The Bugaboos: July 23-August 2, 2007
Mon: Drive up & hike to Applebee
Tues: Hike to East Creek
Wed: Beckey-Chouinard (20p 5.10)
Thurs: Surf’s Up (9p 5.9). Hike to Applebee.
Fri: NW Ridge Eastpost Spire (4th class)
Sat: Sunshine Crack (11p 5.11-)
Sun: Paddle Flake Direct (6p 5.10). Go to car for spare rope.
Mon: Rest day in camp.
Tues: Cooper-Kor (18p 5.9 A0)
Wed: Snowpatch Route (19p 5.8)
Thurs: Hike out & drive back to Seattle.
It was time for a summer climbing trip, and we have been looking forward to a return to the Bugaboos ever since our first trip last year. We loaded up our packs with 2 weeks of food & fuel, a full rack to #5 camalot, 2 ropes, full camping gear including a four season tent, etc, and headed out. This is far more than we had ever carried in the past, so we had no idea how much all that gear would weigh—80 pounds each? 100 pounds?? So we put our packs on the scale—50 pounds each without food, and 65 pounds each when fully loaded for the approach hike. Not too bad!
Monday:
We drove in, hiked to Applebee under cloudy skies, and set up camp.
Tuesday:
Our initial plan was to climb a route on Snowpatch, and continue onwards to a camp at East Creek. However intermittent rain and lightning throughout the night, and black, ominous clouds in the morning had convinced us to change our plans.
Instead we got a leisurely start and hiked over to East Creek in the afternoon. All the spires were socked in with clouds that slowly rose as the day progressed, indicating the start of a strong high pressure system that we had seen in the forecast.
Passing the Pigeon-Howser icefall on the way to the East Creek camp:
The basin is remote and spectacular. The Beckey-Chouinard climbs the left skyline in the photo, with the Minaret in the center.
We scoped out the approach to the ridge, and went to bed early.
Wednesday:
We got an early start, and crossed a short section of snow to reach the ridge. An hour of spectacular class 3/4 scrambling led to the rope-up point. With how enjoyable the approach to the climb was, we were psyched for what was to come!
The route is simply amazing, with pitch after pitch of splitter moderate cracks on extremely high quality rock. 3 parties were below us though, so we didn't linger.
Looking upward at the Great White Headwall from a ledge:
A short, splitter offwidth at the start of the headwall:
The climbing kept getting better and better! However the parties behind us were jostling for position, and while we were staying a pitch ahead of them, it was starting to stress us out...
...At one point, we heard a shout from below, and only later learned what happened....I will refer to the parties below us as A,B, and C. Apparently the leader of party "A" (a really cool pair from Montana) was nearing a belay while party "B" was attempting to lead past them and set a belay a few feet higher. However the leader of party "B" slipped out of a chimney...he had not placed any protection for a while, and was facing a 40-50 foot fall! After falling about 10 feet though, he instinctively grabbed the rope attached to the leader of party "A"! Leader "A" was 10 feet out from his last piece but incredibly was able to hang on, preventing a very serious accident.
We were two-thirds of the way up the route, it was about 11:00am, and the weather was absolutely perfect. And in addition to the obvious safety concerns created by the crowding, the constant rush to stay ahead of the others was detracting from our enjoyment of the climb. Thus we decided to stop at an intermediate belay ledge and let everyone climb through.
A couple hours later, everything cleared out and we had the route to ourselves. (We did see 2 additional parties much lower down who were attempting the route round-trip from Applebee, but they did not catch up. In fact we later learned that one of these parties had a mini epic, bivying on the summit and then accidentally rappelling directly into the bergschrund and being forced to ice-climb out. The other party bailed.)
With the route to ourselves, we enjoyed more full ropelengths of splitter cracks on perfect granite in the sunshine.
We then reached more broken terrain,
Simul climbed for several hundred feet,
And reached the summit!
The first rappel anchor is easy to find at a notch just below the summit. John and Wayne (the friendly Montana party) had their ropes get stuck on a flake during the second rappel, so we rappelled down and freed them. Our ropes then got stuck in the exact same place! Yuko led up 40 feet to free it, and then we were able to continue our descent. We joined forces with Wayne and John, who expertly located an anchor far off to the climber’s right which allowed us to easily rappel over the schrund with our 60m ropes.
Yuko rappels the schrund:
Looking up at the schrund from the ground. Note that rappelling slightly further to climber's left would create problems as you would land directly inside the schrund.
We then hiked back to camp. Our lightweight combo of approach shoes + short ice axes (50cm & 60cm for Yuko and I, respectively) worked perfectly, although on the way I punched through a crevasse up to my waist, with my legs hanging over an unseen void…maybe we should have roped up for this section? In any case we were back at camp shortly afterwards. At this point we met a friendly party who had hiked in for the B-C the following day, plus a really nice and super hard core guy who was preparing to rope-solo a VI 5.9 A4 route on the Minaret. We lounged around, ate dinner and went to sleep!
Thursday:
We were woken in the morning by a helicopter landing near our tent. It was carrying a party flying in to attempt the B-C the following day. Did I mention that this route is popular? We ate breakfast, drank some tea and left camp late in the morning.
On the way back to Applebee, we stopped by the west face of Snowpatch to climb Surf’s Up (9 pitch 5.9).
Yuko on the fairly mediocre opening pitches:
After the traverse, where the climbing becomes much better with some nice splitter cracks:
On the summit ridge:
Friday:
We took it easy in preparation for a longer route the next day. We noticed that Eastpost Spire, which is right next to camp, looked like a fun scramble.
We climbed the NW Ridge route, which was straightforward and spectacular with a very short section of 4th class to reach the summit.
Saturday:
Sunshine Crack, an 11 pitch route consisting almost entirely of laser-cut splitters, was high on our list. Due to its NW aspect, we opted for a late start to minimize cold temps.
Yuko approaching the route:
Leading the second pitch offwidth (5.10). We brought double cams to #2 camalot, and 1x #3, 3.5 ,4 ,4.5 (old sizing) which worked perfectly.
Looking down the offwidth pitch (photo taken during descent)
We saw a dramatic rescue on Bugaboo Spire. Here, the helicopter is dropping rescuers on the summit. We later saw it carry out a litter.
Following a 5.10 roof pitch:
The crux roof (11-). Neither of us fell, but it was very strenuous (photo taken during descent).
The spectacular final pitch offwidth (the topo shows 2 pitches to the top of the route, but.we were able to link them with our 60m rope).
Sunday:
We planned for a medium length route, in preparation for something longer the next day. We decided on Paddle Flake (5p 5.10), which is next door to McTech Arete (which we had climbed the previous year).
The first pitch was awesome,
but the rest of the route was not so good (especially compared to the super-classic McTech Arete). Yuko climbing an offwidth crack near the end of the route (several options exist, but this seemed like the best way)
Looking down the back side of Crescent Spire. We couldn't help but wonder what the area would look like in the winter...
To descend, we rappelled McTech arête.
Another party got their rope stuck on the rappels just as we were starting to climb the route, and had now been waiting for more than two hours for someone to come by and free their ropes (they did not have enough free rope to lead back up, and other options to free them on their own would have been sketchy I suppose).
I saw the knot joining their ropes was jammed in a crack, so I freed it and waited for them to pull their rope. However I did not account for the fact that their rope was through the same rappel ring as our rope…the friction as they pulled the rope burned right through the sheath of our rope!! So we tied a knot to isolate the damaged section and continued down.
We couldn’t climb anything with the damaged rope, but fortunately we had an extra lead rope in the car. So after returning to camp and eating dinner, I hiked down to the car to grab the other rope and then hiked back up.
Monday:
I was more tired than expected after the bonus trip down to the car the previous night, so we took a “full” rest day in camp, reading our books and drinking tea.
Tuesday:
The East Face of Pigeon is perhaps the most elegant feature in the Bugaboos: in a series of angular steps, a broad, smooth slab steepens and narrows to a spectacular pointed summit. The Cooper-Kor (18p 5.9 A0) links natural features to climb a devious path up the face.
Approaching the face:
There was a sizeable moat, but I found a good belay spot at a snow block that bridged the gap.
The rock quality was spectacular. It is perhaps the best granite I have ever climbed, impeccably clean and solid with splitter cracks.
Yuko on the class 4 ledge traverse:
Yuko leads an amazing 5.9 variation off the ledge, with the headwall looming above.
The slab traverse pitch (5.8 R). There is no protection between the two corner systems. There also aren't any holds (pure friction climbing). The angle steepens slightly as one progresses, and the crux seemed to be the last move.
Finishing the traverse and placing a piece.
From here, the route climbs up, pendulums ~20 feet to another crack, climbs that for a while, then pendulums ~10 feet to yet another crack...these sections are supposed to go free at 5.10, but the rock was wet and there was no intermediate protection during the traverses.
This led to lower angle terrain,
Followed by some really loose and really unpleasant climbing. The final pitch to gain the summit ridge, in particular, is the worst pitch I have ever climbed with some dangerously loose and wet rock. It looked like an off route option to the right might have worked better. Also if the rock wasn't wet it probably would not have been quite so unpleasant.
After this we reached significantly more solid terrain.
Soon afterwards we were on the summit.
This route is spectacular until the pendulum pitches, at which point the quality decreases significantly. It is overall a lot of fun though, and is probably best late in the season when it is totally dry.
Wednesday:
We got a late start and lounged in camp. While rummaging through our supplies to prepare a mid-morning snack, we suddenly realized that we were almost out of food! Accordingly we decided to do one more route and go home the next day. The Snowpatch Route (19p 5.8) is long, climbs an obvious line, is close to camp, and has mostly moderate climbing. We didn’t leave camp until about 11:00am, so we double checked that we had warm clothes and headlamps “just in case”.
A quick glance at the guidebook, and at the mountain, led us to believe that we should climb the obvious snow couloir to the obvious notch before continuing to the summit.
The couloir still looked reasonable during the approach...
The couloir started out at a moderate angle, but gradually steepened until getting REALLY steep, with three bergscrunds/crevasses along the way. It’s the steepest snow I have ever climbed, and definitely caught our attention. It had to be a solid 60 degrees. After that we roped up for some incredibly loose and non trivial rock climbing to gain the ridge a couple hundred feet above the notch.
Looking at the guidebook again, I realized that we were actually supposed to approach the notch from the opposite side of the mountain...in any case, now it seemed like we were REALLY behind schedule as we didn’t start climbing the route proper until about 1:30pm. We started simul climbing and covered ground quickly though. Excellent mid-5th climbing on solid rock led to fun slabby terrain (low 5th, limited protection) next to the snowpatch, where we took a rest break.
We switched to fixed pitches a few hundred feet above the snowpatch. We climbed a feature that matched the guidebook description (left-facing corner capped by a roof, which is surmounted by traversing to the left).
However the traverse under the roof was much harder than the guidebook indicated (closer to 5.10), and the terrain above did not match the description at all. Yuko surveys the options:
We saw a few ways to go and elected to continue onwards.
Fortunately, several more off-route pitches eventually took us to the summit ridge.
The guidebook mentions an off-route "Honeymooner's Variation". We didn't seem to be on that though, and we weren't on a honeymoon. However we did get engaged during this trip...so we jokingly dubbed our version the "Engagee's Variation"! (Of course I'm sure many people have already climbed every possible variation on the route many times in the past).
We then rappelled the Kraus-McCarthy descent and headed back to camp.
The next morning, we broke camp and headed out. This was a spectacular 10 days, and especially because we got engaged during the trip, we are planning for many more trips like it in the future! For example, tradition dictates that the couple go on a honeymoon to an exciting locale after their wedding...