Day 2: Wednesday, July 27 

We had a decent night’s rest, but awoke early. By the time we ate something and broke camp, it was already 6:45 AM. Yesterday had seen us climbing up old logging roads, and the higher we went the more overgrown they became. As bad as that was, it was luxury compared to the no-logging-roads of today. We were engaged in a full-blown West Coast bushwhack. The climbing was slow and arduous, up a rocky, burnt ridge which we followed to 5,000′ elevation. At that level, we found a bit of blazed trail and an old campsite. My guess is that these were left by prospectors rather than loggers. Forging on, we stopped at around 6,000′ for some lunch. This was a beautiful spot, by a waterfall in a heather meadow and we relished the break. It was very hard going with our heavy packs, miserable in fact. I had never carried so much weight in my life, and my bony frame complained bitterly.

It was only a matter of time, and we knew it, before we’d leave all vegetation behind. By 2:30 PM, we reached the edge of the Breakenridge Icefield, a milestone of sorts. You never saw two guys drop their packs so quickly. This looked like a great campsite, at 7,050′. The weather was still nice and clear, so we set out to do what we’d come for – climbing. It was 3:40 PM. by the time we set out again.

Setting out for our first summit, we got there with no trouble at 4:25 PM. The altimeter said 7,600′ but it was off – the actual height, we felt, was closer to 7,490′. Brian built a cairn on top. In the intervening years since we climbed this peak, it has become known as Breakenridge SW2. The rock outcrop was studded with fine, clear, elongated quartz crystals. Tired as we were, we traversed this peak and carried on, dropping down to a glacial lake, then climbed to another summit which was 7,190′. This one had some nice moves on upturned granitic blocks, and we stood on top at 5:20 PM and built another cairn. Leaving it, we went back down to the lake, then continued towards Mt. Breakenridge. By 6:30, we were dead tired and decided not to climb it, instead going back to camp. I’ve always felt badly about that, because it cost Brian his chance to climb Breakenridge. On the way back to camp, we found a claimpost that had been left by one Earl Dodson back on October 5, 1966.

We cooked some supper, and meager fare it was. Brian felt poorly for a while this evening, but perked up later. As the evening progressed, some clouds started to move in. By 9:30, we were in bed. It had been a long, hard day – we had climbed 5,250 vertical feet, most of it with heavy packs, and had covered six more miles. This had been grueling work so far. Now that we were well above tree line, going on from here shouldn’t be so hard, as we’d more or less stay high and just climb peaks along the way.

Day 3 – Thursday, July 28

We got up at 5:30 AM, and it was pouring rain. After some breakfast, we just sat around in the tent and waited. Hours passed, and it improved enough to pack up camp. By 8:00, we left and headed north along the edge of the icefield, then dropped our packs and climbed 400 feet up to the top of Peak 7420. There, at 9:00, we built a cairn as the clouds rolled in once again. Hustling back down to our packs, we continued north out into the middle of the icefield. The clouds rolled in once again and socked us in – it was a complete white-out, and we couldn’t see a thing. All we could do was sit down on the snow and wait, and wait, and wait – for 4 hours. We moved around a bit, tried to wait it out in a few different places, but it was a waste of time. There was no concept of distance or direction, and it was as frustrating as could be. We had to do something, we couldn’t just sit there forever. There was a big, open, fairly flat piece of rock some distance back, and it seemed like we could find it if we followed our footsteps back the way we had come. That’s easier said than done in a white-out, as all texture seems to vanish, but eventually we found it.

After looking around a bit on our rock island in the middle of the icefield, we found the most level spot and pitched our tent. God, it was windy – it blew non-stop. We kept hoping that it’d let up and maybe we could move on later in the day, but by 6:00 PM we were still socked in. At 7:00, when we tightened up the tent cords for the night, it was snowing! It was obvious we weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. We turned in for the night at 7:30. Our expedition was certainly up in the air – we had no idea what we were in for, nothing but question marks right now. This whole day had yielded but one peak, with 550′ of climbing and a mere 3 miles covered. Tomorrow would surely be a better day.

Day 4 – Friday, July 29

It blew really hard all night, and rained almost constantly. The tent walls became saturated and dripped all over us, getting our down sleeping bags wet. The tent had a perfectly good fly, but the violent flapping in the wind allowed the horizontal rain to soak the ripstop nylon tent walls. We slept in late, if you can call it sleep. Once in a while, we’d poke our heads out but it was always socked in. At 9:00 AM, it was a whopping 36 degrees F. The pressure had dropped overnight, so we weren’t too hopeful of improvement. Because the tent was tall, about seven feet at the center pole, it was easy enough to move around and stretch a little, but that was small comfort. Before we had left town, I had installed a zipper in a half-moon shape in the bathtub floor of the tent for cooking. This allowed us to set up the MSR stove on the bare rock and not burn the tent down.

By 4:30, there was no change in the weather, but the pressure had been rising slowly all day. We made several trips outside into the slop to keep tightening all the tent and fly cords. Man, we were bored. Most of our time was spent talking about what we’d eat once we got back to civilization. It wouldn’t have been so bad if we’d had a lot to eat, but that wasn’t the case. What a huge mistake I’d made, pushing for lightweight food – we were hungry all the time. The discussion even turned to alternate plans such as avenues of escape if the weather didn’t improve and we were forced to bail. Three days of food left after today.

We slept a lot in the afternoon to pass the time. Part of the problem was that at this latitude in late July, there was a good 18 hours of daylight. Back in town, I’d drawn a monopoly board on the back of one of our maps. The dice and everything else all fit into a 35-mm film canister. Out it came, and that killed a bunch of time. Brian was taking antihistamines for sinus congestion, and it looked like he was getting a cold. Pea soup for supper – big whoop. Just shoot me now.

By 8:00 PM, we noticed that it hadn’t actually rained for quite a while. The wind was less violent, the altimeter had dropped over 200′ since yesterday. At ten o’clock, it had cleared up and the moon was shining. Please God, let it hold!

Day 5 – Saturday, July 30

I woke up at 4:30 AM because I was too excited to sleep any more. Things had dried out pretty well, and we had everything packed up and were moving by 6:40. There were still some clouds hanging around, but it was getting clearer all the time. Man, it felt good to be moving again.

The first thing we tackled today was something we called Peak 7900. It wasn’t difficult, and by 8:45 we stood on its summit. Looking farther north, the ground we had to cover to reach our next peak (we called it Peak 8000) looked easy. That’s exactly how it turned out, easy-peasy, and even with full packs, we stood on top at 10:00 AM. Nowadays, local climbing guidebooks and even Google Earth refer to this one as Traverse Peak, a name we didn’t give it when we did the first ascent. The skies had cleared completely and we were excited – a full day of climbing awaited us, over some interesting-looking ground.

A large, crevassed icefield now lay in our path, and we weren’t looking forward to crossing it. It took an hour of careful travel, roped, with ice axe and crampons. That done, we now stood at a saddle, actually more like a notch, between two peaks – our plan was to climb both of them. We dropped our packs, then dropped down a bit below the notch. That put us in a good position to climb the first one, 320′ of Class 3 slabs on its north side. This one was about 7,300′. On top, we built a cairn and stayed a while to soak up the view. Back down at the starting point, we decided against the one on the other side of the notch. It involved some very steep snow, and Brian said he felt weakened by his cold. No worries. We shouldered our packs once again.

There was something wrong – with the maps, that is. Our route continued north, down a crevassed glacier which filled an entire valley a mile long. That in itself wasn’t a problem, but the bogus 1:50,000-scale map showed no glacier or snowfield there. To this day, it’s still hard for us to believe that the mapmakers could have omitted something that obvious – somebody wasn’t paying attention to the air photos, that’s for sure.

Descending the glacier went with no problem, and it led us to a lightly-wooded ridge. It really struck us, the smell of green, growing things again – it was a welcome change. Down we went, all the way to a small lake at 5,850′ elevation, a real beauty spot – we’d camp here. After washing some clothes, and also ourselves, hours were spent lazing in the sun. Brian’s cold was getting worse, so it was decided that we’d put in one more good day of climbing, then call it quits. It was a shock to realize that our big plans were over, that our glorious expedition was over almost before it had begun. There was no choice, really. Our food was crap, what little of it there was, and we were slowly starving ourselves and losing weight. The first food drop still seemed impossibly far away, and we knew we’d run out long before reaching it. The weather and my poor food planning had done us in. Tomorrow, we’d do more climbing and then return to this camp for one more night. A late supper and a fine sunset ended our day.

Stay tuned for the continuation of this story, entitled The Lillooet Range – Part 3

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