Thinking back on all 60 glorious years of it (okay, some bits of it maybe not quite as glorious), I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. First of all, and most important, I didn’t die. In all that time, I averaged a peak a week, I never broke a bone, I saw something of the world and I met a lot of really nice people. I’m talking about my climbing career, of course. In all that time, I created an oeuvre of which I feel I can be justifiably proud, one which brings a smile to my face in my doddering old age. I got to thinking of it all in the context of trips I went on for the purpose of climbing – not day trips, because there were too many of them to count, and not even simple overnight trips, of which there were also hundreds. I’m talking about trips where I was out for at least two nights or longer, sometimes much longer, trips where I could get some serious climbing done. I’ve always kept good records, so it was a lot of fun to look back through them and see what had really transpired over all those years.
In the early days, there were no trips that met that 2-night criterion. That would be from 1962 to 1965 – they were just day trips. Since 1966 was my first year with reliable transportation, it was also the first with trips that qualified – Banff, Jasper, Mt. Temple, Emerald Lake – all while working in Golden, BC, and Horne Lake on Vancouver Island, while studying in Vancouver.
Everything changed in 1967. My time spent out in the mountains went from very little to, I guess we could say, full-time, at least for the summer. From May to September, for a period of almost 4 months, I lived out in the bush in mining exploration camps. Our normal routine was to fly out into the mountains and get dropped off by helicopter and work our way up and down mountains looking for mineralization – those were just day trips, and we were always back in our main base camp at the end of the day. However, there were several times when I was sent out on real camping trips which I can definitely count among my tally of trips that were 3 days or longer, because there was real mountaineering involved in these. There were 3 such trips that summer, as follows:
June 26 – July 5 camped high up along an un-named creek July 11 – July 22 camped at Ball Creek August 7 – August 20 camped at More Creek
Each day we headed out from those tent camps and worked our way up and down the surrounding mountains. All that time was spent in the Stikine region of far northwestern British Columbia. In September, I moved down to the Nass River area of BC where I camped for 4 of the soggiest days of my life scrambling up and down mountainsides in the area of Alder Peak.
The year 1968 got off to an interesting start with a 3-day attempt on Wedge Mountain by its west ridge in February. Man, talk about futile! In May, I spent a full 7 days way up the Stein River with a group of guys prospecting. Every day was a workout, with thousands of feet climbed up mountain slopes mapping and working hard. After that, we moved up to the Interior of BC to the Smithers area where we set up shop for the summer. From a base camp where we lived out in the bush, I then made a series of trips to smaller camps out in the mountains of the Telkwa Range. Each of these camps was with a partner, and all day every day we would climb up and down the surrounding mountains exploring, mapping and examining the mineralization. This was a tremendous workout and the camps went as follows:
July 10 – July 18 camped above tree-line at 4,550 feet July 21 – July 25 camped above tree-line at 5,225 feet July 27 – August 1 camped at Denys Creek at 4,900 feet August 3 – August 10 camped at Hunter Basin at 5,530 feet August 22 – August 28 camped at Loring Creek August 30 – September 4 camped at Pontiac Lakes
October ’68 – another futile 3 days spent on the west ridge of Wedge Mountain
Then came a long dry spell, with no trips of 2 nights or longer. The summer of 1969 was spent in the Yukon, over 4 months of it living in camps in the bush, but on only one occasion did I get away for a 4-day trip to do some mountaineering.
The years of 1970, 1971, 1972 and 1973 saw me keeping my hand in the climbing game but always close to home – nearly always just day trips, the rare overnighter. It wasn’t until 1974 arrived that I started to plan anything longer, and that was when I headed out and did a nice solo climb of Glacier Peak down in Washington state that took up 3 days of travel time. The same for a trip to do Black Tusk and Wedge Mountain.
There was plenty of climbing going on in 1975, and a few more took up that 3-day minimum: an attempt on Mt. Rainier; a climb of Skihist Mountain; a traverse of Mount Breakenridge, and a 4-day trip to climb Mount Truax.
One of my best climbing years ever, in terms of how much was done, both quantity and quality, was 1976, and yet nearly all of it was done as day climbs or one-nighters. There were very few trips of 2 nights or longer, and they were these: several peaks in Cathedral Lakes Provincial Park; a peak by Devil’s Lake; South Sister Peak in Washington state; Three Brothers in Manning Park; a traverse of Mount Garibaldi. There was a 5-day trip up Sloquet Creek and then down the Stave River, and a 10-day trip to climb the Mexican volcanoes. That was the sum total of longer trips done that year.
Buried in amongst the hundred peaks climbed in 1977 were several trips of 3 days or longer that stand out in my mind. A trip to climb peaks at the head of Scuzzy Creek; climbs of Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Adams; a trip to climb Mount Breier and its neighbors; a climb of Stein Mountain and its outliers; a winter climb of Nepopekum Mountain. Brian Rundle and I went in and did Wedge and Weart both in one day, then followed up with a sodden bivouac in Gentian Pass and an ill-fated attempt on Castle Towers via its west ridge. We made up for it all in the summer with an 8-day trip into the Lillooet Range with a string of firsts on such peaks as Traverse Peak, Vista Peak and Surprise Peak, among others.
1978 was another good year, where longer trips produced some excellent results. One such trip was 3 days in the Anderson River peaks. A 4-day traverse along the ridge of peaks on the divide east of Tretheway Creek picked up Coon Peak among others. A similar traverse down the ridge on the west side of the creek picked up Tretheway Peak and its satellites. The pièce de résistance, however, was the 5-day winter first ascent of Robertson Peak done with Ross Lillie in February, one for the record books. And who could forget the first winter ascent Brian Rundle and I did of Castle Towers on March 12th. Yep, it was one helluva year.
Well, then everything changed. Life changed, a lot. I moved away from the Lower Mainland of British Columbia and to the Interior of the province. My work changed. Family life changed. The years rolled on by. 1979 and 1980 saw no long trips, although a trip to Mount Logan was all set to go but unraveled at the last minute. In the summer of 1981, I spent 6 days on the Columbia Icefields with Ross Lillie doing some climbing. 1982 saw me moving to the USA, to the flatlands of Iowa, where precious little was done in the way of climbing until I escaped to Arizona in 1985. Finally, I was back in the land of mountains. This was my new home, and it felt right, that I was here to stay, my forever place.
Stay tuned to see how I settled in to my new climbing life in Arizona and started going on longer trips.