don't call it a comeback: the grand finale
We left Thursday at 7 PM. I took the first shift that got us out to Spokane, Doug sprawled out in the back of his Toyota Highlander with an air mattress and a sleeping bag, snoring. No doubt he was assisted by the couple beers he'd drank with coworkers at happy hour, but assisted or not, one of the things I really envy about this guy is his ability to SLEEP. Give him 5 minutes horizontal and he is OUT. Not me.
Doug took the second shift, into Idaho and then north. I managed to catch some shuteye. We pulled off the road somewhere in BC around 3 AM, set up our beds in the back, and fell asleep with a cool breeze blowing in through the open hatchback. When we woke up a scant few hours later the skies had become stormy, and I drove us farther north through serious rainshowers. I could see snow up on the walls of the valley, not so far above us...
A big breakfast in Radium fueled us for the hike in. We made the long gravel drive into the trailhead and headed uphill through cool, unsettled weather.
At the trailhead, you build a chickenwire fortress around your vehicle, supposedly to prevent porcupines from gnawing your brake lines. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is a wive's tale but nobody has the guts to step out of line.
BC is green!
The steep but short hike went quickly. When we reached the campground there were a couple of inches of snow everywhere. The cute but humorless custodian chick told us we were "brave". We felt worried.
I tried to learn to roll a cigarette but ended up leaving the duties to Doug.
The next morning we thought we'd get up at 4 am to get our schedules tuned, and climb Pigeon. The alarm went off and Doug didn't hear it, it was absurdly cold, I took a quick vote and nobody wanted to get up so we slept until the sun hit our tent. Once it did things slowly started to warm up. We made some granola and coffee and looked around us for a long time. The day had come bright and beautiful but all the snow had us pretty concerned. We talked about a couple other routes in the area. Neither of us were willing to say the words "plan B" but we were both thinking them.
Snowpatch Spire is ALWAYS gorgeous.
On the plus side, the Bugaboo-Snowpatch col was in the best shape I've ever seen it- and both my previous trips were in July. What a high-snow year! On the way in, with the sketchy weather we'd ditched our first option which had been to hike all our stuff into the East Creek Basin. We decided to camp at Appleby and spend Saturday reconnoitering the route and hopefully climbing the West Ridge of Pigeon Spire. So we headed on up.
This is the northeast side of the Howser Towers. We will be climbing up the far side of the one on the left, and rapping down this face.
One of the hardest things about this route is logistics. Do you go from base camp at Appleby or East Creek? Appleby is farther away from the route, but if you camp in East Creek you have to haul all your gear all the way in there, which is tiring. Either way you choose will involve glacier travel. You'd really rather not climb the rock with crampons and an ice axe on your back, they're heavy and the axe sticks out and catches on things. But the glacier conditions might demand pointy metal.
Here was where the 8" of fresh snow we found on the Vowell Glacier turned from a curse into a blessing. It was nice and soft and gave us good steps. By the time we were near Pigeon Spire we'd begun to feel hope again that our objective might be attainable.
Pigeon Spire's northwest face, the classic west ridge goes along the ridge crest from right to left. Supposedly this rock looks like a Pigeon, I never really figured it out.
So we descended through the Pigeon-Howser col and into the East Creek Basin. We had the bright idea to use two rappels to get down the steepest part at the top. From there we kicked steps down the soft snow, knowing that after a cold night, they'd be set up hard for us in the morning. We walked all the way down to the site where we could have bivied, near the base of the route, and stared up at South Howser Tower.
This is the south side of South Howser Tower- much different from the north! You can see near the top the Great White Headwall we'd be climbing the next day. The amazing cone of granite on the right is a feature called the Minaret, which has only a few, VERY hard routes up it. But look at it!
And then we walked back up to the col. By the time we got there I was tired and sweaty, and I thought our best bet to succeed the next day was to head straight back to camp, eat, and go to bed. But first we scoped out the spot where we'd be rappelling back down to the glacier.
The northeast side of South Howser again, you can see the bergschrund and near the right skyline, our planned rappel route.
Doug walking back toward Bugaboo and Snowpatch.
I made some dehydrated beef stroganoff, wolfed it down, and then turned in well before the sun went down. Like I mentioned before, I'm not a great sleeper. Especially outdoors, and especially when I'm going to do something big in the morning. I did more tossing and turning than I did sleeping, but slept enough that when the alarm went off at 2 AM it didn't feel completely dreadful.
We drank some coffee and ate a little bit, and then stole off up the col and across the glacier under starlight. Everything went according to plan and by the time the sun started to rise, we were nearing the base of the route.
The West Buttress of South Howser Tower in the dawn's light.
We scrambled up rocks until the going got hard and then we roped up. Doug took the first lead, and we got off route which is apparently a common experience. But soon we were at the base of the first 5.10a pitch, which Doug also led.
Doug tackles the first 5.10a roof pitch. You can see, as always, the GWH looming above.
After that I led two pitches which got us up and into the Great Dihedral, super fun 5.8 climbing in a huge left-facing corner. Doug and I then swung leads for another 4 pitches up to the big bivy ledge. Doug expressed some concerns about how long this was taking us, and worried about being benighted. I thought we were doing okay, and as far as I was concerned the only way was up- bailing would have been an amazing pain in the ass.
Looking up from the bivy ledge, the Great White Headwall looked even more imposing than it had looked all day up to that point. I'd been warned that the first two pitches off this ledge were "real asskickers". I asked Doug to take the first one, since he has bigger hands that would fit the wider crack better, and I would take the second.
Looking up at Doug getting into the business.
His pitch was about 200 feet long, starting with a fist crack, before a ledge and a corner switch, and more crack climbing up to a few face moves above. It took a long time but I never pulled out my camera to take any pictures of the amazing scenery around me, which unfortunately would be the case for the rest of the climb. I guess I was too preoccupied with thoughts of finishing the climb before sunset.
I tried to follow the pitch as fast as I could, which was good for our time but pretty exhausting. My lead after this pitch was the infamous "squeeze" pitch. It starts out with a tough balance move above the belay, with no handholds, into a corner. From here it's solid hand crack for a good ways, before the corner gets wide and you move into a finger crack on the face to the left. That goes for a good long ways, before petering out and forcing you back into the corner, which by now has widened out into a squeeze chimney. This was the real struggle. There was a significant amount of snow down in there. The crux for me was: standing on a chockstone, hugging another chockstone covered in snow, grabbing a higher chockstone, trying to muscle my way up, realizing I didn't have the strength, backing down to a knee bar, trying again three times, pumping out and hands going numb from cold at the same time... before finally getting a clue and using my feet. That's alpine! After fighting my way through this I built an anchor and brought Doug up.
We felt relief at having the meat of the route behind us- just 3 more pitches of easier climbing, then some scrambling to the top. But we were still pretty concerned about time. I don't remember looking at the clock but I guessed it was about 4 PM.
Doug led and managed to stretch all the way up to the base of the last pitch, then I led and got us around the corner, up the final gulley, and to the rap station. At this point light was fading fast. We looked down onto the shady side of the mountain. We'd been avoiding thinking about it, but this was where the 4th-and-low-5th-class scramble was sure to be complicated by a blanket of snow. We did the rap as fast as we could and I headed off across ledges and blocks.
Beautiful but stressful.
Sadly, before long I was gripped by uncertainty. There was no way to know whether the high point I could see was actually the summit, and whether the high ridge I could see was my target, or if I needed to go around the corner. I quickly brought Doug in. The topo we had was frustratingly vague. Doug picked up all the gear and headed out as fast as he could. With a few shouted directions he made his way up to the ridge, with me simulclimbing behind. He disappeared from view and I kept following as the rope pulled me in. After a minute with no action, I could tell from the motion of the rope that he'd found an anchor and was reeling me in on a fixed belay. And so, I topped out, just as the last rays of sunset were fading.
Aaaaaaand... gone.
Closest thing we got to a summit shot.
I wasn't trying to make a face here, I guess this is just what I felt like.
And now we were in the situation we'd worried about: searching for rappel anchors in the dark. These are as close as we got to a summit shot, as I don't think I ever actually touched the true summit. In hindsight it was silly- one more minute would have made zero difference. But we felt very urgent.
This is where the shit really hit the fan. We were on top of a mountain, covered in a layer of fresh snow, exposed to the wind, in the dark. Trying to find rappel anchors. The first two raps went well enough, the problems started when we went to pull the ropes for the second one. One end got stuck below us. I volunteered to fix it. So down I went. Into the top of The Big Hose, which is an ice route early season, now it was just ICY. I found the rope had twisted over itself and lodged in a crack. After a huge amount of fiddling around I managed to get the rope out and then I prusiked back up the rope. I'd put my down jacket on at the top, so now I was good and sweaty. It was Doug's turn to take the lead, so he rapped down to find the next anchor.
Oh another thing: When it says 30 meters, it means at least 30 meters. I wouldn't do this one without a 70 meter rope.
Here's the map of the rap route, which is advertised at the trailhead, the hut, and the campground. If you read the description of rap #3 you might notice parts of it are italicized.
Doug rapped down, looked around for a few minutes, and shouted up that he didn't see the anchor and was going to have to come back up. So he did, while I waited. Then he went down again, a different direction. And looked around a long time. I could hear him cursing before he announced they weren't in that direction either, and started coming back up. This was very time consuming, by the time he got back up to his starting point I had probably been standing still in the cold wind for an hour, and was really getting worried. What if he couldn't find the anchor? We were not in a good place to hunker down for the night, with the gear we had (we were wearing all of it, plus we had a couple flimsy space blankets) it would be a really unpleasant and probably dangerous night.
Doug told me he had one more shot- he had gone to the left and gone to the right, and there was one more option in between. I was just praying. I waited in the dark, stamping my feet to try to keep the blood flowing. And eventually, finally, I heard a triumphant "YES!" He'd found the anchors. When I followed him down I saw why he'd tried two other choices first: the rap was very diagonal, over a low angle and narrow ridge, which today was covered in ice and snow. If you slipped and blew it, you'd pendulum off the ridgecrest and sideways into the dark unknown. Sketchiest rap I've ever done.
Mad props to Doug for saving our asses.
After this, the raps were straightforward. Doug went down first on every single one and did a fantastic job of finding the anchors quickly. As we lost elevation it warmed up and the wind subsided, and we started to feel like things would be okay. We'd spend the night in our tent, instead of cuddling under a pop-tart wrapper.
The final rap takes you down a snow slope and over a huge bergschrund- here's a picture during the day. Doug went down first and I could see the bright spot of his headlamp disappear as he went over the lip, and I could hear some mutterings of amazement. Soon the rope went slack and I could see Doug walk out onto the glacier below me. "Ah yeah, so chill!" I followed.
Into the dark.
When I rapped over the edge I went free-hanging and was staring into a gaping hole full of icicles. I swear I saw some that were 15 feet long, amazing. Unfortunately I was in no state of mind to fumble with my camera.
And we were done! Standing on soft, low-angle snow, upon which I knelt and deposited grateful kisses with my catastrophically chapped lips. We rearranged our gear and then set off across the glacier. Reaching the B-S col we retrieved our crampons and ice axes, and then rappelled down the col. Then it was a simple slog back to camp, which we reached at 1:55 AM. We'd been up for almost 24 hours. We celebrated with the last 3 ounces of bourbon and I cooked myself dinner, while Doug went straight to sleep.
In the dark with my headlamp off, staring up at the stars and eating my dehydrated beef stew, I tried to think about what the day we'd just experienced meant. But my brain spun meaninglessly, it already seemed surreal.
The next morning, we woke up at 7:30 regardless of how tired we were. It was another beautiful day and we groggily spread all our gear out and packed up. The hike out took a couple hours, and when we got to the car we changed into cotton clothes and gorged ourselves on snack food. We hit the road and 10 boring hours of driving later, we were back home in Seattle.
I'm still kind of in shock that we got this done. It's been the most ambitious climb on my to-do list for so long, and it always seemed out of reach. I learned a lot about myself this last month. Now that it's been done, I'll have to find something else to put up there. But no rush.
And as usual, my appetite for alpine climbing has been satiated just in time for the turning of the season. We are having the most beautiful weather right now, for which I'm very grateful, I'm so glad this is how I get to wind down. 80 degrees in September in Seattle is divine, everything is green and smells like blackberries and the sunsets are gorgeous. But we're losing 4 minutes of light each day and soon there will be a crispness in the air. And my thoughts are turning to sleeping in on weekends, brunches, cooking dinners, and then before long, snow and ice.
Life is good.
Doug took the second shift, into Idaho and then north. I managed to catch some shuteye. We pulled off the road somewhere in BC around 3 AM, set up our beds in the back, and fell asleep with a cool breeze blowing in through the open hatchback. When we woke up a scant few hours later the skies had become stormy, and I drove us farther north through serious rainshowers. I could see snow up on the walls of the valley, not so far above us...
A big breakfast in Radium fueled us for the hike in. We made the long gravel drive into the trailhead and headed uphill through cool, unsettled weather.
At the trailhead, you build a chickenwire fortress around your vehicle, supposedly to prevent porcupines from gnawing your brake lines. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is a wive's tale but nobody has the guts to step out of line.
BC is green!
The steep but short hike went quickly. When we reached the campground there were a couple of inches of snow everywhere. The cute but humorless custodian chick told us we were "brave". We felt worried.
I tried to learn to roll a cigarette but ended up leaving the duties to Doug.
The next morning we thought we'd get up at 4 am to get our schedules tuned, and climb Pigeon. The alarm went off and Doug didn't hear it, it was absurdly cold, I took a quick vote and nobody wanted to get up so we slept until the sun hit our tent. Once it did things slowly started to warm up. We made some granola and coffee and looked around us for a long time. The day had come bright and beautiful but all the snow had us pretty concerned. We talked about a couple other routes in the area. Neither of us were willing to say the words "plan B" but we were both thinking them.
Snowpatch Spire is ALWAYS gorgeous.
On the plus side, the Bugaboo-Snowpatch col was in the best shape I've ever seen it- and both my previous trips were in July. What a high-snow year! On the way in, with the sketchy weather we'd ditched our first option which had been to hike all our stuff into the East Creek Basin. We decided to camp at Appleby and spend Saturday reconnoitering the route and hopefully climbing the West Ridge of Pigeon Spire. So we headed on up.
This is the northeast side of the Howser Towers. We will be climbing up the far side of the one on the left, and rapping down this face.
One of the hardest things about this route is logistics. Do you go from base camp at Appleby or East Creek? Appleby is farther away from the route, but if you camp in East Creek you have to haul all your gear all the way in there, which is tiring. Either way you choose will involve glacier travel. You'd really rather not climb the rock with crampons and an ice axe on your back, they're heavy and the axe sticks out and catches on things. But the glacier conditions might demand pointy metal.
Here was where the 8" of fresh snow we found on the Vowell Glacier turned from a curse into a blessing. It was nice and soft and gave us good steps. By the time we were near Pigeon Spire we'd begun to feel hope again that our objective might be attainable.
Pigeon Spire's northwest face, the classic west ridge goes along the ridge crest from right to left. Supposedly this rock looks like a Pigeon, I never really figured it out.
So we descended through the Pigeon-Howser col and into the East Creek Basin. We had the bright idea to use two rappels to get down the steepest part at the top. From there we kicked steps down the soft snow, knowing that after a cold night, they'd be set up hard for us in the morning. We walked all the way down to the site where we could have bivied, near the base of the route, and stared up at South Howser Tower.
This is the south side of South Howser Tower- much different from the north! You can see near the top the Great White Headwall we'd be climbing the next day. The amazing cone of granite on the right is a feature called the Minaret, which has only a few, VERY hard routes up it. But look at it!
And then we walked back up to the col. By the time we got there I was tired and sweaty, and I thought our best bet to succeed the next day was to head straight back to camp, eat, and go to bed. But first we scoped out the spot where we'd be rappelling back down to the glacier.
The northeast side of South Howser again, you can see the bergschrund and near the right skyline, our planned rappel route.
Doug walking back toward Bugaboo and Snowpatch.
I made some dehydrated beef stroganoff, wolfed it down, and then turned in well before the sun went down. Like I mentioned before, I'm not a great sleeper. Especially outdoors, and especially when I'm going to do something big in the morning. I did more tossing and turning than I did sleeping, but slept enough that when the alarm went off at 2 AM it didn't feel completely dreadful.
We drank some coffee and ate a little bit, and then stole off up the col and across the glacier under starlight. Everything went according to plan and by the time the sun started to rise, we were nearing the base of the route.
The West Buttress of South Howser Tower in the dawn's light.
We scrambled up rocks until the going got hard and then we roped up. Doug took the first lead, and we got off route which is apparently a common experience. But soon we were at the base of the first 5.10a pitch, which Doug also led.
Doug tackles the first 5.10a roof pitch. You can see, as always, the GWH looming above.
After that I led two pitches which got us up and into the Great Dihedral, super fun 5.8 climbing in a huge left-facing corner. Doug and I then swung leads for another 4 pitches up to the big bivy ledge. Doug expressed some concerns about how long this was taking us, and worried about being benighted. I thought we were doing okay, and as far as I was concerned the only way was up- bailing would have been an amazing pain in the ass.
Looking up from the bivy ledge, the Great White Headwall looked even more imposing than it had looked all day up to that point. I'd been warned that the first two pitches off this ledge were "real asskickers". I asked Doug to take the first one, since he has bigger hands that would fit the wider crack better, and I would take the second.
Looking up at Doug getting into the business.
His pitch was about 200 feet long, starting with a fist crack, before a ledge and a corner switch, and more crack climbing up to a few face moves above. It took a long time but I never pulled out my camera to take any pictures of the amazing scenery around me, which unfortunately would be the case for the rest of the climb. I guess I was too preoccupied with thoughts of finishing the climb before sunset.
I tried to follow the pitch as fast as I could, which was good for our time but pretty exhausting. My lead after this pitch was the infamous "squeeze" pitch. It starts out with a tough balance move above the belay, with no handholds, into a corner. From here it's solid hand crack for a good ways, before the corner gets wide and you move into a finger crack on the face to the left. That goes for a good long ways, before petering out and forcing you back into the corner, which by now has widened out into a squeeze chimney. This was the real struggle. There was a significant amount of snow down in there. The crux for me was: standing on a chockstone, hugging another chockstone covered in snow, grabbing a higher chockstone, trying to muscle my way up, realizing I didn't have the strength, backing down to a knee bar, trying again three times, pumping out and hands going numb from cold at the same time... before finally getting a clue and using my feet. That's alpine! After fighting my way through this I built an anchor and brought Doug up.
We felt relief at having the meat of the route behind us- just 3 more pitches of easier climbing, then some scrambling to the top. But we were still pretty concerned about time. I don't remember looking at the clock but I guessed it was about 4 PM.
Doug led and managed to stretch all the way up to the base of the last pitch, then I led and got us around the corner, up the final gulley, and to the rap station. At this point light was fading fast. We looked down onto the shady side of the mountain. We'd been avoiding thinking about it, but this was where the 4th-and-low-5th-class scramble was sure to be complicated by a blanket of snow. We did the rap as fast as we could and I headed off across ledges and blocks.
Beautiful but stressful.
Sadly, before long I was gripped by uncertainty. There was no way to know whether the high point I could see was actually the summit, and whether the high ridge I could see was my target, or if I needed to go around the corner. I quickly brought Doug in. The topo we had was frustratingly vague. Doug picked up all the gear and headed out as fast as he could. With a few shouted directions he made his way up to the ridge, with me simulclimbing behind. He disappeared from view and I kept following as the rope pulled me in. After a minute with no action, I could tell from the motion of the rope that he'd found an anchor and was reeling me in on a fixed belay. And so, I topped out, just as the last rays of sunset were fading.
Aaaaaaand... gone.
Closest thing we got to a summit shot.
I wasn't trying to make a face here, I guess this is just what I felt like.
And now we were in the situation we'd worried about: searching for rappel anchors in the dark. These are as close as we got to a summit shot, as I don't think I ever actually touched the true summit. In hindsight it was silly- one more minute would have made zero difference. But we felt very urgent.
This is where the shit really hit the fan. We were on top of a mountain, covered in a layer of fresh snow, exposed to the wind, in the dark. Trying to find rappel anchors. The first two raps went well enough, the problems started when we went to pull the ropes for the second one. One end got stuck below us. I volunteered to fix it. So down I went. Into the top of The Big Hose, which is an ice route early season, now it was just ICY. I found the rope had twisted over itself and lodged in a crack. After a huge amount of fiddling around I managed to get the rope out and then I prusiked back up the rope. I'd put my down jacket on at the top, so now I was good and sweaty. It was Doug's turn to take the lead, so he rapped down to find the next anchor.
Oh another thing: When it says 30 meters, it means at least 30 meters. I wouldn't do this one without a 70 meter rope.
Here's the map of the rap route, which is advertised at the trailhead, the hut, and the campground. If you read the description of rap #3 you might notice parts of it are italicized.
Doug rapped down, looked around for a few minutes, and shouted up that he didn't see the anchor and was going to have to come back up. So he did, while I waited. Then he went down again, a different direction. And looked around a long time. I could hear him cursing before he announced they weren't in that direction either, and started coming back up. This was very time consuming, by the time he got back up to his starting point I had probably been standing still in the cold wind for an hour, and was really getting worried. What if he couldn't find the anchor? We were not in a good place to hunker down for the night, with the gear we had (we were wearing all of it, plus we had a couple flimsy space blankets) it would be a really unpleasant and probably dangerous night.
Doug told me he had one more shot- he had gone to the left and gone to the right, and there was one more option in between. I was just praying. I waited in the dark, stamping my feet to try to keep the blood flowing. And eventually, finally, I heard a triumphant "YES!" He'd found the anchors. When I followed him down I saw why he'd tried two other choices first: the rap was very diagonal, over a low angle and narrow ridge, which today was covered in ice and snow. If you slipped and blew it, you'd pendulum off the ridgecrest and sideways into the dark unknown. Sketchiest rap I've ever done.
Mad props to Doug for saving our asses.
After this, the raps were straightforward. Doug went down first on every single one and did a fantastic job of finding the anchors quickly. As we lost elevation it warmed up and the wind subsided, and we started to feel like things would be okay. We'd spend the night in our tent, instead of cuddling under a pop-tart wrapper.
The final rap takes you down a snow slope and over a huge bergschrund- here's a picture during the day. Doug went down first and I could see the bright spot of his headlamp disappear as he went over the lip, and I could hear some mutterings of amazement. Soon the rope went slack and I could see Doug walk out onto the glacier below me. "Ah yeah, so chill!" I followed.
Into the dark.
When I rapped over the edge I went free-hanging and was staring into a gaping hole full of icicles. I swear I saw some that were 15 feet long, amazing. Unfortunately I was in no state of mind to fumble with my camera.
And we were done! Standing on soft, low-angle snow, upon which I knelt and deposited grateful kisses with my catastrophically chapped lips. We rearranged our gear and then set off across the glacier. Reaching the B-S col we retrieved our crampons and ice axes, and then rappelled down the col. Then it was a simple slog back to camp, which we reached at 1:55 AM. We'd been up for almost 24 hours. We celebrated with the last 3 ounces of bourbon and I cooked myself dinner, while Doug went straight to sleep.
In the dark with my headlamp off, staring up at the stars and eating my dehydrated beef stew, I tried to think about what the day we'd just experienced meant. But my brain spun meaninglessly, it already seemed surreal.
The next morning, we woke up at 7:30 regardless of how tired we were. It was another beautiful day and we groggily spread all our gear out and packed up. The hike out took a couple hours, and when we got to the car we changed into cotton clothes and gorged ourselves on snack food. We hit the road and 10 boring hours of driving later, we were back home in Seattle.
I'm still kind of in shock that we got this done. It's been the most ambitious climb on my to-do list for so long, and it always seemed out of reach. I learned a lot about myself this last month. Now that it's been done, I'll have to find something else to put up there. But no rush.
And as usual, my appetite for alpine climbing has been satiated just in time for the turning of the season. We are having the most beautiful weather right now, for which I'm very grateful, I'm so glad this is how I get to wind down. 80 degrees in September in Seattle is divine, everything is green and smells like blackberries and the sunsets are gorgeous. But we're losing 4 minutes of light each day and soon there will be a crispness in the air. And my thoughts are turning to sleeping in on weekends, brunches, cooking dinners, and then before long, snow and ice.
Life is good.