eastern promises part 2

You’re sick of hangin‘ around and you’d like to travel
Get tired of travelin‘, you want to settle down
I guess they can’t revoke your soul for tryin‘
Get out of the door and light out and look all around

– Garcia | Lesh | Weir | Hunter

Where were we? Ah yes… just as we were despondently starting our descent we heard a voice hailing us. Definitely in the WTF category. Within a few seconds we located where it was coming from. There was a climber (and I hesitate to use that term as you will learn) far off to our left who seemed to be somewhat distraught and in a spot of bother. We waited where we were as he gingerly picked his way over to us. It turned out to be a young man who was doing a solo attempt of the route. Not an uncommon or foolhardy endeavor for those capable of doing so. Unfortunately this poor lad was not one of those people; far from it. For starters, he was very poorly equipped. In fact not equipped at all really. Jeans, a lightweight shirt, and a pair of rock shoes. His ‘friends’ had told him that the climb was a cruise. Well… it had quickly turned into something else for this nice guy and now for us as well as it turned out. More of a shipwreck. He was way more off route than we were and he was now in a bit of a jackpot having climbed himself into the predicament where he couldn’t safely climb down, nor up; not that there was any escape or relief in the upward direction. 

So we now had to descend not just by ourselves, but we had to extricate this hapless soul as well. All in a days work I suppose. Doing any amount of down climbing was now going to be hazardous so we began to rig the first of many rappels. It’s not that the terrain disallowed down climbing, it’s just that it was a long steep way down and one wrong move or slip would end up in one starving to death while bouncing, and with our newfound friend in tow we couldn’t afford to take any chances. The snag here was twofold. First off, this guy had no harness or rap device. Secondly, he had never rappelled before. Oh well…

We fashioned a makeshift harness out of sling material. Kev let him use his ATC, whilst he resorted to using a Munter hitch. Next we gave him some rudimentary OJT on rappelling, then off we went. Kev or I went first each time with either one of us going second, letting the young man going last. Our thought process was rooted in speed of descent first and safety second. First man down could be rigging the next rappel whilst the second could provide a fireman’s belay to our new man. In retrospect we should not have done it this way at all, as the potential pitfalls were many, and we didn’t really gain any appreciable time by doing so. Remember, this guy had never done any of this before. Our method had him threading his own device, trusting him not to drop it, and leaving him alone which, I am sure was very stressful. And if you recall we were using a very skinny rope, which calls for extra caution in all of this rappelling business. Additionally it is the responsibility of the last man down to ensure that the ropes will pull freely on retrieval. In retrospect all of this was really far too much to expect for a newbie in this situation. We should have always had him go in the middle. We weren’t thinking clearly. 

But, you know what? This kid deported himself exceptionally well under the circumstances. He listened to instructions and followed them. He always threaded the device correctly, and never dropped it. Only once did the rope not pull, but in all fairness that could happen to anyone at anytime. A short bit of scrambling back up and we could get it freed up, so no harm… no foul. The rappels were by necessity short because we were using a single rope doubled, so this meant there were a lot more of them. I lost count. 

By now the savvy reader might be thinking what about that other team that was mentioned earlier? Well this is where we meet up with them. About half way down we come across them. They were a Korean couple. Man and woman. The man looked fairly old, but they were well equipped and looked to be moving very competently, albeit slowly although they were still quite low down, and the day was starting to wear on. The gentleman spoke virtually no English, but the woman had some reasonable command of it. I let her know that they still had a very long way to go, and that the difficult climbing was going to occur much higher up. The two briefly discussed their situation in Korean; thanked us, and continued upwards. Hmmm… good for them I guess. Their progress did not last very long however. After another rope length or two, we could see that they too had decided to bail. 

As I had mentioned previously there was a lot of tat on the climb and this is what we used to rappel from each time, as had obviously many others, because this was always located a convenient one half rope length apart. Some had rap rings, some had screw links, most was just webbing. Some more faded and threadbare than others. When in doubt, we added a piece of our dwindling supply to back it up. What turned out to be the last rappel was also the most exciting. It was totally blind. We had no idea where the ends of the rope landed. Could have been in mid-air for all we knew, but based on all of the others we figured that we would be okay. This is a reminder as to why we always knot the ends of the rope. 

It was a real rope stretcher as well, but at least it was the end. The ropes barely touched down on this tiny snow and loose rock covered ledge that wasn’t really big enough for the three of us. From here though we could traverse along some more manky snow covered ledges over to the crest of the ridge from where we could finally un-rope and down-climb the last bit to the col. 

The exciting stuff was over for sure, but we still had a long and tiring day ahead of us. We grabbed a bite to eat here and heard a bit more of our new comrades story. It turns out that he had also hiked in the afternoon prior as we had. For whatever reason he got totally lost and ended up biviing somewhere near the west face of the ridge and was exposed to rock fall throughout the night. This poor fellow was really lucky to be alive at all by this point in time. 

We chatted for only a short while and soon parted ways and never saw him again, although he does figure briefly in the story later on. The Koreans had gotten down safely as well by this moment.  

Lost in our own thoughts Kev and I took separate paths back to our bivi site where we hastily packed up and began the trudge out to the road. Its only 5 kilometers, but we were moving pretty slowly by now and hurting to boot. Also by this point we had drank all of our water so we were thirsty as hell. It was early evening when we finally staggered into our campsite, pretty beat up for sure. I gratefully ate a good meal and washed it down with a cold beer, although I was so dog-tired I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have. I wish I could say that sleep came early but it didn’t. Too much stuff reeling in my mind for that to happen. 

You recall all that training I did over the winter and spring? My legs (Kev’s too) were trash. We were so sore we could barely walk. It took a real effort to go anywhere, but one thing we had to do was check in with the Rangers and let them know that we were back; plus I wanted to inform them of our little incident. With that business done we did nothing else but hobble around camp and patch our bones. Later on in the day we drove into Revelstoke and met up with some of Kev’s friends for a nice Indian takeaway dinner. 

Although our legs didn’t feel any better, a day later we did a consolation climb of a small ‘peak’. More of a bump on a ridge actually. More of a hike than a climb as well, and even though it hurt, it was good to get out and get moving. The weather was going to be turning for the worse and our time was running out so we left a day early and headed back to Calgary. I tried to get an earlier flight but to no avail, so I languished around a hotel for a day waiting for my scheduled departure; and that was it, another trip, and another unsuccessful attempt. The last?  Most likely, but…..

Epilogue:

About a week after my return I received a text message from the head of search and rescue for the area that we had been in. The rangers had passed along my contact information, and he was contacting me to get a first hand account of the incident, and fill in some of the details. We had a very nice conversation. First off, he offered his thanks to us, and congratulated us on the excellent response we had to the situation. He asked me a lot about the details of what we did. Interestingly enough he mentioned that we could have called SAR. We did have a cell phone and good reception, plus a SPOT device. He said that they would have come right away and long-lined the guy off. I responded that we were there and felt it was our duty to do what we did, and that helicopter rescues are not only expensive, but dangerous as well. He told me that the cost, because in a national park is paid for by the government, and that this sort of thing is (almost) routine and what they are highly trained to do. Yet he went on to say that if he had been in our place that he would have done exactly what we did, and reiterated what a good job we did. During the conversation I asked the SAR head about the incident Kev and I witnessed two years back on Mt Tupper, and yes this guy was doing the chopper rescue and body recovery on that one. Small world I guess.

Lastly, and this is where the young fellow comes back into the story, the SAR guy told me that the kid actually went into the rangers and self-reported the incident to them, and that he wanted to express his gratitude to us for helping him out and saving his life. How about that…