I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.”
― Jack Kerouac
As you may recall in part 1 of this little adventure we had returned to our camp, pretty much dog tired, and even though we collectively bagged a couple of summits, we had our tails tucked between our legs. We were all thinking that we were going to be seriously hurting units the next day, but you know what? It wasn’t all that bad. A bit of soreness in the quads, but other than that in pretty good nick. A couple of years back when we came down from Sir Donald we couldn’t walk right for a week; a testament to how undertrained we were at the time I guess. We opted now to do a nice little 8km hike over flat terrain; the old rail line to Glacier House actually. Just to stretch things out a bit. We also took the opportunity to drive into Revelstoke (or as the weed shop says Revelsmoke) for a beer or two, and a late lunch. The weather forecast for the next day was calling for severe thunderstorms later in the afternoon, so we wisely chose to take that as a rest day as well. Languishing around camp, some short walks, a bit of stretching and hydrating summed up the days activities for the most part.
I went down to the station, just to take a ride
I went down to the station, just to take a ride
Found myself on a flatcar, yesterday behind
– John Fogerty
Later in the day we finally started organizing gear and packing for the next climbs. We took the lightest alpine kit we thought we could get away with. Skinny rope, minimal crevasse rescue gear, ice axes, crampons, harness, helmets, headlights, in-reach device, rain jackets, light puffy’s, less food than on day one, and more importantly less water, because we knew that we could (probably) resupply easily. This is likely a good time to give a shout-out to the Katadyn Be-Free water filters that we each had been using on this trip. Lightweight, fast, and supposedly effective. We felt that this paring down of gear would allow us to execute Renee’s great idea: being that we should hike in to Asulkan Pass and do the peaks of Jupiter, the southernmost summits of the original traverse plan.
I’d get it one piece at a time and it wouldn’t cost me a dime
– Wayne Kemp
If we pulled this off then we would just have to find a way up to Sapphire Col at some point and do the remaining two peaks: Dome and Rampart. Maybe in some other universe. We could be like those wankers that hike a week on the PCT each year for 10 years, and then say they hiked the PCT. But, I am getting off track here. Renee’s plan was a good one… let’s get after it…
Again we set off with a Sparrows Fart. One of the problems with this was that we didn’t get to brew up, and had to head out without that cup of Kicking Horse that we had been enjoying on camp days. This morning was no different in that regard, but today in the pre-dawn, the parking lot was different. It was busy with climbers; one group going to Sir Donald, and another party planning to do the traverse that we abandoned earlier on in the week. The approach hike this time around was as different as chalk and cheese from the one we did a couple of days ago. The first km’s were pretty gentle with some short undulating sections until we had to cross over the Asulkan Brook (hardly a brook, looking at it) one last time. There are several bridges across the ’brook’, however this is one that Parks Canada takes down and reinstalls each year. It would be a hard crossing without it, except maybe in the dead of winter.
Almost immediately after the bridge we had to climb the ’moraine of pain’. An unrelentingly steep slog that eventually ended at the Asulkan Cabin. Two and a half hours from camp. Not too shabby. Even I had to admit it was a pretty breathtaking location for a hut. In France there would have been a cable car to here and beyond. We took a few minutes to slake our thirst, eat some grub, and take advantage of the privy. No open air thunderbox here, but a lovely two room affair.
We couldn’t lallygag long though, because we still had many long hours ahead of us. The day had really only just begun. We were off trail at this juncture but we were in tall cotton. Nice open slabs, gentle snow slopes and easy boulder fields led us in time to the Asulkan Pass proper. We were all feeling great and making good time. It was a real dramatic change from how we were feeling the other day. From here the route was both obvious and inobvious at the same time. Holy Schrödinger Batman. What’s this knucklehead on about you are thinking? Well… this…
You see, the ridge from straight on looked like the ‘obvious’ way to go but inhospitable; so in another sense not obvious at all. So we traversed around a fair bit south and west until we thought we found a weakness. The weakness turned out to be in our heads, because it was a chossy, gravelly shit-show that we ended up groveling our way up. You know the type of terrain I am talking about. Where you need to climb right next to or beside each other to avoid the fall line of all the stuff you are dislodging. The higher we went the crappier it got, until we spied a way to veer back east a bit and got on the ridge crest proper, where of course the rock was much better, and Renee commented ”you’re gonna like this”. Not only were we making better time, we were also afforded the first real views of our objective. Unfortunately that little detour through the choss seemed to really sap our strength; both physical and mental.
We stopped at a sheltered spot where a small tongue of rock jutted out onto the glacier, and had some more food and water. It was here where Renee figured that she had enough fun for the day and wanted to have something left in the tank for the return trip. She hunkered down and waited for Kev and me to do Leda. This involved losing a fair bit of hard fought for elevation while we descended the glacier (per se), and then continued up the gently contoured south east ridge. The snow got increasingly steeper and we could see where it stopped at a cliff face near the summit. There was most likely a nasty moat that would have been problematic to navigate through. We took this opportunity to exit the snow at a convenient location just below a small crevasse and carried on up the ridge on very nice steep blocky quartzite. In this fashion we made the summit of Leda. Leda however is not the highest point of Jupiter. Pollux is. Not far horizontally, but accessed by a narrow and very exposed (in places) class 3 ridge with a tricky notch.
It was my turn to vacillate and I chose to wait on the summit of Leda for Kev to make his way over to tag Pollux and come back. Within 30 minutes or thereabouts we were reunited and started down-climbing the ridge and thus made our way down and then back up the glacier to where we had left Renee. Kevin and I were both surprised to find that we had been gone 3 hours. Mountain time dilation… its a real thing. Although we were both thoroughly knackered we still had enough left in us to accompany Renee to the summit of unnamed pk. 2672. We tarried only a minute on the summit where we were afforded magnificent views of the Dawson Range, and then began picking our way back down. On the descent, and with some careful route finding, we followed the ridge all of way the down, almost to Asulkan pass. This is way we should have ascended. There were a few shitty sections on the lower part, but nothing as dodgy as it was on the way up.
Once at the pass we took off our helmets and again tanked up on water and food. I took the rope from Kevin as he had been carrying it all day and did more than his share with it. Another case of dragging that damn cord along and not using it. Oh Well…
It was at this point that Kevin pipes up and says ”hey Renee, there’s a guy running down our route with no shirt on”. This being a bit of a WTF moment. Hallucinations brought on by exhaustion? Or maybe we did somehow slip over into the universe next door. But sure enough this fairly young fit looking dude is soon upon us. This cat was as cool as a polar bears pillowcase. Trail running shoes, shorts, a bit of a fanny pack, shirt wrapped around his head forming a makeshift hat, and an ultra light ice axe. He stopped and chatted for a bit. It had taken him 6 hours to get to where we were by doing the full traverse. Pretty amazing. Then he proceeds to tell us that it’s actually easier in winter. Oh yeah and yesterday he did the Sir Donald Traverse. Oh just fuck-off… Seriously though, he was a nice guy; some people are astoundingly fit, skilled, and motivated. We said our goodbyes and he was off. We hoisted our laden packs, glanced down at our heavy mountain boots, and with a bemused shrug plodded off after him, although by this point he had vanished from sight.
On day one of our original traverse plan, we had anticipated that maybe we would have had to be doing this portion in the dark at the end of a very long day. Today however, we had the benefits of the gps track we had made to get up here to help us find our way to within sighting distance of the cabin, all the time wondering how we would have fared in the night without the navigation aid. We soon however got a visual, which obviously was reassuring. What we also got a visual of, was another 2 climbers. Coming down from Young’s peak. Our paths intercepted so we chatted with them for a bit as well. A young Kiwi couple. Also very minimally appointed, skilled, and fit. They had just completed the Young’s Peak Traverse. Soon after they were bounding down the trail ahead of us, causing poor Renee to enter a state of profound denial of reconciling both her physical and mental ages, and wondering why she isn’t racing down the moraine of pain with them. Welcome to the club Renee. The only consolation is that in some parallel universe we undoubtably are keeping pace with, or even outpacing the Kiwis.
If I get a parking ticket, there’s always a parallel universe where I didn’t. On the other hand there is yet another universe where my car was stolen
– Max Tegmark
listen: there’s a hell of a good universe next door; let’s go
-e.e. Cummings
By this point there were some darkening storm clouds brewing up over the Asulkan Ridge. Our thoughts went to the party that we met in the parking lot at dawn who were still up there; lightning is no joke on an exposed ridge. But our thoughts went also to our own comfort as we wanted to beat the oncoming rain and make it back to camp dry. We hoofed it as fast as our weary bodies would go and did indeed beat the rain and beat the clock just shy of 13hrs. Dog tired yet again, yes, but we felt pretty good about our overall effort as well. Twenty three kilometers and change, and about 1,700m elevation gain.
Postscript
- That ultra light fast guy we saw took 6 hrs to get from the Illecillewaet campground to Asulkan Pass. I can’t imagine it would have taken him more than 2 hrs from the pass back to camp.
- On the other hand… remember those parking lot dudes we met at the start of our day? It took them 17 hrs. We know this because Kevin left a note (and a can of coke) on their car asking them to text us when they got back. They also mentioned that they could feel the electricity in the air when that storm rolled in. They got lucky.
Stay tuned for part 3…
Soundtrack Music
One Piece at a Time (Mr. Johnny Cash) | Crosstie Walker (John Fogerty) | Shelter From the Storm (Bob Dylan) | Two 6’s Upside Down (Dropkick Murphys)
Photos
K/R/B
Catering
Chubby Funsters
Lusted after gear
Camp Corsa Race Ice Axe