Our plan was born from the spontaneous energies that are a constant in the chemistry of all grand adventures. News of the pocket glacier sliding from it’s perch at the base of the North-East Buttress of Slesse Mountain reached us and after a kaleidoscope of packing and preparing we were driving south towards Chilliwack and the dramatic valleys of the North Cascades. Rising from the Southern banks of the Fraser River;(and opposite the Coast Range on the North bank) the Cascades jut from the north-west woods and ripple south, until they recede into Northern California’s sandy high country. This range holds some of North Americas most active volcanoes and is a major vent for the tumultuous gurglings and groans of the earths inner workings. The Cascades are the eastern border of the infamous “Ring of Fire”, a horse shoe shaped area covering 40,000km of the Pacific Ocean’s basin that contains over 75% of the worlds active and dormant volcanoes.
In comparison; the North Cascades(or as some call it the Canadian Cascades) are tame in relation to the unruly tempers of their volcanic brethren to the south. Tending to sit patiently, while growing slightly. They do not need to shout and raise a ruckus to alert the world of their presence. Although as we turn onto the Slesse Creek FSR, I secretly wish the mountains would say something, anything at all, as I peer up at the low grey sky and wonder if the peaks are still waiting for us somewhere above. We creep along the un-kept logging road, weaving through irrigation ditches and holding our breath for the scraping shriek of the station wagons belly on the small boulders that poke from the freshly rained upon dust, until a particularly hungry culvert stops us in our tracks. We squeeze the wagon onto the bushy shoulder and stretch our road weary limbs before shouldering our bags and cracking some beers (to lighten the load, of course) and settling in to a comfortable pace up the road. As we crack our second beverage the skies open up and a tropical deluge drenches the both of us, my too small backpack is bulging from its load of gear and the water seeps in as we drain our approach rations.
We reach the trail(marked by an SUV from some urban adventurers) that splits right from the road towards the river which winds through the valley, logs crisscross the water. We eye out a line but before crossing search out an eddy in the waters to cool our beers for our return, then scamper to the opposite bank and dive into thick blueberry bushes pillaging the ripe fruit as we go. A soft dirt trail weaves through the thin woods behind the bushes and a few hikers trod downhill on their way back from the memorial site and we nod a greeting. The trail steepens briefly before we gain an ancient logging road with a single file trail weaving through the aggressive regrowth. Bushes edge into the trail and the rainwater cradled in each leaf easily deposits itself on us as we squeeze through the corridor. Soaked through once again I strip my pants off and hold them above my head just as more hikers come around the corner, they are my only pair I explain as they shake their heads at the crazy pantless climbers. After many switch backs through continuous brush we reach our camp, the miserable wet conditions had caused us to hurry through the last 8km in just about two hours and now we found ourselves in a grey sub-alpine bowl wet and cold with 4 hours to wait until the sun set.
Stripping off wet clothes and emptying backpacks we assessed the water damage, Rupert was in good shape with an extra set of clothes but I had not prepared for the bush thrash and hung out my long-johns and pants in a wet tree to dry. Inverting a shirt, I fashioned some breezy pants while Rupert layed his air mattress upon the plaque, creating a sort of couch for us. I began separating the pages of our maps that had now become soggy psychedelic explosions of printer ink. We cooked our dinner and munched it while glancing questionably up at the clouds hoping to glimpse Slesse's peak.
The plaque we ate our dinner beside was placed in the mountains as a memorial for Trans-Canada Flight 810. The plane, originally bound for Calgary had experienced severe turbulence and ice over the Cascades and was forced to turn around. As it changed course to return to the Vancouver airport the plane angled left instead of right due to possible mechanical issues and impacted into the West face of Slesse. All 62 crew and passengers were killed instantly as the plane disintegrated, spreading wreckage over the glaciers below in one of the worst air accidents to happen in Canada to date. The site, once open for logging was shut down and the area designated a memorial park. As I finished reading the plaque I noticed as an ending note it invited those who ventured to these parts to enjoy the wilds, if not only to honour those who have found their resting place in these mountains.
Our dinners consumed and our bivies prepared we settled down in the mosquito's to share a smoke and wonder about tomorrow’s weather and if we would be able to climb, while the heavy clouds whirled just over our heads. I lay down on the ground wriggling a bit to level out the coils of rope I was lying on and wrapped the blue nylon tarp tightly around myself, wondering how I could have thought a tarp would hold any warmth as I settled in for a cold night.
I was startled awake by a fit of shivering, curling the blue tarp tighter around myself I tried to hold on to the heat that the cold ground greedily pulled through the ropes coils. Peeking from a hole in the tarp I saw the stars, so I poked my head from the cocoon and I saw Slesse glowing in all her beauty under a nearly-full moons light, silhouetted by the glimmer of a billion stars I had never seen before and I fell asleep, happy, despite the bitter cold.
Coffee was brewing by 5 and we casually separated what we needed from what we didn't, not a word was spoken about the rain the day before as the dim light crept into the valley and the caffeine hit our blood. Stashing the unnecessary gear at camp we headed further up the old road into more wet bush whacking and once again became soaked from head to toe. We pushed through as fast as we could and burst into the alpine meadow with momentum as we hustled to our first landmark: the propeller cairn, a carefully arranged collection of debris including the propeller from flight 810.
We shook off as much water as we could and looked up at the walls towering thousands of feet overhead before stepping onto the expansive polished granite slabs sloping below them and scampering towards a col in the ridge ahead. A mountain goat trail snaked through the notch and from it we could see the bowl spilling out in front of us, small sections of glacier still perched on the slabs, and above the North East Buttress shot off into the sky. From our vantage we discussed our options to reach the buttress and decided to skirt the uphill side of the remaining glacier rather then hike below it and lose elevation. My first experience with an ice axe was a delightful scramble over wet polished rock while bracing against the over hanging uphill side of the ice, staring down into the deep blue space between the rock and the glacier careful not to misplace my foot on the greasy rock. We quickly traversed through the bowl, shoes squeaking over the granite that was so finely polished by the crushing weight of the pocket glaciers which form every winter and slowly creep down the slopes until (as it had on this occasion) they lose their grip and crash and tumble into the valley below. From the slabs we scramble onto a series of traversing ledges that lead up and right towards the ridge, the exposure grows the further we traverse and the bowl drops from below us as we pull on trees and dirty cracks until we reach a ledge and receive the full view of our objective towering ahead.
I have a smoke while we take the rope from the bag and tie in, Rupert drinks some water, and then I scramble onwards. We climb together, I place gear from time to time to keep us attached to the mountain, Rupert retrieves this gear and we simultaneously progress up beautiful compact alpine granite. With few difficulties we flow through the lower third of the mountain and after a stretch of wet climbing I build an anchor with the remaining gear I have and Rupert joins me to take over the lead. He delicately maneuvers through a broken, loose corner and I am chuckling as I follow it as his protection falls out of the cracks from the light breeze. I meet Rupert on a perch and punch through one short steep wall to gain a huge grassy ledge, the halfway point. We drink water and snack and curiously peer over the East face and smell the exposure. We can see the camp and another pair of climbers traversing towards the Buttress and we check the time and realize it is only brunch. We are psyched.
Rupert heads off towards the headwall up some easier climbing and waits for me at the point where the wall starts to kick back. I slotted hands into a happy crack that leads me up to a bulge, the cracks stop for a bit so I slotted in a cam and hopped over the small roof onto edgy face climbing. The rock was unlike anything I had ever seen, I peered below the roof at the grey granite I had just been on and then once again at the black rock I was currently balanced on, red veins crackle and crisscross like lightning bolts over the semi-gloss surface. I shout down too Rupert about how neat the rock is before venturing upwards slotting a nut into a small seam at one point to ease my mind as I carefully knock on each hold to make sure it is attached to something. This black intrusion was flaky and sometimes hollows, a little like old concrete, but better. We climbed together for a while after that crux, both feeling our way up wonderful cracks. During moments where the rope was not moving I studied the ridge leading North from Slesse that would lead us back to camp, making mental notes of the landscape.
I join Rupert once again to take the over the lead for the last hundred meters of climbing and as I near the summit I happen to glance over the East Face once again and find myself reeling back as the exposure floods my system and for the first time since I was a kid I am scared of heights. I took a few deep breaths and looked over once more to be sure and to my surprise nothing happened, I brushed it off and continued up. The angle begins to ease ever-so-slightly and all of a sudden I was scrambling fast, the smell of the summit strong in the mountain air. And then, just like that, we were on top, 15 feet of the most beautiful sparkling white gold splitter granite poked from the darker rock of the summit of this incredible mountain.
We laughed and smiled a lot as we sat in the clouds high above the rest of the world, peering south over the border into the States and in every other direction at the crazy wonderful place we call home and it was good. It was 3 in the afternoon now, it had taken just under 7 hours to cover the 3000’ to the summit and we now had 6 hours of daylight to descend that distance to reach our camp below.
Our time on the summit was timeless even though it lasted only a few minutes, we quickly picked our bodies up off the rocks and weaved our way through the peaks crazily tottering gendarmes till we picked up a faint trail heading towards the West Face and down the gravelly ledges, with a little looking around we found a boulder with tattered rappel anchors slung around it, we threaded our rope and hurled it down the cliff, a long rappel deposited us onto a ledge where we could pull the rope and then scramble down the easier gully, exiting skiers right just before the gully cliffed out far above the talus below. Like mountain goats we scamper across the thin ledges and down climb steps until we find another anchor to rappel down some steeper rock to yet another ledge that continues traversing right to a final rappel onto the talus slope. A faint trail wandered across the slopes and we zeroed in on the higher of two notches in the ridge to the north.
As we near the col a Peregrine Falcon lofts on an uphill air stream just a few meters over our heads, studying us as we studied him and then with a tilt of a wing rocketed away into big blue sky. We shook our heads at the experience as we walked through the notch and began descending a gravel slope beside a pocket of corn snow making a few slippery moves over the slush, the couloir forked and a warning light went off in my head as I glanced downhill and mentioned to Rupert that we should stay high and soon we had reached the ridge heading north and our first look back at the buttress we had just climbed. We moved quickly to the top of the ridge, glancing back every now and again in awe of the perfect shape of Slesse until both of us stopped as a massive explosion rocked the basin. Unlike the rumblings of the glaciers we had heard all day this commotion was followed by a puff of rock dust as boulders detached from the cliff just to the right of the buttress.
We spotted the climbers we had seen earlier, they were setting up their tent on the huge ledge at mid height and we shuddered at the thought of being on the mountain as it fell apart. We returned our focus to the task at hand, covering the rest of the ridge easily and reaching the cliffs at the far end, two rappel’s got us off the ridge and we reached a thin goat trail that we slid and scrambled down, crossing some patches of snow towards the “Wooded Knoll” a short wall jutting from a steep grassy hill with large cliffs below, at the base of the cliff a thin trail traversed through the slippery grass towards a large talus field, from our information we knew our next step was to reach a red coloured scree field and descend it but in our tired, thirsty state we confused the definitions of talus and scree. We jumped from boulder to boulder down the talus until we reached a massive drop off, looking around we realized we were on the tip of a giant peninsula cliffed out on all sides, confused we hiked back up hill wasting massive amounts of energy and time crawling back over the boulders. Bilbo Baggin's words rang in my head "Adventures make one late for dinner" and I was re-energized by the realization that we were in fact on an adventure. We stumbled around for a while trying to figure out where we had gone wrong as the light began to ever so slightly fade until we remembered that talus was made of big boulders while scree was gravelly smaller stones and that a giant red scree field was just to the skiers left of our position. We peered over the edge of the peninsula and discovered a scrambly route to descend directly onto the scree and to our delight a small snowmelt stream. We fill and then chug our water bottles and then fill them again, dusk is creeping heavily through the valley and we carefully pick our way through the unstable terrain, an injury at this time of day would be catastrophic.
Our next landmark is a faint gully that will lead us to a wooded shoulder, we are tired and the landmarks are vague so we begin making decisions based on assumptions and soon it is dark and we are still on the scree field scratching our heads. My headlamp flickers and then dies as we look at the water stained pages of our maps, a fleeting moment of clear thinking emerges from my tired brain and I discover a parallel between the topography I had studied from the peak and one of the maps and half guess that if we cut skiers-left we will find our way. I turn on my phones flashlight and we bushwack into a line of trees. Mossy scrambling traverses cliffs and I nearly stumble off a precipice in the dark, neither of us know if we are on the right track but we have run out of options so we continue. I look over the notes once more and try and decipher our location; after the faint gully we are supposed to walk downhill through shrubbery, on the wooded shoulder, and then be able to head straight down through old growth on a trail. Yet here we are on some random deer track and my headlamp is not working and as each second passes the probability of us having to spoon in this cold alpine terrain grows at an exponential rate, and then the trail spills into a clearing and we are wading through shrubbery. Never have I been so happy to see shrubbery.
Rupert’s headlamp catches a spot of colour and we discover it is flagging tape, our moods lighten as we spot another bit of tape further downhill and then another as we enter an old growth forest and pad down the steep forest floor. The sound of the river that runs below the memorial plaque where we camped grows louder and louder until we cross and then ever so slightly quieter as we scramble up the hillside of the opposite bank. Our packs are where we left them and we stuff our ropes and harnesses into them, and stuff our faces with what food we have left. And with Slesse glowing behind us in a full-moons light we begin our walk back down the narrow corridor of the trail, hallucinating from fatigue we stumble along in silent unison, snaking our way through the bush. The trail was dug out by the inmates of a correctional institution that is situated by the Chilliwack river and I find myself creating a story where we had been part of that crew and made a daring escape, breaking away from the chain-gang then hiding in the woods and now we were on the lamb in inhospitable mountains with Johnny Law on our tail. As silly as it was the looming threat of imaginary coppers drove my tired limbs forward. We crash through blueberry bushes and over the logs bridging the river and stop to grab our beers that are glacier cold from the water and then we commit to one final uphill push to the logging road where we sit in the dirt and I use my teeth to open the can of beer because my fingers cannot. After our first pop we stand up and crack one more as we begin walking the final stretch of our journey. The full moon bathes the valley with white light and we do not need our lights and the night is beautiful. With nothing but downhill road to go our minds and bodies begin to relax and we talk about how miserable it would have been to sleep unprepared in the mountains. Rupert mentions his experience of our walk down the trail and I learn he had imagined we were escaped convicts as well and we laugh before silence falls over us once more as we spot the cars license plate reflecting the moon up ahead. Our packs hit the ground at 11pm and we try to make soup but soon we are both asleep; me curled in the front seat and Rupert in the back, both of us dead to the world, until the mid morning sun stirs us alive and we high tail it to Denny’s.
