Elkhorn

When we first were planning our trip to Strathcona Park we thought that we may be able to climb a few peaks in the 4 days that we had in the area. We had been scouring over the “Island Alpine” guidebook and decided to start up the Elk River Trail for the first few days and set up a base camp from which we could explore the surrounding peaks. We had heard that the conditions were unusually snowy still for this time of the year but even with that considered there seemed to be more things to do then we could possibly tackle in one trip.

As we were getting ready to set off we quickly realized that we hadn’t really planned for backpacking/serious mountaineering when we left Calgary in June; we only brought small day packs, a Canadian Tire two man tent and Paul’s sleeping bag couldn’t pack down into a manageable size. We had solved the issues of only having a single pair of crampons, one ice axe and my mountaineering boots badly needing to be replaced in our little excursion to Vancouver, but it would have been unreasonable/ expensive to buy the backpacking gear we already owned. We would make do with what we had.

With 3 packs between the two of us, gear hanging off and sticking out of our daypacks in an unruly manner and wearing climbing harnesses, we must have looked like a pair of crazies (or novices) when we started up the trail. We had rock gear, ice/snow gear, camping gear, and 2.5 days worth of food, our Island Alpine bible, a map and various clothing layers and our standard first aid & emergency kits. We were totally oblivastoked. At about the 2km mark on the Elk River Trail we branched off, crossed a raging river via log-jam and put our faith in to the vibrant flagging tape to lead us through the brush. The goal for the day was a campsite on the North West ridge of Mt. Elkhorn that the book described as “nice, with a good view and water”. What more could we ask for?

3800ft of elevation gain in 6000ft of horizontal travel and 8 hours later, we poured over the map in our tent in the NW ridge of Elkhorn awakened to the reality that this mountain was much bigger (and steeper) than the book had made it seem; We had known we were in for a solid hike but we hadn’t expected vertical tree root climbing, soggy fixed ropes over seeping mossy rock walls and sections of “hiking” that had us gaining a foot of elevation for every two feet traveled. It was a hell of a grind.

Base camp with a the summit of Elkhorn (pointy and slightly left leaning) peaking out behind first of the 3 smaller crests that we would have to go over to get to it.

The photo from the book showing the NW ridge route. This is only about half of what we still had left to do from base camp.

We had another 3320ft of elevation still to gain, the water at the campsite was either a snow pile or the slum puddle from the snow pile melt-off, and we had much more technical terrain ahead of us. We decided that we needed scout the route, check out the avalanche danger and see if we were in over our heads. This would mean an additional day and a half on the mountain if decided we could do it, and therefore we would have to do some serious food rationing and snow-melting to get us through.

Our scouting mission, our first encounter with snow!

This is taken 30min out of base camp at about 5000ft. Out of curiosity we surfed the net and found photos from other peoples trips up this route and this section is a snow-free boulder field.

Paul pondering the feasibility of reaching the summit.

At the end of our scouting mission, after meandering our way over snow fields that hid both our trail and trail markers and taking a look at the mountain we decided that we shouldn’t do it; too much snow (and therefore a potential avalanche risk in the 30 degree heat), we only brought a 20m rope, and it would be hard to make the food thing work.

However, come the morning of day three we just couldn’t walk away, the summit called us and so at 10am we decided to “go take a look” ...just to see if it would go.

A snow arch framing part of the sun-cupped Elkhorn Glacier

Looking out to the snow-capped mainland peaks visible along the horizon from the col. We are only another 20min to the start of the climbing section.

The final push. The route we took is the right leaning line that you can see over Paul's right shoulder, then we traversed leftward to the upper glacier where it wraps itself around a tower.

This photo gives a bit of a better perspective.

Once we got to the upper glacier we crawled into the bergschrund (the gap between the glacier and the rock face). We followed its path around the rock tower till the gap became too small and we were forced to climb the rock (with some aid from the snow) to gain higher ground. After a bit of rock traversing we got to rappel back into an even deeper (4-5m) section of the bergschrund and finally exit out onto the final section of scrambling.

5:30pm and we were on the summit. Turns out it wasn’t bad as we thought it might be- we could easily navigate around any sections that we were unsure about, the snow pack was solid (though there was lots of it) and the climbing was a breeze even with a short rope. It was some of the most interesting mountaineering terrain that we could get all in one package and the view from the summit was amazing!!! Sadly, there is no rest for the wicked and after a peanut butter and honey warp and a look around we descended via the West couloir down a steep snow field to regain the NW ridge and retrace our steps to our base camp by 9:30pm.

We are so glad that we decided to “go take a look”, it was a great experience! We’ve both learnt a lot and are really excited to try some of the other mountains in the area when we can make it back this way.

Back in Nanaimo, we have a day to kill before we can catch the cheaper ferry back to the mainland. It will be nice to take it easy!