Bugaboos

Well this is a little late, but I figured I would write up a trip report for my trip to the Bugaboos last summer. I was there with Josh and we did a couple climbs; Energy Crisis and the Northeast Ridge of Bugaboo Spire.

On our first day we climbed Energy Crisis 5.11c. I first saw this climb the year before when I climbed Mctech Arete and noticed the beautiful corner next to it. It looked so hard and intimidating then and now I was about to give it a go. It is always cool to see progress. I wasn't able to onsight the crux pitch, but with a couple small falls I finished it out and from there it was smooth sailing. What a great climb.

The gear pile

Looking up Energy Crisis
The first pitch (Also really good)
Down low on the second crux pitch
Higher up
Snowpatch & Pigeon from up high
Josh rapping off the top

The next day we decided to climb the Northeast Ridge of Bugaboo Spire. I know that this is one of the 50 classic climbs, but I didn't think it was that great. There was very little good climbing and a lot of loose rock. Having said that it is worth doing just for the adventure. The climb is long and it's on a beautiful mountain.

For this climb it was me, Josh and a guy that we met in camp. To keep a long story short we took a little longer to do the climb than I would have hoped, but eventually made it to the top and back down to the col right as it was getting dark. This is where the real story starts.

Early morning light on Snowpatch

The gully you have to climb to reach the ridge
The best pitch of the route
Snowpatch
Summit ridge
Pigeon at dusk

From here we couldn't descend down the pass between Snowpatch and Bugaboo because all the snow was melted out, which left big rocks just sitting in sand. A definite bad idea. The other option is to rappel next to the icefall on the backside of Snowpatch. This isn't too bad. It is something like six bolted rappels. The only problem is that now you have to walk all the way around Snowpatch and pick your way back to camp. It adds a couple hours to the adventure, but it's still better then knocking giant rocks onto each other.

So off we went on the rappels. We made the first 5 without incident, but this all changes when we get ready to make the sixth rappel. We already have the rope strung through the anchor and I'm about ready to leave our little ledge when all of a sudden we hear this super loud roar above us. Not only does it sound like we are about to be killed by rockfall, it looks like the cliff is about to fall apart with us on it because the entire thing is shaking. It actually looked like when you throw a rock into a perfectly calm lake and it creates ripples. That's what the cliff was doing. Shaking back and forth. I've never been so scared in my life. I actually though I was dead. In that second I believed that was it.

At this point we were hugging the wall and hoping that the rocks wouldn't hit us, but they never came. The roar didn't stop, but there were no rocks. After a couple seconds of confusion we realized that the noise was actually a little climbers left. We looked left just in time to watch a rock the size of a small school bus fly through the air. It was so weird to go from complete chaos to dead silent as we watched this massive rock silently fly towards the glacier. Within seconds it smashed into the glacier throwing September snow 50 feet into the air like it was Utah powder. It then careened down the glacier and finally stopped a long ways past any of the debris from the icefall.

Needless to say we were a little surprised by what had just happened and decided to make the rappel and get the hell out of there. After a long walk around Snowpatch and another rappel we were finally back at camp 18 hours later.

This is a picture from a previous trip of the icefall. We were rapping just out of the picture to right when the block rolled off the rock where the icefall meets the rock at the highest spot. Our guess was that the rock was frozen in place for a long time and finally melted out and slowly slid down the shelf, which is why it shook for so long.

I learned a lot of lessons from that climb. The most important being that the mountains really can kill you. You read about people getting hurt and dying and you always think that it wont happen to you. You know enough, you are careful enough, but the reality is that we are fragile in the alpine environment and things out of our control can end us in the blink of an eye. Am I done taking risks in the mountains, no way, but am I more aware of my surroundings and what I'm doing. I sure think so. I've always read that young climbers take risks early on and it's not until they experience close calls that they fully realize what they are getting themselves into. I always kind of laughed at this and said that I had my stuff together, but I didn't fully comprehend the situations that I was putting myself in. Climbing is a sport that can kill you. It can happen at the crag or in the mountains, gravity works the same everywhere. Have fun, but more importantly be safe. The whole point is to come back and climb again tomorrow.