North Shore Peak Bagging Part 2: Crown Mountain and the Camel (we bit off way more than we could chew)

Last thursday the weather couldn't have been better for some hiking up on the North Shore. The sky was cloudless, temperature hovered in the mid-teens and there was a slight breeze to keep things bearable. Dave and I had rented snowshoes and poles from MEC to climb our way over the various mountains that lead to Crown Mountain. I had, foolishly, packed about 70 pounds of climbing gear and protection, rope, water, jackets, food, and camera gear into my sport climbing bag in the vain hope that I would be able to haul it all to our final destination.

We arrived at the top of the Grouse Mountain gondola at about 11:30 and started off climbing Grouse. It was an easy snowshoe up a cat track but I started to realize just how overloaded my pack was. We discovered, coming down the steep path off Grouse to the base of Dam Mountain just hwo hard it is to snowshoe downhill. You really have little control of where your feet go and end up sliding all over the place. To the left is a shot of Dave on the summit of Dam which is higher than Grouse by some amount. We set off again down a steep path to the base of Little Goat Mountain. Little Goat was steeper than Dam to get up but not as long.

We paused for a little food before continuing into uncharted waters for us. We came to a point, on the saddle between Little Goat and Goat where the snow simply dropped away into the Hellishly steep valley wall of Crown Pass, a vertical drop of about 300 meters. We decided to leave our snowshoes at the top, as it was getting dangerous with them with us nearly sliding down Crown Pass, and donned our crampons and ice axes (we didn't at this point rope up or put our helmets on).

We sort of bushwhacked, cutting a traverse across the top of the pass looking for an open path down. At one point, on a 60 degree slope, both my crampons slipped out from under me and I began to slip down the slope that only got steeper and led into the trees and rocks 300 meters down. If I hadn't slammed the handle of my axe into the snow and self-arrested I would have been seriously injured if not worse. That fall sort of rattled me a little bit and I descended the rest of Crown Pass very slowly and gingerly. On the left is me at the base of Crown pass.

We had realised at the top of the saddle that we very likely wouldn't make our goal on that day, it had taken us much longer than expected to reach Crown Pass. At the base of Crown we roped up, donned helmets and harnesses and began our ascent of Crown through the trees. We made it about 200 or 300 meters up the lower sloped before we realized in was 4 PM and we had to turn around.

We staged a photo of me climbing the base of Crown. After we paused at our final point in the trek, we ate a good supply of Dave's chocolate bars for sustenance and began the Hellish trek back up the wall of Crown Pass.

Walking through wet snow with crampons is like walking up a sand dune. For every two steps you take, you slide one back. It was tiresome but we managed to achieve it in about an hour.

When we came to our snowshoes I found myself struck with a wave of euphoria. I simply felt really relaxed and generally good all over. Dave was struck with the same feeling a few minutes later. We weren't sure but we explained it away as being a rush of endorphins because our bodies were so destroyed combined with the overexposure to sun we both had that day.

It was time to get off the mountain but we still had a ways to go yet. We very slowly continued on our way, summiting Little Goat for the second time.

To the right Dave strikes a Touching the Void pose coming back up Crown Pass.

The sun was setting and making for nice pictures when we snowshoed our way back up to the summit of Dam. At this point the bag was weighing very heavily on me, my face was a picture of despair and I was descending the mountain any way I could.

At the base of Dam I came to my senses and ate a sausage, bread, a block of brie and some more chocolate. I also put on my fleece. I began to feel more human and we discovered a flat cat track that led back to Grouse.

Pretty soon we were back at the lodge, completely burnt out and realizing that if we are to climb Crown and the Camel we either have to wait for summer to melt the snow or come again with a tent and make it a 2-day outing.

Me coming back up Crown Pass.

Me looking back at the unacheivable target of the day.