Skoll Peak - New routing in the Klinaklini area
We drove up to Whitesaddle Ranch and met Mike King who would fly us in the following morning if the weather was appropriate. As always Mike was hospitable and presented us with ongoing banter and stories from his vast experience of flying in the mountains of BC. Setting up camp on Mike’s lawn at the side of Bluff Lake, we prepped our gear for an early flight the next morning.
We awoke to perfect flying weather; calm, clear, albeit a little warm. We launched bright and early and headed for the basin to the East of Skoll NE3. Our plan was to set up a base camp in a position to attack the large south east facing wall on Skoll NE3. If we were able to do a few routes up the face than we would begin drawing our attention towards other walls in the area. With four climbers, we operated as two teams of two. Danny Guestrin and myself, and Sam Fagan and Andrew Sylvester.
After landing, we celebrated our arrival to a beautiful camp surrounded by amazing alpine scenery; big walls, glaciers, goats, boulders, and alpine meadows. I was happy that my scouting while working at Bella Coola Helisports the previous winter was paying off and my friends didn't seem to think I had led them astray. The rock appeared to be good, grey, coastal granite. Hopefully with some luck the south facing walls wouldn't have too much lichen on them and soon we'd be scaling them.
Our first close up look at the wall. There are a ton of crack systems and it seems most of them would be possible to climb. Danny and I chose to take the path of least resistance starting with the chimney.
With camp established, we took some light packs and headed up towards the wall equipped with a drone and binoculars. We were hoping to gain a better idea of the lines we would attempt the following day if the weather allowed. The weather we had that first day of perfect blue skies and calm winds would seldomly return for the rest of the trip.
In the morning we awoke to drizzle on the tent and skies socked in as is typical in the coastal alpine environment. We scrambled around some of the more moderate peaks in the area gaining better knowledge of the surrounding walls and likely doing a first ascent with the four of us. It is truly a beautiful area with loads of potential for future climbers.
The following day we were blessed with much nicer weather. Not what I'd call splitter but stable enough to pursued us to go for it. We rose out of the tents at around six AM. Danny and I had spotted a line and decided to attack it in a fast and light style with a casual Squamish start. Leisurely, we had breakfast, packed up, and made our way across the loose boulders outside camp and up towards the wall. Sam and Andrew were on a similar program but they decided to bring the drill and haulbag and prepare to establish the finest line on the wall no matter the difficulty.
The Climb
Both teams, about 40m apart, began to throw themselves at the wall. Danny and I started up the first pitch which was technical cracks that ramped up to a climax of climbing around a few tetering blocks to enter into a chimney that would give us access to the main wall. It went without too much trouble.
Danny leading the chimney on the second pitch: Surprisingly great climbing ending in perfect hand jams through a roof!
Second pitch was a beautiful chimney ending in a roof pull with a handcrack. Danny led this one and did a great job climbing the steep and clean granite. Both of us were ecstatic at the quality of the climbing on the first two pitches.
The Third pitch was my lead, and it proved less obvious in its route. I tried straight above the belay to start but was met with very hard, very flaring cracks, so downclimbed back to the belay and traversed to the crack system to the right of the main corner. Following discontinuous cracks in the right system, I cruised up to a dyke feature that looked like I could traverse back into the main corner. Succeeding on the traverse, I built a belay in the main corner again and brought Danny up.
Danny crushed the fourth pitch, climbing straight up a perfect corner with hands until reaching a tower of blocks. Deciding to tension left for a brief moment to gain a crack system parallel to the corner, Danny managed to avoid the blocks. Following, I was able to free the move out of the corner and work my way up the parallel crack to the belay. I lowered down once at the belay and trundled the tower of blocks, very thankful for Danny's diligence avoiding them and most likely saving the day and possibly my life.
Since the fourth was a short pitch, Danny launched off on pitch five again. Another great pitch leading us to the top of the pillar on the left side of the long corner.
We thought the route would follow the face cracks above but once arriving to the top of the pillar and seeing the face, the cracks looked discontinuous, full of grass, and hard to protect. I headed left through a large chimney system and traversed further left into a corner with a nice crack.
Danny taking a leak on top of the tower at the top of pitch 5.
The eighth pitch continued to follow the corner and led Danny into a flaring chimney that narrowed down to a five and six inch crack. The dirt and moss was flying down onto the belay and the winging had begun. Danny heroically led off into the unknown up the offwidth until eventually I heard a yell that he was off belay. I managed to free all the moves following and we graded this the hardest pitch at 11-.
A short pitch brought us across the ledge and up a few steps to the base of the upper headwall. The next two pitches were mid 5th class with a few moves of 5.9 and brought us to a ledge below a menacing corner and roof.
The 12th pitch was my lead and I dispatched up the intimidating and steep corner. Some tough moves brought me out of the corner to a number of blocks which also proved challenging but eventually brought me to a belay below a final obstacle before the summit ridge.
The last pitch(13th) before the ridge was seriously overgrown with lichen and had a steep crack right off the deck. We opted to do a few moves of aid to move past this and keep flowing towards the top. It was now very late in the day and we both knew we were likely going to be bivying on the summit ridge, or close to it, unless we kept a steady pace towards the top.
I believe it was three more pitches of simul-climbing to reach the summit once gaining the ridge. We reached the summit at about 2115. We were both absolutely psyched that we had pushed through our doubts on the route and were standing on this amazing peak in the middle of absolutely no where. Unfortunately we had to keep moving. We snapped a few photos and began scoping out our descent with the last rays of light at about 2130.
Just after gaining the summit ridge. Three pitches of simul-climbing to go.
Our plan was to gain the south ridge of the mountain by rappelling off the summit block to the south. It was difficult to see as we lost light but we managed to scramble down quite a ways before slinging a boulder to rappel towards the ridge. We made a 60m rappel and then a 30m rappel before hitting ground we were able to scramble again.
Gaining the ridge, we moved South until reaching a gully we had scoped the previous day. We headed down into the gully, a loose, sandy, scary place that we tried to spend as little time as possible in. We made one short rappel which set us up in the gully proper. From there one long 60m rappel got us out of the scary part of the gully and sheltered along the skiers right side of the slope behind some rocks. We made one more double rope rappel off of a bollard. At the end of the ropes, Danny began down climbing the glacier and I began to rappel. Reaching the end of the ropes I attempted to pull the rope but failed to be able to make any movement in the rope. The rope was stuck on the bollard.
We decided to abandon the ropes for the time being as it was now the middle of the night. We headed back down to camp content with our effort. I stormed into our tent in a state of exhaustion, disoriented, crashing into the tent and awakening Andrew at about 330 in the morning. Sleep immediately took me.
The following morning we chatted with Sam and Andrew about their route. They had made it about a pitch from bench before the headwall when they were stumped by grassy offwidth cracks one way and closed seems the other. We went to rescue our ropes and were able to get them back. We brought the drill up and Danny added a one bolt rappel anchor above the last steep snow rappel.
Playing the worlds smallest game of scrabble in the tent with four stinky climbers on a down day.
The rest of the trip was plagued with poor weather. We spent countless hours bantering in the tents, playing scrabble, chess, reading books, and snacking our food away. Finally we woke up to decent conditions again, and both teams racked up and took off for the day. Danny and I were first, as we had our eyes set on a traverse of the main skyline, finishing at the top of Skoll NE3 and using the already established descent from our first route.
The Swindler’s Traverse
We walked across the glacier from camp to the north and gained the col and the start of the ridge. Almost right away we found splitter, clean cracks. Reminiscent of the moderate splitters on the Squamish Apron, we solo'd our way up the first bit of ridge during first light of the day. This route, placed in the sea to sky, would be an absolute alpine classic and consisted of short pitches of technical climbing up to 5.9 followed by scenic summits and rappels down to interesting notches followed by more short and fun 5.7-5.9 climbing on good rock. One section was a bit loose but was followed immediately by more mid 5th class splitters to another summit. Views of the Waddington range drew us further south throughout the day until we reached the summit of Skoll NE3 a second time. This time we knew the descent and we were much earlier so we lounged on the summit, snapped a few more photos, and enjoyed the views. An absolutely classic day.
Back at camp early, we chatted with Sam and Andrew about their attempt back on their route, the Smoking Section. Aptly named after the two endlessly rolling cigarettes on every trip we have done together. They described how absolutely splitter and amazing their route was but how they had again hit a wall. They reached near their previous high point, dog legged left and been stumped again. The route is equipped with bolted anchors, is 5 star climbing, and is waiting for someone to finish the final few pitches.
More bad weather was followed until the final day. We laid in camp unsure of our ability to be plucked in the endless drizzle and haze of grey. Danny even tried to muster camp to move downslope into the valley at about 6pm with only a few hours of availability for Mike to fly. We talked Danny down off the ledge and we quietly waited, anticipating likely not being able to leave as planned. A short window popped and Mike pounced. Flying through spotty clouds and barely managing to find us in the merk, Mike came in hot to a dank camp of smiles.
We left with hearts full; a great week with four great friends, zero beta, and a range full of possibilities.
A view of camp at dusk.
Danny and I established two routes:
Hail Mary (5.11-, C1, 500m), to the Summit of Skoll NE3(Copenhagen Peak)
The Swindlers Traverse 5.9, 9 pitches of climbing with 8 rappels total throughout the day. 1.8km of technical travel. A variety of summits and spires.
Sam and Andrew established one route with two potential finishes:
The Smoking Section (5.10+, 6 pitches, 150m), southeast ridge, Copenhagen Peak (Skoll NE3)
Skoll Peak NE3 (Copenhagen Peak) Topo - Hail Mary(left) and The Smoking Section
