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Date |
Ascent Time |
Descent Time |
| 1st Time |
05 Aug 01 |
incomplete |
incomplete |
We drove up the Bush River north of Golden to marker 182. This is practically the end of the road.
We put chicken wire around the trucks to keep the animals from chewing on the rubber lines and hoses.
Then we waited for the helicopter to come in. Soon, there it was. We loaded up the helicopter and
flew to the Tsar/Sommerville col. There were 7 people on this trip, so we had to take two trips in,
but the second trip was full of gear. We were able to take beer and regular food to keep in the
base camp. It was looking like a great weekend.
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Here we see Bill Marriott (trip organizer). Bill doesn't like approaches, so he tends to take
a helicopter whenever practical. Circled in red is our base camp with the lower slopes of Tsar
in the background. Bill and I went for a small hike up the slopes of Sommerville.
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This is Mt. Tsar with our route shown in red. As you can see, the weather wasn't the best, but
it was a lot better than what I had seen on most of the prior weekends.
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This is another picture of the route. You go up on the right, then you cut across this long
"boardwalk" back to the left ridge. It's actually a very easy route. The mountain isn't very
technical.
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Here is a shot looking back at the boardwalk. As you can see, it's just a long flat section of rock
that cuts across the mountain.
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After the boardwalk, you have to run up a snow slope then rock to gain the ridge. This is some
really bad rock. For us, the rock was covered in verglass making the climbing a little slower and
a little less enjoyable.
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Here we can see the rest of the route. As you can see, there is quite a bit of snow still on the ridge.
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Greg turned around on the "boardwalk", which left six climbers. Four of us (including me) turned back at
9,800 ft. Because of the verglass, we had to do a quick rapell to get down safely. As we watched
James and Frederic continue on through knee deep snow, we were glad to be heading to our beers back
in base camp. Of course we felt terrible the next day. Good weather, helicopter access, descent
conditions, just a lack of effort.
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The next day, we hiked out. We cut across the glacier shown here and then made our way down into the trees.
What followed was some of the worst bushwhacking I've ever come across. It was only 10 km and 3,000 ft of
height loss to the car, but it took 9 hours to get through it all. Of that, I spent 5 hours not being able
to see my bright coloured boots. I was glad to be back at the car. Alan Kane explains his descent on his website
and he didn't encounter nearly the bushwhacking that we did. In fact, he was back at his car in a few hours.
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