The Bugaboos with Danelle
After last year's mixed experience in the Bugaboos, I had been itching to get back. The region is so breathtaking, and the climbing so good, I wanted to go in with a little better strategy and more time to really "be" there. So Danelle and worked out the timing and decided to go at the end of July. I had a wanted to stagger our time there by staying in the hut for the first few nights and then doing a secondary run back to the car to pick up the tent and the cooking gear. In retrospect, I do believe that this is the right way to do things, if one wants to climb the Snowpatch route on Snowpatch Spire. I had also thought that Pigeon Spire was a good destination from the hut, but I was wrong on that account. It turns out that the Bugaboo Glacier cuts right past the Snowpatch Spire in a dramatic icefall, making access to the back side of Snowpatch, Pigeon and the Howser Spires extremely tenuous. So my original plan to hit Pigeon and then Snowpatch was scrapped.
So we pulled into the parking lot, wrapped Danelle's truck in chicken wire to protect the underside from the pesky porcupines (which are apparently still active, as I met someone who lost his brake lines to the critters), and shouldered our heavy packs for the grind up to the Kain Hut. This time, rather than 100+ lbs, I was packing around 75lbs or so. It stil made for a long and arduous 2200 ft of elevation, but so much less awful than last year! I think we made it up to the hut in roughly 4 hours.
Part of the approach:
 |
 |
 |
We sacked out in the hut, and repacked for the next day's adventure: the Snowpatch Route on Snowpatch Spire. I had wanted to be on the trail at about daybreak, but unbeknownst to us, we had traveled east enough that we were in the next time zone... so the sun was coming up considerably earlier than we had expected. We were on the trail at a rather late hour of something like 6:30am. I should have zeroed in on a less ambitious target than the 20 pitch route for our first day... live and learn. I also made the mistake of taking a slightly non-standard route to start off with. It started as a fairly pleasant crack, turned into an offwidth which almost ate my knee, then I had to transition to a parallel crack that was a fairly dicey reach. My feet sketched twice, but I was able to hold the thin horizontal crack. Also, the cracks had seen so little travel, that the granite crystals (which were enormous) were super sharp. By the end of the pitch, my arms were covered from finger tip to mid bicep in little shallow abrasions. Later in the day, as the cuts gained a little color, I looked as if I had gotten into a fight with a Cuisinart. So with a late start, and a very slow first pitch, we were already looking at being far too slow.
Here are some pix from the approach to the route, and the first pitch:
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
At the beginning of the third pitch, I pulled myself onto a horizontal rail and discovered to my dismay that I was climbing on rocks covered in running water. It made for more excitement, but still proved to be quality climbing. Further on, we found that there was far more snow in the huge snowfield, and it encroached on the path I was supposed to be climbing. I actually had my feet in snow for a few sketchy steps.
Some pictures from further along the route:
 |
 |
 |
Shortly after these photos, I made a crucial mistake in reading the route description and ended up wasting a tremendous amount of time trying to work a desperate pitch. I finally bailed off a rap sling back down towards Danelle, but pendulumed over to the ledge that we should have been on in the first place. Further complications came along in the form of not having big enough pro to protect the 5.8 off-width (which I soloed sans pack) and Danelle not being comfortable with some of the traversing pitches. We were running late enough that we viewed a gorgeous sunset from the second to last pitch. Unfortunately, I was so focused on being as fast and efficient as possible at this point, that I never pulled out my camera. We were up at the top of the spire, getting our boots on and setting up the first of several rappels as the light was really beginning to quit.
Because it was getting dark, we moved fairly slowly, further putting us behind schedule. We finally hit the glacier around 1am... the silver lining to the cloud was getting to see the northern lights (a first for Danelle). As a side note, I just learned in my Space Plasma class, that the auroras peak around 2am because of the shape of the magnetosphere, and the tilt of the earth's magnetic poles...
Danelle and returned at the hut around 3:30am. We were trashed, but we knew that we needed to eat something substantial to allow our bodies to recuperate, so we quickly cooked up our meal and some hot chocolate. Ironically, we had the company of some people who were just starting their day... ah, crazy climbers. And then we slept until about 10am the next morning. Hardly the way to get oneself onto the alpine schedule. But we needed it. We took that next day to saunter back to the truck and grab our tent, cooking gear, and the rest of our food. We stayed in the hut again that night, to allow our bodies the benefit of a semi-real bed.