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18 Posts |
Posted - 08/09/2012 : 5:55 PM
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Siwhe (2843m) is just about 20km northwest of Lytton. This was a three-day BCMC trip lead by Greg Stotlmann, his fourth after 3 unsuccessful attempts. This was my second attempt, as I was on last year’s trip (trip report here: http://www.clubtread.com/sforum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=39940&SearchTerms=stein). Joining us were Rodolfo and Mark, also part of last year’s group.
The general plan was to approach Siwhe from the North, and then do a big “backwards C”, going eastwards, then looping back west to hop onto Siwhe’s SE ridge roughly 1.5 km SE of the summit. Distance from car to camp: about 13.5km. Distance from camp to summit (one way): about 14.5km.
 
We left Vancouver Friday shortly before 5pm, headed for Lytton where we took the Lytton ferry across the Fraser river. We drove about another hour looking for a flat area to car-camp. About 45-60 mins in, we found a nice area with a barely visible sign that said “Spaghetti Flats”. This area is flat, dry, large enough to accommodate a number of vehicles, many many tents and is off the road so that the dust of other cars driving by isn’t an issue. There were few bugs and we didn’t set up tents.
Woke up at 5am, were in the car by 6, drove further up the road to a ranch (the road at this point almost does a close to 180 degree switchback). We parked the car, got our final preparations ready and were hiking by 6:30am. The beginning of the hike goes along a cattle trail that takes you up above the left side of the ranch. Just follow the path (heads West). We soon reached some kind of grassy plateau, the trail faded out but keep right and you will find the trail again. There area number of forks that seem to rejoin further up. We always took the straightest path (on the way back we didn’t). Shortly after the trail drops towards the river. The trail at this point is very well defined and well maintained. Further in, you will get to a gate that blocks the way to a first bridge. Go around the gate but do not cross this first bridge (we did and it cost us about an hour or so...) Keep walking until you see the second bridge. Cross this one. The trail continues, keep following it, you’ll be steadily gaining elevation, staying mostly in trees, crossing a few rock slides. At some point you will reach an area where you can see that the trail veers to the right (there’s a tree on the left hand side with a big knot in it) towards a valley that is not the one you want to be on. At this point we left the trail, dropped down towards Siwhe creek to cross it again - found some decent logs (it took us about 4 hours of travel time - not counting breaks or mistakes we had to correct- to get to here...).
Now, once on the other side, we should have gone leftwards (somewhat perpendicular to the direction we had been traveling while on the trail), but our group got separated and our route ended up being a bit more convoluted. Greg who had been here before says that the path is easier if you stay low and don’t gain too much elevation. The idea is to walk along a a different creek, on the right side of the creek. At about 1500m elevation, on the left side of this creek, there are some more open areas made up of boulders/loose rock. When you see these, it is easier to travel on the left side of the creek. The boulders are much easier to travel on. At this point the views open up and the Siwhe range appears in the distance (summit not visible).
Once on the East side of the creek:
View from Camp (Siwhe summit not visible):
We finally made it to the lake (1720m elevation, roughly 2km directly North of Siwhe) at 7:20pm or so. The bugs were pretty bad. We camped on the far south side of the lake. Most areas were pretty wet/ marshy but we found one that was decently not too wet.
The way in crosses the Siwhe creek a few times and then crosses some other creeks that are draining from further up, so it is possible to refill on water. However, for the first 4-5 hours, there’s a lot of cow and horse shit right next to the river... At the lake the water is rather still, but there are creeks flowing from higher up that one can get water from.
We got everything set up, had dinner and were ready to get to bed around 10pm with a plan to get moving by 4:30am the following day. By 4:30am, only Greg and I were game for attempting Siwhe. We left camp shortly before 5am. We hiked up the left side of the valley (going E-SE) through some bush in order to gain a col at 2200m that is just under 2km from Siwhe on its NE ridge. The micro-terrain on this ridge is such that using it seems like a bad idea. The bush from the camp goes on only for a short section and then things open up nicely before that col. Once at the col we dropped down about 200m and got to a small lake, about 1km SE of the col. This would have been a very nice place to camp but would have made for a very very long first day. There is ample opportunity to get water from anywhere from the camp to the col and then to this lake. The travel is mostly on rock/heather/boulders and is very very pleasant and scenic. Almost all of the travel (all the way to the summit) was hiking, use of hands was only for balance.
Greg on his way to the col:
Path to Col from Camp:
Path From Col to Siwhe:
Views from the col & close to the col:
Looking back:
Last Year's consolation prise (Stein):
Siwhe (center):
The views along the way are very very nice, including the NE face of Stein (last year’s consolation prize after not making it to Siwhe - we were camping in the bowl south of Stein), as well as Siwhe’s East face.
Once past this little lake we continued SE contouring a large moraine. At this point we made a major mistake and went off-route, mis-identified our position and veered East instead of West. I don’t know why that happened since we could have just opened the map and checked our elevation and avoided this whole detour, but we didn’t and it cost us quite a bit of energy and time and increased our total distance by 1.5km. After realizing this we back-tracked and moved steadily West until we got to the lake 2km almost directly East of the summit. THERE IS A GLACIER ABOVE THE LAKE THAT IS NOT ON THE 1:20,000m MAPS. As a side-point, none of the glaciers in the area are on the map and it’s worth pointing out that they seem to be “everywhere”: there is one that is on the East face of Siwhe, and a few others are located all along the East sides of the SE ridge. Greg who had been in the area on prior attempts had seen them and we came prepared with glacier gear.
Glacier and Lake SE of first bump East of Siwhe summit:
This col on the right is the col we want to ascend to get on the SE ridge. Siwhe is right of that (not in picture):
    
We stopped above the lake for a 1/2 lunch break (by then it was just after 12:30 or so). The glacier has a number of crevasses that weren’t quite completely open. The general plan was to head for the “second col” SE of the summit. We debated heading more north and hoping onto a northern ridge, but in hindsight that seems like it would have been a bad decision (from further up it wasn’t obvious how one would connect back to the first bump SE of Siwhe - the terrain is, in parts quite jagged and steep and these details are not visible from the map or from below). We wasted a bit of time getting ready (crampon difficulties) and were only walking by 1:30pm. Once at the col, we got rid of the rope, I chose to carry my crampons, Greg left them behind - he had hard plastic boots with good edging while I had general purpose mountaineering boots that were not the best on snow. Greg took a personal break and I started on the rock, heading towards Siwhe. The rock was mostly fine but some of it was loose. Greg hadn’t started his way to I chose to backtrack with the idea to contour a little lower on snow on the east side of the ridge. Greg started off on the snow and I followed his steps. At this point the snow is quite hard and while we were on flattish bit, it does drop off quite steeply on the right-hand side and a fall and slide would be unpleasant to say the least. I put my crampons back on. Once past that bit, travel is unexposed and fast, though on loose rock/small boulders.
View from Col:
We stayed on snow to cross over this:
Siwhe seems to have some kind of permanent ice cap towards its top. We stayed on the right for a more direct ascent, having taken so much time already. We got to the summit at 3:58pm and unfortunately didn’t have the luxury to have a nice break. We stayed exactly 9 minutes before heading down. By then we of course knew that we would be traveling in the dark, but we wanted to get as far as possible while there was light.
Siwhe summit:
Greg about to get up on the permanent ice cap:
Summit:
 
Setin viewed from Siwhe summit:
We managed to get through most of the boulder fields while there was some light out. It took us about 6.5 hours to get to just below the first col above the camp. At that point we took our second 1/2 hour break of the day. It was good to be at the col already, the terrain would not have been easy to navigate in the dark. We got to camp close to 1:30am, very very tired after traveling a total distance of about 30km that day.
Rodolfo and Mark got up to greet us, Greg went straight to bed, I decided to have something warm to drink and eat a little. I got to bed a little after 2:30am. Our decision was to leave camp by 8:30am. Wake up was set for 6:30am. The fast among us took 9 hours to get back to the cars, the slowest an extra hour. The way back was uneventful though we took a slightly different route that turned out to seem longer. For one, just after the lake we stayed closer to the river as opposed to a little higher on the boulders, and then second we waited too long to cross the river and had to go through A LOT of deadfall. We only crossed it close to the bottom of the valley. Better to cross the river at a higher elevation somewhere between 1500m and 1600m as we did on the way over (the best time to cross the creek on the way back is once past the loose rock/boulder fields that are higher above the river on the east side of the creek. After that, the West side of the creek is flatter and doesn’t have as much deadfall.
Oh, yes, the calories... I wear a calorie counter watch (based on heart rate: 6800 the first day, 9000 the second and I assumed at least 4000 for the third though I didn't put the watch on...).
Thanks Greg for organizing! |
Edited by - chloejt on 08/09/2012 8:54 PM
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over the hills and far away
Canada
725 Posts |
Posted - 08/09/2012 : 6:08 PM
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| Holy god-fearing crap. Nice job and congratz. Those are long days spent. Only 9 minutes on the summit. Was it worth it? Did the two that stayed behind get up to anything? |
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18 Posts |
Posted - 08/09/2012 : 6:11 PM
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| ... yes just to not have to go back through that bush next year and attempt again! It's a nice summit and would have been a great place to stop for a 1/2 hour, but we were concerned with time, it's too bad... |
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Vancouver, BC
Canada
559 Posts |
Posted - 08/09/2012 : 8:00 PM
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| Great info on this another mystery & interesting area. Thanks very much for sharing. |
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Vancouver, BC
Canada
520 Posts |
Posted - 08/09/2012 : 8:38 PM
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| Great adventure! That's a lot of calories for few minutes on the summit. Congratulations. |
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845 Posts |
Posted - 08/09/2012 : 10:40 PM
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| Well done, although I wouldn't say that your way of summitting was faster than Alastair's. |
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95 Posts |
Posted - 08/10/2012 : 09:24 AM
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Nice work!
I wish I was there as Siwhe is high on my priority list, but I had other commitments. Good reference for the future.
Cheers
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18 Posts |
Posted - 08/10/2012 : 10:11 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by RamblingBull
Well done, although I wouldn't say that your way of summitting was faster than Alastair's.
The bush was worse on last year's trip (though it didn't go on for as long) so I'm not sure. Alastair took a little over 17 hours if I remember correctly and the distances are roughly the same (we took a detour and our pace was only moderate, slower than what Alastair's would have been)... Alastair mentioned that a couple of other people (Dean & Adrien?) found a trail that took them straight to the ridge that we got to after the bush last year. *That* would make last year's way a better way... |
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Squamish, British Columbia
Canada
1030 Posts |
Posted - 08/10/2012 : 12:17 PM
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| Woah! That is quite the trip. Any details on total distance and elevation gain? |
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18 Posts |
Posted - 08/10/2012 : 2:11 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by leimrod
Woah! That is quite the trip. Any details on total distance and elevation gain?
Total distance was roughly 60k (15 to camp + 30 for the round trip camp to summit + 15 back to cars). Elevation gain, that I'm not sure because there are a number of ups and down, both on the way to the camp and then from the camp to the summit... Starting elevation was somewhere between 300 and 400m... |
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West Vancouver, B.C.
Canada
295 Posts |
Posted - 08/11/2012 : 08:03 AM
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Congratulations!  Great effort! Your summit day was huge and Greg's pack looks pretty heavy. |
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 Trail running, bike hucking, fast packing, beer drinking collector of pine cones on a day pass
AKA
Dances with Trees
Forest Gnome Cabin
Canada
13090 Posts |
Posted - 08/11/2012 : 10:45 PM
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Very impressive effort and good to get that monkey off your back, especially for Greg I guess :D
Beautiful area, love the photos and thanks Chloe for the report |
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Siwhe (2843m), 08/2012, 3 days, 20,000 calories!
