Mount Athabaska: Silverhorn Arête
“The view that lay before us in the evening light was one that does not often fall to the lot of modern mountaineers. A new world was spread at our feet; to the westward stretched a vast ice-field probably never before seen by human eye, and surrounded by entirely unknown, un-named, and unclimbed peaks. From its vast expanse of snows, the Saskatchewan Glacier takes its rise, and it also supplies the headwaters of the Athabasca; while far away to the west, bending over in those unknown valleys glowing with evening light, the level snows stretched, to finally melt and flow down more than one channel into the Columbia River, and thence to the Pacific Ocean.” ~J. Norman Collie
The high mountain adventures of 1977 contrasted starkly with the lows of my personal life.
A relationship that outsiders assumed was cemented by the sharing of extraordinary experiences was in fact reaching its end. On the very expeditions that took me to new personal heights, I watched resignedly as the light went out and a spark ignited elsewhere.
As winter descended on the Purcell Mountains, I found myself alone in a cold tipi, too depressed to face the chores of winter survival. I retreated to the dreaded city.
Another Kootenay acquaintance and budding alpinist had also moved back to the west coast and, though we had not climbed together, it seemed natural Tom Hocking and I should rope up for the 1978 season.
My base camp was a spartan bachelor suite above a Chinese restaurant on Vancouver’s Robson Street, shared with several thousand other tenants. I studied my housemates’ excellent six-legged climbing skills as I did finger traverses around the picture rail.
From my job in a nearby bike store, I trained before and after work, cycling the roads and trails of Stanley Park. This frenetic activity buried–but did not extinguish–my grief at the loss of my lover and young daughter.
Weekends, Tom and I honed our rock-climbing skills at Cheakamus Canyon near Whistler and scaled a few peaks, including Mt. Blanshard, east of Vancouver.
With looming plans for the snowy peaks of the Rockies, we turned our attention south to Washington’s glacier-draped (3,285m / 10,778ft.) Mount Baker–following the Coleman Glacier to the summit.
In late July, we set out for the Rocky Mountains. Tom had prepared an ambitious agenda.
“We’ll knock off Sir Donald on the way up to the Icefields, climb Athabaska, then maybe have a look at Andromeda Skyladder.”
We can do Lefroy after that,” he announced.
All this was to be under the banner of “The First Annual Go For Broke Perissodactyl Expedition.” I can’t say I shared the same affinity with the ponderous rhino, but the sign my friend installed in the back window of his station wagon—complete with profile of the horned beast—insinuated we were its human avatars.
At Roger’s Pass, we scrambled the Asulkan Ridge, an easy ascent with stunning views across the valley to Mt. Sir Donald’s symmetrical triangle. We’re going to try that? Tom wasn’t so sure and, given his prevarication, I wasn’t about to take the lead. We continued on to Alberta and the Columbia Icefields.
Holy cow!
Mount Athabaska (3491 m / 11453 ft) towered above Wicox Campground. We spent the afternoon of July 29 studying our route—the Silverhorn Arête—through binoculars. I admitted in my journal to a sense of intimidation. Then I packed my klettersack.
At 03:00, I got my reprieve. With not a single star visible and a damp wind ruffling the tent, we buried ourselves deeper into our sleeping bags and our dreams, for me a desperate flight from mounted soldiers.
The next day, or rather night, we poked our heads out to see a sky shot with starlight. Within the hour, we were following the bobbing yellow circles of our headlamps up a giant spur of shattered rock, Athabaska’s glacial moraine.
At 05:00, we fitted crampons and stepped onto the glacier, beginning a long traverse into the centre of the face, where the route reared above a great crack in the ice. This bergshrund would be the first technical challenge barring entry to the arête. We scurried, as fast as our spike-clad feet would carry us, under the hanging glacier above. These precarious features, called seracs, spill house-sized blocks any time, but the prudent mountaineer does not tarry underneath when the sun’s rays bathe them in warming light.
Tom led up and over the giant slot for 25 metres, stopped short because we still wore coils used to shorten the rope. What’s he doing up there? We won’t be off before dark at this rate. Meanwhile, from the depths of the glacier came tortured moans, echoing from somewhere deep in the maw of the ‘schrund.
Tom is thinking: “Hey, this isn’t snow, it’s ice. What have we gotten ourselves into? This isn’t Baker at all.” *
He “[fought] down the panic” long enough to “whack out … a mini-platform,” install an ice-screw belay and call me up.
I reinforced the anchor and led through.
Another giant split in the ice required a long traverse on its outside lip, into the centre of the steepening face. The result of a slip either way here meant a tumble down the glittering white face or into the upended glacial chasm, its depths cloaked in blue shadows.
At the end of this lead, I decided to keep moving and shouted down for my partner to follow. I put in running belays until all the ice screws were gone.
“It’s time to take out the last screw. Ray feels it first. We’re no longer attached to the mountain …. Four screws dangle uselessly from my harness.”
Smashing my tools and crampon points into the ice, I moved as fast as I could. Tom dodged splinters dislodged by my axe. I noticed my knuckles red from contact with the sharp ice.
Fifty metres below, my mate was similarly distracted.
“My hands are bleeding now and I’m surprised to find a parallel trail of blood leading upward. Ray’s. Nice contrast. Our blood mixing on the mountain.”
The angle finally laid back and we gained the east shoulder at 11:20. Clouds swirled around us as we made our way along the narrow summit ridge, joking that if one of us should fall off one side the best bet for the other would be to dive off the opposing side. Since our weights were dissimilar this theory was better left untested.
On the summit, we celebrated with cheers and bear hugs. To the west, a new panorama had opened up. The ridge fell away to the massive Saskatchewan Glacier, 1500 metres below. The scale of the geography was staggering. Forging southward, the source of one of the greatest river systems in Canada filled the great valley bottom. The Columbia Icefields stretched to the horizon. We were stricken with the same awe as alpinists J. Norman Collie and Hermann Woolley, when they beheld this view on the first ascent in 1898.
How tragic that just over 100-years later, men without awe threaten the purity of this precious resource downstream with the unregulated development of the Alberta tar sands. It also goes without saying that the burning of the mined fuel will hasten the retreat of the icefields.
The ascent of Silverhorn Arête was a transformative adventure. It instilled respect for the difficulties of steep ice-climbing and left me eager for the next challenge. More importantly, it rekindled in me the spirit of poetry.
Turning west, I made my way to the Columbia Valley. My daughter had just turned three.
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It’s a good article.
That first ice screw I placed after I’d surmounted the bergschrund had to be bombproof in case something bad occurred as I was belaying you up. Had you tumbled into that bottomless moat I could not have held you (or Yoda, or even a Jawa) from my precarious mini-platform without a really solid anchor, and we both would have been gone. Once you got the next screw in above my first, I was able to remove it as it no longer had any purpose.
After you led through I was hoping to swap leads up the arete….
But that narrow ridge was …’exhilarating’, eh? Which is way better than accelerating (“Ja, ja, keep moving!”) ‘0 ]
That certainly was a memorable route.
Holy moley, was that really 32 years ago??
The ice-axe I used now hangs on the wall of my shop. Looks like there’s still dried blood on it (mine, not yours!).
Cheers, mate!
Hocking
Great article, except for that irrelevant crack about the “tar” sands. Unregulated? Puhleeze…
It’s not a “crack;” it’s a pointed reference to what I and many others see as one of the greatest environmental catastrophes ever unleashed.
Neither is it irrelevant. The operation has flown under the regulatory radar in many respects and much continues to be covered up by governments, as we see from the linked article.
I fear we’ll see the “downstream effects” for generations to come.
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