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Chief
climber
The NW edge of The Hudson Bay
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 2, 2011 - 11:03pm PT
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Just want to remind people that the book Disaster on Slesse explains the history of the crash in a succinct but informative manner that makes it hard to put the book down. While Paddy does devote some time to Slesse in his book Cloudwalkers, the OKeefe/MacDonald effort offers a more complete picture.
The impact site just below the notch is obvious with blasticated rock and bits of shrapnel and fuselage that gleam in the sun. You can't swing a dead cat down in the basin without hitting a piece of the shattered Northstar. There are a couple of real obvious commemorative markers on the way in and if you're heading up to the east wall or taking the high traverse to the NE Buttress, you can't miss the propeller cairn.
I can't speak for other's impressions of Slesse but it's a stark, jagged and ominous looking peak and that's in summer. In winter it's a veritable nightmare. While it's buttresses and obvious ridges well define the mountain's architecture from a distance, once you're under it, it's an amorphous MoFo. Slesse has been officially designated a Heritage Crash Site and grave marker by the Federal Government and like Yosemite's Sentinel it's definitely a TOMBSTONE!
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bmacd
Social climber
100% Canadian
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I never was so terrified and uncomfortable pre-climb about a route than when Chief dragged me kicking and screaming to the base of Slesses unclimbed North East Face for an attempt in the mid 80's. The gaveyard bivi produced a hideous collection of never to be remembered nightmares scarring me for life ...
The worst was the long silent drive home with our tails between our legs not even having broken the rope out of the pack at the base ...
Utterly, fully and completely mentally humiliated by the most foreboding evil mountain wall in south western BC
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JFrimer
Trad climber
BC
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A good trail now goes to Crossover Meadows and Crossover Pass. 3h from the car to this view.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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A good trail now goes to Crossover Meadows and Crossover Pass. 3h from the car to this view.
I still think the way Anders and I did it was as good as any, and it's also a pretty good proof that you don't have to be fast, to be fast. We climbed the NE Butt just one day after two hot climbers who were keen to blitz it in a day, and despite the fact that we were nowhere near in their class as pure rockclimbers, and that we had no intentions of speed, our doorstep-to-doorstep time was better than theirs -- entirely because we didn't bother with the Crossover descent. We left Vancouver in the morning, parked the car on the Chiliwack river road, hiked in and got partway up the buttress that day, and bivied. Bumbled our way up and over the summit and part way down the west side the next day. Bivied again and then hiked out to the car via the other valley in the early morning and were back in Vancouver before noon. Total time: barely over 48 hours.
Edit to add: regarding the crash, I've been on the mountain a few times, seen debris, but never felt anything I could describe as spiritual or paranormal. I'm sorry for the folks who died, but I never felt haunted by their spirits.
I heard that the other two (Dave Vernon and maybe Richard Suddaby????) blitzed the actual route in 8 hours or so. But to speed their ascent, they bivied at the base the night before and started climbing the next morning. They fired the route in minimal time, but that left them on the summit and their bivi gear back at the start of the route. So no choice but to do the much slower Crossover descent. On which they got caught by darkness. Total time? I think almost three days.
Edit: I've been on the mountain quite a few times, and seen my share of the debris, but never felt anything paranormal. I felt sorry for the people who were killed, but then, I feel sorry for people who are killed in highway accidents, or on battlefields, or who are felled by disease.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Ah. When we climbed it, the Nesakwatch road was closed (bridge had been bulldozed) within a stone's throw of the Chiliwack River Road. Given that hiking down the west side of the mountain was so much faster than going back down the east side via Crossover, the extra hour or so of hike out the valley was irrelevant.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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The trail that Jeremy and friends built a few years ago apparently makes it much easier to get back to the Nesakwatch valley. That said, you still have to get down the regular route, and back along the ridge some distance. There's much more information available now than previously about what to do, but it still requires mountain sense.
I've done the regular route or northwest face several times, once as a day trip. A couple of times we've run into NE buttress parties on top, who were essentially lost in terms of the descent off the tower and into Slesse Creek valley. A good place for a reconnaisance - when David and I did the buttress, he'd done the regular route before, which was quite a help. (Bunch of photos on the 'climbing at Squamish in the 1970s' thread.) We set out from the car (just off the Chilliwack Lake road) in late morning on Saturday, bivouaced 5 - 6 pitches up, and got up and over and down to non-technical ground before bivouacing again. I was in a hurry, so set off very early in the morning after a waterless sleepless late summer night, scuttled down the trail, drank half of the creek, then had a long hike out, essentially to the Chilliwack Lake road again. Then got lucky, got a ride quickly, and got back just as Dave appeared.
The tower descent + Crossover traverse and descent is if anything more challenging, especially in less than good conditions, and shouldn't be underestimated.
Anywhere under the east side of Slesse is a foreboding place, and would be regardless of the crash.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Its a dawdle compared to slesse creek. you guys are sick
Hey, who you callin' sick? Our descent was cake. Two raps off the summit then easy hiking. It's the Crossover descent that was sick. Maybe they've paved it and and put up streetlights and it's okay now, but back when dinosaurs walked the earth it was the sick option. Hiking down the tourist route and strolling out Slesse Creek valley might have been a few klicks longer, but it sure was easy.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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If the 'Crossover' is the one we did back down to the creek on the east
side then I concur. Didn't like that one bit.
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Chief
climber
The NW edge of The Hudson Bay
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 5, 2011 - 03:44am PT
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Interesting weaves of the thread.
Re paranormal interaction with the plane crash.
While it was kind of thought provoking and spooky camping by the propeller cairn, I don't recall anything other than my fertile imagination at work. Clearly the experience made more of an impression on my esteemed colleague bmacd, but then he takes a more liberal view of such things. I certainly wouldn't dismiss such possibilities or make light of another's experiences in this regard and would say, to each their own.
Re Slesse Creek descent over Crossover.
When I soloed the buttress and got to the Crossover option, it looked like a nightmare compared to the superhighway of a trail dropping down to Slesse, so I went that way. I have a different recollection than Ghost as it seemed like an extra ten or fifteen kms, back to Nesakwatch over the way I walked in. In fact the longest leg of the twenty two hour day from Squamish was the descent and walk back to my car. The climb up the buttress proper didn't take more than a couple hours.
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Hardly Visible
Social climber
Llatikcuf WA
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A little previously posted eye candy.
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bmacd
Social climber
100% Canadian
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I was embellishing the bivi experience as is my usual literary style but Tami has been more succinct in describing pre climb emotions but I do well remember the enormity of the task at hand - nothing paranormal inferred in this instance
The grave yard bivi wasn't good for a pre-climb psych up though - or memorial / propeller cairn as it's called
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Chief
climber
The NW edge of The Hudson Bay
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 5, 2011 - 01:11pm PT
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Tami,
Slesse scared me away at last a half dozen times over the years.
The times I did climb it, I couldn't take in the whole mountain at once and had to work really hard at pretending I was brave.
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JFrimer
Trad climber
BC
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Last time I climbed the NE Buttress, I daytripped it, summitting by noon (having climbed the headwall pitches in the rain). 8h from the car to the summit. Our plan was to use the Crossover Descent (pre-trail days). But it was in clouds so we went down the old "normal" trail to the west. Knee-crushing descent, slide alder road, long walk (my friend showed me had enough control to pee while walking!), walking up the Chilliwack road, thumb a ride from kind strangers, back to the car at 8pm. Yup, *with* a ride, it took as long to get back to descend as it did to climb. I timed it from below Crossover Pass last summer. Less than 1.5 hours. Assuming that the descent off the mountain takes 2 hours, that's 3.5 hours back to the car... and you'll find water along the way (unlike the other side). Not to mention the streetlights, pavement, and maniacs wielding machetes.
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