Incredible trip,
incredible mountain and incredible partner.
Mount Waddington is truly a climber’s mountain. Generally only
alpinists, and only a small portion of us, have even heard of this grand
peak. The highest point of the
spectacular Coast Range, and the highest summit wholly with the Province of
British Columbia. Heavily glaciated, remote, rugged and with an impressive
elevation of 4019 metres (13,186 feet), Mt. Waddington is truly a world class
peak.
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Photo by the incredible Steph Abegg.
This photo shows the top half of the route we attempted. |
Waddington was on my wish list way back in the 1990’s, but by 2000 I sort
of forgot about it. Busy career, busy
being a dad and lack of time to even climb in my beloved Rockies, this elusive
peak was out of my mind entirely. Enter
the superlative Scott Berry. Since September
2016, Scott and I have done two great trips close to Calgary in the Opal Range,
a first ascent of a summit (“South Schlee” – GR388157) and a new route on Mt.
Elpoca (North Coulor/North Ridge, 5.8, Alpine IV). Scott is the kind of guy you
have always have a blast with, be it in a bar (we both appreciate liquor), on a
beach or a scary belay ledge.
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| Scott high on Waddington |
Waddington has been on Scott’s active wish list
for decades and he was keen to attempt it in 2018.
I agreed to join him on this climb back in the Fall of 2017 and we both
eagerly awaited the trip. Scott is also scholar of special summits from around
the world (he has climbed extensively in South America and Europe, and close to
his home in the Sierra Nevada of California) and he had essentially memorized
the route and general beta for Waddington.
Using the classic “The Waddington Guide” by Don Serl and Scott’s keen
mind, I spent much of 2018 in eager anticipation of this trip.
The Don Serl guide
book is excellent and I will quote it is this trip report. Don writes, “Climbing times return from Rainy
Knob vary from under 24 hours to more than a week. Three or four days is typical,
but bad weather often intervenes, and should be planned for.” Scott’s plan was to
summit on our third day, return to Rainy Knob or the Tiedemann Glacier for
helicopter retrieval at the end of our fourth day. Speaking with the helicopter
pilots at White Saddle Air when we arrived, they indicated that the majority of
parties average 7 or 8 days return from the Rainy Knob camp with good climbing
conditions. Hmm. In the end, because of the
difficult conditions we encountered, our summit attempt happened on day five
of our trip. If anyone ever asks me, I would suggest at least seven days return
from Rainy Knob for fit and experienced groups, more if you have the challenging conditions we experienced.
August
1 - Flight onto Rainy Knob
July 31 I was up about
5am, on my flight to Vancouver at 7am.
Arrived in YVR just after 7am, Scott arrived about two hours later, once
we got the rental, we headed to MEC in Langley to get some last minute items,
like stove fuel, had a burger and finally hit the highway about 1pm. I have read
estimates about the drive to White Saddle Air Services near Bluff Lake from
Vancouver takes about 8 to 11 hours (800 kilometres). For us, it was 10 hours, but that included a
crazy logging road detour since highway 97 just north of Cache Creek was shut
down due to a mud slide, a high energy local lead us through the maze of
logging roads, otherwise we would have been stuck for 8+ hours waiting for the
main highway to be cleared. We arrived
just before midnight after we arrange B and B accommodations near the air field
through White Saddle; highly recommended since there are no campground or
motels at Bluff Lake. We were set to fly at 7am, so we got about 4 hours of
sleep so we had time to repack our gear for the flight in.
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| Best approach to Mt. Waddington... a cozy copter ride. |
August 1 was a mix of
sun and clouds, but the pilot was keen to get moving since they were super busy
supporting the local forest fire suppression efforts. After a quick debrief, we
were in the air right at 7am. Beautiful
flight into the Coast Range, massive and tall spires and awesome glaciers
everywhere.
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I got the front set for the flight in, yeah!
Photo by Scott Berry |
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View on the flight in
Photo by Scott Berry |
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Mt. Waddington from the flight in. You can see the whole route in this photo
Photo by Scott Berry |
Originally, we thought we would be dropped off on the lower Tiedemann
Glacier, but the pilot was able to drop us on top of Rainy Knob, saving us
considerable effort. The copter flew
away and we were left alone in this glorious wilderness. It was only about 8am, but dark and frightening
looking clouds were building, and rain appeared to imminent. Scott’s timeline had us camping on Rainy Knob
for the first night, originally thinking we would have to climb the snow slope
up from the Tiedemann Glacier. Since we were both tired from the long drive and
lack of sleep and the weather looked iffy, we decided to pitch a camp and get
some sleep. Well the weather was unstable and by noon it got hot and sunny (not
great conditions for snow/ice/glacier climbing anyway), but by late afternoon,
rain threatened again. After a big and tasty dinner of fresh veggies and black
bean burritos, we climbed about 250 metre up the glacier to do some route
finding to prepare for the big push the next day.
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View from Rainy Knob down the Tiedemann Glacier
Photo by Scott Berry |
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Unpacking after drop off
Photo by Scott Berry |
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OSWB is in the house
Photo by Scott Berry |
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View up hill from the knob. Bravo Peak is the point peak on the right,
the summit of Spearman Peak is visible on skyline, just left of centre. |
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| Unstable weather our first day, camp on top of Rainy Knob |
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OSWB cooking up some black bean and fresh veggie burritos at the Rainy Knob camp
Photo by Scott Berry |
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| Steaming up some fresh peppers and green onions, yummy. |
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| Dinner time |
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Chilling at camp
Photo by Scott Berry |
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More chilling, I am a chill guy :-)
Photo by Scott Berry |
August 2 - Bravo
Glacier, camp in the Cauldron
“From Rainy Knob, the
route ascends the Bravo Glacier icefall… crevasse problems often lead to very
circuitous travel, and snow conditions may deteriorate remarkably as the heat
of the day comes on, further contributing to slow progress… reach the upper
basin (the Cauldron) of the icefall (2700m] just beneath the Headwall… traverse
left in the Cauldron to cross the schrund (2800m), often with great difficulty,
and climb 100m or so of 50° snow on the Headwall… camping in the icefall below the
Cauldron resulted in the deaths of four very experienced climbers in 1960 when
a serac collapsed, and is to be avoided: leave Rainy Knob early.” The Waddington Guide. Don
Serl
Well
we left Rainy Knob early, just before the sun was up, we made fast and steady
progress on almost frozen snow with basically no boot penetration, even with
the heavy packs (about 70 pounds each).
We swapped leads up the broken glacier with a mix of steep ice/snow
climbing and short sessions of flat terrain.
Scott found us a couple of great snow bridges and we were able to stay
mostly right up the icefall and made great time to the Cauldron, a glaciated cirque
below the steep headwall that leads to Bravo Col.
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OSWB working through crevasses on the way the difficult upper Bravo Glacier bergschrund
Photo by Scott Berry |
The bergshrund breaking
the steep headwall was massive, with a tall (30m) near vertical ice wall above.
We tried three different sections to try and gain the top of the ice wall, but
the most difficult climbing was exiting the near vertical ice to the snow
covered lower angled section on the top of shrund. By time we were attempting this exit crux
move, the upper snow pack had become super soft and provided no purchase for
axe picks or crampons, just bottomless sugar snow. By mid afternoon we gave up
since snow above shrund was just too sketchy. Despite the guidebook warning we
decided to camp in the Cauldron so that the snow could freeze, or near freeze,
overnight.
August 3 - Above Bravo
Col, camp near Spearman Saddle
Up
before 3am, after surviving the night without any serac fall, I managed to lead
the upper ice wall and get up the still sugar snow slope. After I setup a midpoint snow anchor, I
bought up Scott, where he was able to get in a rock station left and above
me. Big problem was I led the crux
without the 70 pound pack. Now I had to
pull up the pack, holy shit, what a gong show, eventually after a ton of effort
and time, I got my pack above the shrund.
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OSWB cruxing on the upper Bravo Glacier bergschrund
Photo by Scott Berry |
Finally,
after a couple of steep and loose fourth class pitches of rock, we gained the
top of the headwall. As we ascended the
steep glacier towards Bravo Col, the clouds dropped, it began to snow and
visibility was limited and occasionally zero. Despite the dropping temperate, the snow was
getting softer and we had a very slow pace as trail breaking was knee to thigh
deep snow. A few dangerous and interesting crevasse crossing got us up to Bravo
Col in near whiteout conditions. Scott’s original plan had August 3 was our summit
attempt, but with the slow pace in the soft snow, we were way off this time
line. Above Bravo Col, the pace continued
to be very slow due to deep post holing, a few more scary snow bridges and on and off whiteout conditions. As we continued towards Spearman Saddle, we decided to pitch camp below the
saddle proper since the winds were whipping, we dug into a side slope to make a
nice flat tent pad. Full on conditions with high winds and snow, we were tired
and not feeling the love at this point.
Since the weather was so bleak, and the visibility so bad, we slept in
the next day. The update plan was to set a high camp the next day and attempt
the final summit tower on August 5.
August 4 - Camp below
Tooth/Summit tower
Slept
in to about 8am, a solid 11 to 12 hours of sleep since we were both asleep
about 8pm. Well we paid for the extra
sleep with extra tough conditions.
Despite being at about 3150 metres, the cloud cover and fresh snow made
the snow plod another post holing grind to the saddle. As well, above Spearman
Saddle, there were many scary crevasse crossings.
As
you travel above the saddle, the route steepens, with several steep snow/ice
sections below the ridgeline, eventually you need to traverse right (north) as
the rock ridge becomes vertical. There
was nasty section where exposed glacier ice runs up a series of rock gullies,
below the ice/rock gully section, we encountered a long, hard glacier ice
traverse that was actively receiving rockfall from the melting ice (of course
the sun came out in full force as we were about to traverse this section). Also, to add to interest, this nasty,
dangerous traverse was above a massive, bottomless crevasse. With the active rockfall, we didn’t want to
place ice screws since we had to move fast, man, it was a scary traverse,
eventually the traverse ended on snow, away from the rock wall, in between two
massive, bottomless crevasses. From here
is was a long, steep, snow/ice face climb, above a massive, bottomless
crevasse. Much of this steep slope had
recently avalanched, so we were mostly climbing on glacier ice. Long plod
towards a ridge line that would eventually lead to easier terrain at about
3650m.
Just before this ridge line, two
or three thin, scary snow bridges, then the ridge was hard glacier ice, and
very exposed down either side. Was very
happy to get off this exposed ice ridge and onto flat terrain near 3650m. We decided to pitch camp here, in between a
few massive crevasses. Fun, exciting and
challenging day of complex glacier climbing to reach this camp site. We were
happy with our camp close to the summit tower and we were very hopefully for a
summit the next day.
August 5 - Summit
attempt
