The three attributes of an alpinist are:
A high pain tolerance, a bad memory, and… I forget the third one
It turns out that everything in Roger’s Pass is hard. This was our last day, and we would soon be heading out after breaking camp. It was early morning and I was having just a wonderful cup of camp coffee with my newfound mountain friend Pat’O. No one else was up yet. We were swatting flies, swapping lies, and generally solving the world’s problems. Both of us were feeling a little rough around the edges, not to mention feeling our ages from a week in the mountains when Pat brought up an interesting topic of conversation, or maybe it was just a question: When to retire from alpine climbing? Turns out one we both have pondered; maybe more so in recent years. We are both greybeards to an extent, so I suppose that it makes sense on some level. The flippant answer is after the next climb. That of course, is like hanging up a sign promising free beer tomorrow. To answer the question properly, requires us to address the age old question of why we climb in the first place. What exactly are we getting from it, and when don’t we need that something, or perhaps can’t get it any more. My wife recently asked me the very same question about retiring from alpine climbing.
Post trip, in an e-mail to me, Pat used the phrase… “I miss wilderness, pain, fear, joy, opportunity, community, limitlessness.” That struck a chord with me, and perhaps goes a way towards answering the question of why. Read on if you will, but there will be no real answer forthcoming. How could there be?
I live near mountains; I can summit peaks in several hours return from my house. But I don’t live near that glorious high alpine that we cherish so much. To get there has become a whole big deal. It means traveling, planning, negotiating, permitting, and coordinating with climbing partners, like in this instance my good friend Kevin. He and I have made several trips together to the Roger’s Pass area over the years. This one was maybe going to be our 4th or 5th foray into the region with each other. You would think we would have learned by now. The beauty of this area is in… well… it’s beauty. That and the approaches are all reasonably benign in the overall scheme of things, and the rock is very solid. When I say reasonably benign, I refer to how close to the road most things are. I suppose that’s where the benignness ends however. The trails whilst mostly well maintained and mercifully short, are all pretty steep. The climbs themselves are mostly hard. Even the easy stuff is hard. What’s ‘easy’ you ask? Turns out I have no clue. My first exposure (pun) to climbing grades and difficulty was from Dick Culbert’s 1974 guide book. And I quote…
Class 3 F2 II Most Parties rope up somewhere in this range
Class 4 F3 III- Continuous belaying and fairly serious climbing
Maybe times have changed. Maybe old Dick was a bit of a fuddy duddy. Or, maybe this is why I never got very good. Who knows. Also somewhere along the line since 1974 the term ‘4th classing it’ has become synonymous with unroped soloing on any conceivable grade. What I do know is that when they say Class 3 in Roger’s Pass you are likely to be on some difficult terrain that could be wildly exposed. Real fall to your death material if there ever was any.
The other thing about Roger’s Pass is fickle weather. Not Patagonia fickle, but fickle enough. This brings us to another drawback to traveling for climbing. The weather. You can spend a year or more in planning and preparation, and have it all go out the window upon arrival at your destination.
We had two main climbs that were in our sights on this particular trip. The first up was the North Face of Young’s Peak. Supposedly a good introduction to alpine snow / ice climbing. Not that we needed any introduction to this mind you, but in the context of the aforementioned age discussion it seemed a reasonable goal. We arrived in Roger’s Pass as per usual, driving in Kevin’s trusty truck all the way from Calgary, and pulled into the Illecillewaet campground in the rain. The next day it was still raining, but with an improving forecast. The day following started out marginal but we figured it might just be good enough for Young’s. Turns out it wasn’t. It’s a beautiful verdant trail though, with many well bridged stream crossings and views of spectacular waterfalls. Tough sledding nonetheless, loaded down with even the minimalist gear we had. We kept slogging up the trail and up the infamous ‘moraine of pain’ into the thickening mist, until we reached the Asulkan cabin which marks the trails end and the start of cross country travel to the base of the face. Problem was we couldn’t even see Young’s Peak nor our intended route due to the low cloud cover. Not exactly inside of ping pong ball conditions but close enough, and too close for our comfort. We waited a good amount of time hoping for the clouds to lift. There were periods where we saw some promising patches of blue sky and sunshine, but within minutes it would get dark and close in again. After several cycles of this we realized that this endeavor was turning into a fool’s errand, and although it still being early, even if it did clear, we would risk running out of daylight by the end of the climb. Eventually there was nothing left for it but to head back down to camp.
It’s always hard to say in these situations if going up or going down is the hardest. But we had no choice in the matter of course. Down we went. Twice on the hike out we met some folks going for day hikes. “To see the glaciers up close”, so they said. Sad to say, in both instances, these people were actually hiking on the wrong trails. They needed to be on the Pearly Rock trail, and alas they were not. Some people just shouldn’t go outside at all I guess. Speaking of glaciers and sadness though. It was very sad to see many of the glaciers receded and in such a state of decay. We had a third climb planned if the first two went well, that would have necessitated traveling on one of these glaciers. A few times when the clouds lifted for a bit we could see how unpractical and dangerous that would’ve been given their condition. Maybe in the early Spring, or as a ski mountaineering objective.
The next couple of days included a visit to Revelstoke, and hanging around camp, but mostly checking the weather forecasts. The various models we were looking at kept changing; seemingly by the hour. The one thing we absolutely needed however, was at least a day of dry conditions for our next objective, Uto.
One, (and I sort of dislike the word, but it seems fitting in this case) serendipitous, thing that did happen during our weather vigil was that some climbers moved into the campsite two over from us. I figured that I should at least walk into their camp and say hi. I was really glad that I did…. Three, and I use it as a term of endearment, grizzled veterans were unwinding after spending a few days at the Glacier Circle hut, in an attempt to climb Selwyn and Fox. They too, were thwarted by the weather. We got to know these guys a little bit better over the next couple of days. All very cool. It never ceases to amaze me how at times these random meetings can turn into something special.
At last we got a reasonable forecast, although we didn’t wait for that full day of dryness that we had desired, as our time in the area was running out. That, coupled with the fact that we didn’t trust the weather window to hold for more than another day. Our new friends plan was to climb Uto as well, but they were going to go in the day before and camp at the low bivi site. I’ve been up there too many times with overnight gear to want any part of that, so Kevin and I opted to go light and do it as a day climb from camp. One thing we have gotten pretty good at over the years is having all our shit together the night before. In the morning all we needed to do was put on our boots, choke down some grub and go, and that’s exactly what we did. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been up this trail over the years. All things being said and done, it’s a pretty decent trail until the Pearly Rock junction. From this point on it’s a grueling grind up some old moraine remnants with a couple of stream crossings thrown in for good measure. Some years these streams can be problematic, but with the receding snows this is become less of an issue. It started us wondering as to when there might not be any streams here at all. We arrived at the bivi site in about 2 1/2 hours; not too bad of a time for an old guy I guess. We saw our friends tent and a couple of others besides; who were apparently doing Sir Donald. We filtered some water and had a snack to steel ourselves for the grind up to the col that would take us another hour. I started back up okay but quickly began to flag and noticed that my left hip flexor was starting to bark at me, and I soon had thoughts of turning back creeping into my head. I was able to rally for a while and we kept at it. We could see our friends up on the lower ridge already. Once at the col we started to prepare for the actual climbing, but by this point I had realized that my heart wasn’t really in it anymore. Tired, hurting, and actually a bit intimidated by the route ahead, I felt really bad at letting Kevin down on this one. He was capable and pretty psyched to do it. Being the good man that he is he was very understanding and we headed back down. Before doing that however, our gaze keep returning to Sir Donald. I had to shake my head in disbelief a bit, considering the numerous times I had been up on that ridge with nary a second thought. Today… a daunting prospect indeed. As we started picking our way down the ugly talus we started talking, and it became clear that Kevin wasn’t about to be outdone by my weakness; He was formulating a plan.
He figured that once we were back near the bivi sites that he would drop all but the most essential of his gear and attempt the so-called down climb route solo. I’ll admit that I was a trifle concerned about him going up on an exposed route by himself, but the reality is that he is very solid, and wouldn’t take any unnecessary risks. I agreed to wait with the gear. Not a difficult thing to do with the warm beautiful weather and amazing views. Or at least I thought it would be easy. I was able to handily track his progress for about the first hour, but once I lost sight of him I started getting antsy. Being rested up for a while now, I figured that I would follow his route up. Not in hopes of catching him, but just to keep myself busy, and see if I could pick up his progress again. It was actually pretty nice climbing over solid, and pleasant terrain. Within 45 minutes I had spotted him again, but… he was on his way down. I kept on climbing until we met and heard his story.
He had made good time up to the summit ridge, but the actual climbing presented itself as a daunting solo prospect. Very much in line with the discussion above about difficulty and exposure in this area. I guess this route turned out to be no exception. Proceeding unroped over this ‘easy’ class 3 terrain was not something Kevin wanted to engage in that day. He also reported seeing views to the east that we had not seen before, as well as being able to spot our friends on the summit of Uto. After a few minutes of catching up, we then descended together to where we had dumped our gear, where we filtered more water, packed up, and began the hot march back to camp. It ended up being a hard 10 hour day with no summit reward. Back in camp it was somehow bittersweet as we relaxed with a beer and a cigar. Maybe not celebrating a successful climb, but rather the old adage…
Come back alive, come back as friends, make the summit… in that order.
They say ‘never say never’. Will I plan another trip into Roger’s pass? It seemed a bit unlikely in the immediate aftermath of this trip, but (and this is where the bad memory comes into play) a few months later as I write this, little thoughts, and ‘what if’s’ start creeping into my head. A bit smarter training, some lighter gear, better weather… Yeah, that’s the ticket… free beer tomorrow…
Credits:
Soundtrack: Grateful Dead and Dark Star Orchestra
Beer provided by: Bow Valley Brewing
Pizza: Rocky Mountain Flatbread Company
Postscript:
Several weeks after our return I was researching some speed records for the Asulkan Traverse. If you’ve had the tenacity or misfortune to read some of my other stuff you will know that I’m a sucker for speed records and the like. I know that I could / can never emulate some (any) of these endeavors but I do find them fascinating. Kevin had sent me a pretty cool video: Asulkan Traverse, and it got me thinking. Well… I couldn’t find a FKT for the Asulkan but I did find one for the Roger’s Horseshoe. For those of you that don’t know, this route is as follows:
This enchainment includes all of the peaks of the Asulkan Traverse, and all of the peaks around Sir Donald. Fourteen summits altogether with about 40km of distance, and 4,800m of ascent. Now that’s one hell of a big day.
As I said, the FKT for this came up, and I found out that it was an astonishing 16hrs 15min 17sec! Yeah, you read that correctly. The twist in the story however, comes in that this record, unbeknownst to us at the time, was being set exactly as we were attempting Uto, one of the peaks of the route. In fact, our friends had run across this fellow a bit earlier in the day on his descent from Uto.
To quote Pat’O again… Inspiration without envy