Recently, Julian and I had a chance to meet up at Rogers Pass for a stellar day of alpine climbing and scrambling. With both of us being on the road for work, it took a little more planning and motivation to make this day come to reality and with last minute route changes due to travel restrictions on account of grizzly bears, said planning was also not without shenanigans. Nevertheless, by 4pm I was finished my appointments for the day and with a 12 pack of beer, a pile of potato chips, a huge recovery dinner and snacks and more snacks, I was rolling into Loop Brook campsite for very solid and appreciated chill and route research session while Julian made his way over from Nakusp, arriving a couple hours later.
After the always enjoyable catch up and road warrior note trading over a few beers and chips, we retired with the intentions of a 3am wake up call, quick breakfast and of course the promise, nervousness and excitement of a day ahead that may or may not be more of a bite then we are willing to chew.
We made quick progress to the alpine and walked past the sleeping campers at the hermit meadows campground in the early dawn light. The route-finding to the Sifton/Grizzly col was straightforward and enjoyable, working around ledges and meadows to the toe of a small pocket glacier and later, the col.
Sifton is a big 3rd class peak on both of the E and W ridges that we traveled, the former being the descent and quite a bit longer then the W, it took time to sort out in a couple of spots but was more or less easy sailing.
Moving up and over Rogers was similar in many ways to Sifton, although slightly bigger, more complex near the summit and one needing to work around snow (we wore approach shoes) a little more.
This face beckons in a different season.
Gaining the Swiss Peaks was one of the cruxes for us, not having mountain boots, we gingerly moved from the steepening glacier to the foot of the rock and made some easy 5th moves to gain the first and later summits, which were all quite easy, albeit with nifty exposure in spots.
Getting off of Truda (last Swiss peak) required a couple of raps but soon we were looking up at Hermit, the last of the day.
We encountered excellent rock and position on the W ridge of Hermit, we both agreed that this was our favorite part of the day. Just awesome.
Another beckoning face. Having these immense N aspects really provides some cool ambience to the trip.
Working our way down the SE ridge of Hermit required a couple of easy raps and some down climbing but soon enough we were on the glacier and watching the sun set over the western peaks.
All in all it took us roughly 16 hours car to car for this day, we felt we moved steadily throughout and took few breaks apart from the standard sock change and chill before the descent to the valley. We chose to rappel where others would surely down climb and I am positive that a 'running' approach to doing this route would cut a lot of time off the day. Still we were happy.
Interestingly, I had it in my mind all day that our plan included Tupper as well. Having the plans change we had not discussed this in detail and during the end of the day I started to prod JuJu with the idea of skipping Tupper. Finally, it came out that he had no intention of doing Tupper this trip and the idea that had been stewing in my mind was purely a figment of my imagination.
We made our way to camp, got a fire going and pigged out on some pasta with sausage and red pepper, our chilled beers that were in the creek nearby and some awesome cookies. The next day we both set off on our work tours again, a little stiff and sore maybe but with that feeling of lightness and contentment that comes from a good long day in the mountains.
Thanks to Julian for the great trip, good nature and for always being keen on these types of memory forging days.
No comments:
Post a Comment