Message from the President

Here we are at the summer solstice - this is always a favourite time of year for me with long days full of light and the promise of the summer alpine season! 2020 has definitely been a challenging year and the KMC had to suspend or cancel many of our regular programs as we navigate this new world of COVID-19 precautions. But we're finding ways to move forward and updating our club procedures as public health directives change. It's been wonderful to see members out again on small club trips (with hiking pole distance apart) as well as attend the KMC's first online mountain school course on Zoom! Many of us are dealing with the disappointment of cancelled plans or trips this summer, but we're all being encouraged to explore our own backyards. And what a backyard we have here in the Kootenays! Glaciers, wildflowers, mountain peaks, waterfalls! I hope all of you find safe adventures in our local mountains this summer - see you out on the trails! Abby, KMC President

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T h e K o o t e n a y M o u n t a i n e e r

The newsletter for people with year-round pursuits.Sumner Solstice, 2020

ContentsMessage from the President 1..................Trip Reports 2.........................................

Earl Grey Pass 2.................................The Jack Augerpoint Traverse 5...........Mt. Crowe Snowshoe 8........................Davis Creek/Fishhook Lake 9...............Stay at home … not! 10.......................

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newsletter@kootenarymountaineering.bc.ca. Attach your full resolution photos to the email. Lots of photos, please.The Newsletter is published four times a year on the solar

calendar schedule.

Earl Grey Pass Traverse – Rough diary and Impressions.. (Team WEBO)July, 2019Westbound team (WEBO: Abby, Andrea, Richard & Chris) arrived at the trailhead in the early afternoon, after a nice uneventful 5ish hours in the car and some decent enough grub in Invermere. The road to the trailhead wasn’t too rough, except the last km or two. As usual, you hope to God you’ve remembered all your stuff, since there ain’t gonna be anything available to buy along the route.

We hiked into a forest of mostly lodgepole pine, with some open meadows. The weather’s perfect, sunny, not too hot. A few km in there’s a nice open meadow with the ruins of the Earl Grey’s Cabin, obviously a well appointed structure in it’s day, with an impressive stone fireplace, all now showing the ravages of time and entropy. Peaks begin to loom larger as we proceed up the Toby creek valley. We meet some horsey people coming from the west We reach the Teepee campground around supper time and camp for the night. Actually there was a better place a km or so back on a gravel bar but we ain’t going back. There’s just about enough room for 3 tents. We search around and it’s tough to find a good bear hang, but we finally find something, and after a bit of trouble with rock throwing, we get it hooked up. Abby shows Chris a good girl guide trick consisting of putting the rock in a bag, which greatly improves the efficiency of the process, though it still doesn’t go all that well… a pattern to be repeated on subsequent

nights. Richard complains of a pain in his knee, and we hope it resolves itself by morning. Friday dawns with looming heavy grey clouds and the pitter patter of showers on the tents. Richard’s knee pain isn’t any better and he decides to return to the trailhead, slowly, and await the arrival of the eastbound crew (Team EB0) who are due out Saturday Evening. Chris and the 2 gals continue. The rain lets up. The terrain gets a bit rougher as we gain elevation with many meadows of long grass, flowers, cow parsnip and thimbleberries closing in and making our lower halves wet even when it’s not raining. Showers come and go. We’re glad we have ponchos, despite the extra weight. Chris looks like a walking blue tower and is glad to have help getting the thing over the tall pack. There are some logs to go under and over, but the Parks service has gotten rid of most of the stuff and we’re very grateful for that.

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Trip Reports

The showers let up and we find a nice sunny lunch spot in the woods, looking back at the Pharo peaks which we have passed in the morning. After lunch there’s more too-ing and fro-ing over and under large fallen trees… a recent storm has messed things up a bit since the Parks service clearing. Slows things down a bit… actually quite a bit. It’s becoming apparent that this isn’t going to be ‘a walk in the park’. Several more hours and the trail steepens considerably heading up to the Earl Grey pass. We see the Toby glacier and outwash plain, where Abby says there’s a good campsite.

However we are getting higher and higher above the outwash plain, and it becomes apparent we ain’t gonna find a way down there. “Geez… it must have been that y fork a while back that went straight up the hill… Looked like it was a cut in the switchback.” Anyways, no one wants to go back down and it’s just as well, since a couple of hundred feet below the pass we meet team EBO (Doug, Peter, Karina, Reneta …. ‘turn back ‘ they say, “while you still can”. This is kinda disturbing, and it’s not an option. We wonder about their state of mind. Whatever they’re on, I want some, since they’re all wearing Buddha grins. They offer us whiskey. A toast, some more hysterical laughter, pics, and then they’re gone. Another shower moves in and pounds on us. There will be no water at the campsite. Chris carries a pail from the last creek. We shelter for a while under a tree. The sun comes out just as we reach the pass. Peter said there’s a little campsite just uphill. It’s idyllic. Flat spots in a green larch meadow. I spy an excellent bear hang on a dead snag. We get the tents up and admire the glaciers in the sunshine… Toby glacier on the

eastside, and Hamill glacier and peak to the west. Truly spectacular. Time for supper. Fast moving clouds loom over the western horizon… The rain begins again in earnest. No problem getting water now. Chris’s poncho doubles as a tarp and there’s no end of water coming off it. The ladies have an early bedtime chatting in the tent and Chris sits around for a while contemplating the rain. Day 3. Saturday morning dawns misty. ‘Evening red and morning grey, helps the traveller on his way’ Chris says. Not everyone agrees. We head up towards Slate peak, for better views as the morning mist lifts and thins out. Chris is poking around in some boulders looking for an easy ascent, and Andrea finds there’s actually a marked route up the ridge. It’s a bit sketchy with some use of hands and a bit of exposure. Also some wet black moss. Ugh. But very exciting and the views are awesome with glaciers, waterfalls and 3000 metre peaks. We’d like to go all the way to the summit but it’s apparent we have a long way to go and we descend, pack up and go down the hill, to encounter the alleged horrors awaiting in the west.

Walking downhill is a relief from the interminable uphill of yesterday; the trail is quite good, not excessively steep and the weather is just about perfect with sunshine and little puffy clouds. Eventually the trees get a lot bigger and we’re on the valley bottom in big hemlocks, followed by giant cedars. We don’t get too far along the trail today due to the morning diversion, and find a nice campsite down in the valley bottom among the giant trees. Another bear hang fiasco almost results in the loss of Abby’s stuff bag, which gets hung up high on a very intractable branch.

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Eventually we succeed in breaking it off by all 3 of us pulling on the rope and finally snapping off the branch. Day 4. Another sunny day dawns after a good night’s sleep, and we’re off again through the forest, in good spirits. We soon encounter a creek bridged by a narrow slippery log. Andrea is on the other side by the time Chris gets there… Chris doesn’t like the look of it and looks upstream for a place to jump the braids. Wet boots maybe but less scary… Chris is between the creek braids when he sees Abby go swiftly from vertical on the log, to horizontal on the log, then pivoting and falling about 4 feet into the drink, backpack on the bottom. Yikes! Everything gets wet, but fortunately there’s no real damage. The good weather permits Abby’s gear to dry out. The going along the valley bottom, as promised by team eastbound, gets tougher, with up and down travel across avalanche paths, log crossings, sometimes high above creeks, semi disappearing trails in devil’s club and stinging nettles. We’re glad of the blue flagging which seems to show up most of the time when the trail disappears. The scenery more than makes up for the trail difficulties. Mountain peaks and glaciers, sometimes lovely waterfalls, are visible whenever we get a break in the forest… and the forest itself is wonderful… giant cedar trees providing their unique atmosphere along with relief from the heat of the day in the open areas. We’re really blessed though, with the nice weather which is a lot easier to deal with than what Team EBO had to put up with. Day 5. I left this writeup off back in the Fall but I should finish it. It’s now mid May. So my old brain is probably getting a little hazy and fanciful with the memories… Actually it isn’t. Some things have a way of burning themselves into your memory like the events of day 5. This was the day we keep thinking the trail was getting better, and sometimes it was… but then it would become difficult once more. There were more creek crossings. One was a really rowdy creek with a log that sloped uphill about 20 feet above the roaring creek and none of us felt too comfortable with it, since a fall would be of some consequence. So we proceeded downstream to a spot that looked fordable and got out the rope. After many tries by Chris (Rabbit comes out of his hole, round the tree… … Etc) to no avail.

Andrea finally figured it out and Chris dons his sandals and wades across with the rope for security. The current isn’t too bad and we’re over after 20 minutes or so. This was a long day. Somewhere around 20 km I think. There might have been one or two cable crossings in there. Just as well there are 3 of us for that particular job. We’re looking for the “boy scout” camp site. But we can’t find it. It dawns on us that it might have been that washout gravel bar that we just passed… Campsite washed out in a flood! So now it’s getting dark and we press on, hoping that that wasn’t really the camp site. We’re looking around for places to camp in the woods, but they’re hard to find. Suddenly we come on another small campsite. We didn’t know about this one, but it’s a godsend. Some lovely flat spots in a grove of enormous cedars. We get the tents up. Abby almost disappears in devils club getting the bear hang organized. The gals go to to bed and Chris sits there contemplating the forest and having a religious experience becoming a tree hugger. The forest tells him we should not be cutting down any more old growth, and he feels at once very peaceful, and a little angry about clear cut logging of old growth. What a beautiful awe inspiring spot and we are feeling so lucky in the morning to have experienced this.

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Day 6. We have 25 km to go. Downhill, and the trail’s getting better, less deadfall, but then there are about 4 more cable car crossings. Again there are some avalanche slopes with tall brush to push through. We finally meet someone. Turns out to be Ken, from Castlegar, on a day hike from the other trailhead. Some tough hombre, he has navigated all the cable cars alone. Rather him than me. We see a lovely little bear doing his thing eating thimble berries a hundred metres or so above us in the meadow where we meet Ken. Eventually the trail heads down a narrow canyon of Hamill Creek, a raging river. There are big landslips, and an old mine, and the trail is quite sketchy and narrow at times, still requiring care and attention with our big packs. Finally we’re within a couple of km of the trailhead, having walked about 23 km, and the last 2 KM is UPHILL, a couple of thousand feet of UP. This thing never lets up. We grind up the hill. I can’t say I enjoyed this part too much, but we’re cheered by the fine weather, and nearness to the end. High fives all around when we make the trailhead safe and sound, take off our hiking boots, and happily head home. Travellers: Andrea Vowell, Abby Wilson, Richard Upton, Chris Cowan

Vancouver Island – The Jack Augerpoint TraverseBy Goody NiosiI’m baaaack!!!!

Yes, I am. Foolishly, late last July, I left the West Kootenay to return to Vancouver Island. Nine months later, I gave birth to the notion that I needed to go back home. Why? Well, let’s just say there was a man involved. Also the mountains. And friends, most of them members of the KMC. However, my time on Vancouver Island was not wasted. Little more than a couple of weeks after returning, I was cramming my multi-day pack with food, sleeping bag, tent and Band-Aids (you never know) to head out on the Jack Augerpoint Traverse. I’d been promising myself this hike for years and had just never got around to it. The logistics had stopped me more than once. The traverse travels almost 50K from Mount Washington, across the depths of Strathcona Park, ending at Buttle Lake. To do a car shuttle would take at least 4 or 5 hours. Happily, when I’d suggested the hike to a few friends, Pat said that he’d wanted to do it forever as well. Immediately, his wife, Grace, volunteered to drop us off at Buttle Lake and pick us back up again four days later at Mount Washington. Most people opt to start at Mount Washington but I’d heard enough stories about the knee-knocking final descent to suggest we start at Buttle Lake and go up steep rather than down. Sure, this would add another 1,000 metres elevation to the trip, but we figured it

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would be worth it. Our total elevation gain would be somewhat more than 5,000 metres. We waited for good weather and set out in August on a beautifully sunny day – not a cloud in the sky with the forecast for more of the same for at least 5 days. Perfect! How to find the trailhead: look for a red arrow in the middle of the road, we’d been told. We peeled our eyes. “Hey,” I said at last, “There’s a blue arrow on the road.” We stopped. Blue? Oh well – red, blue – whatever. Right? We strapped on our backpacks at about 11 a.m. and set off. The first half hour or so saw us manoeuvring ourselves and our monster packs over and under relentless and ever-present deadfall. And it was steep. And then it got steeper.

After lunch it got steeper and then we got into huge areas of steep scree – just to keep us on our toes – literally. Finally, after about 5 hours of steady, heart-pumping ascent we reached the tarns below Jack’s Fell. How to describe this view: below us was the full, blue length of Buttle Lake. Across the lake, a line of mountains with the Golden Hind towering

above the rest. All around us huge rock bluffs and ridges. And how could we not explore those?

We set up our tents and wandered up and down the ridges, taking time to shoot dozens of photos of the glorious sunset. And then we crawled into our tents with only the sound of a slight breeze in the trees to rock us to sleep.

The next day we set out at about 8 a.m. for our next destination: Ruth Masters Lake, supposedly the most beautiful lake on Vancouver Island. We were on a ridge so we had a gorgeous early morning up and down walk, meeting a small group along the way that was hiking through from the other direction. “Great hike,” they told us, “As soon as you get off the knife-edge ridge.” Oh great. And then I remembered the stories. A couple of years ago a gang of friends had done the traverse. The tales involved something about someone crying and crawling over the ridge, and I understand there was also some sharting involved. Oh dear.

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I should also explain at this point that the traverse is more a route than a trail. Pat had his GPS but the game we were playing was, “Let’s not use it unless we absolutely have to.” So far so good. Enough people do this route that there is, for the most part, a boot-beaten path. We followed it. Our views were wonderful. The sky was blue. The sun was hot. We were happy.

And then, there were the legendary mountains ushering in the cirque where Ruth Masters lake nestles: Augerpoint Mountain, Syd Williams Mountain – and a whole bunch of others. And there was the knife-edge ridge. Pat walked across it like it was a stroll in the park. And why not? I walked across it. Well then. If that’s the scariest thing you can throw at us, bring it on! We had lunch at the high point of the ridge, took another 1,234 photos, and began to head down. Holy heck that was steep! And clearly, people had been making some effort to find a better route for years. There were several boot-beaten tracks. None of them were good. More than once we lowered ourselves down by clinging to branches and roots. But we did make it and there it was – the glorious lake! The pretty little waterfall! Picture postcards are made of scenes like this. Once again we had time after setting up our tents to explore the surrounding ridges, all of them ripe with tarns. That night we fell asleep to the music of the waterfall.

Day three: this was bound to be a big one. Under a blue sky and a hot sun we set out, losing a ton of elevation. Down we went and then down and after that, down a lot more – ending up in a valley with a creek running through it and some cool wetlands – also a disappearing route. After stumbling around for a good 15 minutes, we finally checked the GPS, crashed through some underbrush, and picked up the trail heading in a completely counter-intuitive direction. The next obstacle: a rather high cliff, which we promptly called the Hillary Step. Happily, being somewhat taller than 6 feet, Pat was able to heave himself up and then drag me behind him. Whew! And now, a series of benches going up and up and up to the top of Mount Albert Edward, the sixth highest peak on Vancouver Island. Here, the boot-beaten track faded in and out. But we knew our direction (up) so just kept going, choosing our route as carefully as possible. I think our elevation gain was about 1300 metres on that day – maybe more. It felt like more. A lot more. And finally we were at the bottom of the rock and scree section that would lead to the top. That’s when Pat pointed out that the traverse did not require us to summit. We could skirt around to our right and then descend. “What do you want to do?” I asked. “Doesn’t matter to me,” he said. Ha! He couldn’t fool me! I saw that look in his eyes. And so, panting from heat and exertion I said something like, “Let’s go over the top.” (What I actually said was, “Fine! Let’s go to the f&^%ing top!) Pat continued to babble cheerfully just ahead of me while we slipped and slid on the scree. I believe I told him to shut up at least three times. “I’m concentrating on not dying!” I said. And then, there we were and Pat’s cell phone dinged! Yes – almost civilization. Mount Albert Edward is a favourite Vancouver Island destination: a 6-hour hike or so from the huge campground at Circlet Lake. I’d been up here at least 3 or 4 times. We were now in familiar territory. So while Pat checked messages and told Grace that yes, we were alive and would meet her tomorrow afternoon at Mount Washington, I sat down and ate cheese and crackers. After lunch, we had a long, long descent down to the tarns on the ridge above Circlet Lake. After a nine-hour

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day, all we did that night was set up our tents, eat and sleep. The next morning we descended steeply off the ridge to Circlet Lake and then hiked the long well-trodden path out to the huge parking lot at Raven Lodge. With big backpacks, it was still a 6-hour return journey. And there was Grace. And there was the car. Yay! A car! And mission accomplished. Pat and I agreed: it was worth the long wait to do it and the effort that went into it. We would both do it again in a heartbeat.

Mt. Crowe SnowshoeDecember 17, 2019Well, eight KMCers signed up for the trip but only three showed up. Weather was light, high elevation clouds so we had good views in all directions. We followed the packed Ski Touring route into the old cutblock NE of Mosquito Cabin. The packed uptrack switched backed toward the Crowsnest hut but then turned away from the hut so we had to break a bushwack route to the cabin. Got a fire going, then ascended to the summit of Crowe and admired the views and tried to get sight of the other KMC group ski touring on Neptune. Not seeing them we took a few panoramic pictures and returned to the warmed up Crowsnest hut for lunch. After lunch we bushwacked down the fall line to the packed uptrack and out to the trailhead.

We were Helen Foulger, Wayne Hohn and Rick Mazzocchi.

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Davis Creek/Fishhook LakeBy Goody NiosiJune 18: my first official KMC socially-distanced hike of the season! It was different: smaller (only four of us) and without the usual hugs. But we hugged virtually, made sure to keep a couple of hiking-poles distance between us, and did our heavy gasping/panting on the steep uphill well away from each other.

It was a great hike. After an hour of uphill on a gorgeous sunny day – the first in weeks – we arrived at the lookout. After snapping a few pics, we went on up the ridge and into the forest. And for those who had not been on this hike previously, it was all the usual oohing and aahing when we arrived at the huge old cedars, especially the grove of five that is so majestic.

From there on we dawdled a bit because we had to admire and hug some big trees. We stopped briefly at Fishhook Lake, which is not all that impressive, and then made our way back to the lookout and the bench – lunched while basking in the sun and being tempted to stay all day in a deeply soporific state.

When we finally pulled ourselves away, it was an easy downhill back to the vehicles. I promised the hike would be 4.5 hours. We got back to the cars exactly 4.5 hours after starting up (I kid you not). I promised great weather. Check! I promised a steep uphill. Delivered! I promised glorious old trees. Yup! I promised swarms of mosquitoes as we crossed the swamp and headed to the lake. In fact, I’d been careful

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to note that we should bring bug spray as Fishhook Lake is the breeding ground for all the mosquitoes in the West Kootenay (who me? Exaggerate?). Maybe one or two mozzies. No bug spray necessary. No bites. I deeply apologize. But I did deliver on everything else, right? We were: Tony Holland, Nancy Suuban, Allison Sutherland, Goody Niosi

Stay at Home! … not…By Goody Ni xosiOf course we all had to stay at home and we did our bit all through spring: no KMC hikes. No car pooling. No sharing of gear. No meet-ups. But still – you have to get out and exercise, right? And so we did. I was delighted to see posts from people skiing or snowshoeing on their own or with a small group, with everyone keeping at least the required 2 metres apart. I did a lot on my own, but admittedly the two most fun adventures in late March and early April were with small groups exploring new territory. One morning we met up at Kootenay

Pass. Destination: Lightning Strike. And – oops: seems we had totally forgotten that this is a park and the park

was closed. Being law-abiding and thoughtful citizens, we weighed our options. “How about Wolf area?” Ben said. “We just did that last week,” I countered. “Well,” Ben said. “We could park at the pull-out and explore the terrain on the south side of the highway. We’ve never done that.” We were game. So Ben, Cecilia, Dana and I set off to see what we could find. Our first discovery was an old ski track. That seemed promising. We followed it over a bridge and then steeply up a small rise, which spilled us out onto a road. Okay then – we followed that for a few minutes and decided it wasn’t going anywhere fast. Meanwhile to our left was a steep hill/mountainside that would surely lead somewhere with a viewpoint.

Up we went, taking turns breaking trail and avoiding dense clusters of trees. After a good deal of sweating and panting we reached a ridge with some fine views. This was turning out better than we could have hoped for. And there, above and ahead of us, was a higher ridge and what looked like the peak of an accessible mountain. Perfect!

We continued on and on and up with a few narrow ridgelines and quite a bit of digging in of snowshoes. We reached the peak about 3 hours after setting out: fine views and

as pretty a setting as any we’d been to. A perfect spot for lunch. A couple of us (not me!) noted that there was yet another peak a bit farther on and why not go for it? Ben estimated 30 minutes. I guessed 90. A sudden snow squall made our decision clear – lunch and back down. A few days later, Ben, Peter B. and I met for a similar exploratory trip above Fish Lake between Kaslo and

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New Denver. We started off on the Bear Face FSR, which we ditched as quickly as possible to begin heading straight up. Once again we soldiered on for about 3 hours before stopping for lunch. This snowshoe gave us tremendous views of the Goat Range every step of the way: Brennan, Whitewater, London Ridge – all of them there – all of them utterly gorgeous. Both trips convinced us there was more exploring to be done. At Kootenay Pass, the next peak past our stop and at Fish Lake, a second ridge that might have lifted us higher sooner. So yes – we are staying home but we are also getting outside. Strange times indeed but no matter how odd, the availability of nature where we don’t have to have close contact with others, is one of the great blessings of the beautiful West Kootenays.

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