Pro Guiding Service - Out of the Rabbit Cage

We need to start digging more graves.

Over dinner at the White Saddle B&B, our little party has been discussing big problems - water-use issues, stewardship practices of public-land agencies, America's bullying tactics on the world stage--when that one-liner pops out of Billy, a hired hand helping maintain this Canadian homestead located in the eastern foothills of British Columbia's Coast Range. Conversation stops and we all fix Billy with a what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about stare.

Yup, he drawls. There's just too many of us in the rabbit cage.

It is a poignant synopsis of the human condition, but the following day as we take the half-hour chopper flight from this 2000-acre homestead on Mosley Creek toward the 13,185-foot summit of Mt. Waddington, British Columbia's highest peak*, the statement is at odds with our surroundings. We fly over a landscape whose boreal forests, free-flowing streams, and explosive ramparts have never known the pull of man's bridle.

We breach timberline and skim over a broken glacier a thousand feet deep. Around us a mouthful of rock incisors rise a vertical mile above the ice. We follow the frozen river before rising skyward, like a leaf caught in an updraft, to thread a narrow gap in the sheer walls. Then we drop steadily toward the junction of the Dais and Franklin glaciers where we spill out of the aluminum bird.

Taking the lazy man's flight rather than the multi-day slog into this inhospitable and unpopulated domain packs a shock value. Rather than watching the land scroll steadily backward in time, the change hits you fast. The noise of the chopper melds rapidly with the white noise of the mountain winds, and suddenly you're no longer in the 21st century but part of the Pleistocene.

She's a lonely land, comments Martin Volken, the Swiss-born, American-based, internationally certified mountain guide who has organized this trip to the hinterlands of Canada. The four of us accompanying him stare up at the sheer buttresses of Mt. Waddington towering 6500 vertical feet above, and there is an oafish, open-mouthed quality to our tilted heads. Watch the tonsils, guys. Volken warns, They're gonna get sunburned.

Life here outside of the rabbit cage feels vulnerable. Our infrastructure is the skiing, climbing, and camping gear crammed into our 50-pound packs. Included in that load are nine days of food, which in this domain of famously foul weather may or may not be sufficient to power us up several peaks. We've packed light enough to be completely mobile. If the weather blesses us, we can ski the peaks surrounding the Dais Glacier, move to the Ice Valley Glacier, and attack Mt. Munday and Arabesque Peaks. And if the weather pounds us, we can drop to a better rendezvous point for the helicopter.

By noon our nylon suburbia is a tiny stain of color dotting the white plate of a two-mile wide glacier. Some within our group are working out the Martha-Stewart details of the ultimate snow camp but Volken, who erected his tent quickly without worrying about such niceties as a front-door sitting area for removing boots or elaborate cooking platforms (he cooks inside his tent using a hanging stove) soaks up the scenery. Around us a half-dozen glaciers drain off the surrounding peaks and merge to form the Franklin Glacier, a 25-kilometer-long finger of ice flowing west to the ocean. This glacier is as long as the Aletsch, the longest glacier in the Alps.

The comparison has Volken thinking about where he grew up near Zermatt, Switzerland in the crumpled heart of the Pennine Alps. He takes in the Yosemite-sized walls of Mt. Waddington, the ice falls flanking the upper reaches of the Dais Glacier, the rock turrets fortifying the serrated northwestern skyline of Waddington, the steep couloirs dividing the horn of Mount Chris Spencer, and announces, This place is like a primordial Mt. Blanc Massif, like Chamonix before Chamonix.

With us are Ron Petett and Peter Avolio, two clients who have followed Volken along the Haute Route and down many steep couloirs near Chamonix and Zermatt. Petett nods in agreement, but Avolio is always quick to tease, Can't you ever make a comparison that leaves the Alps out of it?

Volken picks up the tossed gauntlet, How about this then, he says, This is like the North Cascades on Viagra.

Sensing Avolio has just gotten going, Volken grabs his skinned boards, OK guys, time to ski.

The annals of Coast Range skiing are full of tales of storms delivering tent-burying dumps and nylon-shredding winds. We've come physically and mentally prepared to sit tight but our real hope is to ski the plum of the region--the 13,000-foot, Northwest Summit of Mt. Waddington. Unlike the main summit, which is 60 feet higher, the Northwest Summit can be climbed without getting technical in perfect conditions you can actually ski off the top.

After bagging the 8,700-foot summit of Cavalier Mountain on our arrival day, we realize we are experiencing a major drought when we awake to sunshine. Two days of sunshine in this part of the world is enough to have Coast Range skiers fretting about skin cancer. Volken suggests targeting our main objective right away. Everyone agrees the weather should not be squandered.

We leave our low camp heading for a couloir we could see from the top of Cavalier Mountain breaching the turreted Northwest Ridge of the mountain. From the col topping this couloir, the map indicates we can access the upper reaches of the Angel Glacier, our highway to the summit.

In truth, however, it's all speculative--our 50,000 scale topographic maps leave a wealth of ice falls, seracs, and cliff bands invisible between the 130-foot contour intervals. And the complete written information about this route comes from one suppositional sentence in John Baldwin's guidebook, Exploring the Coast Mountains on Skis, It is possible that the Angel Glacier could be reached more easily in spring from the upper Dais Glacier via a snow gully that climbs north from the head of the glacier to join the long northwest ridge of Waddington.

This is either a pathetic paucity of description or a beautiful terseness of information, depending on whether you believe guidebooks should tell all or simply point you in the right direction. Volken is one who does not want his exploration and adventure butchered by an oversupply of information. It's much of the reason he left Switzerland and set up shop in North Bend, Washington where the peaks of both the Alpine Lakes Wilderness and the North Cascades National Park gave him an undeveloped stomping ground which he likens to Switzerland a hundred years ago.

This neck of the Coast Range may be more like Chamonix 150 years ago and Volken rolls in it like a dog who has found something deliciously smelly. When you guide the Haute Route there's a mountain of infrastructure in place. It's not just the lifts and the huts, there are scores of guides with information to share and with whom you can discuss ideas and options. Out here, though, he says happily, every party is on their own.

Our information may be limited but the steep couloir we follow intersects a gap in the northwest ridge some 4200-vertical feet above our lower camp. From that gap we traverse a short distance where we establish a high camp on the edge of the Angel Glacier. In Europe there would be a hut at such a strategic location and we would purchase beers and bunk space. But it's unlikely anyone has ever camped here before.

We throw up the tents and then sit back to appreciate the wildly jumbled landscape. Look how muscular that peak is. Volken is staring west at Mt. Bell whose final 6,500 vertical feet rise like a skyscraper from the valley below. There appears to be absolutely no easy way up its rock walls and tumbling glaciers. In Europe peaks like that would be famous, but the fame of a mountain or a range depends on how many people can actually see it. The Matterhorn, the Eiger, Mt. Rainier, the Canadian Rockies they're famous because millions of people can see them. No one sees these peaks, so they're nobodies.

In late afternoon more typical coastal weather blows in and snow is suddenly swirling around the tents. That's when we discover we're located in a spindrift zone. Our tent platforms fill in with drifting snow and over the night the walls of the tents squeeze inward. Three of us in this party of five share a two-man tent and by dawn we are sardined together. I can't bend without kneeing one tent mate in the groin and heeling the other in the shin.

Amazingly the weather breaks in early morning and although the fresh snow has us worried about avalanches, it is apparent we can move safely upward for some distance, evaluate the snow stability in route, and turn around later as the terrain steepens if the hazard is high.

On skinned skis we glide away from camp and quickly find an improbable ramp contouring onto the main body of the Angel Glacier. Below the ramp monster crevasses and oddly balanced seracs turn the ice into a hellish jumble. Above the ramp, the terrain skyward is surprisingly skiable.

We traverse along the ramp, then switchback up the Angel Glacier surrounded by a topographic maelstrom. The void beyond the edge of the glacier drops thousands of feet to the Scimitar Glacier. Then on the far side of the Scimitar, the great granite buttresses of Combatant Mountain and Mount Tiedemann rise, respectively, 3500 and 4500 vertical feet in explosive, upward sweeps. Avolio, speaking in faux French, suggests we are looking across the glacier at the Dru Pillar.

A single contour line from the summit, we hit a steep, knife-edged ridge of snow on the NE side of the summit pyramid where we remove skis and prepare to kick steps to the summit. Volken leads a short way up the ridge but the surface slab is poorly bonded to deeper layers. He backs down knowing that if the snow slides it will sweep us over the north face of the mountain and deposit us, a vertical mile lower, on the Tiedemann Glacier.

We work our way west and take another crack at the final hop to the top. Volken leads on belay over a schrund and eyeballs a traverse across a steep snow slope separating him from a gentler ridge sloping to the summit. It's technically easy, but if the 45-degree slopes above the traverse slide, anyone in harm's way will enjoy a rapid transit ride into the schrund and an equally rapid burial under tons of snow. Before traversing Volken digs a hasty pit in the surface snow with his arm and then pries on the back of the snow column he's created. It slides with a gentle nudge. Forget it, guys, he says backing off.

As skiers what concerns us more than the final 150 feet of climbing to the top is the quickly rising cloud level, we're praying it doesn't white wash thousands of vertical feet of turning. We quickly strip the skins and point the boards down. These initial turns are unforgettable, the powder is light and, with the Coast Range spread out below us, the dance is deceptively flightlike. Halfway back to the tents we intersect the ascending cloud level and flying turns to crawling. The light is so flat we cannot risk following the fall line into body-breaking crevasses--we squander elevation by skiing beside our up track.

Back at our high camp, we debate whether to ski down to the Dais Glacier in these chowder conditions or whether to hole up. Several lobby for descending now before storms load the steep ascent with an over-supply of snow. The rest agree and for the next two hours we battle ACL-busting glop as we retrace our route back to low camp. Worse than the glop is the flat light and, using a combination of high tech waypoints stored in his GPS during the ascent and low tech snowballs to decipher the ground immediately in front of us, Volken brings us out of the clouds. Minutes after we've erected our tents back at our Dais Glacier camp, the storm hits. It starts with thunder and lightning; then during the night well over an inch of rain pummels our nylon roofs.

Imagine how out there they must have felt. Volken is talking about the young Beckey brothers who in 1942 spent days hauling their gear and food into these environs the old- fashioned way. As teenagers, they took on the task of assaulting Waddington's technical true summit. This place is isolated now but it must have felt like another planet then. Volken is looking up at the precipitous summit whose rock walls are now plastered with rime from the storm. Others had tried to bag this highest of British Columbian peaks but it was Fred and Helmy Beckey brothers who won the Lotto.

It's been thirty-six hours since our return to this low camp and the storm system pissed itself dry last night. With a rising sun painting the glaciers and peaks with mango light, we ski toward Mt. Chris Spencer (9780 feet). Actually for 1.5 miles we skate across the frozen plate of the lower Dais Glacier before we skin and crampon the skis for the climb up the Fury Glacier. We climb for a couple of hours and reach the bergschrund where the glacier pulls away from the steep headwall of the peak. We work across a snow bridge and then jettison the skis, climbing with ice axes and crampons up the final 800 vertical feet. We hit the summit ridge and then climb roped along its exposed spine looking down over the half-mile abyss separating us from the Scimitar Glacier.

From the summit, the ice falls and rock walls separating us from the Angel Glacier where we skied two days ago look impossible to surmount. Volken slowly turns in a circle taking in the panorama. As an examiner for the American Mountain Guiding Association (AMGA), a guide who has skied extensively in the Alps, and the author of a guidebook about steep skiing in the Cascades, he knows what he's talking about when he maintains, If you picked this range up and moved it to Europe, it would be a skiing Mecca.

Volken mentions lines like the 5500-vertical-foot, 50-degree drop off Mt. Asperity and the couloirs draining Combatant Mountain that are world-class hardman runs. But he believes the Waddington area is a nearly perfect ski touring center because of its mixture of ballsy lines, moderate routes (like our tour up Cavalier Mountain several days ago) and easy tours (like those following the highways of the many valley glaciers).

Later in the day we're lounging around our tents discussing the descent, the snow was good as it transitioned from heavy powder to ankle deep corn. But laying such turns over a spectacular backdrop turned a good descent into a great one. Ron Petett is studying something far in the distance we talk and he finally asks, What are those black spots across the glacier.

We all stare at the moving dots that are easily a mile away.

Crows, most of us agree.

Petett disagrees and keeps watching. It's another group of skiers, he eventually says. They're dug into the glacier like us, so we're just seeing their heads.

I look a while then lay down a wager, I've got a beer saying it's crows.

The next morning we make a ski ascent of an unnamed 9000-foot white pyramid with beautiful undulating snow slopes. From the top, Volken is able to contact the helicopter pilot who is scheduled to pick us up tomorrow. He warns us a storm is approaching. This isn't a cute little system like the one that moved through a few days ago, the pilot says. If I don't bring you out this afternoon, you're on your own for another three or four days.

We agree to a pick-up in several hours. We strip the skins and before shoving off Volken takes in the viewshed and asks, I wonder if anyone else is skiing any of these peaks now. We start down sun-softened corn snow looking straight across the Regal Glacier at Waddington. Despite how good the turns are we keep stopping to rubberneck. It's simply too stunning to rush. We pass through a little gap in the SE ridge of the peak and move onto south-facing slopes leading back to camp. Moving up those slopes are four "crows" on skis.

I've just lost a beer to Petett. And Volken, who was wondering whether there was even anyone else within a hundred square miles of us, is now feeling like he's in Europe sharing this very peak with four skiers. Avolio, however, has come away from this trip with an appreciation for the Canadian solution for solving big problems, like eating crow. He watches the four skiers moving steadily towards us and mutters, We need to start digging more graves.

SIDEBAR: WADDINGTON TRIP PLANNER

Ski Season. Most skiers visit between mid April and mid June.

Helicopters. Because the weather is better on the east side of the Coast Range, skiers usually fly in from the Tatla Lake environs with White Saddle Air (250-476-1182, www.whitesaddleair.com).

Accommodations. Prior to flying, many skiers bunk down at the White Saddle Ranch/B&B, located adjacent to the heliport (250-476-1285, www.whitesaddleair.com). Lodging options--some with meals, others without, start at $20 CND/person.

Skiing In. To access the area by skis, start near the main logging camp on the Klina Klini River. From the east side of the Knight Inlet, head over Jubilee Mountain to reach the Franklin Glacier. It takes most parties several days to reach the base of Waddington. See a guidebook for details.

Guidebook. The classic is John Baldwin's Exploring the Coast Mountains on Skis, $19.95 CND (http://john_baldwin.bivouac.com/exploring.htm).

Maps. The 50,000-scale sheet of Mt. Waddington (92N/6) from the Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources is readily available. Harder to find (but much better) is Map Number 92N.034, a 20,000-scale map of the area published by the Resources Inventory Branch of the Ministry of Forests Province of British Columbia.

Temperatures and Conditions. In spring be prepared for gale winds and nighttime temperatures as low as 0-degrees Fahrenheit.

Gear. Carry the normal backcountry kit plus ski mountaineering tools (rope, harness, prusiks, ice axe, crampons, ski crampons).

Guides. Martin Volken, an internationally-certified mountain guide, leads advanced skiers on eight-day trips into the area for $1,395 (2003 price). Contact Pro Guiding Service (425-888-6397, www.proguiding.com).

* Mt. Waddington (13,185 feet) is the highest peak entirely in British Columbia. Mt. Fairweather (15,298 feet) and Mt. Quincy Adams (13,560 feet) are higher but are on the BC/Alaska border.

Note after the fact
From: patrick.wheatley@rbc.com
Date: Tue Feb 24, 2004 4:06:51 PM Canada/Eastern
To: howie@backcountrymagazine.com
Subject: RE: The Lonely Coast Range

Thank you for the great article on the trip into Mt Waddington, I really enjoy the trip articles in Backcountry because it fuels my fire to travel and ski around the world. I just wanted to let you know that there is a new map to the Mt Waddington area that I picked up from the Mountain Equipment Coop up here in Canada. It is called "The Waddington Map: Summit Series" and it is very detailed with a 1:25000 scale. I would recommend this map for any one heading into that area of the coast range. For a link check out http://www.elaho.ca/waddmap.htm. I have no financial interest in any of these companies, I just like maps and think people should buy the best maps available. Keep up the great magazine, it makes the summer months that much easier when I have all this great stuff to read..and reread while waiting for the snow to fly again. Pat Wheatley