It is with a great deal of trepidation that I'm announcing my intention to migrate all the content on explor8ion.com to a more modern, updated format. Why the fear and trembling on my part? It's a daunting task ahead of me. Over the years I've managed to create two monsters in the forms of explor8ion.com with over 650 trip reports and verndewit.com with tens of thousands of photos. This migration effort will eventually bring both domains together but for now they will exist separately - I apologize for the confusion. Please be patient with some churn on both sites, while I spend the next few years on this very huge, very non-trivial exercise. During the change, you will see highlighted sections such as the one below from my Chimper Peak trip. This highlighted section will show up in every trip report as I move them over.
!!Attention!! explor8ion.com is being updated and trip reports migrated to a new site while this one is still operational. The new version of this trip report can be found at https://verndewit.com/2018/10/20/chimper-peak/ and contains more photos in a modern format. For more information on this move and possible future changes please click here.
If I'm totally honest about it, I didn't really feel like climbing Warren after a long day of approaching and climbing Mount Brazeau the day before, not to mention a very restless night spent sleeping in a very noisy and cold mid, thanks to a strong west wind blasting our exposed bivy site on the glacier.
Mount Brazeau has been on my radar for many years already. I wasn't in a huge rush to do it however, because I knew it was a relatively easy 11,000er and could be done in almost any conditions and in any season, from full-on winter conditions to mid-summer ones. Or could it? Ben and I set out on July 30th 2015 from the Poboktan Creek trailhead to find out how Mount Brazeau and its neighboring peaks would behave in an extremely dry year in the Canadian Rockies.
After climbing Mount Sir Douglas on the weekend, I wasn't really expecting anything spectacular from the following week. To be honest, as much fun as Sir Douglas was, I was feeling a bit burnt out and thought I needed a week off. Then the weather got nice. Then Ben and I started emailing. Then I found myself planning to leave Thursday evening for a shot at Mount Victoria - North Peak!
Raf told me I should climb Mount Sir Douglas this year (2015) since it was my 40th birthday and Sir Douglas is the 40th 11,000er in Corbett's book. Who am I to argue with the crazy Pol?
Once we descended from Christian Peak and looped back to our traverse tracks from the day before, we decided to give Arctomys Peak a try. I think we all underestimated the amount of effort required to get all the way over to the eastern edge of the Lyell Icefield from the south ridge of Christian Peak, never mind the effort to then descend 400 vertical meters, cross another small icefield and then re-ascend to the summit of Arctomys.
Edward Peak was easy after the 'schrund on Ernest, but what would Rudolph be like? Well - it was smack in the middle of the previous two. We had no technical issues up it's south ridge, it was a moderate scramble at most. The only difference between it and the other Lyell peaks, is that Rudolph is a rock scramble rather than a snow climb.
Next to Ernest Peak, Edward (Lyell II) was pretty darn tame. Other than the fact that the height gains and distances were starting to add up and the day was getting long, there were absolutely no difficulties getting to the summit of the purported, but debatable of the highest of the Lyells.
I think it was Ben who initially started musing that perhaps we should "go for Lyell 1, 2 and 3 (Rudolph, Edward and Ernest) today yet". Wait, what?! When I first overheard his murmured suggestion I thought I must be dreaming. I'd never heard of anyone doing the entire Lyell Hut approach on foot and then 3 of the 5 Lyells on the same day.
The Lyell Icefield and the Lyell peaks in particular, have had my attention for many years. I’ve been doing trips around them and had glimpses and full on views of their lofty and distinct summits many times. Some of the best views were on my remote ascent of Mount Amery, Monchy and Hooge back in 2012 with Eric Coulthard.
After a fairly straightforward route to the summit of Threepoint Mountain it was time to explore. Nugara is pretty sure in his guidebooks that there is "no direct route" from Threepoint over to Mount Rose, it's shorter neighbor to the south. He's right, of course. There is no direct scramble route.