High Aspirations: Making Mistakes

Following all these darned courses I've been taking, I finally wanted to lead an alpine climb with the ACC. I got Mt. Edith Cavell up on the schedule, but a rather humorous piece of information reached me about a week prior. The Ghost Glacier (large serac perched precariously on the North Face) had calved, slid down the face, taken air, hit the small lake below, and blown the moraine and parking lot to smithereens. Parks Visitor Safety Specialists termed it a "tsunami". Well, as I said in an email, my group can count itself among a small number of climbers who have had to change plans due to a tsunami!

I searched for a backup plan. Mt. Colin was an option, mostly being scrambling with a couple pitches of 5.6 thrown in. But, it is a long way from the road, and doesn't exactly have groomed access. Mt. Geraldine has a good exit trail, is in Selected Alpine Climbs, and based on the description in that book, was rather similar in character to Cavell. It apparently was just "one pitch of 5.5). I've hiked the Geraldine Lakes trail with the family on at least one occasion, so I knew where to go and how to get out. I felt that a good choice as an alternate plan, so that's what we did.

From the cars, we hiked along the fire road and then bushwacked directly to the base of the ridge in about two hours. Here, at the start of the rock, is where I felt the epic beginning. The terrain here was steep but easy. It was a classic leader's dilema. Could I trust everyone to climb unroped? Would that be deemed a safe and prudent choice? I pitched out two ~45m pitches of fourth class before shortroping one of the two participants to the top of the first buttress. Flat walking brought us to the base of steeper and what appeared to be more sustained climbing.

This long set of steps was predominantly 4th class with the odd 5th class move. I put on my rock shoes for two of the pitches, mostly because I wanted to move fast and not place pro. Shoes were not necessary. Most pitches were climbed on two or three pieces and were in the 40-50m range. Those pieces of pro were either to protect traverses, or just for the sake of having something in the pitch. Eventually, the ridge eased off, but remained exposed. I again shortroped through this. We then came to a third step which appeared to be rather steep and difficult.

Traversing left, we worked through very loose talus to two pitches of rambly terrain followed by a descending traverse. Shortroping around left and up again, we finally hit the descent gully just below the summit.

Here, there was a general atmosphere of retreat. I am guessing that I did a good job of manifesting my concern with our progress through body language. Nobody was surprised when I broke the news that we weren't going the last little bit to the top. We were awful close, but with the way I had been forced to belay and rope up the participants, I would expect at least two hours to the top and back from where we were.

I shortroped a significant part of the descent. It went from snow to good steps down low angle rock, to downclimbing a gorge, and then 3rd to 4th class downclimbing to reach nontechnical terrain. It was a long haul, and I was rather concerned the entire time. It was by no means a straightforward trudge down.

We reached the car at 9:39 PM. We had left at 5:20 that morning. It was a ridiculous day. My verdict is that the guidebook is actually rather misleading. I would actually argue that we never encountered rock harder than 5.3/4, but we encountered a rather large quantity of 4th class terrain. More than that, though, I need to figure out how to handle groups in that sort of terrain.

Both my participants thanked me on numerous occasions for making them feel exceptionally safe. They both said that it was a great day. This means to me I did 2/3 of my job; they had fun and felt safe, but we didn't hit the objective. I need to apprentice under another club-trip leader and see how they handle these types of situations. With just a friend, I'm sure that we could easily solo the whole route in about 10-12 hours. I made some mistakes on this one, but thankfully, they didn't have bad consequences. I would rather not have another 16 hour epic on a club trip in the future, and I want to make sure that I keep improving. I just need someone to show me the way...