South Howser Tower
SW Buttress (Beckey-Chouinard)
Bugaboos, BC
8/15-23/98
Author:
Gary Clark
Climbers: Gary and Lynn Clark
8/15: We arrive in
southern BC to learn that there have been 6 weeks of almost
perfect weather in the Bugaboos, which must be a record of some
kind. This can't last much longer, so we drive to the Gmoser Lodge
to inquire about helicoptering directly into the base of the
route. This is my 4th trip to the Bugs, so the approach hike is
well-known and a gratefully avoided part of the experience. The
helicopter takes all of 6 minutes to deposit us on a small snow
lump just below the Pigeon-Howser Col. We had intended to climb up
to the col to camp, but there are people up there waving down at
us, so we descend instead to camp at the base of the Howser
Minaret. This turns out to be one of the better decisions of the
trip. We pack our rucksacks with high expectations for morning.
However, clouds are starting to gather.
8/16: The alarm
rings at 4:30a, but it is no matter. It's raining hard on the
tent. The Clarks have arrived in Canada, and the drought is
over.
8/17 - 8/20: We get
to know this beautiful but limited area quite well as we sit out 4
days of depressing weather, including 24 hours of dense fog. The
glacial streams dry up, and we must break through ice to get to
water each morning. In our wanderings we find 2 old slings, 8
carabiners, an ancient active cam, and miscellaneous items of
clothing, all of which were likely dropped from routes above. We
get to know the local rodents. The morning of the 20th dawns
clear, but the entire upper half of the route is coated in rime
ice - it looks like Cerro Torre in Patagonia, and we decide a full
day's sun is minimum before we're going up there.
8/21: Another
starry night, so we head up. During one of the weather days, I had
reconnoitered the approach again, and now it pays off. The
guidebook is misleading - scrambling up the lower ridge is very
strenuous and time consuming due to the numerous monster boulders
perched at all angles to each other. The best way is to hike up
out of the pit at the base of the buttress, but not to go too high
on the actual ridge. Instead,traverse until you can drop slightly
down onto a talus slope on the other side. Slogging up the talus
is much preferable to climbing around and over all those boulders.
We rope up around 7:30a, and begin on familiar ground, since we
had climbed the lower 8 pitches a year ago. That climb turned into
an epic that resulted in us rappelling in hideous wind and rain,
with two new ropes eaten and destroyed by a diabolical crack. The
first few pitches now go very quickly, and we're happy to be
back.
A pair of Brits arrive
from the Pigeon-Howser Col. They are very young and very fast,
especially Andy, who fires 5.8 pitches like they were 4th class.
After I lead the crux pitch 5, they are ready to climb through,
which goes smoothly due to their 60m rope (recommended, albeit not
mandatory). We share the same rock for the next several pitches,
which turns into an interesting cooperative effort - we help with
their pack hauling and route finding, and they help with some
stuck gear. Nice blokes.
We stop for a break and
some lunch at the top of pitch 8, the site of our unfortunate
bivouac a year ago. We notice we are definitely starting to slow
down, but determine to continue even if it means another bivouac
(for which, this year, we are largely unprepared). We had decided
to give it our best shot in a day, so have just the clothes we are
wearing. In 1997 we brought full bivouac gear including sleeping
bags, but this had largely destroyed the fun of the climbing due
to the weight of the packs and the necessity to haul them on the
most strenuous pitches. It's the standard alpine climbing game
paradox - you can't have it both ways.
Pitches 9 & 10 go by
unremarkably, and now comes another crux - a 5.9 off-width crack
just above the Sandy Ledges. I find this to be fist-sized rather
than truly off-width, and it presents less than 40' of
difficulties before relenting - a pleasant and classic pitch. This
is the spot where a #4 Camalot would have been welcome; I have
only a 3.5, but make do. We follow closely on the heels of Andy
and Allain up pitch 11, but then I hear Andy yelling down that
they are doing the 5.10 variation instead of the usual pitches
12-14, which supposedly contain a nasty squeeze chimney. I climb
back down a bit to get over to get to the regular pitches; where
Choiunard and Beckey had gone is good enough for me. The pitches
flow by with the speed of a glacier due to pack hauling. I'm happy
to discover that the topo again exaggerates; rather than a squeeze
chimney, I encounter just a classic dihedral with lots of 5.8 hand
cracks and stemming. I guess you could jam your body in the back
of it if you tried, but it doesn't seem necessary - The climbing
is excellent, an adjective I'd never apply to a squeeze chimney.
The 5.10 alternative pitches looked superb as well from below;
take your pick.
It's becoming obvious that
we have two choices: (1) continue climbing and end up at some
random spot for the inevitable bivouac, or (2) stop with a little
light left at a spot of our choosing. We choose #2. The spot of
our choosing is a tiny irregular ledge big enough for two butts,
but not for two supine people. We know this is going to be
miserable, so deliberately slow all processes - setting the
anchors, organizing gear, and moving rocks around are protracted
until, finally it is midnight, and there is nothing left to do but
sit down and wait for the cold to creep in. The closest we have to
bivouac bags is a couple of those cheap reflective emergency
blankets I've often carried but never used. Amazingly, they make a
noticeable difference! Whenever a corner becomes untucked and a
part of my body becomes exposed to the night sky, I can feel it.
This occurs about every 5 minutes, so by the end of the night our
blankets are trashed from constant manipulations. Mine develops
multiple tears that I repair by headlamp with climbing tape. Due
to the warmth of the previous day, the cold is not severe, and our
worst fears of shaking and eventual hypothermia are unrealized.
However, as the 22nd begins to dawn, a worse fear is realized -
more typical weather is returning. By the time we are up and ready
to move, snow squalls come up from the valleys, and are on the
wall. Decision time again.
8/22: We decide to
descend, since the storms we had observed from base camp were
sobering - the kind where you look up and ask rhetorically "Can
you possibly imagine being up there now?" Now we can not only
imagine it, we can experience it first hand. We dejectedly set the
first rap anchor and throw the ropes down, then just stand and
look at them, unwilling to clip in and commit to yet another
failure. In about 45 minutes of procrastination billed as "weather
observation", we determine that conditions are likely to vacillate
- first a snow squall, then a break, repeat loop. Finally the
break we want and deserve arrives, and we hurriedly pull the ropes
up and set a new anchor for climbing. Of course, by the time I'm
on belay, it is snowing harder than ever, but I'm tired of facing
decisions, so just start to climb. New rules apply as the wet
heavy flakes build on the ledges and melt down the face - on the
first 5.8 pitch I discover I'm off route, so plug a big Camalot in
the corner and do a long tension traverse over to the left side of
the chimney. I bring Lynn up, and soon I'm leading up to the
famous 5.9+ / tension traverse pitch. Let's see - should I climb
the 5.9+ friction, or clip into the two fixed pins and call for
Lynn to lower me out and around the corner? I stand dumbly mulling
over this new decision until I realize that several precious
milliseconds have elapsed. The rest of the pitch is only 5.6, but
the snow is deepening, and I must go quite high without placing
protection so that Lynn will have a good upper belay. She wastes
little time with formalities on the tension traverse - I heard
some scraping sounds, then she swings around the corner into view.
Finally I'm leading the final technical pitch on the topo - a nice
5.6 corner that would be a pleasant scamper in dry conditions.
Shortly we are at the ridge crest, which paradoxically is the
psychological nadir of the whole experience. The snow is now
building on our packs and backs faster than we can brush it off.
The wind is intense and the visibility near zero. I have seldom
been so discouraged in the mountains, realizing that we cannot
protect ourselves from conditions this severe with the clothes and
equipment at hand. We need a break.
We locate the anchors for
the short rappel that's now called for, and gratefully change to
the mountain boots we'd so laboriously carried up the mountain. I
feel instantly warmer on rappel as I drop out of the wind to the
lee side of the ridge. Now begins what the topo labels "250 feet
+" of scrambling. I've learned that estimates of scrambling are
rarely accurate, so we settle down for a long session of serious
belaying. There are many options here, but it turns out one should
stay slightly right for the first 300 feet rather than being drawn
back up to the crest. This takes us around a corner, where the
summit still seems depressingly distant in the fog. Two more full
rope lengths, mostly 4th class but containing short 5.6 sections,
finally gets me to the crest just below the summit. I'm desperate
to find the anchors and get on with the descent, but do note that
the true summit is very close. By the time Lynn arrives, another
short break in conditions encourages us to truly finish the climb.
We manage a smile for the summit photo, and begin to believe we
might just live through this to climb another day.
The standard descent via
the NE face is routine enough, with many fixed stations. We follow
the standard advice of always tending right, and cringe every time
we pull the rope in anticipation of it hanging up - a nearly
unthinkable event given the conditions. We later learned that Andy
and Allain had in fact pushed it over the top with headlamps the
night before, but somewhere in mid-face a headlamp went on down
without them. They spent the night standing in their harnesses at
one of these rap stations. Poor blokes. Bloody
miserable.
The final bit of adventure
comes as I anchor in at the final rap stance. Just as Lynn starts
down to join me, a hailstorm begins, nothing remarkable in itself.
However, it turns out that the large dihedral I'm hanging in
serves as the drain trough for the entire upper face. I look up to
an amazing sight - a "flash flood" of hail stones cascading down
the dihedral toward me! I strain against the anchors, stemming out
as far as possible against the dihedral walls as a river of hail
rushes between my legs. I'm screaming at Lynn not to come down,
but of course she can't hear me. This phenomenon lasts a full 10
minutes, and would have been a lot of fun had I known that it
wasn't going to intensify even more and totally engulf
me.
I'm still shaking my head
and muttering in disbelief as she arrives, oblivious to my
experience. More drama was about to come, though. We had heard
that this final rappel over the bergshrund might not be possible
with just a 50m rope this year - nobody we talked to knew for
sure, but there were rumors of an ice screw anchor part-way down.
I set off to find out. The rappel begins with about 50' of steep
ice runnel. Then to my amazement, the bottom drops out as I ease
over the edge into 60' of free-hanging rappel amidst the fantastic
ice sculpture of this impressive schrund. Finally crampons touch
again, on a delicate bridge area. Tip-toeing over the next edge, I
can see that the ropes do reach - but just barely. Gratefully I
drop onto the snow slopes below, yelling upward "Off Rappel -
you're going to love this one!"
Within an hour, we are at
the col, where some very considerate Canadian climbers have
prepared hot drinks for us. They had been watching the face
anxiously since Andy and Allain had arrived early in the day with
stories of their climb and the news that some old, fat, slow
Americans were still up there. Once glance at the tower was
convincing that anyone coming off it would probably not be in the
best of shape. After gratefully tossing down a liter of hot
chocolate, we head off the col again and back down to camp. Here
we discover another act of compassion on our behalf. Another
Canadian party had arrived to camp nearby, and had seen our tent
in very bad shape. We had collapsed it when we left, being
concerned about winds taking it away. The storm had turned it into
a convincing imitation of a back-yard swimming pool, which was
slowly draining into all our gear. They had resurrected it, and
took steps to dry our gear. As if that weren't enough, they cooked
us up some treats. It seems that we had planned for 5 days food,
which we had now stretched to 7, so this was extremely
welcome.
It is now almost 7:00p - a
climb we had planned for a single long day had turned out to be
almost 26 hours of effort, plus the bivouac. We are seriously
dehydrated, having subsisted on mouthfulls of snow (fortunately
for this purpose quite plentiful) for the entire second day. My
digestive system is in such bad shape that hiking out tomorrow is
questionable. I don't remember the last time I so seriously
underestimated an objective.
8/23: We are almost
beyond caring, but are nevertheless grateful to wake to a
promising day - scattered clouds with patches of sunlight for
drying gear. We brew drinks, dry gear, and talk by the hour with
Chris and Sean, who are camped nearby with the Beckey-Chouinard in
mind. Finally we can proscrastinate no longer, and begin the long
journey back to the car. The Pigeon-Howser col is by now routine,
but we have no idea what awaits at the Snowpatch-Bugaboo col. Due
to the extremely dry year, the bergschrund area has deteriorated
to a deporable state. We spend about 3 hours getting down it,
mostly in trying to find the way, which is completely different
than the familiar path of past years. Finally we choose a
suboptimum way of rappelling down some fixed lines stretched over
ice, rock and gravel. The gravel slurry in the ropes manages to
cut deep grooves in our carabiners. Another cost of doing
business. Compounding the situation is the sudden arrival of lots
of people going both up and down, and the fact that it is
impossible to move on this nightmarish slope without loosing
torrents of rock. To our great surprise, we barely it to the hut
before dark. A normally 4-hour trip has taken about 8!
Once in the hut, an
amazing scene develops. After it is established that we just came
from the Tower, the entire population of the hut gathers around
for story-telling. And this theme continues - on the hike out the
next day and in the final parking lot, every party we talked to
(about 15 total) were planning to try the Beckey-Chouinard. The
guidebook is correct in labeling this the "most sought-after climb
in the Bugaboos".
Synopsis &
beta:
The route is sustained
quality, characterized by classic jamming and stemming on fine
granite. Protection is almost always whenever you want it. The
route has at most about 90' of 5.9. However, a substantial
percentage of the rest is quite continuous at 5.8. With packs,
even the 5.6 starts to feel like 5.8 after a while. The guidebook
synopsis of "classic strenuous crack climbing" is apt. Don't
underestimate it based on it's rating.
The main challenges to
this route are it's remoteness, requiring a significant technical
approach with heavy packs (or a very expensive helicopter ride -
don't ask), it's length, and of course weather and the condition
of the route. It should be attempted only by those with solid 5.9
leading skills and significant alpine experience. This route has a
long history of epic adventures (two of these being ours!). In
perfect conditions for a competent pary, it would be a relatively
routine Yosemite-style grade V, but these conditions exist very
rarely. Weather reports are notoriously useless - you have
to just go and try, and keep trying until you get lucky. All the
weather comes from the SW, so you can see it coming. When I told a
local I was there for my 4th attempt, he said "I know people
who've come 20 times, and haven't gotten it yet!".
Route finding is not
overly difficult, but not entirely obvious. I'm working on a new
improved topo that should help.
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Gear
List (besides the obvious):
-
1 set wired Stoppers #4-#9
-
1 set Metolius quad-cams, #1-#4
-
2 sets Camalots, #0.75-3.5 (recommend Camalot #4)
-
1 rope 10mm x 50m
-
1 rope 8mm x 50m
-
10 Spectra single-length slings (6 would have been OK)
-
2 double-length slings
-
4 Spectra quick-draws (8 would have been better)
-
Sportiva Trango boots - approach & descent
-
Stubai aluminum crampons
-
1 aluminum axe for party
-
Light-weight waterproof/breathable mountain parka
-
light-weight pile sweater
-
Capilene underwear top
-
Nylon climbing pants
-
waterproof shell pants
-
fingerless gloves (recommend extra pair full gloves)
-
head band (recommend balaclava in addition)
-
emergency space blankets (recommend full bivouac bag)
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