Lucky dogs on the North Pillar of Mount Macdonald

 

My summer did not go to plan, or at least to the loose plan I imposed on myself last spring. I arrived in Squamish in the middle of June in the midst of a breakup. I had saved up some money to hopefully spend a month before going to the Bugs come August. In an oh-so familiar way I managed to completely burn through my savings and had to reassess, and get a job. My friend was Boris visiting for two months and with their great enthusiasm convinced me to go get on something big, initially something in the Bugs or perhaps WA pass. We passed around ideas for a couple weeks, I wanted to do a new route, Boris wanted to climb a hard classic. Half asleep I remembered a conversation I had with my friend Vincent last year in East creek. He had said “It’s just as hard as Watchtower! Have you not seen the photos? It looks insane.”

That’s it then, that big fucking hunk of rock you drive by in Rogers pass. It’s north facing, and has probably been climbed only a handful of times.

I spent the morning searching online for info. The North pillar of Mount Macdonald was established in 2005 by Jon Walsh and Bruce Kay in a single push. They graded the pillar ED 5.11- A0. At 1000m it definitely is an impressive feat. I also learned that it was recently repeated by Zac Colbran and Rory O’Donnell, also in a single push. Walsh also came back in 2010 with Jeff Relph to straighten out the line and create the direct variation. In my opinion a truly beautiful line.

Last supper ?

Shwacking

THE photo

The crux corner, you can see the alcove halfway up

Our bivy

That same day, I sent a text linking the AAJ article as well as the Gripped article to Boris and within a few minutes they answered “The text is scary, but it sounds exciting”

    We spent a day and a half discussing strategy, “buying” supplies from Nesters and packing. We’d leave Squamish on Monday August 14, climb Tuesday-Wednesday, drive back Thursday so that I could go back into work on Friday. We crammed all our shit into Boris’s 91 tacoma and drove north through the Duffy and into the Kamloops until finally reaching Revelstoke in the late afternoon. Driving in the middle of the heatwave without AC felt more like a 9 hour session in a sauna than a pleasant scenic drive, but nothing a bit of ice cream can’t fix.

I like having a nice meal before a big mission and so on our way through Revelstoke we bought a salmon filet, some heavy cream, sage and butter then continued into Roger’s pass. We scoped out the route for a bit then got to work cooking dinner and doing a final gear check. All in all we brought a light bivy kit each, a double rack, 5 pins, a light axe with a hammer, two ropes and some clothes, as well as 2.5 days worth of food and water. We had a short night’s sleep, punctuated by a mouse trying to eat my shoelaces then woke up around 4:00.

The approach to the base of the route is relatively painless and short, as long as you don’t get lost in the alders like we did. We soloed the first mid-fifth section to the base of the 5.10 climbing then roped up, swapping leads for the first day. Our plan was to get to the top of the crux pitch, where there was supposedly a good place to bivy and finish the route the next day. I took over the lead at the first 5.11 pitch, where I french-freed past two closely spaced pins. Boris ran up the next lead: a beautiful 5.10 crack that takes you through some hero moves past a roof. Two more pitches of great corner climbing brought us to the crux, and best pitch. From an alcove I made a few easy moves past a roof to establish in a corner, I plugged in a nest of RP’s and committed to the thin stemming above. All my granite climbing likely had paid off and I managed to execute the crux sequence perfectly, freeing, maybe for the first time, the 5.11+ section on lead. This was one of those leads rare where everything clicked for me, executing the moves

Onsight, managing the run-outs and the strenuous gear placements, all that far off the deck on a huge north face. The stuff of dreams really.

Though the feeling wouldn’t last long. While hauling, our bags somehow became tangled with the lead lice which cost us a lot of time and faff as well as ripping our only ice axe off of my bag. All I heard was a loud ding noise as I saw my tool tumble down the mountain. In the midst of all that our lead line got caught on a flake and I had to descend to release it before belaying Boris up to me. We climbed another short pitch to a large ledge flat enough to have a comfortable bivouac.

All day we had talked about how excited we were to bivy up there. I’ve always found speed to be impressive but that style doesn’t appeal to me that much, I really love being out there for a long time. After all, if you had a chance to go on the moon, wouldn’t you want to spend as much time as possible up there ? Our ledge was nice and sheltered on top of a tower feature, out of the way of rockfall and large enough to untie and walk around. This late in the summer the sun shines on the north pillar for a couple of hours and so we cooked food and layed in our sleeping bags as the sun was setting. We even facetimed our friend Jonny from up there, a very rare thing on a big Canadian face. The night was relatively calm, with the occasional wind gust rustling our SOL bags.

Day two was a long one, and much more alpine in character. Our tactic was to block lead for the day and it worked out great. I took the first two leads, climbing through loose and hard to protect 5.10 cracks until I finally reached a dead end. Boris then took over, traversing right into another crack system that proved to be the one. He fought through a heavily vegetated flare for over an hour, then through easier terrain until we reached the large halfway ledge. Given the time and the deteriorating rock quality we opted for the original line, we were hoping to save time by soloing the 200-300m 5.7 buttress to our left. We made quick work of it and even managed to avoid the “steep nebulous wall” and its unprotected 5.10 face climbing by soloing easier terrain to the right. 

From there I took over leading what was to be the psychological crux of the route. My first lead followed a vague crack system on the worst quality rock I have ever had the pleasure to climb in my life. I’m not kidding, I swear it felt like I was on vertical frosted flakes. While clipping a cam a microwave sized block came loose under my feet but somehow missed my rope. I was doing my best to avoid sending stuff down and I’m honestly not entirely sure how I managed to climb the pitch without falling. As soon as I reached better rock I built a belay so that Boris could be in a more sheltered stance. When they reached me they told me that a small rock had bounced off of the wall and chipped their tooth.

The next pitch had significantly better rock but was technically more challenging and quite runout. Upon reaching me Boris thought it could’ve been 5.11, although I’m not sure I agree it definitely had some very committing moves with bad gear and ledge fall potential. I’m fairly positive what we climbed was not part of the original route. But who knows, it’s a huge fucking face. In my honest opinion I’d give the upper part of the face 5.10+ X. I felt glad to have moved through it safely.

We were now only a couple rope lengths away from the summit and past the difficulties. We unroped for another 100 or so meters of mid-fifth climbing and landed directly on the summit, right on time for a beautiful sunset. 

Sir Donald peaking through the smoke

Summit

It's not alpinism if you don't take one of those.

After a few minutes on the summit we made our way down the west ridge. Downclimbing most of the way and making a few rappels until we reached the top of the Herdman couloir in the dark. We decided to bivouac one last time since the gully looked like a bit of a horror show and we did not want to commit to it in the dark.

Come morning we packed up quick, had our last sip of water and established the first rappel down the Herdman. I definitely would not recommend this descent this late in the season, we had to dodge continuous rockfall and, after three rappels, run down a groove between ice and moraine. That part of the descent felt incredibly dangerous and although we got through it unscathed, it very much felt above my risk tolerance. Once out of there we continued descending down scree and into thick alders for many more hours until finally reaching the highway.

Herdman couloir, or as I call it, Hell

Oh, we never found the log to cross on the way out.

yup

This route proved to be quite the adventure, and honestly I’m missing a lot of details in the story. So much happened, but maybe or maybe not surprisingly I’m glad we did it. We had a blast up there, Boris is a dear friend and I’m so grateful we got to share this adventure together.

Statistics: North Pillar of Mount Macdonald, ED+ 5.11 A0, with variation: 5.10+ X.

August 15-16, 2023. One bivy on route, one on descent.