Back when we were young and pretty.... okay, we were young. Very young... Karen and Leo invited us on a trip to the Bugaboos, which sounded like a great place to go. After all, we'd climbed in Bon Echo, and New York - Gunks and Adirondacks, and Red Rocks....
My guardian angel sent us a snowstorm as we were topping out on Lions Way (5.6) to reiterate just how unprepared we were, and we were (sort of) smart enough to leave. But..... I promised myself someday I'd be a badass climber and go back - but never quite got to the badass part. I wanted to be able to lead 5.12 with a backpack.... that's badass. In case you're wondering - I can't.
This year we decided we should just go back and see what we can do.
Part 1. Carry all your crap to Appleby campsite. 78 lbs for me, 85 lbs for Marc, 950 m elevation gain including a ladder. Check.
Marc taking a rest on the bridge just below the Conrad Kain Hut. Snowpatch is in the background, and I have to go back to get better pictures of all the beautiful alpine flowers at this elevation. But - onwards and upwards to rocks and snow....
Rocks and snow - and camping. Drying gear after the rain/thunderstorm/hail that greeted us. Several climbers got caught on the tops or descents of climbs, and one climber complained that the lightning left three little burny spots on his bum, and his partner's temple felt a bit odd. No exit wounds though, so he was pretty happy about that. The Bugaboo Snowpatch col is just visible on the right side - it melted out in the rain and turned to evil-ness. Unfortunately the col is the easy access to most climbs, and it's a lot bigger than it looks in this picture. :o(
The bathroom...
Home sweet home
Dinner hour, I put my bowl down and grabbed the camera for a few minutes.
Day Three - the long walk to Pigeon Spire without using the col - lovely walk on snow to work on our overall conditioning, and some fun crevasse experience as there were various sizes and shapes, including one you had to step over next to the rock face.
Pigeon Spire however had a lot of ominous clouds, and since it would be a horrible down-climb on slippery lichen down a ridge line in the wet we decided to leave. So did the clouds. Lovely sunny afternoon followed.
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| baby crevasses in the foreground, with some large ones on the slope above |
Day Five - sneak up on Pigeon Spire again - and then actually climb it. 5.4 -- and taught us that we need to work on our alpine options since simul-climbing was overkill except for a few choice spots, but we had decided to climb it this way and were sticking to the plan... Some "walking with rope" would have sped up the plan.
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| Marc at the summit bolts |
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| Marc rappelling off the summit bolts - the descent starts with 2 short rappels, then re-trace your route |
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| Marc gets two rappel pictures.... because he's cool |
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| Me sitting down on the job. Guidebook does recommend "au cheval", so I followed the instructions. Marc was much bolder and walked the ridge. |
The meander back through the glacier, again avoiding the col for a two hour walk. Marc felt he needed to speed up the descent and applied his personal touch to the day. We left two large slide marks all the way down the steep sections (except the crevassey bits :o) )
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| Fun Crevassy bits |
Day - I have no idea what day it is, I'm on holidays. This is one of the lovely tarns near the campground.
On our hit list was the NE Ridge of Bugaboo Spire in the picture below - up the right hand side, across the top, down the left and back down the col or around Snowpatch and back to the campground. My initial plan was to climb the Kain route which goes up the left hand side and is the descent route - but the Kain route is directly above the col and to approach around SnowPatch would be a 3+ hour tour. So - we snuck up on the NE Ridge. And ran away. And snuck up more - up the choss filled gully to the top of the col, then up the ridge scramble to the base of the real climbing which starts at the obvious diagonal line you can see on the right side of the spire. And ran away. Too late in the day, and I had a melt-down about the epic we were about to have.
But.... the next morning we got up stupid early, crossed the snow, walked around the tarns, trudged across more snow - up the gully (the right way this time) and to the base of the route just in time for daylight. We got there at the same time as several other parties, and if you're going to climb one of the "50 most crowded routes" as listed in Roper and what's his face's book..... that's the way it goes. And you meet cool people!
We "tied" a father and son team on the approach, and they were awesome. Son climbs 5.12, father has scrambled all kinds of crazy stuff all his life and was super fun to be around. Dad was grey haired but I can never guess ages. We let them go ahead as we could feel a humbling approaching us like a freight train, and didn't see them again until the next day. Directly behind us were Conor and Sam, two good climbers with minimal alpine experience. Sam had spent a night on this ridge previously, with his legs in his backpack and the snow settling on his shoulders.
The forecast was for a lovely day with some afternoon clouds, and rain the following day. That weatherperson has since been fired.
Thunder sounded off to our right around mid-morning, and my guardian angels were busy keeping it there. There was some scattered rain to get us climbing as fast as possible.
Lovely 5.8 pitch to start that Marc sauntered up, then 5.7 and 5.6 pitches. With backpacks containing boots, clothes, crampons, ice axes and some snacks this was actually really challenging. I got off the backseat sofa in time to lead the perfect crack line of pitch 4, and then into the chimneys we went. The first pitch of the "5th class" chimney was probably 5.6, and one of my favourite pitches. The rest of the chimney could be simul-climbed, but we didn't really have faith that it wouldn't throw a quick nasty move at us so we did a combination of pitching and simul-climbing.
Notes for next time - simul-climb from the second chimney pitch .... At the top - oops, not the top yet, it's SO much further than you can see. Okay - finally - at the top. There is a rusty piton anchor and below and ahead you can see the easy well-travelled traverse trail on the east (left, campground) side. The North Summit is just above. Need to anchor, pitch right and down the V-slot, undercling the edge - it's just fine - up the other side and belay the second (rope drag pretty significant for this step around). We ignored the summit (see entry re:RAIN and OH CRAP THIS IS TAKING A LONG TIME) and headed into the traverse. We did give Conor and Sam multiple opportunities to pass us, but they didn't ever actually manage.
The traverse across the top is lengthy - there is a lot of route finding, and the book keeps saying "scramble along the ridge line". This means - for next time - simul-climb/scramble, and keep dropping the other rope for the short rappels. We teamed up with Conor and Sam which had advantages - but without having worked together before and having to make up our own plan as we went along took a LONG time. We simul-climbed and set up via Ferratas, and somehow everyone kept being surprised that ropes were a good idea so we kept having to pull out a rope again and organize rather than just expecting it and leapfrogging ropes. Somehow we thought "scramble" meant no rope - but although it's easy climbing, you're a small foothold away from a 2000 ft scream and a bug-on-windshield splat all over a glacier. Ropes for me, thank you very much.
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| The famous bit of the traverse is just behind Marc, where you have to step down on his left to get to the ridge he's walking. There are YouTube videos of this one :o) |
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| Conor on the traverse to the South Summit. Getting late in the day.... |
We got off the last rappel just in time for some more rain, and we all ran down the scrambly part of the Kain Route. Conor and Sam had a head start due to being off rope earlier, but they also only carried one pack between the two of them. They brought a tiny rack (likely why they didn't pass us earlier in the climbing) and one crampon each, no ice axes, and no warm clothes beyond light jackets. They rappelled the col in the rain with constant light rockfall, and ran back to camp.
As we realized we were well off-route on the side of the spire you really don't want to continue down on very slippery wet rock we decided we would rather avoid an epic. We spotted a few sharp but sheltered rocks and huddled underneath with our emergency clothes and tarp. I was very glad Conor and Sam made it down, because there was no chance I was sharing. Incidentally, this sheltered area that is NOT where you want to be - is right next to a rock cairn.
Behind us on the climb was a group of 2, who we talked to the next morning. They got to the col around midnight and "slid down it".... without crampons, ice axes or dying. They have some kick-ass guardian angels! I would say ability - but I don't think so. Marc also has the image of the guy pulling the girl up onto the summit by one hand while not holding onto anything seared in his mind.
We were still shivering in the rain when the party of 5 that was the last to start in the morning showed up and they provided us with the night's ongoing entertainment. They wandered all over the side of the mountain for hours, and how they managed to not knock off giant loose boulders is pretty amazing. Around 1 am they were at the top of the col. The rain had stopped and we were just hanging out overnight waiting for better light. The moon was very bright, and we could have tried to continue but it really wasn't worth it. We napped, woke up, napped some more - and watched the 5 headlights wander around the mountain. Sometime around 2:30 or 3:00 they changed their mind and went to the Snowpatch rappel route - but every half hour or so a headlight would pop back up as they continued to search the mountain for two small metal rings. Around 4 am was the last time I saw them until they came into camp after we had finished our breakfast.
5 am it started to rain again, but was light enough to get moving so we decided to stretch a bit and start moving. Marc had been wanting to check out the col the whole time we were in the Bugs, and early morning when it's all frozen is the best time to rappel down it. We headed there, and with double 60m ropes we only needed 2 rappels to get us well below the crevasse onto the snow from where we could get to camp quickly - as opposed to 3*60m rappels down SnowPatch and a few more hours of walking. The col had been a lot less active over the last few days, and the rappel was actually very, very cool.... I had heard you jump the crevasse - but since it's 20 ft across that's not really going to happen. You actually get to the lip, rappel down into it, walk across the rocks and dirt clogging it, climb up the other side and rappel down the glacier again. I WISH I had a video, or at least a picture, but it just wasn't the time to pull out the camera.
We pulled into the campsite in lovely sunny weather to get lots of questions as the other climbers had been watching headlights all over the ridge the night before. We were actually really happy with our choice of inaction, as it didn't involve us wandering around on a glacier all night, and we were home just in time for breakfast and a nap. Later that afternoon we walked out and headed home. I highly recommend the Wolf's Den in Golden for a Veggie Burger.
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