Mackenzie Peak

It's been a while since I have managed to get out into the hills. Luckily my day came, and the weather decided to co-orperate (and then some). Had an amazing day out in perfect fall conditions out to the west side of the Island to the Mackenzie Range. I have been up the trail here three times before, but still haven't had a chance to climb anything. The Mackenzie Range is made up of a number of spires, most involving some technical climbing. We decided on Mackenzie Peak, which is the easiest in the group. The climbing on Mackenzie is essentially hauling yourself up on trees and bushes. Classic west coast! Amazing views of the surrounding area, particularly out to Kennedy Lake and Pacific Rim National Park.

Looking up to Mackenzie Peak, with the route on the right from the notch.

Steamboat Mountain

Hidden Peak, Maitland Range
Bushwacking up through the cedars

Triple Peak with some of the tops of the Mackenzie Range spires visibel in the foreground (Flattop, Centaur)

Looking down onto Redwall Peak

Redwall Peak....next on the list?

ACC-North Face Leadership Training in the Selkirks

Trying to catch up on the blogosphere and haven't had a chance to post this yet.

Had a great trip this summer taking part in the North Face-Alpine Club of Canada Summer Leadership Training. This course is aimed at working on hard and soft leadership skills for trip leaders with the ACC. The local section on the Island sponsored me to go. Overall, a fantastic experience and I learned a tonne.


The course takes place as part of the ACC's General Mountaineering Camp. This year the camp was up at Battle Brook in the Purcells, just south of Glacier National Park. I had to suck up my morals a bit, and was flown in to camp by helicopter (the first time I haven't walked in to a mountain adventure!)


We alternated a bit between skills days, and then climbing days. The first day started with a bit of an overview on gear and technology (complete with a show-and-tell session about who's gear was out of date!)

While I've often mocked it in the past, we spent a fair bit of time learning how to short-rope (essentially where the leader ties in people into the rope below them and "drags" them up the mountain-don't fall!). I don't know if I am sold on this, but it seemed a useful thing to practice.

Worked on advanced anchor building, ice climbing, route planning, rock and crevasse rescue techniques, piton placements, and short-roping. I found the camp situation a little too formal and rigid for my taste, and the focus was far more on leader-client type scenarios, which also isn't so much my style of things. Despite that, it was a pretty awesome week in the mountains and met lots of great folks, and learned a lot.



Peaks to the south of the camp where we played around with crevasse rescue practice and ice climbing.



Dawson Range



Grand Mountain

Mount Wheeler

Mount Kilpatrick

Purity Mountain

Vestel Mountain (if you look close you can see a group climbing up the snow slope leading up the peak)

On top of Pristine Mountain


Purity Mountain

Victoria Peak

Victoria Peak has been on my list for a while. I had a spare day, so figure it would be a good place to go check out. Unfortunately attempts to find a partner were unsuccessful, so I found myself heading up after work on Friday by myself. The plan was to go fast and light, and pack only what was abolutely necessary. I had pretty good beta on the route, so figured I could manage with failry minimal gear, but I did bring along a 30m rope and home-made light sling harness for rapelling a crux step. I also brought along a +10deg overbag and small sil-tarp, and no stove.

The road in was in decent shape, and I could drive up to about 1000m elevation. I had to walk the last couple of kilometers of road, and then onto the trail. In less than half an hour I was up on the ridge and into the alpine, and then spent another hour or so ridge-running my way up towards the peak. I settled into camp and had a quick dinner, and enjoyed the amazing sunset.

Approach to Victoria Peak

Victoria Peak with route going right to left on the upper snowfield. My bivi site was on the ridge just above the lower snow.

What a camp spot!

Moon rise over the Elk River Valley

It was a cold, clear night (~3 degrees) and my F&L bag didn't quite cut it. I manage to sleep for about 3 hours. It was tough sleeping more than that, and I shivered for a few hours until the sun finally came up. An amazing sunrise and there was a whole ocean of low valley cloud which made for a surreal setting.

The climb went well. There are two options for getting over a step in a ledge accessing the upper snowfield. I took the first one of these, which might have been a little steeper, but was pretty ledgy and had positive holds (the other route looked less steep but more precarious, and had a bit of a hand-line on it). Overall a short (15m) stretch, 4th or easy 5th class. After getting over the crux it was an easy scramble up to the peak.

Warden Peak and a sea of clouds. The clouds make it easy to imagine what the area would have looked like during the last Ice Age.

A happy Woollen Knickers

Back down the route, and rappelled the step with my short rope. Back from a quick snack at camp and back down to the car before the heat of the day hit. What a great spot! Quick, easy access and beautiful spot.

Cherries, Trains, and Stemwinder

Cherry season up in the Similkameen. Kessa went up to help pick cherries and tend to her farm plot, and I came up to lend moral support and look after kids. The whole cherry experience was pretty neat. It is the first main fruit crop of the season, and it was a mad flurry of activity on the farm getting the cherries picked, sorted, packaged and brought to market.

The kids thrive on the farm, and there is so much for them to explore there. Favorite past times are climbing the walnut tree, and this trip they discovered the fun of catching grasshoppers.

Leif has been digging trains a lot lately. He likes that he has a "boy" thing to do, so the two of us had a guys-day-out and checked out the model train place in Osoyoos. It is a huge room with a whole bunch of rail lines and trains running around. The people runing it clearly have a passion for it.

Leif was still pretty stoked on the trains, and wanted to see a "big" train, so I went with the kids to the Kettle Valley Railway out in Summerland. It was pretty neat bit of history. I have been wanting to bike the old railway for a while now. An old steam train runs a small distance of the line, and it is a nice piece of history. They do the ambience up pretty well, including a old-timer playing banjo as the train rolls along.

My last day there we headed out for a hike up Stemwinder Mountain near Hedley. This featured me getting some-what lost (well at least I couldn't find the proper start to the trail). I bumped into a ranch-hand who was up there, and asked for directions to the trail, and he gave me the exact directions to where I was standing talking to him. Funny.

Regardless the trip was a great ecology session with the kids. We got to explore all sorts of plants and the wild strawberries were in season. We were listening to a bird identification CD on the way up, and then we heard a bunch of the birds once we got up there (Red-tailed hawk, Hermit thrush, Swainson's thrush). We also saw a bunch of cattle, and there was a huge colony of ground squirrels. We also played a good game of "Who's poo is this?" which featured fur-filled scat from a coyote (eating the ground squirrels) and after poking around in some pellets Nemiah figured out they belonged to deer. Folks thought it silly I played this game with the kids. Am I the only parent who pokes around poo with their kids?

Lupine

Wild roses