ROBSON PIECE

Like frozen white flame immense plumes of rime point skywards from the tops of the  Emperor Ridge and Wishbone Arete and it seems so appropriate to me that these rows of gargantuan ice jewels rise to a sovereign point on the crown of the Canadian Rockies: the summit of the “King”, Mt Robson. At 12,972ft Mt Robson is a full 700ft higher than the next highest peak in the range, Mt Columbia, add to that the massive reliefs of 9000ft to the west and the Emperor Face presenting 7500ft from Berg Lake on the North; and the fact that Robson is a hundred miles north of the Columbia Icefields, where most of the other high peaks in the Rockies are found,  making it that much colder; and you have a peak that is as big and as complicated as any in the Alps or Andes and one that presents formations and conditions just not seen anywhere else in the range. The ranks of rime plumes are unique and beautiful from the air, climbing through them is a different story. Climbers call them the “gargoyles”. 

Local Indians knew the King as “Yuh-hai-has-kun”, the mountain of the spiral road, believing that the strata, so visible on the south and west sides, corkscrews a path to the top. The white man no longer knows where the name “Robson” came from yet being that we were handed the name from natives and Canadian half-breed fur-traders (Métis). I think that we can assume that there is a coyote or raven at work here and that we’ve been at the butt end of a lost joke that has gone on for near 200 years  now. 

The first ascent of Mt Robson ... my, my, what a sordid piece of mountaineering history. The Reverend George Rex Boyer Kinney erroneously claiming the first ascent with his never-climbed-before partner the cowboy outfitter Donald “Curly” Phillips on August 13th, 1909 (Considering that the two were surviving on a stew of blue grouse and whistlers -marmots- and that they’d climbed from 5,300ft to above 10,000, 11,000 and 12,000ft five times in just two weeks, I’ll advance that the Reverend could well, like so many other exhausted,  dehydrated and malnourished climbers, have been looking through a door opened by pink elephants).  The ascent was doubted from the start and possibly undermined by the ruling class of North American mountaineering. Intrigue was cased in inaccurate recording and the debate on whether Kinney and Phillips made the first ascent survived for 90 years.

Thanks to the fine sleuthing of alpine historian Chic Scott and publisher Gillean Dafferan we know that the Reverend’s Dominion or Canada flag and summit note were found in 1959 by a Harvard Mountaineering Club party. The summit articles lay in a  coffee can in the massive Southwest Bowl, 1000ft shy of the Emperor Ridge. Yet reading Kinney’s earnest description of standing in cloud on top of what he assumed was the summit, I wonder if the man may well have “floundered through these treacherous masses” of overhanging snow and huge cornices and did stand on top of one of the gargoyles some of which are 50ft high! Perhaps Kinney did gaze down through the hole that his ice axe made and saw a “sheer wall of precipice” (the Emperor Face) falling to the Mist and Berg Glaciers, and Berg Lake, thousands and thousands of feet below. And “splendid natural cairns” (where Kinney claimed to have left his  coffee can) do exist in the rock one or two hundred feet off the ridgeline and given that the gargoyles collapse over time and that the bowl itself avalanches hugely sliding snow could have carried the can further down-slope ... ah the joys of speculation. 

What is beyond speculation is that four years later, Robson was climbed by Canada’s greatest mountain guide, the Austrian immigrant Conrad Kain, leading William Wasborough “Billy” Foster and  Albert “Mack” MacCarthy to the point where Kain said, “Gentlemen, that’s so far as I can take you”: the top.  (12 years later MacCarthy and Foster would again climb together on the greatest mountaineering endeavor of this continent, the first ascent of Mt Logan, the highest peak in Canada.) 

The modern era of alpinism came to the King incrementally. Tom Spencer and Ron Perla climbed the Emperor Ridge in 1961, “with purity of purpose and directness of line” Pat Callis and Dan Davis established the beautiful North Face in 1963 and Tobin Sorenson and A. Henault repeated it in the winter of 1978.  That summer Terry “Mugs” Stump and Jim Logan opened the big one, the 7000ft Emperor Face, four days, grade VI, still unrepeated. The prodigious South African alpinist, David Cheesmond, added another grade VI on the left side of the face with fellow countryman, Tony Dick, over three days, August, 1981 (unrepeated). It was Dave’s first trip to the Rockies and he must have liked what he saw because he immigrated to Calgary the next year and that was a god sent for we young Calgary hardmen (Kevin Doyle, Tim Friesen and I; aka “The Wildboys”). Dave became our leader and we learned from him and profited immeasurably from his friendship and love and massive, undefeatable, spirit. 

History and evolution saddled the Wildboys with the responsibility of taking modern alpinism into the great Canadian Rockies in that Canadianist of seasons: winter.
 

    FIRST ENGAGEMENT 

March, 1989, Jim Elzinga kicks outwards on the snow blocks dooring our cave and arctic air rushes in low like green water and displaces the warm air that we’d created like a puff of human breath exhaled and instantly lost to the cold of space. I feel the bite of cold on my bare hands and naked face, feels like sheets of frozen metal laid onto me. I fight into mitts, my jacket crackles like a brown paper bag. Backing out of the portal and into the winter world I can feel the tension in the snow and my crampons force the creaking sounds of a hull stressed too far from inside the stiff snowpack. My thermometer bottoms the temperature at -40 and I realize that Celsius and Fahrenheit cross, and are the same, down there. Ward Robinson, Jim and I look up to the Emperor and even it looks blue.

“If we try to climb technically in these temperatures we’ll get frostbitten,” states Jim in an uninvolved observationist flat tone.

“I can’t see how we’ll be able to keep from getting hypothermic standing around at the belays.” I add, “I’m fucking freezing right now!”

“Shit” says Ward and he looks down and spits. Unsaid is his disappointment.

The Emperor is huge and wild and it is the next step in the evolution of Rockies winter alpinism and more so than Jim or I, Ward wants it. The evolution started with Brian Greenwood, Chic Scott and Charlie Locke on Mt Hungabee in the winter of 66. Jim Elzinga and John Lauchlin pushed it out as far as anywhere else in the world on the Ramp route on Mt Kitchener in 77. The Wildboys picked up the torch and carried it into the 80s: the North Face of the South Goodsir Tower in 83, the East Face of Mt Fay in 84, the Wild Thing on Mt Chepren in 87, the North Face of Howse Peak in 88, the Emperor was the next logical place to go but right then, logic was telling us not to go there. 

“It’s always hard to change objectives, but given the situation, the North Face is the right thing to do,” Jim said, and it had somewhat of a pacifying effect on Ward and I, the young tigers; wanting, wanting, wanting. Mid afternoon on the next day we stood on the top of the King.

We’d unroped for the North Face and it really was the only way to stay warm enough in the -40 because the three of us could move all the time. I lived in my neoprene facemask for two days and during those days it accreted an ice layer as thick as my finger and felt like medieval armor.
 

    GUIDING INTERLUDE 

Since 1986 I’ve guided six trips to Mt Robson and my guests and I made the summit three times, twice via the Kain Face (route of the first ascent) and once by the Fuhrer Ridge. 

July 13, 1994, John Henry Tiencken and I descend from our tent atop the Dome by headlamp and the snow is frozen and supportive and we scamper across to the Helmet /Robson Col. Three hours later we are halfway up the Fuhrer Ridge and the climbing is incredible! Grey slate and coal black limestone encased in concrete alpine ice. I tack up on front points and side points grabbing spikes of stone secured in ice. The “THUNK!” of solid sticks, cruxes that feel like 5.5, secure belays - the grace of technology. I am absolutely blown away knowing that Hans Fuhrer guided two clients up here in 1939!  (Fuhrer is the unsung Titan of North American mountaineering). Were guides and clients just harder then? Have we all become soft and timid? I struggle with these questions. 

The top of the King is marvelous and John and I smile large and shake hands. Clouds ambush us as we traverse from the Roof (the summit rise of Robson) to our descent down the Kain Face. I might as well just  close my eyes for all the good they are doing . Everything is white. I feel like I’m inside a ping-pong ball yet I know that fatal drops yawn to each side and now the ridge has tightroped to one foot’s width. I probe for the drop with my axe and it may as well be a white cane (actually I’d prefer a white cane as it would be longer!). Settling my left heel I see a lightning flash of black slice away into the white. Several tons of cornice rotate away to fall into the mist. The thunder of the collapse is deafening. “FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!” I scream and know that John is now accomplice to my terror.

“WHAT HAPPENED BARRY? WHAT’S GOING ON?”

“I CUT LOOSE A MOTHER-FUCKING LOUSY FUCK FUCKING CORNICE!” 

Later, safe in our tent, I realize that there are moments in mountaineering that transcend time. 
 

    THE 1st ANNUAL ATTEMPT AND

    FAILURE TO CLIMB MT ROBSON 

April, 1997, I’ve come to define winter climbing in terms of  conditions rather than date. For the Rockies, that can mean anytime from late September through to early May depending on the year. I’ve also concluded that, in Robson’s case, any extended periods of clear weather that occur in winter the “season”: December 22 - March 21, are because an arctic airmass has parked its ass over the peak and the air will be crystal and calm but it will also be -30 to -40 degrees Celsius! Early April is just a hell of a lot warmer and that is why Joe Josephson and I targeted the first part of the month for our attempt on the Emperor. 

After many a phone call, it was a wholesome young man from Mazama, Washington who said yes to being our third and hopped into his car and logged a solid 12 behind the wheel to meet us in the parking lot in the early morning shadow of the King. I’ve come to know Steve House  well, I call him the “Farmboy”. 

As Ward, Jim and I had done in 89; Jo-Jo, Farmboy and I shortcut a long ski into Berg Lake by renting a heel-eye-owe-copter.

Boldly we make an attempt at the very centre of the Emperor Face and it proves to be just to damn hard and scary. We shift our attention to linking the huge gulley on the right side of the face with the silvery strip of ice up and left that runs a straight 1000ft to merge with the Emperor Ridge at about the start of the gargoyles. 

We charge, climbing 5000ft of superb classic terrain over a 22 hour day. A bitter west wind rakes at our bivy and it is constant and frigidly malicious and we rush into layers and bags and bivy sacs. We’re  psyched!  Going over the top the next day is a possibility! But first we need to drink and drink, then eat and sleep. 

“Ok. I definitely  don’t have it.” Steve states. He’s just looked through all of his possessions for the seventh time ... the pump to the stove has gone down the face and with it all of Steve’s pride and self-worth. The man is suicidal and I worry that he is going to jump, or slash his wrists with his ice axes.

“You know Steve, at the end of your life, when you sum up all of the fuck-ups that you are going to make, this is going to seem like pretty small change.” I say.

“Gee, thanks Bubba” Steve replies. 

The next morning we are famously dehydrated and we get the hell out of there.

    FAILURE TO CLIMB MT ROBSON 

April, 1998, I’m paying $3.00/minute to talk to an Environment Canada meteorologist and Jo-Jo and the Farmboy are crowding close to the pay phone trying to hear. 9000ft above us the King is obscured in cloud and the money isn’t helping as all the man promises us is one day of good weather, tomorrow. We high tail it back to  Mt Saskatchewan at the Columbia Icefields and the next day Farmy amazes Jo-Jo and I by leading a WI 6 R pitch right off the deck (a pitch that he started by headlamp!). 11 more pitches and we’ve created “The Silver Lining” (700m, V,5.9,WI 6 R).

“Robson was our cloud , this is our silver lining.” Farmboy states with satisfaction on top (didn’t I tell you he’s wholesome).
 

    THE 3rd ANNUAL ATTEMPT AND

    FAILURE TO CLIMB MT ROBSON 

1999, March -because its the only time that we could get. No Jo-Jo as he’s gone off to get serious about a career (god I hate that word). Farmy and I lure Scott Backes out of retirement, but the weather forecast isn’t good enough for the King so we head off to the East Face of Howse Peak. The Farmboy amazes Scotty and I about as much as we can be amazed: WI 7+, onsight, 1500ft off the deck. Two days later, we are in a storm and on our way down “M-16” (1000m, VI, WI 7+, A2) when I get smacked senseless by a collapsing snow mushroom that shears my pack from my back and cracks my right tibia. The next day I’m rescued via helicopter from the lower slopes.

    THE 4th ANNUAL ATTEMPT AND

    FAILURE TO CLIMB MT ROBSON 

April, 2000, Jo-Jo is in the house and he and I and Farmboy duplicate our 22 hour, 5000ft day of 1997. This time with a fully functioning stove! The next day the weather goes to hell in handbag and we bail.

    THE 5th ANNUAL ATTEMPT AND

    FAILURE TO CLIMB MT ROBSON 

April, 2001, a draught winter in the Rockies. Strange shallow snow, poor forecasts, not the time for the King. Jo-Jo is gone again so we recruit Argentine climbing ace Rolando Garibotti, whom we call, “Grab-your-body”  (Ladies, when you meet him you’ll know). Rolo, Farmboy and I win the race for the plum ice line of the winter on the East face of Mt Fay in the Lake Louise group: “Sans Blitz” (800m, VI, WI 7, 5.5).

    THE 6th ANNUAL ATTEMPT AND

    FAILURE TO CLIMB MT ROBSON 

April, 2002, actually Farmboy and I teamed up with Marko Prezelj, Slovenia, and Stephen Koch, USA, to attempt a new route on the South Face of Nuptse ... ya, you guessed it, we failed.

    THE FINAL ACT 

June , 2002, Grab-your-body and the Farmboy come up and go into the King. I am up to my ass in alligators and can’t go, but I love these guys and I wish them well and I expect my heart to sink some  knowing that I may be missing out on the route. Surprisingly I find myself wishing that I could be there with them and not losing sleep -literally- over not being there. I take this as a pleasant sign of maturing: the realization that I can’t be on them all. Conditions and weather sucks and the boys leave empty-handed. My maturity proves to be short lived ... 

“Did you hear about Robson?” my fellow guide, Jeff, asks.

“No, what about it?”

“Sounds like some Slovenians may have done your route.”

“WHAT!” and my heart rate doubles.

“Well at least that‘s what Whipper said. He got it from the folks at the info center, they showed him a picture that the Slovenians had drawn on. The big gulley on the right, right?”

Jeff and I led our quests out of the mountains and I called Whipper and his report did cause my heart to sink. I mean I wanted the FA at least to go to one of my crew not people I didn’t even know. Then rumors of incompletion reached my ears and I received an e-mail from the Slovenians, via Marko, and the attached picture and line showed that they climbed pretty much exactly where we had on our 1st and 4th attempts and to the same high point. (Happy days are here again! the sky above is clear again!). Interesting that the Slovenians claimed a first ascent on what we considered a failed attempt and work in progress. 

Next I started getting e-mails from Jean Christophe Lafaille inquiring about conditions on the Emperor for this coming winter. Man, you gotta start to worry when an alpinist like that starts sniffing around your route, kinda like Michael Jordan dropping in for some game ... you know that you’re going to get hopped. 

I escorted the last of my summer clients from the mountains in mid-October and it was obvious that conditions were perfect and that the weather had locked into some blue. But Farmboy couldn’t come and I gave up convincing myself that I had too many things to do, a career to maintain, that’s when Eric Dumerac called and I cleared my calendar. 

Short in stature but long on power, Eric is a cannonball of a man who wears his heart on his sleeve -what you see is what you get- but keep your eyes wide because there is a lot to see. An “M” climbing enthusiast, Eric has dragged my sorry ass out on some truly sick rigs (I’m convinced that the objective of the “M” game is to pull your  arms out of your torso!). Eric is also keen on climbing mountains and had climbed beyond the mixed dojos footing the mountain to embrace the beauty and battle of traditional alpinism -my sport- his love and passion for all of it is visible and that perspective has encouraged me to look past my own camp and that is a good thing. 

Philippe Pellet hails from France, specifically Briancon (pronounced: Brie-on-sconn. OK, I loved winding him up by calling his town Brian-con, like you’d say: “Brain”, the convict). Philippe was our ace in the hole, the man climbs 5.13, M10 and grade VII in the alpine, and he is an internationally certified mountain guide and rescue specialist who spends six months a year slinging into climbing wrecks under a helicopter. The father of three, Philippe is 41 and that proved to be the mass that tipped the scales in my favor and convinced my wife, the fair Catherine, to grant me a kitchen pass. Philippe speaks little English and embarrassingly, after half a dozen trips to Chamonix, I speak no French (must not have an “ear” for it). The bilingual Eric would be our conduit between cultures. 

October 23rd, 2002, 1500ft above our exit from the nice warm helicopter, we abut against the first of the difficulties and Philippe takes the lead: a freshly formed modern mixed challenge, M5 rock shelled in snow that cul-de-saced. Philippe escapes left across a steep and undercut traverse to reach newborn water ice. 

Fifteen feet into the traverse I come to a hand sized cam and it is set into blocky limestone uncovered from an eggshell crust of course grainy snow. Two of the cam’s feet are open and I cannot fix that as my  pack is dragging on me and heating my forearms to a vicious burning pump. I step down and strand myself in the dire position of being hard up against a questionable stopper and knowing that I will fall if I do not get rid of my pack. In desperation I thrust  my left arm behind the crust, providentially it does not fracture. I scream back to Eric who screams in French to Philippe and after much screaming Philippe coils and hurls rope to me. I tremble now and feel my left shoulder failing, elongating, my pack pulls and pulls and I worry that the shoulder will dislocate. The tasks of tying a knot with one hand and clipping my pack and shucking it from my back draw out into anxious and exhausting minutes. I feel pathetic, like a wobbling just born colt, then I fall into panic and rage when the pack fishhooks on my right tool and drags on me like a gibbeted corpse. I jerk and jerk, the horrible rasp of my crampon points scratching, my body quakes with exertion and I scream a string of vitriolic obscenity that silences Philippe and Eric and they grab at the mountain and check their belays in anticipation of a fall. Then my pack unsnags and arcs away to thud into the wall below Philippe like a 40lb sack of green shit. In balance, I weld  the nut and clip my quivering ass to it, then reach and fix the cam and then breathe and breathe and calm myself down. 

We ferry the other packs across and at the anchor I assure Philippe that all is now cool and I know that he knows its cool because he’s seen this scene many times before. It’s just part of it. 

Four hours later we bivy right of the big coulior and the Northern Lights burn across the firmament like a wall of jade flame, we three eat and drink in awe. 

The next morning Eric’s headlamp bobs from Philippe to rest on me and he says “Philippe wants to put in gear.” and I am shocked because I’ve suggested soloing into the gulley and a modern French alpinist is opting for less risk. “OK”, I agree knowing that Catherine will indeed like Philippe, and that I’ve now heard it all! 

The climbing is superb and classic, the sky is blue and the temperatures human. Pivoting at one of the anchors Philippe elbows one of his tools and it slithers off downslope to ping and bounce then bound off down the huge coulior. Latin vocabulary every bit as loud and rich as my Gaelic of the day before. Eric listens to the end then turns and says: “He’s pissed man.” Concise and minimalist translation, I love it. 

Late in the day Philippe takes over at Jo-Jo's, Farmy's and my high point of 97 and 2000 and we follow a magic silver strip of ice for four perfect rope-lengths. Eric’s block merges us onto the North variation of the Emperor ridge route and later, by headlamp, we find an established bivy at about 11,000ft. I point out chalk coloured flesh on Eric’s nose, the -20 degree wind-chill has blanched the blood from it and like me, Eric, hunkers down and puts his back to the bitter west wind. Shot glass size hunks of spiced Italian sausage jiggle and puff up in a simmering pot of hot and sour soup and pad thai noodles, the French really are further evolved than us culinarily, I mean I’d of had us smacking down KD and tube steak. 

Early the next  morning I get the gemstone pitch: a foot wide strand of deep ice set into the back of a vertical chimney adorned with positive edges and ending on the Emperor  Ridge proper. Quite frankly, it just doesn’t get any better than this. Having followed many pitches yesterday with one axe so that Philippe could lead with two, I realize that it is the way to climb this pitch and I holster my left tool. 

We tack up the ridge for many an hour.

Philippe’s block ends by turning a steep step on the frost-locked 5.9 terrain of the Emperor Face. He elbows off his second tool while belaying and sets our route record for volume, length and scathe. “He’s pissed”, Eric states then listens some more and adds, “Oh, this is funny. He says that in 25 years of climbing he’s never dropped a tool and if he drops one more I’m suppose to take him to the nearest mental hospital and check him in, and it doesn’t matter where, just check him in.” 

Above us the King rises still. Any other route in the range would be over ... the King rises still. 

Late afternoon I surmount gargoyle number ten. We are at 12,000ft and a kilometer of gargoyles stretch from me in toppling legions. They look like gargantuan shark's teeth rolling out in rows. We will never get through them today. I sprint out right onto the “spiral road” of natives dead long ago, and for ten rope lengths we traverse 40 degree ice bands bordered, and held in place, by Robson’s strata. 

The immersion into cold night, calve muscles so exhausted that we sprint to belays, to anywhere that we can get a foot sideways. 9 pm, Eric gains us the coulior that tops the Wishbone Arete. Philippe grinds on in the lead. I follow on brittle glassy ice one gloved palm gliding over the skin of the mountain all my other limbs penetrating it by force. 

Midnight, Eric and I crunch onto the summit shelf and wobble over and clamp Philippe in our arms, language is superfluous as this moment is communicated spirit to spirit to spirit. 

Then we HOWL!