Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Avery
climber
New Zealand
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Feb 8, 2019 - 12:55pm PT
|
Thanks a lot, Chris, for this thoughtful and informative piece.
|
|
Chris Jones
Social climber
Glen Ellen, CA
|
|
George Whitmore’s reference to Gary Colliver’s attempt on Mt. Alberta started another line of inquiry. How had Colliver heard of the Northwest Ridge I wondered. He was not certain, but Glen Denny recalled them discussing Alberta one time on a trip in the Sierra. On the other hand, there were then so few climbers in the United States; how would he not have heard about this famous mountain with just one route? How had the team come together?
He responded; “When Reva, Dick McCracken, and I were planning the 1965 trip, we had arranged to meet Charlie and Trish Raymond at the Columbia Ice Field’s campground on a certain date, after we got out of the Ramparts. When we got to the campground, we ran into Roy Bishop, along with his wife and son, Rusty, who none of us knew previously. I don’t remember if we discussed particulars of his climbing background; all I remember is that he had climbed in the Canadian Rockies several seasons.”
This team of California-based climbers was also very strong. Colliver and companions had made the 1964 first ascent of the formidable Jirishanca Norte in Peru’s Huayhuash. And during 1965 itself Colliver joined Dick McCracken and John Evans to make the fourth ascent of The Nose. Teamed with McCracken and Royal Robbins, Charlie Raymond made the 4-day first ascent of Mt. Hooker’s north face in 1964. And in 1969 Raymond was with Robbins and Joe Fitschen in making three very bold first ascents on the Cathedral Spires in the Kichatna Mountains of Alaska. In the end a bad knee prevented McCracken from joining them on Alberta.
Colliver’s account commences:
“I do remember our 1965 attempt on the NW ridge route on Mt. Alberta. It was on Reva’s and my honeymoon, when we hitchhiked up to Canada. On the attempt Roy Bishop, Charlie Raymond, and I were the climbers.
As far as I can remember, we followed as close as we could to the actual ridge line (perhaps deviating to the left side, but not to the right side), up to the area where the ridge steepens into the obvious rounded buttress that leads to the summit. Low clouds obscured the mountain all day and I don’t remember getting views of the North or the West Faces.
We spent a long day climbing, staying mostly on the north face side of the ridge, as I recollect. At one point we came to a very steep head wall, which I attempted, but the last few feet, which I remember seemed vertical and fairly blank, wouldn’t go, so we backed down a ways and traversed left, further out onto the north face, then up to the lower edge of the summit ice field. From where we met the ice there were a series of narrow ledges—this was where we eventually bivouacked. It didn’t look realistic to go to the right and nothing in that direction that I remember looked like easier terrain; heading straight up the ice above us seemed the obvious way to go; there was no obvious rock route to our right. Looking straight up, the ice disappeared into the clouds, and we had no idea how far we were from the summit. As I remember, I think we took one pair of crampons and one ice axe; (Roy, who done quite a bit of Rockies climbing, assured us we wouldn’t need the ice tools). As I was the one who brought crampons and an ice axe it was my lead. I don’t remember if I went a full pitch and pulled up a second rope so I could descend back to the edge or if I just climbed a half pitch. (I think I hacked a bollard in the ice as a rappel point). I do remember cutting large steps, because I knew the others would be climbing without crampons. Obviously, with crampons and ice axes it would have gone much easier and faster.
Looking at the above photo, a traverse up and right along the line between the rock and the ice seems like the obvious choice to make, but at the time, especially with what little we could see in the mist, that was not clear to us and was never a point of discussion.
There’s a short, sunlit ice rib between the two red lines that may be the most likely place of the pitch I led, as I remember there being something of a rib, a narrow feature in the ice that I ascended on its right side; it may have just been a slight change in angle of the ice. There was no real easing of the angle of the ice to our right, but it definitely got steeper and descended farther to our left. We had, in my recollection, never seen a picture of this side of Alberta and did not know the size, extent, or shape of the summit icecap, which might have helped us make further decisions about how we might proceed.
We spent a cold, rainy night listening to rockfall going down the North Face. In the morning, we were all pretty cold and wet, there was fog engulfing the face, and we could not see what was above the high point I had reached the day before. Reluctantly we decided to descend. We pulled the rope and spent most of the rest of the day rappelling down the route, spent the night at camp, and hiked out the next day.
Not completing the route was probably one of the biggest disappointment of my climbing career. It was my first trip to the Canadian Rockies and climbing on that type of terrain. After that and further experience up there, I don’t think I would ever consider going on such a mountain without everyone having at least crampons and ice axes.”
Just recently Charlie Raymond weighed in. If his recollection is a bit different, remember they are reaching back some 54 years!
“The recounting you have collected from Gary and other info rings true to me except for a few small details. My recollection is that on the lower part of the climb we were mostly to the right (southwest) of the ridge crest or sometimes near to being on it. Higher the ridge is maybe somewhat indefinite. Near the top where the ridge becomes more like a buttress, we went around to the north. My guess is that we reached the summit ice pretty close to where the right-most line in the photo above reaches its lower edge.
I led the pitch from the base of the “headwall" mentioned by Gary, moving to the left toward the north face and then up to a nice ledge at the base of the ice. It was some of the most comfortable climbing on the whole route. Reasonably clean rock. When I arrived at the ledge I erroneously felt that we had it made. The steep ice did not look all that long. The slope was slightly convex laterally, but not on a rib of ice. My memory is pretty clear. When Gary and Roy were up to the ledge, Gary went at the slope with a lot of energy as he described. He went up close to a full pitch. It was clearly a lot of hard, wet work. I followed benefiting from the large steps cut by Gary. When I got up to Gary, he was wet and quite tired and not ready to continue leading. It looked to me that the slope would become somewhat less steep fairly soon up and to the right and wanted to go on. This is where not having more than one ice axe / crampons set made a real difference. Switching the crampons on to my feet on the steep slope was not appealing. Also it was getting late in the day. So we rappelled down to the ledge. I agree with Gary that there were no easy alternatives from that ledge off to the right to get around the steep ice. We would have just been moving sideways a long ways on steep ice just above the headwall that Gary had earlier grappled with.
After the bivouac the weather was not encouraging, so we did not force onward. All disappointed. Over the years, I have looked back thinking that we should have gone on. Looking at these photos I sort of arrive at the view that we probably made the right decision. There was a lot more ice up there than we realized. I have thought that there were 2 primary reasons that we did not complete the climb. First the attempt to climb the "headwall”. That was really hard rock climbing for those circumstances and we lost a lot of time and energy in that diversion. Secondly, but more important, we all should have had ice axes and crampons. We made a bad collective decision on that one. Looking at photos of the mountain from the north ahead of time might have helped us get our planning right. Having somebody on the team, who was really comfortable on ice would have been the best addition.”
This team had the summit within their grasp. Was it the weather that turned the tide, or the decision to leave axes and crampons behind? It was certainly not their skills. Perhaps adding their frequent climbing partner Royal Robbins to the team might have upped the ante - but that year of 1965 he was climbing in the Alps. As it was the first ascent of this general line had to wait another 25 years - but not for lack of attempts.
|
|
Chris Jones
Social climber
Glen Ellen, CA
|
|
After reading Barry Blanchard’s account posted above, Gray Thompson sent me some fascinating news: he had returned to the Northwest Ridge almost 20 years after our 1970 attempt for another tussle with Alberta. And equally intriguingly he wrote: “Denny Eberl and I had attempted Alberta's NE ridge in the summer of ’66 after our Mt Logan climb with Boyd Everett & Co. We spent 10 days in the rain before retreating, meeting Jim McCarthy, John Hudson and Lito Tejada-Flores on our way out via Woolley Shoulder, who were coming in to try the same route. I don’t think they got any further than we did.”
So here is an entirely different line of investigation for someone: early attempts on Alberta’s Northeast Ridge, which was ultimately climbed by K. Swigert and S. Tenney in 1985.
This new cast of characters streaming up and down Woolley Shoulder just about rounds out all those US-based climbers with alpine pretensions in that era. Dartmouth climbers Eberl and Thompson in 1967 joined the immensely talented Dave Seidman and Roman Laba to climb McKinley’s Direct South Face, and the next year made the first ascent by Americans of the Matterhorn’s North Face. Jim McCarthy was the outstanding Shawngunk climber of his time. Among other alpine routes he established the Southeast Face of Proboscis in the Logan Mountains, together with Layton Kor, Dick McCracken and Royal Robbins. I first me Lito Tejada-Flores in 1964 when he arrived back in Chamonix after an attempt on the Direct West Face of the Dru with John Harlin and Nick Estcourt. Qualification enough.
This brings the narrative to the 1970 attempt that I made with Eberl and Thompson which is higher up the thread. An assortment of partners were due to arrive in due course, but for the moment I was adrift. The Alpine Club of Canada then had a classic wooden clubhouse with adjacent cabins on a wonderful site just up the Sulphur Mountain road from town. When at the clubhouse before in 1967, we were charmed by the afternoon teas and the overall feeling that we were back in the 1940s. Also, those in residence were in general going for hikes to Lake O’Hara or around Lake Louise; there did not seem to be any actual climbers in sight. Nothing had changed in 1970. So when Eberl and Thompson showed up I was completely astonished; I knew of them thru their Matterhorn ascent, which to my mind was pretty out there. (In fairness I should point out that over the years we had many great times at the Banff clubhouse. There was a self-cooking area for those of us not getting full board, and the staff were really great. It was just not the place to find climbing partners).
It seems unlikely that no one visited the west side of Alberta between 1970 and 1988, but nonetheless, that is the next attempt of which I am aware.
Gray Thompson narrates: “Mark Whiton, John Barstow and I hiked up the Athabasca River from the highway to get to the NW arete of Alberta in 1988.
We scrambled up the long slope from the river to where the Vulgarians had left that note long ago. From there, the “arete” became a very steep face of weak loose black limestone that led to the summit ice, which looked threatening and carved by deep, steep ice gullies that appeared to be a passage to the top of Alberta.
John had decided not to come up with us. Mark began leading the short, steep and difficult face using several knife blades for aid. As Barry said in his article, none of the placements looked like they’d hold any more than tentative body weight. As Mark climbed, a flurry of rocks came down and struck me on the back with enough force to cut holes in my nice alpine jacket, but only made bruises and drew no blood.
It was getting late, darkness was coming soon, and the ice gullies were shrouded in fog and mist making them look like an entrance to some kind of Hell, although they’re probably a nice path to the summit. We were only 20 feet or so from the top of the rock and beginning of the ice. Mark had used all the knife blades and needed to lower down to recover some of the lower ones to keep going higher toward the ice.
At that point, we discussed whether to go on given the complications from recovering some of the lower pins, the weather and lateness. We decided that he’d get in as good a pin as he could and lower off, which he did.
So the sling material that Barry and Jim saw on their successful climb was probably ours, and we’d not made it to the top so theirs’ was the first ascent. I mentioned this to Barry when I met him at the 2004 Banff film festival when we also met you.”
In a later communication Thompson remarks: “I think the main reason we bailed was that the climbing was easy/moderate to that last pitch, and then became hard aid on knife blades and rurps that Mark was doing, and it was getting dark and it looked like a storm was coming in. In retrospect I don’t think it’s a very good route, although it certainly would have been a new one on a big peak.
Somewhere in my hundreds of thousands of old slides, I have a photo of the Vulgarian’s note, too. I’ll send a copy if I find it.”
|
|
Chris Jones
Social climber
Glen Ellen, CA
|
|
After delving into the above attempts and forays, it was hard to resist the allure of the northeast ridge. As we are talking about many of the same characters, it seems okay to post here rather than on Alberta Northeast Ridge thread.
In answer to a query on his 1966 attempt on Alberta, Lito responded: “I can’t quite remember much about what took us to Alberta for a not very serious attempt. Nor do I remember any other parts of the story. I do sort of remember some very powerful and intriguing black and white photos of Alberta back then, in Ascent I think.”
Jim McCarthy however responded: “While Lito may not recall our adventures on Alberta I do recall them … quite vividly.” In a phone conversation he explained: “We were interested as we knew Art Gran and John Hudson had been up on Alberta. I was in the lead as we crested Woolley Shoulder. I looked at North Twin; it was so scary, it was unbelievable. On the approach Lito had been talking up “North Twin, North Twin”. I was watching him as he arrived and got his first look at that face. Stunned, he just took 3 steps backward. The north face of Alberta was obviously a huge undertaking; our ice tools were no good. So off we went to the northeast ridge - it looked climbable. Solid rock for the most part. We were maybe 4 - 5 pitches up the very steep headwall. We had some nuts etc., but in mountain boots it was hard: 5.8 to 5.9. No cracks, nothing. I was perhaps 60 feet up with nothing in. Ahead I thought there was a crack, but it was dicey. I went on and got to the crack, emotionally drained, and hammered in a pin. After I brought the others up we took stock. There was another pitch like that ahead; I thought I won’t do another lead like that again. So we roped off; there was no sign of any previous attempts.”
Thinking about McCarthy’s comments I realized that the northeast ridge was not their original intent. What was? Jim replied: “North Twin was first on Lito’s list with Alberta second.”
|
|
Mighty Hiker
climber
Outside the Asylum
|
|
Thanks, Chris! Lots of sleuthing there.
Two not involved seem to have been Fred Beckey and Leif Norman Patterson. Leif in particular knew and did a lot of climbing with Glen Denny and Gary Colliver. (But probably not the Vulgarians…) Both Fred and Leif had climbed a lot in the Rockies, although they both liked to find entirely new paths.
And perhaps there were Canadians who gave it a try, but didn't have much success and so didn't record anything?
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!