The year was 1981 and I think that this was possibly my third trip to this area. I was with my two good friends and climbing partners Colin and Ross. This was each of their second trips to the area if I remember correctly. The Joffre Lakes group is about the best climbing value around. By that I mean the approach is so simple and easy for what the area has to offer. It’s only about a three hour drive from Vancouver over mostly really good roads; however there are times when the road maintenance on the gravel portions is sub-par and this particular time was no exception. The washboard was so bad in one section that we thought that we would lose fillings or suffer kidney damage. The hike in is mellow and enjoyable. The trail is always in pretty decent shape, and it’s not too steep as they can be in that part of the world. To top it off you get to pass three beautiful lakes that each has their own distinct colour. The place is really very pretty and more importantly there is a cluster of fine looking mountains with something for just about everyone. There are serious rock routes, steep snow and ice climbs, easy scrambles, amazing alpine bouldering and everything in between. That probably explains why we made so many trips there over the years.
By the time of this particular trip I had already climbed several of the peaks in the area, but one I hadn’t was the highpoint of the region, Mt. Matier. It tops out at 2,783 m and has a bunch of good routes to the summit. It’s a bit unclear where the name comes from, but I read somewhere that it may have been attributed to an early prospector in the area. At one time there was a petition to name it Anniversary Peak, but that never happened. Even though the access is so good, as is the climbing I have never had to share a route with anyone other than my partners. I know that it is a popular area, but for some reason we have always avoided other climbers.
The three of us hiked into a camp at the upper lake late one afternoon. We must’ve been just flying because we made it in 1-1/2 hours. That was with carrying overnight kit and climbing gear as well. Different times. One thing about this area that is common knowledge to those who know anything at all about it, is mosquitoes. Big ones. Hungry ones. And lots of them. This trip was no exception either. The voracious and infuriating little buggers were everywhere; drilling into us at every patch of exposed flesh, and even through our clothes where they could.
In the early morning at least there were precious few of the nasty critters and the only thing nipping at us was the chill when we left camp for the climb. A 0500 start time worked out to be just fine for us. We meandered our way through the streams and heather of the sub-alpine and soon were approaching the lower glacier. Today this glacier has unfortunately receded to a great extent making the approach quite a bit different. For us however it seemed fairly straight forward. There can be a bit of tricky route-finding through the icefall but we were able to avoid much of that by squeezing around the toe of the glacier on the right hand side and without much fuss we found ourselves on the upper portion. This is a large mostly flat bowl and crossing it was fast and simple. From this side of the peak there are two obvious lines to the summit. The West Face direct and the North West face/North West Ridge. The West Face often has a bergschrund that can pose trouble and be difficult to negotiate, and tempted as we were to go this way, we opted for more of a sure thing by taking the other route.
It was a glorious day. The weather and conditions were excellent. Our route offered up some reasonably steep snow that is capped by several hundred metres of stiff class three low class four rock. The snow was starting to soften a bit in the sun and it made for almost perfect step-kicking. This allowed us to make rapid time until we hit the rock. There were a couple of bands of snow interspersed between the rock bands but we were making good time here as well and by 1030 we found ourselves shaking hands and tucking into our standard and tasty cheese sandwiches on the summit. This had been a great ascent. It was challenging enough without being too scary, and was in an exceptional location. It was still early so we were able to laze around and soak in the ambience for quite some time before we had to make our descent.
We carefully down climbed the rocky sections and although the snow was pretty steep, it was soft enough by now that we could descend face out and enjoyed a combination of plunge-stepping, glissading and boot skiing that rapidly took us back to the glacier proper. By now the sun was getting high and it was blisteringly hot. We followed our steps back across and skirted our way past the maze of the icefall and eventually back through the heather and now swollen streams to our campsite. All that was left was to de-camp and have a leisurely hike out to the car. The end of another well spent weekend in the mountains.