Giallo
The Northeast Buttress of Slesse Mountain provided me with the finest climbing experience I have ever had in the Cascade Mountains. Seeing as it was Carl’s first trip there, it must have been his, too. Having just returned from a short two weeks of skiing in Chile, it was an abrupt change of gears for me to go from winter and snow back to summer and dry rock. I went through the US customs in Dallas in the morning on my way to Seattle and crossed back out of the US later that day into the fine country of Canada. I wondered what the Department of Homeland Security would think of that, but I was never delayed in any of the multiple border crossings during the week.
Information about the climb for us was a mixed bag. There were plenty of route descriptions in various guide books, though all were slightly different. We could get no recent info from anyone about access and the glacier approach, etc. The helicopter flight service we hired to ferry us in also knew of no one that had been in there this season. We just needed to fly in and find out for ourselves. We met with the pilot, Dave, later on in the evening after crossing the border. We arranged to have him meet us with the helicopter somewhere out the road into the West side of the mountain, the side we were to descend. This way, we could leave our car as close as possible for when we came down of f of the peak. The flight in was to be brief and very expensive. Little did we know how valuable it would be.
In the early morning the following day, we drove out to the aforementioned road only to find out that it was now closed for no apparent reason some six plus miles from where we wanted to get to and where the pilot was to meet us. We hurriedly drove back towards the town of Chilliwack to make a phone call to Dave before he took off. We luckily caught him and told him of the new pick up point. We knew he’d find us, but now we just added an additional six miles of walking to the already lengthy descent. Ten minutes later, Dave landed and we got in. The weather was nice and sunny with only few small, distant clouds. The views of Slesse and the surrounding mountains were exceptional as we ascended up the West side of the Peak. Dave gave us quite a ride, letting us scope out the death march road to walk out as well as the descent off of the summit. We flew around to the East side of the mountain and got our first views of the Northeast Buttress climbing route and its approach. We were in for a surprise.
The route looked great. It was clean of snow and looked dry. The glacier leading to it did not look so great. It is a small, dying pocket glacier and was in a state of decomposition. Numerous large blocks of glacial snow and ice lay in the small pocket where there once was a glacier. Some were still falling apart. It looked tricky to get across to say the least. More likely, it would be dangerous. This was looking to be a quick end to our trip. Dave, however spotted a small perch of rock right at the toe of the buttress where the climbing begins that he felt he could get one skid on and, perhaps let us out. We flew up to it in moments and he steadily eased the ship onto the rock pedestal that was smaller than the bed of my pickup truck. It was relatively easy if a little unnerving getting out. The drop off on either side of the rock was severe. Dave was very steady and it felt easier than getting out of a telepherique in the Alps. Moments later, Carl and I were alone on the rock in the quiet of this remote alpine setting. We were essentially on a belay ledge and put our harnesses and helmets on right away. Had I been thinking about it, I would have handed Dave our ice axes and crampons as we probably wouldn’t need them. Oh well, we had planned on climbing the route with the stuff anyway, so we might as well do it.
We started up moderate, fourth class terrain. It was slow going with the big (for rock climbing) packs full of overnight gear, food, water and extra clothes. A few hundred feet up we started belayed, fifth class climbing. The first pitch proved to be one of the more interesting of the entire route. It was not hard, maybe 5.7, but had virtually no protection and involved slabby, friction climbing. I guess the weight of the packs helped with the friction underfoot a little. Harder, but better protected climbing followed. The route was straight forward and easy to follow. It was mostly on the crest and the climbing was always in the 5.6-5.8 range. The ridge steepened a bit in the middle and there was an obvious traverse and bypass to the North side to avoid the harder climbing here. Some larger clouds were forming above now, but it was still pretty nice. The rock was sound by mountain standards. It was also well featured and a real pleasure to climb. The views down the large sweep of mountain to the decomposing glacier and further on down to the forested valley below were beautiful. There was big relief here and it had a similar feel to being on a big face in the Alps only without any people or cable cars around.
We climbed for hours and on into the afternoon and were still a long way from the summit. This seemed OK since we had bivy gear. Still, I did not trust the clouds above and we hadn’t seen any decent bivy ledges for quite some time. We wanted to summit and start the descent by day’s end, if possible. The final pitches to the top proved to be the best and most challenging. The climbing here was very steep and climbed right onto the crest of the buttress as it flanked the overhanging East face. There was good air here. If you had dropped a biner, it would go for over a thousand feet before hitting anything. There was a pitch of 5.9 in this section that had a small roof to clear. This was the crux. After that, the angle eased, but the climbing was no give away. Brilliant climbing up well featured granite on 5.7/8 ground led us right to the summit which, at 7:00 pm was enshrouded in fog. We had managed to make the ascent in 13 belayed pitches over 12 hours. Reading the summit register, it appeared that we were likely the first party to have climbed the route that season and only the second to climb the peak at all. Perhaps the road closure and now lengthy approach was scaring people away.
The summit did not have much promise for a comfortable night’s sleep so our stay there was brief. We wanted to get down to some sort of suitable bivy site before it got too dark to see. The fog made it very hard to find the descent route which was much more complex than the accent route. A few rappels and some traversing later we were in the dark looking for a piece of flat ground. There was not much to be found. Eventually, we found a sloping, earthen ledge. Now, the ice axes were to come in handy. We were able to hack out a flat spot in the dirt with our axes just big enough to get out tent on. It was a good thing we brought a tent, too since the fog had now turned in to light rain.
The bivy was comfortable and dry, however there was no snow around so we were unable to make any water, which we both needed badly. We had been on the move for over 14 hours that day and each had about two liters to drink. We were parched and I felt my legs cramp up throughout the night which poured rain down on top of our shelter. It was a fitful night of sleep, but reasonable enough all things considered. The rain let up a bit in the morning and we got out, broke camp and continued down in the fog. Things were a bit easier to see now that it was daylight, but the fog kept us on our toes for a while longer.
Eventually, we made it out of the technical terrain and simply had to put one foot in front of the other for the six thousand foot toe-pounder of a descent. We walked for untold hours until we reached the road and then our car just before nightfall. Our feet were blistered and our muscles were quite sore, but our spirits were high after such a fantastic climb and good adventure. Highly recommended!
