce stemming crux off the belay to a ledge and then 20 m of funky and hard 5.11c crack above. It took me a few tries to stick the crux moves, but I managed to send the pitch, which puts you at the top of pitch 5. Now we had 12 more pitches of 5.10- and under to get to our bivy ledge. Tons of stellar pitches and easy climbing got us to Big Sandy at sunset, but the crux was by far trying to haul our 'light' pack behind us. We brought way too much extra food and water, and trying to hand haul that gear behind us was wearing us down - hopefully not too much.

Jas and I settled in to a romantic shiver bivy on our ropes and my Mutant pack with a delectable meal of tasty bites, cashews and chocolate bars. All the while the crux pitches of the route are right over your head, taunting you all night while you try to sleep on a crooked and sloping bivy ledge.

12 hours of 'rest' later we gave it our best. The first pitch off the ledge in the Zig Zags, is about 5.12a, and it was the warm up pitch. I was sending the whole route to this point, but Jas had hung once lower down, so I asked her to lead this pitch so I could try and warm up on it. She tried hard, and came close, but couldn't send it, and try as I may, I could not send the pitch. 5 times I lowered down to a no hands stance, and tried again, but fatigue from the day before, cold temps, and no warm up added up to not being able to pull off the tips climbing crux. Which is unfortunate, because I managed to scrap my way up the next two pitches with (5.11 and 11+) and then only hung once on the final crux 5.11d slab pitch, which would have been easy to try again.

But on this day, the mental fortitude was not with me. Without a doubt, this is the hardest discipline of rock climbing. Trying to climb your hardest pitch after pitch after pitch, either all day or day after day is so mentally and physically taxing. At the same time however, it is the most motivating thing in the world. Now I want to train harder next year, and try harder the next time around. Go back to Half Dome, and try it in a day with out hauling a big pack behind me. Think about my weaknesses and try harder then ever to overcome them so I can reach my goals. Sometimes failing just makes you want to throw in the towel and pick up something else entirely, but I guess that is the difference with climbing, most of the time failing makes me want to come back and try harder!

Here are some photos and a cool time laps video of sunset over Yosemite from half way up Half Dome...

Looking up at the 23 pitches of the NW Face of Half Dome

The 5.11a traverse pitch 4 into the Higbee Hedral

At the belay of pitch 15

The first 5.12a pitch of the Zig Zags, pitch 18

Spectacular pitch in a spectacular place: the 5.11d slab pitch 22.

Summit!

If at first you don't succeed

Ironman and the Turret loom behind camp

You know the rest of the saying. Sometimes it hurts to say it, but you can say it with me right now. “Try, try (try, try) AGAIN!” This is kind of a basic tenet of alpine climbing, or maybe all climbing really; actually, life itself. So what am I trying to get at here?

If you followed my last post, it was a video from the a trip I took to the Adamant Mountains in 2008, a recap of some attempts, successes and failures from a great 10 days in the mountains. A lead in to climbing there again this season. And we did climb there again this year…

July 13th we (Craig and Jeremy) decided to drive to the Golden, BC to pack and prep to fly into our glacier camp at the base of some amazing summits. Camp would be a 10 minute walk from 2 unfree-climbed 600m alpine big walls. Drool.

But for the few days leading up to our departure, way too much time was spent looking at the weather models, trying to figure out if we had any chance of some long awaited BC summer high pressure. For details I can’t really get in to (let’s just say extenuating personal circumstances of a team member) we decided to give it a try anyway, and by the morning of the 14th we were waiting to fly in from a random logging road, and watching the black clouds prevent our passage.

Back to Golden where we spent the next 4 days hanging out, watching the weather and waiting to fly in to the mountains. Before we know it life got complicated, the weather sucked, and we were hauling ass back to Squamish to at least go rock climbing at home, and salvage a bit of work while we could.

Sorting and packing for 9 days on the glacier

Flash forward now to August 5th, and it’s time to try and fly in again. This time, it’s not just us, but a total of 11 people, aka ‘Alpine Man Camp 2010′. It is a huge crew of our friends, so we are pretty psyched about hanging out in some amazing mountains with all of them. Once again the forecast looks iffy for a few days after we get in, but we are optimistic about some good weather for the later half of the trip; we have 9 days, so hopefully half of them might be good.

Andrew shows off his secrets for waiting out storms in the tent

We know that at the very least, the day we fly in will give us perfect weather, and by 10am we are racked up at the base of the north face of the Blackfriar for Craig and my 4th attempt at free climbing this 600m wall. Everything is going well for us, except the time. We get so high up on the face, into new territory for us, but it’s 9pm and starting to get dark. The 4 more pitches of unknown and dirty terrain are going to take us at least 5 hours to climb and descend. Our packs are just a bit too light and fast – no bivy gear, extra food or water, and besides, we still have 8 more days on the trip. So we decide to wrap, and figure we can start climbing at 5am on the next attempt instead of 10am. Seems logical, right?

Pitch 1 of the north face of the Blackfriar

Well, the next 5 days prove us wrong. Welcome to the hours of time blending together; I still can’t discern what we did on what days during that period of time. Fog, rain, and snow all collaborated to keeping us in the sleeping or cooking tents non-stop. The saving grace was hanging tough with some really good friends, so jokes, stories, and philosophizing were the themes of the times. “Fester fiesta 2010.” We would fire up the satellite phone to get weather forecasts, only to go further into depression. It just wasn’t going to happen on this go-around, and by day 5 we realized that when the weather got good, we needed to jump on that opportunity to actually get out of the mountains and not be stuck there running out of food.

Jeremy losing it in the tent after at least 100 hours of non-stop tent time

Finally the weather broke enough for us to escape, and we fled the glacier as fast as we could, so we could regain our sanity outside of the confines of our tents. Oh well, at least I know what I might be trying to do again next year!

The French Files, Part 2...the Verdon!

We left the Gorges du Tarn and headed straight for the multi-pitch adventures of the Verdon Gorge. Single pitch sport cragging is great, but the memories really are made on the all day 10 pitch routes for me. Hanging on the walls, vultures circling below, azure blue river pounding away in the gorge 1,000 feet below you - this is what climbing is all about for me! Oh yeah, and did I mention it is a paradise in the south of France? Can you say amazing wine for 4€, great local produce and anamazing gite we were staying in that was only 23€ a night, totally solar powered and beautiful? Life is getting better every day.

I will break down the Verdon trip into a couple of posts, each focusing on the big routes we did. After countless hours of internet research, it seemed as thought there were 3 pretty classic long routes to tackle, at a good spread of grades as well.

Our first day we decided to try our hand at La Demande, 6a+, 400m. This was the original route that climbed the tallest section of cliff at the Verdon Gorge, as was kind of like first ascent of El Cap for the French in 1968. Being the major weakness of the biggest cliff, the climbing felt right at home being from North America and having done my time on the trad classics: chimney's and cracks, BUT with tons of bolts! I love France!

So in classic Verdon style, we drove up to the top of the cliff, walked 2 minutes to the rap station, and abseiled down 400m to the gorge bottom. We then walked 15 minutes to the base of our route and Voila, we were climbing. Being the first long route of the year for us, Jas and I were psyched to start off mellow for us for a route graded 5.10. Pitches went well, the climbing was fun and it was not nearly as polished as I feared it might be.

Good times for us, and we felt warmed up to tackle the next big route in the gorge: Pichenibule...but that is for next week!

For now here are some photos...and if you want any info on the Verdon, check out this GREAT article from UK Climbing: http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=2076

Jas starts the 'approach'

The first few pitches of leaning cracks.

Jas follows the crux pitch (5 I think?)

Jas in the exit chimneys. 5.8 chimneys forever with bolts!

Back at home in our lovely Gite!

Snow at Home, Warm sun in UT

The road trip continues, even as my inbox starts to flood with reports of epic early season powder back in British Columbia - for all of you VMT skiers, my guess is there is about a meter of snow at 2000m near the lodge right now, not bad for November! So while rainfall warnings and low snow levels continue at home in Squamish, sunny days and warm sand stone continue to be the norm in Southern Utah.

Since I last wrote, I spent a few days in Red Rock,NV escaping the cold spell, driving to Moab, UT through a blizzard, taking part in the AMGA Annual Meetings, climbing in Indian Creek, UT and then finally back to Zion, UT. Lots of driving in the desert SW in the last little while, but that is the price you pay for road tripping some times.

Moab was highlighted by good times with good friends before, during and after all day meetings. Sometimes it meant skipping meetings to go and climb down in Indian Creek! When the meetings were done we dropped down for a quick hit at the creek so that Jasmin could send a project from last winter Ruby's Cafe. She easily dispatched it after a few burns, so we hopped in the car to head back to Zion.

Jas was all set to climb with her gal pal Mandoline, allowing for what I call a reunification of the Fembots. These two ladies seem to crush the traditional rock scene back home in Squamish, sending 5.12 trad like it ain't no thing. Now they were going to apply them selves to a few fun days in Zion. Meanwhile my original partner bailed, and I turned to the world of Facebook to find a rope handler for a few days in Zion. Low and behold facebook delivered in the form Jason Kruk. I also had to make a climbing rope appear as well, as after a full season of use my trusty Petzl 9.4mm Fuse had finally kicked it. I can't even begin to count the amount of pitches this rope had put in since March, including new free routes in the alpine, and long sandstone free routes in Zion...if you want a tough handling lightweight rope, look no furter. Luckily Petzl is in UT and was able to connect me with a brand new 9.4 Fuse for the rest of my trip. You can read a review here if you like.

Jason is a (not that young anymore) crusher from Squamish, and he was fresh off a 7 day ascent of Golden Gate on El Cap with his partner in crime Will Stanhope. Those two have been getting into trouble in climbing destinations around the world for years now. Jason regalled me with tales from the captain, and it sounds like he managed to free all but 5 feet of the 41 pitches of Golden Gate. Will sent them all. Proud.

Now it was time to tackle some sandstone. Day 1 we decided to check out the Gentleman's Agreement right above Springdale. Rob Pizem freed this one in February, and graded the first 4 pitches 13b, 12c, 12a, 12a, but after Jas and I went up and checked out the pitches last month, they are more like 12d, 12a, 11c, 11b, so don't be intimidated and go try it! Well it was not in the cards for us that morning. Clear skies, and temps in the 70s meant roaster hot conditions for the pitch 1 tips crack. No go for us after 3 tries each, so we packed up early and headed down the hill for some cocktails in the sun.

The next day we decided to try Brian Mckray's new route Silverback which is just left of the classic Monkey Finger. Wow, what a route, and if you are up to the task of long, hard, sometimes wide, and almost always sandy climbing, then you should go for it! The route is quite 'modern' as in bolted anchors and plentiful protection bolts on the pitches. So much so in fact that you really only need 1.5 sets of gear for the route, which in the desert is pretty nice. Granted you need a double set of nuts and finger gear and one of each cam up to the mighty #6 camalot. I will post some pictures here, and get you psyched...but unfortunately we didn't get any shots of the last pitch, which is one of the best in the park. Splitter 12+ finger crack to a roof at the end. WILD. But be warned that the pitch before that is 5.12 OW - number 5 and 6 BD required!

Squeeze chimney p1 - mandatory entrance exam.

Wide, loose and sandy, p2, but wait it gets classic, don't worry!


p3. Classic 11+ Zion funk. Lots of bristlers, so super safe.


p4. gives you some loose 10+ face climbing with lots of bristlers as well.


And then gets into some classic flare climbing with this wild roof at the end.


p5. One of the best in the park, 120' of wild steep hands in this crazy flake feature. So good, and so high off the deck, gotta love it.


p6 is the bear of the route. Starts with tight hands in a flare and then finishes with 5.12- OW. Fun.


Jason gets psyched following the OW. So glad for the bristlers.

Space Buttress (and beyond...)

So I finally had some time to head to the mountains for some climbing of my own. I love being a mountain guide, but it is always great to hit the hills with your amigos and have a little less responsibility on your shoulders. But then again, when you head to the mountains with your friends you tend to step up your game a bit.

For me, I knew where I wanted to go. For years now I have been staring at the improbable looking geometry of the Space Buttress of Mt. Gimli in the Valhalla Mountains. Whether it is from the north at my winter home at Valhalla Mountain Touring, from ascents of the super popular South Ridge of Mt. Gimli, or across the valley from Kokanee glacier park, this buttress has been calling its siren song to me for years.

This year a new guidebook came out for the West Kootenays, and that is always a good motivator for getting after it. The description in the book says that the Space Buttress on Mt. Gimli is one of the hardest technical alpine rock climbs in Canada. Now I don't know about that, especially with what some of the Canadian alpinist crankers have been sending, but it does provide for 1000 feet of slightly overhanging rock climbing, with a few points of aid waiting to be freed. I recruited Jeremy Blumel, the merry prankster, granite crankster for a go at this wall...here is the video of our trip.

We spent 1 day checking out the route to see if it would go free to the half way point, 1 day trying to send the first crux with out adding any bolts, and then went back up to add a variation and send to the summit. What a line...thanks Dave Lussier et al, for your pioneering efforts in this backwoods mecca of BC.



After a few days of getting scared in the 'pine, Jer and I shifted gears big time, and decided to hit the quartzite climbing mecca of the Back of the Lake at Lake Louise in Alberta. The most scenic, compact cragging I have done in a long time, it was super inspiring to climb their for a few days, and Jer and I set our sights on the two trad classics of the region, Scared Peaches (12a) and Where Heathens Rage (12c). So fun, here are a few shots of Jer going for the send on Heathens...Thanks for the shots Fiona!

Jer definitely NOT on kitty litter in the alpine

The classic Heathens Whipper

Team orange on the Space Buttress

Wow, an update!

I know, it has been a long, long while, but that is the nature of the chaotic summer life I live. One week I am on Rainer, the next in Boulder, then Squamish, and who knows a helicopter flight to some alpine climbing. Not having a steady schedule can throw you for a loop sometimes, and blogging is one of the first things to be a casualty. Well, now I can update you and throw some pics and ideas for adventure your way...

I will catch you up with part one here, and the return to alpine guiding/climbing. One of my first trips this year was for Mountain Madness guiding the Kautz glacier route up Mt. Rainier. If you haven't climbed Rainier, it is an incredible mountain, that is quite a great achievement to climb and a perfect stepping stone for climbing the big glaciated mountains of the world. The Kautz Glacier route is a really fun climb, that starts with a few pitches of easy ice climbing to a nice steep glacier walk to the summit. On this trip we were met with heinous winter weather, and a perfect sunny summit day, followed by a visit from the Jet Stream, winds lashing us on our last night on the mountain. Overall, some hard work and a great climb, here are some shots:

Ahh, the first day of summer...and 6 inches of new snow at 9,200'!

Sunshine above the clouds on the way to High Camp on the Kautz Glacier Route.

After this trip I found some time to actually do some climbing in Squamish, and was able to get up a few routes, like the University Wall, which I only hung in one spot due to abnormal wetness, or my impatience to climb the route before it was dry! I spent a great deal of time climbing in the dihedrals on the Chief as well, avoiding the crowds and climbing the steep and impeccable granite of the sky crag ledge zone. If you are up to the task, the routes Men Holding Hands, Getting down on the Brown, and Brothers in Arms are all 5.12+ trad routes and are all AMAZING. Check it out on www.mountainproject.com, which by the way, is an amazing resource for online route info. I even got a chance to do my favorite route in Squamish, with my favorite person in the world: Freeway with Jasmin! If you haven't done this route, GO DO IT NOW! So good, 8 pitches of impeccable granite, short cruxes, good gear, great positions. We honored the gentlepersons of leisure club with our 3pm start and were back down at the car at 7pm, having both cruised the route, which is a good fitness gauge to feel like you can waltz up 5.11 cracks.

Jas starts up Freeway at about 3:15pm

Happy climbers on Freeway

After this I was onboard for 2 weeks of alpine guiding and instruction with Kuan and Mike for Canada West Mountain School. The boys were here to learn the skills of mountain travel and I was going to try and show them how. We started off with a week in the Spearhead Range near Whistler, where we climbing summits like Blackcomb and Decker and learned stuff like crevasse rescue and snow anchors.

Finally last week, we flew into the Tantalus Range and the luxurious Jim Haberl Hut for some more peak bagging. With high pressure all week, we managed ascents of the SE Face of Dione, North Face of Serratus and the East Ridge of Alpha. All classic and amazing, it was a great way for these guys to end their trip out to BC!

The boys summit the E Ridge of Alpha

Finishing off the North Face of Serratus with Dione in the background

Mike cooks up some burgers a the hut. Alpine climbing is so hard...

On the way up Serratus

Well, summer is slowing down, and the next 2 weeks have a bit more alpine guiding on tap as well as the Squamish Mountain Fest. I am forcing my self (so hard, I know) to take off for about a month to climb for myself from late August through September...time to climb in BC before the fall gets here! Time flies when you are busy and climbing all the time!

Adamants Part 3

Last time I left you (scroll down) I had just been HAMMERED by weather trying to free climb the Blackfriar. We spent the next day drying out and licking our wounds, ready to pounce the next day for another free attempt of this 2,000 foot wall.

Staring down Blackfriar from camp

The day dawned clear and cold and we headed over to try our luck again. Freezing cold temps met us as we climbed in the shade for 6 pitches back up to our previous high point in no time flat. We were feeling like we could do this, all free in a day, which would be a first for any of the big walls around here. The next pitch proved to be a bit alpine. Going light, all I had was a pair of running shoes to keep feet warm at belays. I quickly put them on for the next pitch, 5.9 ice/rock jamming between a snow patch and the wall. Gear doesn't work too well in this scenario, so I ran it out for a good 50 feet to a nice ledge where the snow was gone and I could put my rock shoes on. The pitch then started to ramp up a bit - steep and with a small crack, which I had to dig out protection with a nut tool on lead, only to reveal RP placements for pro. No time to stop and think of how scary it was, so I just kept on firing to the next ledge.

Following Craig's proud 5.11+ onsight gardening fest

Craig stepped up for his next lead which was more of the same, 5.11 free climbing with small gear while gardening out the crack. We began to watch the time add up, as cleaning and freeing your pitches on lead takes a LONG time; almost 1.5 hours per pitch. At this rate there was no way we were going to make it. In fact I slowed us down big time on the start of the next pitch, trying for a long time to make my self fit into a tight squeeze chimney right off the belay. At 6' 2" and a 180 lbs, size was not on my side, I just couldn't get my hips into the thing. So I handed over the lead and Craig wriggled his smaller frame into the crack and fired off another 50m of gardening after that.

2 hours later and 8pm in the evening we decided to make the obvious call. Gardening and doing this route in a day were not going to happen. We had broken the sacred alpine free climbing rule of British Columbia - stay on south facing rock! South facing alpine rock in BC gets dried off in the sun, and doesn't allow as much moisture and vegetation to thrive, keeping the rock clean. We were trying to climb a north facing route and it just wasn't working. Oh well, lesson learned. Back to camp with our tails tucked between our legs.

The next day we decided to test our theory and headed for a new variation start to the classic Gibson-Rohn route on Ironman. Looking at the line it was obvious that we had a few pitches of slammed shut corners that were still climbable, so we took the power drill in tow to place a few bolts for pro if need be. Craig led the first pitch and fired off a nice 55m 5.11c putting in 6 bolts on lead AND still managing to free the pitch while dragging up the drill. Impressive.

Me (Evan) drilling on lead, p.2

Pretty soon after starting it was obvious that my pitch was going to be hard with out much gear. I placed 3 bolts right early on while aiding the feature, and then was able to work over toward a super thin crack and place a few pins, and finally get some regular gear in. Craig followed the pitch clean at 5.12- with some wild full body bridging, so we knew our new route would go free. 2 more pitches of splitter clean cracks lead us into the regular route on Ironman, where we than rappelled our route so we could re-lead that 2nd pitch and free it. We called our new variation 'Man of Steel' being that we bolted a new line on Ironman, it is always fun to have a play on words.

Craig following the last pitch of Man of Steel

We awoke the next day to a vicious thunderstorm early in the morning, so pancakes and extra coffee seemed in order. By noon the weather was good and radio reports had the weather being horrible for the next 3 days after this. So we bucked up and left camp at the early alpine start time of 1pm to climb the standard route on Ironman, 10 pitches V 5.10+. As we started it was obvious that the weather was going to deteriorate, so not wanting to get caught in a storm we simulclimbed almost the entire route, getting back to the base 3.5 hours after we started. Minutes later the skies opened up and we fled back to camp.

10cm of snow the next day left us festering in the tent, watching movies on the Ipod waiting for the helicopter to take us out.

Now all I have to do is stop climbing every day in Squamish so I can get around to edit my hours of video to post up here!

The Adamants - Part 2

Well, I gave you all the quick intro just 2 weeks ago, and now I am back.

But I am so loaded with killer photos and great stories that I will break this up into a few posts.

We landed at the head of the Austerity Glacier in the heart of the Adamant Spires, a remote group of peaks about 100 miles north of Rogers Pass, British Columbia. My trusty partner Craig McGee guides in the winter for Canadian Mountain Holidays in this area so he was chock full of lines for us to try. We built our snow camp, racked up and tried to sleep, giddy as two kids on christmas (in my case Hannukah) morning, ready to try the 2,000' formation known as the Turret.

Digging camp at the base of the Turret

Racking up in the AM

The formation had never been climbed in a day or free climbed so of course that was our goal. We walked 5 minutes to the base and picked what looked like the best line. Info on the route was virtually non-existent and the two pictures of where the route went had 2 different lines drawn in! A few hours later and about 1,000 feet of climbing brought us to the base of the headwall. We had battled a bit of loose rock and tricky route finding to this point, and now the vertical headwall took on the character of an onion skin. Peeling, hollow giant flakes were the name of the game, as we cautiously tread up another pitch or two.

Craig tackles the headwall of the Turret with Mt. Sir Sanford in the background.

About 400 feet from the top, the scary climbing got the better of us. I came up to a 7 piece anchor that Craig had made, and he still didn't feel good about it. The next pitch was a 100 foot traverse across perched blocks that was looking to weigh in at 5.11 r/x. We had enough and bailed.

We then turned our sights to trying the first one day and free ascent of the Blackfriar, another 2,000 foot wall close to camp. We did about 6 pitches of amazing Black Canyon of the Gunnison style free climbing until the skies opened up on us. I was on an intricate and run out 5.10 pitch when waterfalls starting pouring down the route. Not having a solid piece of gear in to bail on I kept climbing in the rain until I could make the anchor. Of course the anchor was guarded by 10 feet of ice climbing- this is the mountains after all! A minor epic saw us off the cliff soaked to the bone and hustling back to camp for dry clothes and warm tea.

Me bailing off the Blackfriar in a storm.

Back in camp we were feeling the mountain beat down. Adamants 2, Craig and Evan 0. But I have been in the mountains enough to know that humility and failure are a big part of the game and that is what keeps you coming back to try again. So we dried our gear out for a day, and rested up camp, to get ready to try the Blackfriar again...

The Tantalus Range

Summer finally kicked in for us in the Pacific North-wet last week, and my timing couldn't have been better for a 5 day trip to teach some folks about alpine climbing. Working for Canada West Mountain School, I met with my two climbers Mike and Lou at a coffee shop in town at 7 am. A little caffeine, some pouring over maps, and a ten minute drive took us to the Squamish Airport. The heli pilot gave us a quick briefing and we loaded the bird for the hop up to the Jim Haberl Hut in the Tantalus Range of coastal British Columbia.

Black Tusk Helicopters setting some climbers up with Alpha in the background.

The Tantalus Range is an amazing string of peaks that rise out of the ocean just west of the highway between Squamish and Whistler. If you have ever driven to Whistler on a clear day and looked west off the highway, you are smacked in the face with 6 - 7 thousand vertical feet of steep, rocky peaks with tumbling glaciers pouring off their ridgelines. The problem with climbing in the Tantalus range has always been access. Steep forested hill sides guarded by major, fast moving rivers prevent easy access, and that is where the heli comes into play. For a few hundred dollars per person Black Tusk Helicopters will drop you off and pick you up at the Jim Haberl Hut, right in the middle of the range. We chose this option, and after the 6 minute flight straight up, we were practicing crevasse rescue on a glacier by 8:15 am. Unbelievable!

The Jim Haberl Hut with Dione in the background

The hut fully styles you out, completed in 2006, with its bunk beds with mattresses, hardwood flooring and walling, propane grill, outhouse, etc...it is full on alpine bivy luxury. You can walk out your door to technical alpine terrain. What could be better 15 minutes from my house in Squamish.

So with 5 days of sunshine and warm weather forecast, we set to making plans for some of the classic climbs in the range and a bit of instruction as well. First off we climbed Serratus, which is literally a 15 minute walk from the hut. Steep snow slopes led to some easy rock scrambling and the summit at 8:30am.

Summiting Serratus with Dione in the background.

Warm weather meant alpine starts: 3am wake up calls and walking by 4am so we could get the best snow conditions before the heat of the day. It also meant sunrises on the summits.

We did some skills and then ramped up for an ascent of Dione, one of the more prominent peaks in the range. This one required a few hours of glacier travel on the approach, front pointing up a steep couloir, and then 3 pitches of 5th class rock. By all means, a well rounded alpine ascent, requiring a wide skill set.

The SE face of Dione with the Rumbling Glacier in the background

Approaching the summit of Dione

The shadow of Dione from the summit

We climbed a few more small objectives the next day and then headed back down to the heat of the valley. Overall a great trip in an amazing spot just a short heli ride away from Squamish. Get up to the Tantalus if you have a chance!

Climbing above the Lake Lovely Water area.