Rappelling down was almost a huge screw-up, but luckily went well. Because the route was over-hanging, as Ryan lowered he got farther and farther away from the wall. Luckily, he was able to toss the end of his rope around a tree at the top of pitch three and pull himself in! I have to say, sometimes doing things like that becomes very little fun about half way through, and the best part is just being done. We took a rest day the next day and spent the rest of the trip on some nice, albeit, less adventurous climbs.
Ski-Mountaineering in the Melville Group Sam Pfeifer (‘12) Late May, 2011. Jack Fields (‘12), Garret Lund (‘12), Rob Bishop (‘12), and myself had just driven for 30 hours. The last week of school fogged our minds from the Springs to Golden, BC. Wide-eyed and giddy, we stood around a helicopter about to embark on a two-week ski-mountaineering expedition in the Melville Group of the Battle Range in the remote and craggy Selkirk Mountains. With a weather window that morning we were anxious fly in. After flying low under cloud cover, over and through mountains and valleys, we got dropped off in the middle of nowhere by our pilot Don Mctighe – “Of 19 years Selkirk experience.” Our excitement, however, proved to be a little premature as we found ourselves socked in, trapped under our mega-mid tent, with nothing to do for four days except smoke a cigarette found hiding in a puffy jacket. We endured without breeding too much animosity – or shortage of mature conversations – and when the weather broke we were that much more excited to strap on the crampons, shoulder the skis and see
what the lovely cirque had to offer. We warmed up on a dog of a route up Moby Dick Mountain (2,830m). The climb and descent went without event except for a great show by a wolverine, which we spied snooping around camp as we descended. Still feeling energetic, we headed straight up from camp the next day to climb a steep couloir on the South face of Mt. Proteus (2,802m). The summit stood in our sites all morning. After weaving our way through the icefalls we found ourselves staring up at a 55° slope that was cut to hell by avalanche paths. This was no surprise given that since our arrival we’d been hearing the continuous roar of snow cascade over cliffs and down slopes, moving like water, as steep rock heated up from the sun. The avalanches started late and we had awoken early so without ado we roped up and began to simul-climb the couloir. The front pointing was first class and the transfers from the slopes to the deep slide paths offered a nice reason for concentration as we motored up the snow. A cliff band toward the top encompassed the crux, but we topped out without event and, by god, not even breathing hard. We intended on continuing with a running belay over the fourth-class rock but with one look at the ridge we decided to pitch out the climbing. Jack started up the ridge on lead, placing several cams. As he continued, things got significantly spicier than the route should have been, and he decided to lower off a chockstone. Several options were then explored, including rappelling off the backside of the mountain. Fortunately, Garrett popped his head around the corner and found a way to get us back on route. We easily simul-climbed around the ridge, over the upper glacier, and up the talus pile to the summit. We gained the knife edge summit on a fixed belay with two snow pickets and one by one we all spent time soaking up the 360° panorama of mountains upon mountains upon mountains. A rest day found CCAJ
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