Mountain Lake Hut Area Again
December 29-30 , 2005
Trip Report | Photos
This TR was written by Jason & Chris:
At 5:45am, Julia, Chris, and myself were collected in my driveway, packing Chris’ car with gear. It had never occurred to me to ask what he drove, so I was a bit shocked to see a conservative 2wd sitting in my driveway; could this little Detroit-born steed survive a logging road? As it turned out, Chris skillfully spurred it all the way to trailhead.
We forgot to zero the odometer at the Fury Creek gate- which itself took a bit of guesswork to locate, but with only one brief wrong turn we eventually found ourselves at the little warming hut near trailhead. We were assured that a bouquet of flagging tape marked the trailhead (not), so after gearing up we started wandering down the road at about 8:30am (I add the ‘a.m.’, as lately most won’t be familiar with that suffix being applied to departure times for J2 and I.) About 150m down the road, Julia found a sign laying on the ground, which pointed up a steep and overgrown logging spur. She re-planted it in the ground in the hopes of alerting the group behind us, but alas, it seems the wind had other plans.
It began snowing immediately. The temperature must have been hovering at just about 0C, as big flakes began to fall at a furious rate. Regardless, we were getting overheated, and stripped down to shirts and shells. Chris was using a soft shell, which is a technology I’ve yet to try, but which seems very promising.
There had been no snow on the road, but it was sticking now, and as we gained altitude it joined that which had previously fallen. In the back of my mind I started to worry about our return trip- if it snowed heavily, would we return to find the only evidence of the car to be a gentle bump on a snowy road? Would Chris’ car be stuck till spring? He had shared the same thought, but we resigned ourselves to dealing with that when the time came.
The logging spur we’d been ascending was very occasionally marked with tape, but it suddenly came to a dead end. We poked around with no success, so retraced our steps, more attentively searching the uphill slope for flagging. Our efforts were rewarded, and the real ascent began. It was immediately steep, and as the snow continued to fall, the preexisting snow thickened, and our footing became increasingly dubious. Ok, ok…MY footing became increasingly dubious. Julia seems to have no trouble ascending slippery 30-degree slopes, but I was not having a good time. In a very undignified fashion, I lurched from one tree to the next, grasping at branches and alder, staggering up the slope like a man on borrowed legs.
---- Chris, on the ascent ----
Lots of veggie belays. One step up, slide two back. Repeat. Curse. Repeat. And so on. We ended up bushwhacking parallel to the alder-chocked flagged route; unpleasant and lots of work! Jason stepped into a seemingly innocuous puddle and went up to his knee in boggy-goodness, sending me and Julia into hysterics.
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At 9:45am, after an unsuccessful exploration of another wall of brush, I pressed painfully through a dense thicket of alder to see Julia holding a bright yellow sign: “End Of Trail” it proclaimed.
We looked at each other, then glanced behind us- that was a trail? We soon found more flagging tape, and continued following it up, though I was getting increasingly frustrated with my footing. Chris struggled a little, though seemed much more composed in his efforts. Julia, meanwhile, rested on a log 75m above us, grinning impishly as she watched our labours. Well screw this, I finally said, and put on my crampons. Suddenly my frustration evapourated- I had footing! I could climb! No longer was I relying on the proffered limbs of vegetation to enable my ascent- I could trust my own two feet! My pace increased by a significant margin, and eventually I caught up to Julia, a feat that secretly thrilled me. It also enabled me to get the first shots from above my companions:
---- more from Chris ----
From the amount of slide alder on this alternate route, I surmise that this route has not been used for a couple seasons. Then again, with the astounding growth rate of slide alder, maybe it’s just been one season. I have a renewed hatred for slide alder after fighting my way through it like a medieval knight through pikemen on the ascent, and being slapped in the face and ears on the descent. I wished more than once on this trip that the mountain pine beetle could be bred to selectively chow down on alder. Oh, but that would give way to the Law of Unintended Consequences…
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About an hour later, the forest thinned rapidly, and the exposed slopes held much deeper snow; it was time for snowshoes. They helped tremendously, and soon we were on our way again. By 1:30 the terrain began to flatten out, and with the more open ground, a new adversary arrived: wind. The forecast had called for it, but we’d not had to face it while protected in the trees. Now it blew with increasing ferocity, but so far it was mostly at our backs. We continued toward the hut, using the GPS as a guide, as the flagging tape had long-since vanished.
At 1:45 we came to a spot where it looked like we should maybe descend, so we strapped on our beacons. About halfway down the slope, a cliff halted our descent (fortuitously, as it turned out.) Visibility was no more than 500m, so it was challenging to figure out where we were. We adjusted our heading to parallel the drop-off, and laboured through deep snow on an ascending traverse. I was feeling like an Everest climber in summit-day: one step, 3 breaths, repeat. Visibility was now only about 300m, so it came as a little surprise when a steep rise suddenly stood in our way. It was a precipitous, snow-covered slope, and none of us liked the look of it. We decided to traverse around it to the right, after employing a compass and the contour lines in Julia’s GPS. Though a long traverse that put our faces into the wind, I think it was a good choice.
We were all getting tired, but the hut being so teasingly close kept us motivated. There was one spot where I’d wanted to pull my camera out so badly, but the conditions prevented me: we were about halfway around the hill and passing under a vertical cliff band that rose 20m above us. All over it, metre-long icicles hung like decorations on an alpine Christmas tree, and I wanted nothing more than to stand and stare at them for a moment. Unfortunately, the wind was sending a heavy cascade of spindrift down from the slopes above, so I kept my hood up, face down, and snowshoes shuffling along.
Hunger set upon me out of the blue. I had to stop and fuel myself, and ended up a couple of minutes behind the other 2. When I caught up, Julia was standing 25m ahead with a big grin on her face, waving me forward, “come on!” she urged. I just knew she could see the hut.
Sure enough, just over the next rise we could see it, though just barely through the snow, 250m away. It was a shadowy grey mass on an otherwise white canvas. Chris was already 75m ahead, and we chased after him with a surge of anticipation: we were almost there! I took a last couple of photos, then enjoyed my giant-strides down the slope.
A little note to remember for those times in near-whiteout conditions: you really can’t tell when you’re going to walk off a cliff. On many occasions, we’d take a step that we thought was down, and it would in fact be up, or the opposite. There’s a handy little technique I’ve seen where you hang a stuffsack from the end of your avi probe, and use it to gauge what the terrain is doing 3m ahead. Our vis wasn’t that bad, but it still gave us pause.
When I got to the hut, Julia was busily trying to open the back window to gain entrance; the front door was stuck. We finally used a ski pole tip to knock the latch free, and all piled into the shelter. After pulling off the major bits of gear, we brushed the snow off our packs and bodies, and swept it all outside during a brief lull in the wind. With the door closed, spindrift was still pouring into the hut, driven by a wind that was becoming fierce. We used some plastic to fill the gap between the top of the door and the jamb, then rolled up pieces of paper to fill the cracks through which jets of fine snow were shooting in. The door was still leaking badly, so I hammered strips of wood along the jamb to block the cracks, which did the trick.
Safely ensconced in the cabin, we got the stoves going. We suddenly realized we needed water. Julia suggested we get it from the nearby creek, which she said would take about 15 minutes for a return trip. There was little resistance when she volunteered to go (chivalry is dead in the alpine,) and after outfitting her with my ski goggles, a radio, and every layer she’d brought with her, she ventured into the blizzard to fetch us water.
About 5 minutes later my radio burst to life with an urgent call from Julia: “Mrumfp prafforamfo bafaraffa moof! I’m coming back!” I still have no idea what the first part was, and after asking her to repeat herself, the response was the same. Her insistence that she was coming back seemed to obviate any rescue attempt, so we kept ourselves busy and awaited her return. Chris spotted her a few minutes later, filling a stuffsack with snow just outside the cabin. She burst in the door, excitedly reporting her near-death experience below a fracture line. She couldn’t get water, but brought a large, densely packed sack of snow, which served perfectly for drinks and dinner. You rock Julia!
We discovered a great way to save fuel when making water from snow. There’s an old stove there that doesn’t work, but it has a stout grill that can be removed. We placed two tea lights where the burner would be, then replaced the grill and set a kettle of snow on top. Within 30 minutes it had turned 2-litres of snow into just under a litre of cold water. We always kept a pot of snow on the candles, which saved us a lot of fuel.
Once we had hot drinks going, I had a peek outside. We could hear the snow and wind outside, and in the last light of the day I could see spindrift flying horizontally at 60k/h or higher. We all worried about the group that could be behind us. Did they just bail altogether because of the weather, or were they out there right now in trouble? We couldn’t get a phone signal to check. I didn’t know if anyone in that group had a GPS, or any familiarity with the area. Were they stuck out there, or safe at home? We were powerless to do anything about it, so we trusted to their wisdom, and focused on dinner.
Our original intent had been, of course, to try for Skypilot, but suddenly we were more worried about being cabin-bound for a week. We knew a summit bid was out of the question, and hanging around by choice to play games in an unheated alpine cabin is, as Julia put it, a much more appealing prospect when in the city than when you’re actually in said cabin. The forecast had called for heavy snow and wind the following day, and we worried if our escape would be thwarted.
Julia stood by the window, unhappily staring out into the darkness; she had to use the outhouse. “I wish I could just beam myself into it,” she said ruefully, then added, “better yet, I wish I could just beam my poo into it.” I nodded with empathy, feeling fortunate that even during lulls in the wind I couldn’t hear the call of a prairie dog. I turned and asked Chris if he’d be heading out there too. He glanced outside, then shook his head earnestly, “I’m a shit camel- I’m not going anywhere.”
After a bit of soup and bread followed by a simultaneous nose-blow (seemed entertaining at the time,) we briefly entertained having a game of Monopoly, as Julia had carted that and at least two other games up with her. We had, after all, intended to be here for 3 days. Sleep won out, however, and after a big cup of Kahlua Especial (35%!!) and hot chocolate (ingredients listed in order of their contributing volume,) we crawled up to the loft for some shuteye. As I squirmed across the big foamie, I felt a cherry tomato sized stone underneath. I started to lift the foam so I could reach the stone, but as I did I could feel the foam was frozen to the plywood in spots. I put it back down. Grabbing the ‘stone’ through the foam, I gave it a squeeze- it crushed slightly under pressure- it was ice! Feeling around, I found a bunch of ice balls inside the mattress. Clearly, the roof had been leaking. I slid over to the other mattress and found the same problem, with the additionally alarming discovery of a whole edge of the mattress soaked through. I guess we’ll address the leaking in the summer, along with other repairs that I can now see need to be done to the doors and windows.
Anyway, we’d hung some of our wet gear in the loft, hoping it would dry a bit before morning. We were still fantasizing about a clear morning and a summit attempt, butmore realistically readying ourselves to scream like 10 year-old girls and flee down the mountain. I wasn’t looking forward to slipping into all that wet gear.
Now, I’m not supposed to tell anyone this, but Julia can actually be a downright thoughtful gal sometimes. I was crawling into bed, and noticed her fussing with my jacket, which she’d draped over the top of the ladder to the loft. My Gore-Tex jacket is older than Gandhi and has all the hydrophobic qualities of a Brawny paper towel- to the point, it was soaked, and weighed about 3 kilos. No matter, she was going to take care of it- and I strongly urge you to note what she did, because it worked. She zipped up the jacket, leaving it draped over the top of the ladder, and pulled out the front of the hem so as to make a little tent. She pulled the hood over the top to fully enclose the torso, and placed a pair of tea lights inside the base of the jacket, which rested on its front edge on the loft floor, while the back was draped down the ladder. When getting up to pee in the middle of the night, she even put new candles in, and folded the arms in to help dry them out too. In the morning, my jacket was 90% dry, making the descent an infinitely more pleasant experience. If you’ve not yet had the experience of putting on a half-frozen, soaking-wet jacket, it’s about as fun as an African tapeworm. Anyway, keep this method in mind- it worked.
Speaking of getting up to pee, I had to do just that at some point in the night (which I only did after playing that ‘omigod I have to pee so bad, but I don’t want to get out of my sleeping bag, maybe the urge will just go away’ game for I can’t say how long.) I descended the ladder, trying not to think about how damn cold it was, and as my feet hit the floor I was standing in spindrift. What the? I spun around and my headlamp came to rest on the open door. OPEN? A small mound of spindrift filled the doorway, and any gear within 2 m of the door had a healthy dusting of snow. It could have been SO much worse if the door had been open more than 6 inches. I felt a surge of undirected ire- why the hell is the door open? Did someone go to the outhouse and leave it open when they came back in? That was the only possible explanation I could think of. I cleared out the jamb so the door would close, and pulled it shut, testing it with my shoulder- it was snug. I was too cold to deal with the snowy gear, and it wouldn’t melt anyway, so I figured we’d deal with it in the morning.
Back in bed, my mind was spinning- how did the door open? I ran scenarios through my head, one of which I shared with Julia when she asked what was up: “I think there may be a dead body outside the door.” She was understandably concerned with this theory, then I explained about the open door, and mused about the possibility of Bob or Suze having crawled Joe Simpson like to the hut, only to collapse from exhaustion once the door was open a crack. She asked how bad the snow inside was, cursed like a pirate at my response, then headed off to have her own pee (after the wind picked up to gale force, we endeavoured to pee in an old bucket over venturing to the outhouse,) promising to tie the door shut to ensure the snow stayed outside. While she was busy, I kept considering solutions, then settled on the only one that made sense: the big plastic bag I’d used to seal the top of the door was hanging outside as much as in. It must have caught the wind, which would have filled it like a little parachute, affecting a powerful lever-like force at the top of the door until it finally opened. As soon as the door was open, the bag would have taken flight, which is why the door was only open a few inches. It was an unforeseeable but frustrating moment in the night.
We were up at the crack of 9:15, having hibernated for at least 12 hours. Chris, I fear, fell victim to the bedtime brew we’d given him, and was more passed out than actually asleep (“I’m such a cheap drunk,” he lamented the previous night while sitting on the end of his bed, head hung as his eyes searched for focus.) In truth, we were a bit alarmed by the time: The vis was still lousy, so we were not even considering Skypilot, but there was no wind or snow, so we should have been out the door already. We’d decided to return via the summer route, as the steep route through the trees (the way we’d come up) seemed decidedly dangerous with no real snow to make steps in. We guessed our descent would be 7 hrs, as we had done it in 5 when returning on a broken trail last time.
We left the cabin at 11:45, after taking some time to fix the outhouse, the door of which we’d arrived to find hanging by one hinge.
We made far faster progress than we’d anticipated, and were having an early lunch at Wind Lake by about 1:10. Our stop was brief, as the chill took hold quickly. As we entered the boulder field beyond the lake, Julia was promptly swallowed by a snow shark. I tried to help, but tumbled into a position that put my left ACL in a terribly painful twist. Chris rescued me, then Julia rescued herself.
The snow was so much deeper than when we’d been there just a few weeks ago. It was also a much denser snow, which made walking on it much easier.
When descending in November, each step has slid away- now they stuck, and progress was much faster. We stopped for a very Hobbit-like ‘Second Lunch’ at 2:30, taking some time to enjoy the sensations induced by a peculiar ball of fire in the sky. Borrowing from an Elfin Lake lesson, we had brought bread, soup in a thermos, and some delicious goat cheese, the combination of which was both extravagant and delicious.
Once back on the trail, we began the real descent, which was infinitely easier than in November, again due to the better snow. Somewhere along this part I lost the tail of one of my snowshoes. I have a pair of MSR Denali shoes, onto which you can add tails if you have a particularly ponderous bottom, like myself. Chris noticed I only had one, but going back to find it was not in the cards. Not happy with having only lost my snowshoe tail, I decided to up the ante: when my cell phone started beeping due to its dead battery (I’d turned it on to try and get a signal back near Wind Lake,) I pulled it out of its bag to shut it off. What happened to it after that is a mystery, but I suspect it somehow fell to the ground within a 10 minute hike of the warming hut- probably right beside the car, in fact. It’s in a Ziploc, so if you come across it, please let me know.
We arrived back at the car at 4:45pm, quite happy to see only a dusting of snow on the ground. An hour later we were in the Squamish Brew Pub with our backs to a fire that finally put the warmth back in our bones.
---- more from Chris ----
J1 and J2 were great company. We didn’t get to bag anything and the weather was nasty but their unique personalities more than made up for it. J1 and I discovered we shared a similar taste in satire and comedy and traded numerous lines from various movies. And the scatological humour just never got old. I also was introduced to the power of tealights, with which the J’s impressively dried out much of the soggy gear, notably J1’s jacket.
I'm not a hard man after sitting on my @$$ the past 4 months chained to my desk with schoolwork. But this trip was worth the effort and I’m glad I got to spend quality outdoor time with quality outdoor people. Of course, I may have been singing a different tune if we had become hut-bound…
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Chris, too, was fantastic company. His deadpan one-liners had us holding our sides with laughter, and overall he just has a great attitude- even when we all had to dig a little deeper than expected to get to the cabin. Also, huge thanks to you for urging your car up that logging road, Chris, and for saving us a long, distasteful walk. Thanks again to J2 for drying my shell- despite having a loftless down jacket, Fisher Price crampons, leaky boots, and a disarming propensity for dropping your pants and peeing without warning, yur’ a pretty cool chick.
Trip Report | Photos
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