I think that this was maybe my fourth attempt to climb this mountain; I am beginning to lose track. This was the summer of 1988 or thereabouts and there was a small group of us that gathered to get our alpine fix in B.C. and Alberta. I had been away from the mountains for several years by this point. Doug had come from his home in Arizona, while Scott, Harry and I had made our way from the Big Smoke… Toronto.
The four of us hiked into the Uto-Sir Donald col in the late afternoon of June 30th. There was already another party of two camped in the col with similar aspirations to ours. Not ideal but not so bad either; it’s a big route. Try getting that kind of solitude in 2020… We just had bivi-bags and minimal gear so it was a really bleak night.
We woke everyone up in the dim, grey chill of morning to a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday and Oh Canada since it was Canada Day after all. The weather however, was not the kind wanted for a celebratory picnic or climb for that matter. It was in fact: total crap, which is a common theme in the Rogers Pass area. It had actually snowed overnight so there was a dusting of white on us. The summit was socked in and the skies were dark and threatening. The other two guys that were here decided that under these conditions they would not attempt the climb and packed to leave. Harry, (always the really smart one in our group) uttered some pithy comment like “you guys are fucking nuts’ and promptly crawled back into his sleeping bag and waited it out whilst Doug, Scott, and I attempted the climb.
NW Arête Head On
We geared up and went for it. To be successful on this route you need to move fast and light. To do that you have to be pretty confident and capable of doing a lot of un-roped fourth class climbing on some reasonably exposed terrain. If you do climb roped, it behooves you to simulclimb utilizing running belays as much as possible. If you decide to climb in pitches classically you will gobble up huge chunks of time, and may need to turn back before summiting or descend in the dark. So our intent was to simulclimb and only belay when required. With a team of three this was the only sensible way to go. This worked well for a few hundred metres. But the rock was very wet from the fresh snow and the lichen was as slippery as a new deck of cards. It was cold and windy to boot, and this was causing the rock to glaze over with an unhealthy sheen of ice in places. Pretty much winter conditions. We felt we needed to belay to make this safe. This was much earlier than we had expected to be using such shenanigans and sure enough the meter started running quicker. After a few more pitches it became clearly evident that this day wasn’t gonna end well if we continued up in this fashion. Even though it was still early we had already burned way too much daylight as it was.
Doug and Scott at Decision Time
We finally had reached a point where we had to make a call, and that was to regrettably head down. Descending in itself was a bit of a challenge and required a number of rappels to get us back to terrain that we could down-climb safely. All of this took time, but went well however and soon we were reunited with Harry at the col. Nothing was left for us to do but pack up and hoof it back down to the valley and to our van.
Descent
Another disappointing attempt on Sir Donald and as such it certainly got added to my increasingly lengthy grudge match list. This climb like many others in the genre was unfortunately a real low probability affair, given my lifestyle at the time. Weather and conditions have always been the culprit and conspired in all but one of my failed attempts. Too many times to count have I made a one or two week trip to the Rockies or interior ranges only to sit in camp listening to the rain beat against the tent, or hang out in coffee shops or bars just waiting for that window of opportunity and losing fitness with every day of inactivity.
Here is one of my favourite pictures of Harry, snug and warm, and probably still thinking… “you guys are nuts” Harry is another buddy of mine who unfortunately is no longer with us, but he really loved getting out doing this shit with us when he was around.