On the edge: my first technical climbs in the Purcell Mountains

“I know that I cannot do justice to this Alpine paradise: on my first visit to this basin, I wrote in my diary, ‘This is one of the most beautiful and charming spots that I have seen on this continent.’” ~Conrad Kain (1928), Where the Clouds Can Go

On an autumn day in 1976, as the namesake trees of the Rocky Mountains’ Larch Valley were turning gold, I was praying for my life on the crumbling ramparts of Mount Temple, above Sentinal Pass. I promised whatever deity might be listening, that if I were allowed to escape this escapade, I would learn the arcane arts of alpinism.

I survived to winter on the west coast, with no clear idea how I would live up to that promise, but the lure of the mountains drew me back to the East Kootenays the following spring with my (ex-)wife and two-year-old daughter.

In June, we met up with Jan Smith and Charles Scott, fellow veterans of the Meadow and our expedition to the Arctic Circle the previous summer. We returned to Mount Scartooley, a peak Scotty and I had climbed (and christened) in 1974.

Then financial considerations intruded. I joined Robert Toohey (bearer of another Scartooley surname syllable) and Charles Lightfoot to build a log house on the Montana border.

Rare breaks from long, hot days wielding chisel and chain-saw were spent back in Invermere, often lounging naked on the shores of nearby Lake Lillian. One late summer afternoon, I saw a couple sorting climbing hardware on a picnic table. Doug Morgan and Sue Farlinger soon moved their travelling home — a battered panel van — up beside our tipi, on the dry benches above Toby Creek.

Our first shared objective was (3032m / 9950ft.) Mount Trafalgar, outlier of (3,318m / 10,887ft.) Mt. Nelson, the prominent peak of the Farnham Group above Invermere. On a clear August day, we became the second party (FA 1962) to stand on its shattered summit.

In September, we headed north to Spillimacheen and west up the rough road to the Bugaboos trailhead. The first view of these legendary spires is unforgettable: vertical granite and great blankets of fractured blue ice soaring above forest, checkered at this time of year with bright patches of red and yellow. Summer crowds had departed, along with more benevolent weather (for no month can be guaranteed storm-free here). We shared the lofty Conrad Kain Hut with a small group of climbers from Colorado.

Our clan, dogs included, made a memorable ascent of (2842 m / 9324 ft.) Crescent Spire. On this moderate route, recent snowfall had left the rock more suited to canine crampons than Vibram soles. Without steel equivalents, we envied their sure-footedness. Nonetheless, we secured our four-legged friends in rucksacks for the rappel retreat from the summit tower. I regret there is no photographic record of this novel event.

We explored further with treks to Bugaboo-Snowpatch Col and the Upper Vowel Glacier, then Morgan decided Toohey and I were ready to test our new skills on the imposing (2958m / 9705 ft) Brenta Spire.

Before dawn, we crossed the Crescent Glacier and dropped into the cirque beyond Eastpost-Crescent Col. We made an initial push up a series of narrow corners that bottomed out in thin cracks beyond our technical abilities. We rappelled back down to the glacier and circled round to the East Face. There we found a promising line.

We gained height on some easy pitches until we reached a tiny ledge intersecting the face. This was my first experience with exposure of this degree. Morgan led calmly across and set up a belay behind a rock horn. I followed, trying to ignore, yet compelled by, the incredible space sweeping away to the snowfield and the inky puddle of Cobalt Lake under my heels.

Next came Toohey. He too must have been impressed by our situation. As he reached the narrowest part of the ledge, which coincided with an overhanging bulge on the face, he toppled backwards.

Morgan had arranged a webbing loop over the gendarme, securing a sprung “stitch plate” belay device. Pulling the rope taught jammed it in the plate. I tried to haul in the slack as Toohey swung across the face, a spinning pendulum.

While I helped Toohey regain the route and his composure, Morgan had pioneered a way onto the South Ridge, an interminable series of false summits up to the more difficult climbing on the summit tower.

That’s when the storm hit.

In the lowlands, the result would be called an “ice storm.” It deposited what in mountaineering parlance is known as verglass — a coating of ice that renders rock climbing akin to vertical skating.

Without crampons, I found myself in a frightening situation, as I clawed my way up a near vertical dihedral of grey rock. Thank goodness Morgan was above with a tight rope and encouraging words. But it was an old high-school coach who came to the rescue with the command: “Parker, move your arse!” At the moment I imagined my mortal coil was about to uncoil, the British tyrant’s voice echoed in my skull and I snapped out of my catatonic state. Or was it Morgan’s voice booming from the white void above?

Among wind-whipped granite, we pulled a metal canister from the summit cairn. Within, a yellowed notebook contained signatures back to the first ascent in 1938: L. Coveney, S.B. Hendricks, P. Olten, P. Prescott, M. Schnellbacher.

Clasping a pencil nub with frozen fingers, we added our own to the record.

The retreat down the East Face required a series of hair-raising rappels. The sleet lashed our backs, layering on more verglass, making icebound anchor-points extremely suspect.

One such test of nerves originated at a slippery pedestal where Morgan hacked the ice and snow from around a knob of rock. This was the anchor point — a protuberance barely higher than the 2” webbing loop that held the doubled rope. I stomped my boot on the anchor while Morgan and Toohey descended to the ledge below. Then it occurred to me: who would perform the same duty on my rappel?

I crawled over the edge, keeping my weight as low on the loop as possible. We had no rappel devices; we used the traditional “dulfersitz” method — renowned for wearing holes in anoraks and causing manly mountaineers to squeak like mice.

I began to retrieve our rope, doubled through the nylon loop above. At the first tug, the whole system tumbled down the face to my little ledge, including the loop we had moments before trusted with our lives.

At last, we got under the worst of the storm and tension eased. The pockmarked snowfield sloped away from the face, a hundred metres below.

Toohey surveyed our position, remarking cheerily: “We sure drag these bodies some places, don’t we?”

Tagged as: british columbia, columbia valley, invermere, kootenays, larch, mountaineering, purcell mountains, rock climbing, the meadow