By Christian Mason

This is difficult to write, and harder to share. Hopefully admitting to some very stupid mistakes will help someone else. If nothing else, writing this has been a bit cathartic for me. Every big climb I’ve been on has changed me. Sometimes it brought clarity, and contentment after the turmoil of emotions subsided.

This trip left me more confused than before I left. Don and I planned on climbing the North Face of Athabasca, something I’ve been drooling over ever since I started climbing. We were successful, if you can call taking twice the expected time and returning with black finger tips a success. I can’t.

We started Saturday morning for our first attempt. We planned on leaving the car at midnight, but there was a thick cloud cover over the mountain, so we stalled for a few minutes and watched the weather. We decided to start the approach, and see how things looked. We scrambled over the rocky moraine and up to the glacier before deciding to bail for the day. The weather had cleared somewhat, but we still couldn’t see the top 1800 or so feet of the mountain and the going had been far to slow in light of the poor visibility. We headed back to the car, for around a seven hour round trip. It served as good acclimatization and route finding though.

Saturday we left for our second attempt, leaving the parking lot around 1 am and moving quickly through the approach trail. The lower glacier went quickly as well, some bare ice in the beginning then good stable snow, with around six to eight inches of boot penetration. We had to cross quite a few snow bridges over gaping, car eating crevasses. These were generally pretty good as well, though a in few places I was forced to trust snow where my glacier axe found “nothing” underneath.We hit our first snag higher on the Athabasca glacier. The cloud that had lingered over the mountain the day before had deposited ton of very fine sugar snow, and I was post holing up to my knees. I strongly considered turning around here. I’d spoken to the rangers several times over the last few days, and they felt that even with a lot of snow the danger of a slab avalanche would be minor (since there was no slab formation yet) but point releases were possible. I stopped and probed the snow, listened to my inner dialog and tried to decide what to do. We would be exposed to danger for about an hour if we moved through here quickly and I felt energetic and strong, if slightly out of breath from the altitude.

I broke trail the rest of the way to the face and we reached it right as the sun was coming up. The plan had been to have Don lead the face, and simulclimb the entire thing. Unfortunately Don had made a logistical error, forgotten to keep eating and was really bonking hard, having to push to keep up. He sucked it up and we simulclimbed (slowly) about 400 feet before setting the first belay. I felt we were moving far too slowly, and suggested rapping off v-threads and descending. We were perhaps four pitches from the top though, and I felt comfortable, so we decided to pitch out the remainder of the climb.

I ran up the ice, placing two to three screws per pitch. My moderate angle technique does need a bit of work, and I found myself struggling not to front point at times as well as really feeling the altitude. I would go thirty feet or so at what felt like a comfortable all day pace (based on my legs and heart) then find myself gasping for air. Still we made decent time on the face (eight hours or so) considering the fixed belays.

Here is where I made a huge, potentially fatal mistake. There was a party ahead of us doing the regular North Face route, so it should’ve been trivial to follow them. Against all logic and common sense I convinced myself that they were doing the Hourglass and instead took another gully left of the correct one.

Things didn’t go as planned….

The ice steepened to about eighty degrees. I was expecting it to be lower angle from the route description, but still thought I was on correct path. Initially it took good screws (stubbies with screamers) then it narrowed to about a foot wide and became too thin to place screws…then too thin to swing the tools…
The climbing was amazing. I was scared at that point, but it was a manageable fear. Being on the front points almost felt good after the intermediate climbing I had been doing all day. I found myself climbing a left facing corner with a narrow, thin runnel of ice in the back. Stemming out on the rock to rest the calves. Counter pressure moves between hands and crampons, tapping the tools in so as not to break the ice…
Amazing climbing.

There were supposed to be fixed pins on the route, but I couldn’t find any. I thought the snow was simply hiding them. I was having to brush off holds to see if they were slopers or positive.

I ran the rock step out.. it was only about 12 feet long, and found decent ice above it. I put a screw in and clipped into it. As much to rest my head as my body. To let the fear settle. The climbing felt, well, hard for 5.4 but not out of the question.

Then I looked up….
Another rock band…about ten feet above me and 15 feet high.
No ice on this one.

I changed into liner gloves, I would need better feel than my ice gloves could provide for a lot of this section.

The ice became snow, no more gear before the rock band.
Up a corner again. Crap rock and no gear.
Feeling the holds shift under my weight. Trying to push in on them as I moved.
Then up to a small, slightly overhung bulge. I looked down and considered my position. I was about twenty feet above a stubby. If I came off I was looking at a minimum of forty feet. Over a rock band and onto eighty degree ice.

Something would break, and Don was in no shape to get me down, or get help in time.
The revelation was clear and clinical. “I might as well be soloing, if I fall, I will die. Maybe not immediately, but I won’t make it down”. I over gripped and felt panic welling up. Thoughts of never seeing my daughter again, of dieing on this mountain, of death not being an abstract thought, or a risk to be considered but something tangible, right here, NOW. I was disgusted with myself for being here, for risking my life so callously. I couldn’t find the move above me. I started to move up and one of my tools caught on a hold at my waist, nearly pulling me off.

“calm down”… I set the tool over the obstruction.

The times climbing I’ve been truly sketched out there has always been some calming inner voice. Something telling me that I would make it. I don’t know its source. Just some inner (perhaps misplaced) confidence? Something spiritual? Simply a defense mechanism?

I don’t know the origins of that voice, only that it’s been there, and was there now, clear as day. “You’re not going to fall.” Coming through over my panicked breathing. “You’re not going to fall, take your time, find the moves…you can do this….you WILL do this.”.

It was surreal. This was the most terrified I have ever been, a few deep breaths and I committed. Moving my crampons up on small edges, balancing on the front points. It gave me enough reach to find a good hold over the bulge. Steady myself on it, step up.. and place both feet solidly on big holds. The angle backed off here, and there was more snow on the rock, easier climbing…

The shaking started, the fear I had repressed for the last few minutes coming out of me in spastic breathing. The voice chimed out again. “Slowly.. deep breaths… you’re not done yet.”.

There was NO way what I climbed was 5.4, but I thought the route was just out of condition (perhaps that was why the others had taken the Hourglass?).

It took me an hour to find a belay for Don. The rock was complete crap. I drove a decent knife blade in and clipped a screamer to it. It seemed ok, didn’t move and rang true, but I didn’t want to trust one piece. I clipped it and moved on. An angle next, it was no good, the whole block it was in shifted. I tried digging down in the snow to good ice, but found only more lose rock with snow over it. With more lose rock below.

Finally in desperation I started digging. I could carve out a good stance in the snow at least, and hold Don on my harness. I dug down a few feet, found a few inches of ice that was bonded to the rock on the sides, but detached in the center. It took a screw.. it might have held a second’s fall. I noticed that I’d blown the tips out of my thin gloves climbing the rock, in the back of my mind something vaguely told me I should switch to warm gloves… I brushed the thought aside..just as soon as I finish the anchor. Both tools were plunged into the snow, and I packed it down around them.. they held strong tugs… better than nothing, maybe.

I clipped into the mess. Dug my foot in, and prayed Don wouldn’t fall. He did, I caught it on my harness, the anchor never felt it.

He arrived at the belay, and told me he’d broken his hand. Or more specifically one of the big rocks I’d knocked loose had. I could see the swelling in his glove already. He’s a tough one. Seconding that pitch with one hand that didn’t work, then calmly reporting it.

There were a few hundred feet of easy snow between us and the summit ridge, though in places it was over thin shifting rock.
We unroped and soloed to the ridge.

Stepping on that ridge is something I’ll always remember. It was narrower than we expected, a few feet wide, but with good steps kicked in it. It dropped off for over a thousand feet in either direction, and to the south I could see the expanse of the Columbia ice fields stretching off into the distance. The sun was setting and the entire scene was bathed in a rose colored glow. More importantly, I was beginning to believe we’d make it back. It was settling in.

The camera was at the bottom of my pack, underneath the rope. Not worth the time to take it out, we wanted to get off the ridge before dark.

The descent was long and all the new snow scared me (we could see evidence of small point release slides) but we made it down. We had footprints to follow…
We were out for 24 hours total (24 hours fifteen minutes).
I’ve never been so tired in my life. I was starting to see things on the moraine, my brain cast the shadows into people, the car, writing, anything to make sense of what was going on,

A day of sleep, of rest and of hydration. I was convinced I would never do any alpine climbing again. As it is, the route is beautiful, and I would love to go back. But I’ve been made aware of a very real weakness. My route finding sucks, pure and simple. I was lucky in that I was strong enough to climb through some very nasty stuff I got myself into.

I will post my technical notes on gear, route planning and preparation for analysis later. The point of this trip report is to share the experience, the dull post mortem (thankfully on the climb, and not me and Don) will be separate. I am glad to be home, and thankful for the wake up call that I lived through. I was convinced for days afterward that if I continued mountaineering it would kill me. I’ve done two “real” mountains now, and had epics due to route finding on both of them. I will climb in the mountains again, but I NEED to address the weaknesses I have seen before I do that. It did show me something about myself. I’ve very glad to know I can perform under that kind of “do or die” pressure I saw here, but I also don’t want to have to do it again.

I would estimate the climbing we did at 5.7 with lose rock, 80 degree thin ice, and deserving of an R rating, though perhaps someone much more skilled than I could’ve found gear. All in all I feel much more confident in my climbing ability, head and fitness, and much less so in my decision making.