Way back on March 10th of 2014, I posted a story of climbing Mt. Breakenridge. At the time, I had no photos of my own to use, so climber friend Ross Lillie kindly offered me his. In the interim, I have discovered my original photos taken on that trip, so here is a re-working of that story, complete with all of those pictures taken almost 50 years ago.

The first time I ever visited the town of Harrison Hot Springs was probably during my high-school years, I’m guessing in 1962 or 1963. As you approach the end of the highway into town, it deposits you at the beach on the shore of Harrison Lake. From there, you’ll get a good view of Mt. Breakenridge. In fact, that’ll be the only view most people will ever get of the mountain. Here’s a view north up the lake taken on a cold winter’s day back in 1969, perhaps the first photo I ever took of it. It’s the snowcapped peak on the center horizon.

Here’s a better picture I took a few years later, which was taken at the height of summer. The white you see is part of the Breakenridge Icefield, and the mountaintop stays white like that all the time.

When I think back on my early days of climbing, I realize I did some pretty ballsy stuff, took a lot of risks I maybe shouldn’t have. But if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have all these great memories to entertain me in my doddering old age now, would I? Here’s an example.

It was the summer of 1975, and I was restless to get back into the mountains. It had been all of four days since I had last climbed something, and the weather was perfect. That’s saying something for coastal British Columbia. Came the morning of August 8th, my wife drove me to the dock of Riv-Tow at the southern end of Harrison Lake. They operated a water taxi which ran up and down the 50-mile-long lake, supplying the various logging camps and catering to the whims of the lunatic fringe such as yours truly. Much to my surprise, I found two photos I took back in 1974.

From the village of Harrison Hot Springs, you could look north straight up the lake and see a big mountain, perpetually white with snow and ice. Even at the end of summer, it wore its white crown. I was mesmerized by it, and daydreamed of finding a way of getting to it and standing on its summit. Mt. Breakenridge was its name. What little I knew of it had been gleaned from a book which had been published only months before. Alpine Guide to Southwestern British Columbia, written by Dick Culbert, who had been a fellow geology student at the University of BC in Vancouver, was an instant success. It quickly became my bible. The only reference available at the time, it covered a large area at the edge of which I happened to live. This ambitious and much-needed work changed my life, inspiring me and many other climbers to head to the hills and explore.

The boat, named Redonda, piloted by Ed Reid, left early in the day and always on time. It took several hours to make its way up the lake to my jumping-off point, so I had plenty of time to ponder my situation. My plan was to travel alone, on foot, many miles through remote and challenging terrain. If something happened to me, I’d be shit out of luck. Rescue would be a long shot – where would they even begin to look for me in that trackless wilderness? No, this was a do-or-die venture, and I had no intention of dying. Everything hinged on not making mistakes, not even one.

The captain set me down at the dock of the long-abandoned logging camp at the mouth of Stokke Creek. He wished me luck, then hit the throttle and quickly disappeared up the lake. There I stood, utterly alone and beginning to realize the magnitude of what I had undertaken. It was barely noon. An old logging road led out of the quiet camp – I followed it northeast up the valley bottom for a few miles, watching it become steadily more overgrown. It was around this point that I decided to leave what was left of the old road and start climbing in earnest.

Using the old topographic map I carried, at length I made a decision to head up spur roads, taking me higher and higher up the southeast side of the valley. I met a bear en route, but thankfully he took off running and left me to my own devices. By the time I called it a day, I had climbed 5,100 vertical feet. I felt totally knackered, and knew for sure I was dehydrated. How? As I stood there taking a leak, surveying the valley below, I had a bladder spasm which crumpled me like a rag doll. Once I recovered, I drank my fill from a small stream nearby and felt a lot better. It had been a good day, getting that high with a full pack. The night was clear and chilly, but I slept well. Here are a couple of photos I took from my campsite that evening.

There had been clear periods throughout the day, but as the sun went down, I could see clouds moving in. This always made me suspicious about what weather might be coming.

I took these pictures the next morning from my camp at 5,100 feet. There were too many clouds for my liking and I was afraid the weather was about to change for the worse.

This view is to Mt. Douglas, northwest across the valley of Stokke Creek. It has an elevation of 6,800 feet, and is probably named after the old village of Port Douglas at the head of the lake.

I had something to eat and moved on. It took a while, but the bush thinned out and the slope lessened. Shortly after starting out, I took a few more pictures. Here’s one looking way up Stokke Creek.

Here’s the view I had up to what would be the edge of the plateau – beyond this sat the icefield, not yet visible.

Here’s another view up to around 7,000 feet.

This is a photo of a prominent ridge that runs WNW from the edge of the icefield. It sits as high as 7,300 feet and runs downhill to the left.

At around 6,500 feet elevation, things started to level out. I was now above treeline, and soon made my way on to the Breakenridge Icefield at around 7,000 feet elevation. I had been filled with expectation as I came over the rocky rim for my first look at that large expanse of ice, and I wasn’t disappointed. It was only two miles or so across this thing, and fairly flat. That’s the summit of Mt. Breakenridge out there, elevation 7,858 feet, so it was about 800 feet higher than where I stood.

What a rush, being up there by myself! Although I had an ice axe and crampons with me, I didn’t really need them to cross that final distance to the summit. The ice was old and quite flat, so the chance of falling into a hidden crevasse was almost nil. The last stretch was on good rock, and before I knew it I stood on the summit. I felt like a million bucks – I was the king of the world! It had taken five hours of climbing that morning from my campsite to reach the top. I spent a while and soaked up the view. Too many years have passed since that day, almost 50, for me to remember if I left a summit register. If I didn’t find one there that day, then I would have left one, as that had already become my habit. Here you can see my final few feet to the summit.

There I was, enjoying the view, when reality settled in – I needed to get down off this thing and find a way home. If I were to go back the way I had come in, it would mean waiting days at the lake shore for the boat to pass by on its next run, as it only made the run twice a week. Oh, wait –  I hadn’t told him to pick me up, so he wouldn’t even stop there! The camp was abandoned, so there was no reason for him to ever come by. My original plan was to traverse the mountain and exit via the south and east and come out at a logging road. It was all unknown territory to me, but how hard could it be? Man oh man, was I in for a surprise!

It was short work to head down off of the spine of rock that was the summit ridge and back on to the icefield, and I then started south. My first challenge was to cross the very pronounced south ridge and get on the east side of it. I managed this without too much trouble and there I was, in the huge basin which drained the entire southeast side of the peak. It looked like, if I trended southeast, I could get down out of this bowl and to the creek which drained the entire basin. I put on my crampons and very carefully chose a path down through the glacier and snowfield which filled the entire upper part of the valley. Several crevasses gave me pause – being solo, I couldn’t make any mistakes – falling into one would have likely put an abrupt end to my climbing career. While on the upper part of the glacier, I managed a couple of photos which I share with you here.

As you can see in the photo, the glacier was badly broken in places. I had to weave a very zigzag path to avoid the most dangerous areas. You can also see that wisps of cloud were drifting across the basin – the ceiling was dropping, and I hoped I could descend fast enough to stay below it. The last thing I wanted was to get caught in a whiteout way up there. This next shot shows the terrain a bit lower down, with wisps of cloud moving across the basin.

There were plenty of features like this one to bypass.

Yet lower down, I managed this look to the south, down the length of Harrison Lake, while lowering clouds threatened.

When I was even lower, I had this look to the east, across the bowl.

By the time I reached a point well down in the basin and had stepped off the last of the snow, I felt I had it made. I had dropped a full 2,500 vertical feet, as carefully as I could, while trying to maintain enough of a pace that I could stay below the cloud cover. Right about where the ice and snow ended, at around 5,200 feet elevation, a big problem reared its ugly head. Unseen from above, a cliff band, which I’ll call the barrier,  stretched in a horseshoe shape all the way across the basin, and it was a real doozy. I had no rope, so there was no possibility of rappelling down anywhere. I stood on the top, looking over the edge at countless waterfalls cascading down into the valley below.

In retrospect, it was a beautiful sight, but totally lost on me at the moment. I couldn’t see any obvious way to get down. It took a lot of walking along the edge before I finally found a place safe enough to downclimb and get below the cliffs, which were about 500 feet high. I had burned a lot of daylight doing this, and guess what – there were even more cliffs lower down, scattered bands of them, but nothing as bad as the barrier. I was never so glad to finally get below tree-line, and that’s saying something in the coast rainforest.

Following the headwaters of the no-name creek that drained the entire basin, I continued to lose elevation as the bush thickened. The mega-rainfall in this area promised all of the joys of Coast Range bush-whacking, and I was not to be disappointed. Steep ravines interspersed with waterfalls really played hell with my progress. Deadfall littered the forest floor. Several times, I was forced to cross the creek, whether I wanted to or not. This was usually done on fallen slippery trees over the whitewater creek. One wrong move would’ve been a disaster.

A strong memory I still have of that forest, though, was that it seemed primeval. It was old growth, undisturbed and untouched by the hand of man. Loggers had never touched it. The trees were huge, probably hundreds of years old. Much of the forest floor was covered with a thick layer of moss, several inches thick, deep and soft. It was magical. The forest was so dense, though, that it seemed dark and gloomy beneath it, made even more so by the solid gray overcast.

By 8:00 PM, I was totally shagged out – I had been moving pretty much non-stop for fourteen hours straight. Even though I kept looking for a place to bed down for the night, nothing good came to light – I just couldn’t find a level spot anywhere. Out of desperation, I settled on a mossy spot among tall trees – it wasn’t nearly flat, but it was the best I could manage. I spent a very uncomfortable night contorted into an awkward position on a slope. Then it started to rain as I lay there in my bivi bag (I hadn’t brought a tent, wanting to travel as lightly as possible). That was one long night.

My third day dawned, gray and overcast. The bush was sopping wet, so that made for extra fun as I lost the final 1,500 vertical feet descending the valley eastward. It took me three hours to do that. I found a place to ford Big Silver Creek, and waiting for me on its far bank was a logging road. Back in 1975 when I did this climb, there was no logging activity at all in the entire valley I had descended from Mount Breakenridge to Big Silver Creek – it was untouched, virgin country. Since then, sadly, logging has destroyed it. Anyway, once on the road, I started walking north up the valley. Before I had started this climb, I had heard rumor of a camp upstream, and in an hour I found it.

It looked like any other logging camp, but perhaps because it was a Sunday, all was quiet. The camp was run by B.C. Forest Products. I finally found someone to talk to – he was incredulous upon hearing my story. It turned out that they had a radio in camp, which somehow could be patched in to the telephone system. He happily placed a call for me to my wife – I told her the climbing was done, all I had to do now was get back to town. Someone was leaving the camp soon and offered me a ride out. It took a couple of hours on the logging roads, but he got me out to Harrison Hot Springs where I had caught the boat. A little hitch-hiking with my pack got me the last 40 miles back to my home in the town of Mission.

In retrospect, I had been pretty lucky. No injuries, didn’t get lost, didn’t get eaten by any bears, and, best of all, I had climbed a great mountain. To this day, it is one of my fondest mountaineering memories – not bad for a young whippersnapper of 27. I was already planning the next one.