Located in the Northern Selkirk range, the sheer granite faces of the Adamant peaks are among the most impressive in British Columbia, Canada. The rock is comparable to that of the world famous Bugaboo and Vowell groups of the Purcells. The Adamants combine a remote location, superb rock, big-wall scale (500+ meters), challenging glaciers, and excellent alpine-style rock climbing routes.
The team consisted of us three from Oxford, and two local Canadians - Keith Lennig, who Cole grew up with in Vancouver, and Sasha Moore, a friend who lives in Squamish. The mountain experience of the team ranged from countless multi-day alpine climbs and ski traverses to never having used crampons and a spread of technical rock climbing ability. In addition to the obvious motivation to go to such an amazing area, we chose Austerity Glacier because it provided objectives across the difficulty the adventurousness spectrums. Additionally, it was clear there was potential for new-routing with the abundance of rock and the limited amount of teams that have been into the area due to both the remoteness and the notoriously bad weather.
The team in front of the Ironman Buttress, near our basecamp.
The trip was planned through Skype calls, google docs, and calorie spreadsheets, but the majority of the final details were sorted out during a week spent in Vancouver prior to the trip. Many days were spent slowly ticking off the packing and to-do lists: endless trips to supermarkets, a bewildering trip to Costco, MEC, hardware stores, measuring and repacking food into ziplock bags, buying more climbing gear, and sorting climbing gear. When all this was done, the last challenge was fitting everything into two cars and driving 10 hours across the province to the shores of the Kinbasket Lake.
In 2007 the access logging road into the area was washed out, increasing the shortest approach to a canoe across a lake and a few days hiking and technical glacier travel. Whilst we would have loved to do the trip in a self-supported style, we were also excited at the prospect of exploring a big wall new route, which would require a portaledge, and realistically we would need three weeks of supplies and climbing gear, all in all which would have required multiple journeys. In the end we decided that a short helicopter ride was the best option for this trip. The helicopter picked us up from Kinbasket Lake and took us up over the Adamant glacier--which we would have had to traverse had we decided to walk in. It was clear we had made the right choice; the glacier heavily crevassed, and would have been a nightmare to navigate with heavy loads and for multiple journeys. From the air, we scouted a flat and crevasse-free spot to land and camp on the better snowed in Austerity Glacier on the back side of the range. After hauling the bags out, the helicopter rather abruptly disappeared, and we were left staring around at the granite walls of Ironman, Austerity and the particularly intimidating 500 metre high black granite face of Blackfriars.
This blog post presents 3 separate takes on the same expedition. First Bronwyn describes an unintended close encounter with the inside of a the Austerity Glacier, second I (Cole) describe our new routing efforts on the Ironman Buttress, and third Rowland talks through a great day out on the Gibson-Rohn (also on the Ironman Buttress).
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The Crevasse
By Bronwyn Tarr
On the day we flew onto the glacier, the first thing I noticed was how unbelievably beautiful it looked. The next thing I saw were the crevasses. Some were large garled and gaping. Others, still closed, were thin streaks of slumped snow glinting off the sun like clusters of stretch marks. The brightness and textures of the glacier was astonishing, even through my CAT4 glasses.
We landed in a very flat area, which seemed ideal for camping as it was a safe distance from a couple obvious crevasses. To be sure, Keith probed in widening circles and soon gave us the go-ahead to set up our tents. We felt safe, and even though a lot would change on the surface of the glacier during our stay, Keith’s probing proved solid, and all our tents remained out of reach from the crevasses for the duration of the trip.
In camp with the Blackfriars behind us.
For Rowland and me, this was our very first time on a glacier. This meant learning some basics. On day two, the team trekked up past a boulder field to an ice slope that lead up to some easy scrambles. Along the way, Rowland (wearing crampons for the very first time), slipped on the hard ice. I paused, holding my breath, as I watched him slide downhill, gaining speed as he tried to self-arrest with his axe. No sooner had he dug it in, he lost his grip on the axe’s handle, leaving it perfectly picketed into the slope as he continued to slide down towards the boulder field. Thinking quick, he swivelled around onto his back, and stopped himself using his feet, breaking a crampon in the process. Keith retrieved his axe for him and we carefully picked our way across the rest of the icy slope. At the end of the day, with a DIY fix on the crampon, Rowland and myself, the novices, roped-up to rap back down.
The next skill for us to master was the rope system for glacier travel, and, of course, what to do in the event of someone falling in a crevasse. Early in the trip, the guys sought a safe path across the glacier to a col, weaving through the intermittent crevasses, but it was important to be prepared in case of a fall. We ran through the step-by-step system for a crevasse rescue - how to self-arrest, build a picket anchor or T-slot anchor with your ice axe to help alleviate the the weight of the faller from the person catching the fall, and how to build a 3:1 or 5:1 pulley system to help haul them out. Rowland and I took a morning to run scenarios, repeatedly practicing the building of anchors whilst the other person pulled hard on the rope to simulate the experience of catching and holding an actual fall. I found it very challenging to build the anchor when Rowland was weighting the rope, but it was good to practice, and after a few hours we felt confident that we would know what to do if the other person did indeed end up in a crevasse.
Standard practice when travelling across a glacier is to rope up and have the lightest person lead the way. Although anyone could be at risk of a fall, the person in front is navigating the landscape and checking the depth of the snow before the others follow. Having experienced how challenging it was to try and pull someone heavier than me up a slope during our scenario practice, I appreciated the logic of placing me, the lightest person on the trip, in front. I felt a little like a ‘sacrificial lamb’, but I enjoyed the responsibility and, well, at least I would be easy to pull out if something happened!
On about day 10 of our trip, Keith and I took a day to walk across the glacier to the col, some 30 minutes from camp, where there was excellent ridge scrambling and some easy 5.8 routes. It was a stunning, hot day, and we had a brilliant time navigating the ridge and taking it easy on some of the routes. I practiced my gear placement, route finding and anchor building on the ridge, and we had a stunning view of the neighbouring glacier. It was so glorious that we took our time turning back and, as is often the case, it took longer than we had anticipated to make our way back down to the fixed lines at the top of the col.
Always in front when I was part of a glacier travel occasion, I became familiar with the features along the route to the col and back. I’d had a fair bit of practice learning how to read the curves of the glacier, where to expect a crevasse, how to follow the lines of a possible crevasse and how to communicate with my partner behind me when I was taking large step or mini-leap over an obvious slit in the snow and ice. The crevasses, in their varying and shifting states felt a little like old friends after a few days. The closed crevasses reminded me of large snakes stretched out across the landscape, slumbering under the snow.
Roped up, alpine butterflies set every few meters on the stretch of rope between us, prussics in place and headlamps on, we radioed the other and started out towards camp. It was quickly clear that the heat of the day had almost completely melted out our previous route across the glacier, and I ended up leading us far off route and into a cluster of open crevasses. Communicating with keith we swung back out and around the nest of crevasses and eventually were back on track. At no point was I actually worried. The crevasses were clear in the beams of our headlamps, we had a good system of communicating and moving slowly, and now that we were back on the trial, I knew what to expect.
Soon I came to the edge of a filled in crevasse that we had been stepping over for several days. I stopped at its side, noticing that the width of the slump seemed larger than I recalled, now just less than about a meter across. There had been several consecutive days of top quality warm weather, both days and nights, so changes in the crevasses weren’t surprising. I paused for a second deciding whether to use my axe to probe the edge of the slump just ahead of me to make sure it wasn’t overhanging, or whether to move up right where the slump looked narrower. Before I could do anything, the snow beneath me was suddenly gone. I was falling into nothing. I closed my eyes. Maybe I cried out, I don’t remember, but quickly I was jerked by the rope as Keith flug his weight back against the pull and self-arrested on the slope behind where I had been standing.
I was inside a crevasse.
View from inside the belly of the beast.
It is hard to explain what I felt in that moment, or what the fall itself was like. At no point at any other time in my climbing (or general life) have I felt myself falling so suddenly and unexpectedly. The ground beneath me literally disappeared into nothing. It was terrifying.
It is equally difficult to explain what went through my mind when, a split second later, I opened my eyes to the terrible image of the gaping crevasse that I was now hanging within. I remember my first reaction when I saw the scene below and around me was to close my eyes again, to try and prevent the rising panic and disbelief. But seeing nothing was even more scary, so I opened my eyes again, and breathing hard reached for my radio. “Keith, have you got me?”
I had fallen about 5 meters down, and found myself hanging between two steep walls of crystalline ice that were about as far apart as I am tall; I had my shoulder wedged against one wall, and my foot just reaching a thick ice ‘tufa’ that curled up the opposite side. Down below me was maybe another 20-30 meters of cold air, with a cascade of twisted, haphazard ice blocks leading down to greater darkness below that. It was impossible to tell how deep it really was, but rather than looking down, I felt myself mostly staring along the stretch of the cavern. It felt like I was suspended inside the dark esophagus of an ice beast.
Despite all our crevasse rescue practice, not once had we rehearsed what one should do if you are yourself the one to fall into the crevasse. Thankfully, Keith had easily arrested my fall with the help of the alpine butterflies and the downward angle of the slope below the crevasse. We could communicate through the radio’s we had hanging around our necks and he did a quick, comprehensive assessment of any injuries (basically none, only a painful wrist that would later reveal itself as a bruised bone). He was really brilliant. Totally calm and methodical. I described the quality of the ice on the walls on either side. There was no good blue ice within reach, and white ice crystals showered down when I tried to insert my axe or crampons into the vertical walls just within reach. Inserting my ice screw to create a mini-anchor for myself was not an option; I would be relying on Keith to build an anchor up where he was. Also, the drop was too far below me and the walls too steep for the possibility of of being lowered to a ramp where I might conceivably walk or scramble out of the crevasse. It felt very precarious.
Our best option was for Keith to go about the standard crevasse rescue protocol, first an anchor, then a pulley system. But, to be safe, he immediately started calling camp on the radio - the more hands helping the better and quicker this would be. We both called the boys on the radio multiple times, Keith quickly handing this job over to me whilst he went about securing the line and making us both safe with a T-slot axe anchor. There was no reply. Over the next 20-30 mins or so I got increasingly cold, but kept talking with Keith as he tried to execute a 3-to-one pulley, but the rope had gotten so cut into the lip of the crevasse that it was not moving at all. We needed the others to come so he could back up his anchor and we could introduce a new piece of rope into the system, one which was not already dug deep into the packed snow and ice.
The hole…!
Later we would discover that the others’ radio batteries had died shortly after we had last talked with them. Also, the signal from within the crevasse reached only Keith who was close and above me, but not out horizontally towards camp. But trying to call them on repeat gave me something to do other than panic. Lots of things ran through my mind during that time there. I oscillated between being totally horrified at the fact that I was hanging in this inhospitable, icy cold dark space, and feeling waves of gratitude that Keith had caught me and that I was essentially safe, experiencing first-hand the ancient innards of the glacier which we had been tramping around on top of this whole time.
It was breathtakingly isolated and beautiful and terrifying all at once. It was silent except for the drip drip of melting ice. I started to see shapes in the ice formations below me. One of them looked like a pegasus horse. Others like twisted vines reaching out to me from the darkness below. I thought about what a unique privilege it was to be somewhere where no other human had been, and how amazing ice is. I sang ‘Space Oddity’, quietly so as to not disturb the eery ice sculptures below and around me. I did micro muscle contractions to keep the creeping cold at bay. I counted my breaths and suppressed the waves of panic that inevitably rose up from time to time as my brain re-played the fall and imagined what might have been, if it weren’t for our safety system and Keith’s skill.
We don’t know exactly how long we waited there, Keith trying different things up top and both of us calling the others repeatedly on the radio, but it was probably less than an hour all in all. Eventually, Keith radioed down to me that he had gotten hold of the others - they had wondered where we were, checked the radios and changed the batteries and finally communicated with Keith. They were on their way. It was going to be OK.
The rescue was smooth and fast. The others were extremely well organised and Sasha took the lead on the choreographing everyone during the rescue. They approached from the opposite side of the crevasse to where Keith was anchored, probed and set up their own anchor with a fresh rope, keeping everyone on belay. They hauled me out quickly, got me warm, and got us all safely back to camp, where we ate the most delicious chili I have ever tasted. I felt so incredibly grateful, and also relieved.
New Routing on the Iron Man Buttress
By Cole Robertson
On the first day of good weather in the range, we decide to go cragging at the base of the Iron Man Buttress. We wanted a chance to get a feel for the local rock (how much like the grit would it be?!) and shake off the cobwebs from a couple weeks of manic prep and shopping first in Oxford and then Vancouver. There was also a line of what looked like finger cracks to the far left of the Buttress which had no documented climbs on it. It looked like it could be a top-class route.
We checked it out on the cragging day, and it looked excellent, thin, flakey, balancy cracks supplemented with small chicken heads, at a pretty sustained 70-80 degrees. But it looked real thin at the top… would it go? On that we climbed the first 4-5 pitches of a line immediately to the right of ours. I had to lead one of the most… shall we say… exhilarating pitches of my life. Running out of appropriately sized gear, and wandering through a alpine purgatory of moss and lichen while committing to sustained 5.10+ laybacking with no belay in sight, I eventually climbed to the top of a “three-buttcheek” belay on top of a large pillar and brought Rowland up. At that point, it was possible to step out of the crack system we were in and into the thin finger cracks we’d thought might be a good new route. Rowland lead out and after about 15m realized that if it was going to be a new route, it was going to either need some aid, or be a lot harder than 5.10--the nice finger cracks slammed shut in a burly corner which did not allow us to pass that day. After a halfhearted (and innovative) attempt to aid it on an improvised system, Rowland popped a micronut and we decided it was time to head down for the day.
We let it be for a little while. We climbed the Gibson-Rohn, as well as various other smaller objectives, and Keith and Sasha successfully completed the Ironman-Austerity-Adamant Traverse (over three days!). We wasted a bunch of time setting up a fixed line which would help us navigate the Blackfriar-Adamant col at the Western edge of Austerity glacier. I’d thought it would allow us to complete an objective we’d had on that side of the range, but it took too much time and we ended up not even attempting it. At least the rope helped Sasha and Keith descend over the massive bergschrunds lurking under the col. I was happy to meet them with some Baileys-enriched coffee, food, and a 10.5mm static rope I’d fixed to expansion bolts I placed at the col. I was also happy to leave in place a good rappel descent route for future parties, and later, towards the end of the trip, Bron and Keith would use the lines to access some nice ridge scrambling and climbing. The numerous circles of piled rocks were testament to the number of parties who may have made unplanned bivvys at that col. I hope those bolts will be a welcome sight to many tired mountaineers for years to come.
Rowland starting up Tinman (our new route).
In any case, we faffed with this kind of thing a bit too much, probably due to inexperience in that kind of expedition setting, and the fact we hadn’t clearly defined what our collective objectives would be beforehand. Oh well, the next trip will be even stronger.
Following a post Gibson-Rohn rest day, Bron and Rowland and I set off up the crack system we’d hoped would form our new route. The first pitch was a blocky intro pitch, easily lead. The next 2-3 pitches were brilliant. Perfect cracks and flakes, sustained in the 5.10 range, technical and interesting, balancy. Amazing. We swapped leads until we arrived at the corner which had spat us off the first day. We weren’t that keen on aiding it and we’d left the drill in camp so couldn’t really put in a free attempt. We decided to rap down to a crack system to our left and attempt to lead up and out of it. This all worked, though navigating the swinging rappel with three climbers chewed through the hours pretty quickly. Eventually we got ourselves set up at a ledge under what looked like a truly amazing hand crack. It was Rowland’s lead, and he practically sprinted up it. It looked like he was doing the front crawl… for about 7 meters. Then the crack ran out and he entered a sea of the hollowest sounding rock we’d yet encountered on the buttress. I have to give him that lead. He kept it together admirably, while gingerly picking his way through the minefield he’d found himself in. It was actually a terrible position -- the belay was directly below him. We watched taught and anxious from underneath as he made a huge reach around a loose block to safer terrain. Scary.
Unfortunately, the holds also ran out. Or rather the gear. With gear a meter below his feet, Rowland was unwilling to make some insecure slab moves on crystals to gain the easing terrain above. I shouted that he should take a deep whiff of his armpits and step up, but he said I was welcome to if I wanted. So he rapped down, and I re-lead the pitch only to arrive at the position he’d got to and know with unshakable certainty that I wasn’t going to commit to those moves either. There was no way I wanted to try 5.12 slab climbing over distant gear shoved in hollow sounding flakes on top of a minefield of choss with my belayers directly below me. The line would have been pretty artificial anyway--who wants to rappel traverse in the alpine? If our route was to go it would have to be via the hard corner Rowland had tried to lead on the first day.
Rowland and Sasha and I climbed back up the next day, this time properly equipped with aid gear, bolts, and a drill. We quickly fired the first three pitches and put in a two-bolt belay underneath the hard corner. I aided through the worst of the difficulties. We left a fixed pin at the crux, and I figured it would go free somewhere in the 5.12 range. But it needed a good cleaning and we wanted to make sure the rest of the line connected before wasting too much time on it. So I aided my way though it and kept going. It was gratifying to implement the aid techniques Rowland and I had practiced at the Running Hill Pitts in the Western Grit, though I can’t say I’m an aid climber for life.
Once through the hardest bit, I freed the rest of the pitch and found a belay which a couple of bolts would eventually make comfortable. In the meantime, I suffered until Sasha arrived with the drill. One pitch remained. The crack system at this point petered out, but a couple of bolts allowed us to traverse some moderate slab and gain the final crack of the mainline Gibson-Rohn. We celebrated for a moment on top and then began the rappel descent. We were all too sunbaked and tired to honestly attempt the hard corner--and we stupidly didn’t have the brushes we needed to scrub the lichen off the rock. I’d brought a variety of brushes to the last development expedition I’d been on -- to Namibia -- but the desert rock there had been so clean I’d never even used one. Without considering that the local flora in BC -- which is mostly a rainforest -- might be a little more aggressive, I declined to bring any brushes into the Adamants.
Why is it that the wisdom of experiences has to be gained through mistakes? The trivial nature of any single one of the collective of hard-earned details on which success in the mountains hinges is a constant revelation to me. The quotidian dullness of the fact that not bringing a wire brush might make the difference between a free route and an aid route is amazing. And yet it is the constant process of refinement, skill acquisition, failure, success, and learning that make climbing and mountaineering so compelling to me.
Sun’s out guns out somewhere on the Ironman Buttress.
We were, in any case, very tired. We decided to call the route finished and leave that pitch as an aid pitch. The belays now are bolted and the crux is protected with a fixed pin. Someone will free it soon enough. All that really remain are a hard couple of moves. I think we can be happy with that contribution.
The route climbs the left side of the Ironman Buttress, and on the right side of the same buttress some climbers a few years ago put up a mostly bolted line which they called Man of Steel -- ostensibly because of the number of bolts, but I think they were also bragging about the grade, which is stiff. Not to be outdone, we called our route Tin Man, which at 5.10c, A1 (E2), is not stiff. But it’s a fun route, with some really enjoyable pitches, stunning position, and we think other climbers will enjoy it. What more can you ask for?
The Gibson-Rohn (South Buttress of Ironman)
By Rowland Penty Geraets
From when we first started looking at the area before the trip, the South Buttress of Ironman, also known as the Gibson-Rohn was the route I most wanted to do. It is the classic of the area: 300 metres long with sustained high class pitches up to 5.10+ (E2/3) in a stunning position climbing the face and ridge of the prominent Ironman. If the description isn’t enough, it is also in Fred Beckey’s top 100 climbs in North America, and it’s safe to say he’s done a fair few high-quality climbs.
The day started in the pitch black at 5 am with the horrible sound of my alarm, followed by the immediate feeling of relief that I had a thermos full of coffee wrapped in my down jacket right next to my head, which I had made the night before. I spent a few minutes snug in my sleeping bag sipping coffee and eating a few chocolate M&Ms (i.e. glamping) i was energised and ready to face the world outside a down sleeping bag and put the breakfast on.
Cole and I pounded porridge and hot Gatorade until we felt a bit sick, finished our coffees, and each headed off with a brown paper bag for the morning routine. By now each of us had our own superior and perfected method of pooping in a brown paper bag while standing on icy morning snow. We grabbed our backpacks we had packed the night before and headed off up snow slope by head torch to the start of the route. It’s always amazing the amount of energy from excitement and anticipation you have in these early mornings, or maybe I just drank too much coffee. As we reached the foot of the first pitch, dawn was breaking.
The final part of the morning routine was completed when I started climbing: nervous climbing with icy hands and sewing up the crack. I placed practically the entire rack in the first half of the first 40 metre pitch, only really aware of just how much gear I had in by how bad the rope drag was as the line meandered towards the top. As is often the case, I only realised how fun the pitch was once I reached the anchors, took a breath, and looked around.
Each of the next few pitches was stunning, with face cracks, laybacks, a bit of chimneying (by Cole, more laybacking for me of course). At each belay our camp down on the glacier gradually became smaller and smaller. At the top of the first buttress we began simul-climbing along the blocky ridge, with just a few steps of steep rock posing difficulties. We soon arrived at the base of the crux pitch: the 5.10+ finger crack which splits a steep blank step high up on the ridge. Cole set off up, and climbed through without too much effort. I less stylishly grunted my way up on top rope, the backpack, elevation, and shitty footwork getting the better of me at the crux.
Thinking it was just an easy romp to the top after the crux pitch, I lead off on the last pitch, round the corner, out of sight from Cole, and onto a very precarious slightly overhanging ledge. With what looked like a hard move ahead, I placed a nest of cams, and committed: two good hand jams and a dynamic swing down to smeared feet with 300 metres of sheer granite exposure of the south face of the iron man below me. Definitely the most exciting
Arriving at the top, we had a snack, and thought it might be time to read the descent description. As it turns out, the recommended description involves “four singularly nasty rappels” down a chossy bowl, ending in a gully and then an ice slope which would be impossible to descend safely without ice axes and crampons. Additionally, the gully area had been shedding rocks hourly the last few afternoons, sending them skidding down the ice field. The described descent was off the cards. The option of abseiling the way we had come seemed uninviting as well, due to risk of getting ropes stuck on blockly terrain and sharp chickenheads. Instead we opted for a new descent route: one abseil down into the chossy bowl, then Cole lead a traversing pitch on extremely loose rock, i.e. rocks stuck together with mud. We gained a slightly more solid looking ledge system which traversed across to a ridge we had scrambled two days before. I lead across the ledge which was more a walk than a climb, but a walk where you have to trundle death sized blocks as you go, the burning smell which granite-on-granite impacts make was now firmly in my memory. We gained the ridge, and dropped easily down to the ice-field, where Sasha had dropped a stash of boots, crampons and axes earlier that afternoon.
We walked, slid, and ran back down to camp across slushy evening snow. As we arrived back to camp the sun was starting to dip, we drunk some ice-cold beers and talked plans for the coming days.
Rowland on the way down from the Gibson-Rohn.