| Author |
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 | Dru
Mountain Grammar Police
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 Sardonic sandbagging scoundrel, Cascade Climbers lobotomized spraymeister, space blanket flyer, new millennium vulgarian betaboy and friend to all squids
Climbing, a mountain
Canada
∞ Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2012 : 7:22 PM
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I waffled a bit about putting this in the Washington or BC forum but since most of the time I was in BC with only about 4km in WA I thought BC was the place to put it.
I've had the idea for a couple years that it would be fun to do a widdershins (anticlockwise) traverse of Nesakwatch Creek. Start up the Slesse Memorial trail and come down the Rexford trail after following the ridge all the way around the valley. This in turn was sparked by an attempt on Rapid Peak via the bottom of Nesakwatch Creek. The alder was so bad I thought "wouldn't it be better to be up on the ridge"?
So after reading a bunch of Simon's trip reports and hearing from my friend Brent who ran all the way around Garibaldi Lake in 12 hrs I had myself convinced I could do this whole traverse in two long days. That was dumb. Setting the alarm for 4AM and then not getting up until 8 was pretty dumb too, though.
I parked on the Nesakwatch Creek road sometime around 10 on Saturday and started hiking. I made pretty fast time to the Propellor Cairn and then still fairly good time across the snowpatches to the ridge by Labour Day summit. So far all of this was terrain I'd hiked before and conditions were good.
      
Even though I'd been through the ridge notch by Labour Day before it still took me a while to find my way onto the right path this time. Something about going down instead of up. For those interested in going this way look for a small cairn built, I think, by EAK a couple weeks ago which marks the top of the correct way down. Once through the notch I continued traversing through the basin beyond to gain the ridge crest just above the first major col south of Labour Day.
   
It was in this pass that I ran into a bear. Some people say they have "gaydar" and that they can tell when someone is gay. I have beardar and I can tell when there's a bear near me. Sure enough just after my beardar went off I saw this bear eating crowberries in the meadow. I yelled a bunch at him and he didn't move. So then I fired off a bearbanger and he put on a glissading demonstration.
  
Once past the bear col there is a bump to climb over. On the south ridge of this bump you cross the border swathe and enter Washington. Also at this point the terrain changes from nice, meadowed, open ridges to jaggedy krummholz ridges. On my way back I learned that it's better to sidehill on the Slesse Creek side here, you can get to the bowl below Pocket in around an hour. As it was I kept going along the ridge and eventually picked a nice place to bivi with flat heather, a good view, and running water from a snowpatch.
         
Sadly my bivi also came with hot and cold running mosquitoes so I kept my bug mesh zipped up over my face in my bivi sack. This meant I didn't see many meteors. Only the very brightest big fireballs are powerful enough to see through mesh. 
I was beginning to wonder about completing the traverse in two days but I figured if I could get up early and make it to the col between Cope and Rapid by 1pm I could be back at the car by not so long before Monday. Still a long day but not super crazy, right? I did get up the next morning at first light and after coffee and a bunch of alpenglow pictures, finished traversing the divide and made it to the snowpatch below the north face of Pocket. I saw two potential scrambling routes up, the east ridge or a gully on the left side of the north face.
   
I tried the east ridge first but got stymied by a steep gap two bumps east of the summit. I was sure a 5th class route existed here, maybe not even too hard technically, but it was loose and I was solo and it didn't seem worthwhile to push. I went back to the toe of the east ridge and around to the base of the north face gully. Rock on the right side wasn't too bad and I got to the summit, sustained class 3-4.
It turns out that to continue past Pocket on the traverse you either have to drag all your gear to the summit and then down the 4th class heather ledges on the south face, or alternatively possibly you can bypass the summit entirely with a long traverse around the mountain on the west side. At any rate this was where I packed it in and decided to go back out via the Prop Cairn.
         
The summit cairn had one entry, from K. Thurner in August 2011. He said there was a old film can and pencil stub but no record there then, so he started a new register. I know of two people who have climbed Pocket from the US side but it doesn't seem super convenient and appealing from that direction as compared to the BC approach, at least in my opinion.
Here is the view on to Rapid, and a shot looking down the south face which I would have had to downclimb to get to Rapid to continue the traverse:
 
Once I left the summit I downclimbed the gully and decided to keep low on the bowl north of Pocket instead of going back along the krummholz ridge past my bivi site. This worked out really well, with a couple short sections of mostly large trees to squeeze through, and I was back at the border only about an hour and a half after leaving Pocket. I went up along the ridge and over the bump north of the border and then descended to the bear pass. Sure enough, the same bear from yesterday was back in the pass lounging on the snow again.
 
Once again, yelling, throwing rocks, and clanging my ice axe on a stone didn't work and I had to fire off another bearbanger to get him to move. He showed me what he thought of that by taking a big blue dump on the snow in the pass before running away.
So with the bear out of the way, traversing back to Propellor Cairn and out and down to the car was almost an anticlimax. It was hot but the snow was in the shade and just a wee bit harder than I would have liked, which slowed me down kicking good steps. Some of the snowpatches appeared to have moved or collapsed since the previous day too so I spent a lot of time minimizing my exposure to the firing lines.
      
On the last little bit of old road before you drop into the old growth to get to the creek crossing I was looking at the ground in the dazed end-of-long-day mindset and thought "isn't that a weird looking leaf? It's furry?" Then I flipped it over with a stick. It wasn't a leaf at all. Not entirely sure but I think this snafflehound is a dead flying squirrel. Not sure what killed it, no marks on the body but its mouth was all bloody. Maybe an owl grabbed it and squeezed and then got frightened away? Maybe a tree collision? No firm conclusion.
All in all I figure this is still a pretty good looking traverse. Going up Slesse Memorial trail and coming out Rexford still seems cool to me. Going up either the Rexford OR Slesse trail and looping further around and coming out Radium Lake also seems really attractive. I'd have to say though that doing the traverse I had originally planned is more of a 3 or 4 day trip than the 2 day trip I had envisioned.
There's little bit of Chilliwack history here too as many of the passes and some of the summits in this area were originally climbed by Thiusoloc and his client Henry Custer in 1859. There are still apparently Sto:Lo in Chilliwack today who have inherited the Thiusoloc name. It was cool to ramble through this area and think about the birth of documented SW BC mountaineering a hundred and fifty-odd years ago. |
Edited by - Dru on 08/13/2012 7:38 PM
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Hope, BC
Canada
7093 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2012 : 7:37 PM
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| Awesome report and pics! Great shots of the bears, and surrounding mountains. It would be nice to see a topo map route of your trip. |
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Peak bagging, bushwhacking, zamboni driving, snowshoeing, self portrait artist, and speed demon who loves to hang out on Mt. Seymour
3993 Posts |
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North Vancouver, bc
Canada
155 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2012 : 8:03 PM
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| Some great pics here. I have been enjoying chilliwack this summer. |
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| Dru
Mountain Grammar Police
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Sardonic sandbagging scoundrel, Cascade Climbers lobotomized spraymeister, space blanket flyer, new millennium vulgarian betaboy and friend to all squids
Climbing, a mountain
Canada
∞ Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2012 : 8:10 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by simonc
Dru, here's that guy's Pocket report from NWHikers.net
http://www.nwhikers.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7993538&highlight=pocket+pk+peak
Interesting. Downclimbing the way he did to get to the south face looked unappealing to me but maybe that's the way to go to link into Rapid. Here is the view looking down from the east col.
Google Earth view makes it look more appealing than this. Likewise GE makes the traverse around the west side of Pocket look nasty. |
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Ladner
Canada
628 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2012 : 8:48 PM
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| Proof positive that your not the only crazy person to go solo for an obscure peak. Although this one looks to be worth the effort, nice job. |
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Burnaby, BC
Canada
535 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2012 : 9:02 PM
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Sweet journey Bro!
Did you see any drones or black helos when you slipped into the nether-zone of America? |
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Powell River, bc
Canada
2527 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2012 : 9:07 PM
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| Awesome pictures,love the bear :) Too bad you couldn't see the meteors. Poor snafflehound :( |
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304 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2012 : 9:44 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by burndug
Sweet journey Bro!
Did you see any drones or black helos when you slipped into the nether-zone of America?
Bear drones, obviously. |
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Burnaby, BC
Canada
1293 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2012 : 09:19 AM
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Looks like a fantastic trip, regardless of bears and bugs.
This guy seems to be having fun:
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| Eryne
Intermediate Member
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Chilliwack, BC
Canada
569 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2012 : 10:53 AM
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| You were supposed to be home mowing the lawn and dusting. Sheesh! |
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| Dru
Mountain Grammar Police
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Sardonic sandbagging scoundrel, Cascade Climbers lobotomized spraymeister, space blanket flyer, new millennium vulgarian betaboy and friend to all squids
Climbing, a mountain
Canada
∞ Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2012 : 12:02 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by burndug
Sweet journey Bro!
Did you see any drones or black helos when you slipped into the nether-zone of America?
I think they were all over at the Abby Air Show. Probably makes that weekend the best one for cross-border shenanigans. |
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357 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2012 : 2:23 PM
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| Nice trip Dru! Starting at Slesse Memorial TH and exiting via Radium Lake or Hanging Lake would be an interesting alpine ramble. |
Edited by - DoubleE Alpinist on 08/14/2012 2:24 PM |
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post creek, bc
169 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2012 : 4:15 PM
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| good trip. i have been looking at the area south of slesse for a bit now. looks interesting,thanks for info...bob |
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Prince Rupert, British Columbia
Canada
115 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2012 : 5:01 PM
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| Awesome report. I'm pretty impressed by the amount of walk you did haha. Is it possible we crossed path on the Slesse trail? There wasn't that many people on that trail Saturday :P |
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| Dru
Mountain Grammar Police
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Sardonic sandbagging scoundrel, Cascade Climbers lobotomized spraymeister, space blanket flyer, new millennium vulgarian betaboy and friend to all squids
Climbing, a mountain
Canada
∞ Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2012 : 6:27 PM
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| If you were one of the three guys with yellow crampons strapped to your packs then yes. Otherwise no. |
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Utah's canyon trekking,deck chair packing desert explorer who dreams of visiting Canada someday
3988 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2012 : 7:30 PM
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Pretty country to explore with some route finding possibilities for future outings. Cute bears. Never saw one in the wild. To hike where notable people have pioneered before, is amazing to do. To see what they saw is way cool. What were they thinking or remarking when they finally came to a vista and saw those same jaw dropping views. Sometimes in the desert, I come upon old wagon ruts; still visible. I wonder about the residents of ghost towns who have nothing left but the dead, buried there. Old Chinese grave markers bleached white as their bodies gave out, a lifetime away from their birthplaces, building the Union pacific lines.
Thanks for waffling...great stuff!!
You need to make a trip down here and waffle a bit, sometime. |
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Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada
558 Posts |
Posted - 08/15/2012 : 07:00 AM
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| Nice adventure! Thanks for the report. |
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Happy go lucky, plaid wearin, postholin, safeway gaitor sportin, old-school film shootin, giver of many regards
Abbotsford, B.C.
Canada
13435 Posts |
Posted - 08/15/2012 : 09:13 AM
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Sweet trip, and a fun ready of your investigative and narrative style.
Really enjoyed this in the context of your appealing shots.
K |
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Prince Rupert, British Columbia
Canada
115 Posts |
Posted - 08/17/2012 : 3:56 PM
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Yep. I was the only one that put his crampons INSIDE his bag so his straps wouldn't be dangling around waiting to be tied up in some bushes. If I remember correctly, I said "hey man, how you doing?". 
quote:
Originally posted by Dru
If you were one of the three guys with yellow crampons strapped to your packs then yes. Otherwise no.
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Maple syrup lovin', tree huggin', face paintin' relocated Québécoise who is VERY serious about having fun
Vancouver
Canada
2637 Posts |
Posted - 08/18/2012 : 6:58 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Dru
Not sure what killed it, no marks on the body but its mouth was all bloody. Maybe an owl grabbed it and squeezed and then got frightened away? Maybe a tree collision? No firm conclusion.
Must have been a curse. If my memory is correct, you've had you fair share of problems with snafflehounds. Kinda like what happened to poor Stanley Yelnats IV in the Holes story...
Entertaining read, as usual. That's why CT is fun to come back visit from time to time. |
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Pocket Peak via Propellor Cairn
