1978 - Mt. Athabasca, Mushroom, and "Bakerboys"

Mt. Athabasca - Columbia Icefield Region - Canadian Rockies
Location of Mt. Athabasca
A view of the route from Tangle Falls hill.
My Flickr site for more pictures - 

Mt. Athabasca

After Chuck, Chris, and I had climbed in the Bugaboos, we pointed the van to the Columbia Icefields. Our goal was to climb the Silverhorn Ridge on Mt. Athabasca. We slept in the van in one of the icefields parking lots and woke up in the morning to find clouds. Using that as an excuse to sleep in, I encouraged the others to snooze a bit longer. After a while, lo and behold, it was clear! We scrambled up and drove the van the short distance up the road. Downing some coffee I had put in a thermos the night before, we quickly donned our packs and headed up the trail that snaked up the moraine.

You have to traverse under this to get to the Silverhorn Ridge.

We soon had to put on crampons and work our way up to below the ice cliff which marks the bottom of the ridge. We crossed just below the cliff rather than crossing lower down like we should have done. We then worked our way up to the base of the ridge proper to find that it was not snow as expected, but pretty much solid ice! It is only moderately steep, but with just the one rope and three screws between the three of us, it made for an exciting climb. We had just started up the ice when the ice cliff we had just crossed a short time before lost a few tons of ice! That was food for thought.

The start of the Silverhorn Ridge.

We continued leap frogging up the ridge, but with three on a single rope, it was a bit slow.

Putting in an ice screw.

It wasn't steep enough for front pointing, but not being able to kick steps made it keep our attention.

I am really tall!

Reaching the top of the ridge, we strolled over to the summit to enjoy a spectacular 360 degree view of the Rockies. Chuck isn't really that short as the picture suggests!
The descent created its memories as well. As we got a later than expected start, it was late afternoon when we descended the normal route. The snow was soft and the bridges over the crevasses were weak. The area around the base of the Silverhorn Ridge had some big bridges that were quite thin looking. Being the heaviest and last on the rope, I tried my utmost at creeping across the bridges as smoothly and as quickly as possible. Looking down into the dark depths of some of those crevasses was very sobering.
As we neared the bottom of the glacier, we ran out of snow, and had to head out onto bare ice, so we stopped to put on crampons. The snow at this stage suggested hidden bridges so we kept the rope fairly snug during the time we put on our crampons. Every once in a while, I would stop to just look around and soak the scenery in. What? Chuck had disappeared! He had stepped onto an area of whiter snow that perhaps even had a bit of a sag to it, and dropped down almost 2 meters and stopped on a ledge of sorts! At this point, I saw his head pop out above the snow and look around. Needless to say we kept an even tighter rope until we were on totally bare ice.

Never take yourself too seriously.

The rest of the descent was uneventful. We got to the van, and then drove all the way back to Shuswap Lake. Another great trip with good friends.

Mushroom - Papoose - Squamish
Location of The Papoose

The start of Mushroom.

Mushroom is quite a nice two pitch climb on the Papoose. I always aided the A1 crack at the bottom. The second pitch had an old bolt latter and a good crack at the top. Lots of exposure and a good intro to multi-pitch climbing. We climbed this a number of times through the years.


BakerBoys - Crevasse Rescue Practice
Location of start of climbing route
YouTube video Part 1
YouTube video Part 2

Altitude does strange things!

Another trip to Mt. Baker, but this time not to climb it, but to play on the ice. We got to the base of the Coleman glacier early, and had time to set up camp and make snow sculptures.
Chris and Barb came up with their dog and also brought up some raw eggs. They soon retreated to their tent to escape the sun and heat. We discovered they had brought up some fresh eggs and had left them next to their tent. We thought it would be humorous if we boiled up a couple and put them back in the carton. The late afternoon slid into evening, and they were non the wiser.
When Chris got up in the morning and started to cook his carefully packed eggs in the morning, he found that when he tried to break them they were "cooked"! He was puzzled, perplexed, and just a bit annoyed at the store which sold him defective eggs! We suggested that it might be the altitude but regardless should be taken back to the store for a refund ;-)We didn't tell him what actually happened for years!

Notice the wine. :-)

Ryan and Randy lugged up a "stone age" video recording unit from Garibaldi (yes they were still in high school) and filmed Chuck jump into a crevasse and we did ice climbing on some of the local seracs in the Coleman Glacier. Yes, that is a silver wine glass next to my wine. Doesn't everybody enjoy a nice glass of fine wine with their meal? (link to the videos above)

Ah, the days of wooden knickers!

Tony and Renis took a break from their formidable bush thrashing and peak bagging to join us as well. They were some of the most creative, tough hikers I have ever met. I remember seeing a video they had made with their super 8 film camera on the top of Mt. Edge, where they had one of them appearing and disappearing. They were fun guys. What ever happened to them?
This picture appeared on a MEC catalogue a few years later.

Standing at the back are Renis van Doran, me(Keith), and Tony van Doran
Sitting are Randy Wheating, Chuck McCafferty, Ryan Shellborn, and Garvin Morris.