The Approach

And so it began.



 

Personal Climbing gear pile, and the "rack" of ropes and rock protection pieces.

Day 1- August 16th, 1997:

We drove.  
No kidding, we drove for 12 hours straight from Vancouver to Hudson Hope.  We slept at one of those free campgrounds maintained by the forestry service.

Day 2 - August 17th, 1997:

We drove.  My butt was getting sore, the AM radio stations were few and far between, my jokes and Grants jokes were turning stale, and were more often than not, repeats.  But we drove from Hudson Hope to Finlayson Lake.  Finlayson is 250 km or so north of Watson Lake via single track dirt road.  We arrived at the lake late that day, and camped by the road.

Well the drive up went smoothly enough. I was quite worried about the reliability of my little Subaru. I had only owned it for a couple of months I had already had to replace the clutch, the battery and the alternator. Statistically this 2300Km drive should bring out a few more serious bugs! No such luck (bad luck that is) We made it all the way there with barely an stutter (the loose wheel incident was quickly rectified and didn’t really pose much of a threat to our lives). In truth the drive up was probably the biggest “group dynamics” test of the trip! The car has no CD player or tape deck, only a radio.

 --- YOU BUFFOON!  YOU’VE KILLED US ALL!! 

I don’t want to criticise those radio stations up there, but well, they have “both kinds of music” , and that’s all!

We  survived the combined onslaught of country music, road maintenance crews, endless hamburger meals and hours behind the wheel. After two days we got to Finlayson Lake where a float plane would pick us up tomorrow I think? - or was it today? Ahh   deal with it tomorrow, just tell Mark confidently that its all in the plan. He’ll swallow it! Now for some sleep.

Day 3 -  August 18th, 1997:

It was a wet night and when we got up the weather still seemed rather displeased with our presence. We stretched and scratched and had a bit of a look around  - No plane to speak of! From here there was no way we could contact anyone, but there was a wooden dock and some stuff lying around that hadn’t rusted all that much so we figured we would just sit tight and see what happened. Sure enough an hour or so later we heard the drone of an aero-engine and a float plane landed on the lake and nosed its way over to the dock. I was rather excited and had to make a big effort not to assault the poor pilot with a barrage of questions delivered at warp speed. - Time is different out in the sticks and there is rarely  a n y  r u s h , s i n c e  i t  w il l  a l l  g e t  d o n e  e v e n t u a l y. We loaded the plane up with our rapidly sorted kit and thundered off into the sky  -  Tally Ho!

The plane when it arrived was a vintage Beaver from the 1960's, powered with a single  9 cylinder piston engine that churned out a whopping 450 hp or so.  We loaded our gear, and took off for a 15 minute flight to a hunting/fishing lodge.   To our surprise, it was quite a posh affair with a real rustic atmosphere, stuffed heads of game hanging on every wall, a pool table, a Jacuzzi, and a four star chef who cooked us a fabulous lunch.  What a deal! and it was all included in our plane ticket. 

We spent about three hours at the lodge playing pool, reading and relaxing before the pilot loaded us on the beaver again.  We took off towards Glacier Lake in the North West Territories (We were currently in the Yukon  - not that it makes much difference around there).  The weather wasn't great for the flight, the clouds were quite low.  The clouds were in fact lower than the tops of most of the mountains in the area.  The pilot flew us through winding valleys, over barren tundra and sparse forest.  There were caribou trails everywhere, though we didn't see any actual caribou.  

The country we flew over was quite sparcely treed. The trees, conifers, were short and there was a lot of moss and lichen about. Apparently the lowland area around the lake is the wintering ground of a heard of Carriboo. The lichen is their primary winter food source. - Cool!

The flight to the lake took about an hour and the country started out as very green. As we climbed the trees disappeared, then the green became more of a yellow, then the vegetation turned to rock scree and finally we were over a glacier. We were over a glacier by not much at all! As we had been climbing the cloud base had stubbornly remained where it was. We were now at cloud base and only about 50 feet above the ice. We were hemmed in by rock walls and it was all jogging by at about 90Knots  (180Kmh). We dropped down a bit on the other side of the pass and followed the valley around towards Glacier Lake.

Al, our pilot did us a huge favor and flew us into the cirque so we could catch a glimpse of the Lotus Flower Tower.  The cirque was a tight fit for the plane to fly in, and the towering granite cliffs threatened to tear the wings off our little plane, but through some fancy flying at low speeds, we managed to get our first real view of  our climbing route.  The first thing that came to my mind as I gazed at the wall; "that is big and steep and scary looking,   -  Whose idea was this!". The couple of seconds of view were followed by quite a few more of wildly rotating mixtures of rock and sky and grass  - Lots of fun! 

We landed at Glacier Lake, unloaded the gear, and told Al to pick us up on the 28th of August unless he heard otherwise from a climbing party that was to be picked up on the 21st. So Al and his beloved Beaver took off into the overcast sky, and I said good-bye to the last chance I had to back out of this fiasco.

There were in fact three other groups in the area of the cirque; a group of four Americans flying out on the 21st, another group of Americans flying out on the 28th (with us), and a group of Germans??? we aren't sure if these Germans actually exist, we never had an actual sighting, but apparently they were in the area.

Well lets see about this gear then. I could just about fit it all in the haul bag if I really try but then the thing will weigh a ton.  We have decided to do the main load run up to the meadow in on trip. We will take all the hardware and enough food for five days or so. That way if the weather is good tomorrow we are set to climb immediately and if not then we can come back down and pick up the rest of the food and some photography gear. So I leave some of the stuff behind     - The bag still weighs a tone!   No big surprise  really. One of us has to take the haul bag instead of a regular back pack and the task falls to me. Its a big Fish Grade 6 haul bag, it has no frame and the harness is quite basic. The thing looks like a water heater and it weighs about that much too!

 I’m starting to get those little warning bells that something unpleasant is about to happen.

The first part of the trail  (the level part) to the base of the creek coming out of the cirque is through very lush temperate forest. There are dozens of different sorts of fungus and moss and almost as many different berries. If I knew what I was doing this place would be a feast. The trail is in very good condition - No problems except for the burden of the “water heater”.

The trail then turns North, heading up the valley side through a terribly unstable tallus slope below  the 4000 vertical foot face of Mount Harrison Smith .  About a week before we arrived, there was a nicely marked and well traveled trail up through the tallus.  But that was a whole week before we arrived... apparently a block of granite the size of a small battleship peeled away from the face of Mount Harrison Smith and creamed the trail, and most of the tallus slope, not to mention a good number of trees along the valley floor.  The dust didn't settle for a day.

We get onto the tallus slope and everything is covered in grit and everything is fresh rock surfaces (no moss or lichen to be seen) and everything is VERY loose! Some of these boulders are the size of Volkswagens and they move when you lean on them  -VERY UNCOOL!! This is not a good thing when you are tottering about with a pack weighing more than half your weight, but things could be worse  - It could be raining  - Oh Yeah  -it was raining as well now.

We picked our way through the unstable rock of the tallus slope and it began to rain, and the bugs got worse, and we were both super exhausted, and the top of the tallus just didn't seem to be getting any closer, and I was wondering again what the HELL we were doing there.  Hauling gear to a base camp is one of those necessary evils I guess, and I am too proud (and poor) to let a helicopter do the work for me, so I kept my mouth shut.  Another factor was Grant and I had decided that throughout our trip, we would be forbidden to "blubb".  That is we weren't aloud to complain about things over which  we had no control, such as "I'm tired" or "My pack is too heavy", etc..  Of course we still reserved the right to raise the alarm if things were going badly, for example "the bear is eating my leg off and it hurts get him off me", there is a fine line between blubbing and expressing genuine concern.

We struggle up under our gravity amplifiers for a couple of hours and then flop onto a really big rock that does not appear to move. We have a drink and catch our breath and rub our shoulders and look at each other as if to say “How come you got the light pack” and try not to notice the fact that we are only about half way up this tallus slope.

After five hours with monstrous loads on our backs, we made it to Fairy Meadows.  It is a lush green alpine meadow surrounded by towering sheer gray walls.  Large and small blocks of granite pepper the meadow, and bubbling streams fill the air with a constant "gurgle" and from high up (from the top of the Tower for example), the streams look much like the capillaries of a maple leaf, gathering the water from the oh so frequent rain storms that sweep through the area.

Of course I didn't notice any of this as we first arrived, the only thing on my mind was set up the tent, eat and sleep.  Luckily, the group of four Americans were leaving early, and so we were able to grab their camp, mercifully tucked away from the rain beneath an overhanging rock/boulder roof, forming a sort of "cave".  We cooked, we ate, we slept the sleep of the dead!

Day 4 - August 19th, 1997

We spent the next 30 hours sleeping/eating/sleeping/resting. We got to know the second group of Americans camped in another "cave" a couple hundred yards away.  There were three guys, all college students about my age, or slightly older, and we got along really well with them.  They had climbed the Lotus Tower a week or two before and they had lots of good advice and stories, which we were very eager to hear.  Throughout the day, we were in the clouds, and the rain poured steadily from the sky, which was fine with us because we were to  tired to do much else besides sit around.

The other group of Americans had also made an attempt at the tower a week before.  However they were unsuccessful, due to a series of mishaps.  Two of the four did manage to spend a night on the bivy ledge, and climbed two pitches above the ledge on the second day before bailing off.

The Germans... well we aren't really sure what happened to them?  everything we know about them is hearsay because neither Grant nor myself actually met them.  Apparently there was a party of two Germans in the area who planned to climb the Lotus Tower.  They were seen camping halfway up the valley, in the middle of the dangerous tallus slope?  They were told that the cirque was still an hour or two climb from where they had stopped. They responded with "they liked it there". Ya right! They also had a portable bivy ledge, and they weigh a ton! they were told that there is a spectacular bivy ledge half way up the wall, but they maintained that the bivy ledge was more comfortable.  Ya right! We also saw gear along the trail, stashed in the trees, a rope here, a rack there...  slowly (I have a small and slow brain) a picture of their situation formed in my mind. And this picture was confirmed later by an American who spoke with them.  They admitted that they were unprepared, and they hadn't realized the area was so remote.  So they flew home early, having never even set foot in the cirque.

Towards the end of the day the weather did lighten up somewhat, and Grant and I decided to make our way over to the base of the Lotus route.  We brought our climbing gear with us; lead rack and 'draws, personal gear and three ropes.  We made our way up the cirque, about a one hour hike across scree, moraine and glacier to the start of the climb.  Along the way, I banged by knee quite badly, OW!  The first three pitches are described in the guide as "awkward 5.9".  We found the start of the climb, I craned my neck rolling my eyes higher and higher to take in the line of the route.  I felt very small, very unprepared, and full of doubt at my climbing ability. All we could really see were the first three pitches, the route followed a slight but consistent overhang, and because of the rain, was terribly wet and slimy.  Thankfully, Grant is more level headed and experienced, and he set about organizing the gear, and analyzing the route. I was inspired by his collected example, and so closed my gaping gob, steadied my trembling knees, and cried "Mon dieux! what have we done." 

Back at the tent that night,  I dreamed of climbing.

I’m not sure what hour of the day I woke up but it didn’t really matter. The rain had continued throughout the night and I had been aware of the drip dripping in my subconscious for some time. It was not a climbing day! Good thing too, since my body was trashed by the water heater and the tallus. We eventually emerged from our tent and shoveled food into our heads. We eased our way over to the neighboring Americans camp sight and  introduced our selves. They were a nice bunch and had already done their obligatory ascent of the LFT. We drained them of all their relevant info’ on the route and traded tales of expeditions past in the time honored campsite tradition. After that we headed back to our camp site for MORE FOOD and sorted out our stuff. The rain had almost stopped now so we decided to do a gear run up to the base of the LFT and scope out the approach. We headed up through the grassy cirque into the “third cirque” (the main cirque has four tributary arms and the LFT is in the third one). This was a lush little haven with babbling brooks that gave way to the morains I was expecting. The morain then gives way to the toe of a glacier at the base of the tower. The tower its self had occupied our vision for the last 30 minutes of the approach. It rises up out of the glacier from a broadish base becoming an elegant spire as it rises. The effect is amplified by the foreshortening of our ant like perspective. We could only see about half of the face since the section above the bivy ledge was enveloped in clouds. The whole of the lower face was covered with streams of water and I don’t mind saying it was all rather intimidating. Still not much to be done about it today. We had a good wander about and stashed the climbing hardware under a boulder at the base of the route. Then we headed back, both wondering if we were up to the challenge that lay ahead. We did a lot more wandering about in the upper cirque on the way back and made it back to camp in time for MORE FOOD. The weather seemed to be getting better and those little bells were at it again. This time they were saying “Tomorrow is the day”.