Introducing Mount Slesse
Written by Peder Ourom
Mount Slesse (pronounced Slessee)
South of Chilliwack BC
100 km east of Vancouver
Height: 8002 feet / 2439 metres
Weather: bad (except for a possible high pressure in the summer)
Rock quality: poor
Mount Slesse is an impressive peak. Located only a couple of hours east of Vancouver, the rocky summit stands proudly above the Fraser Valley. I like to think of it as the Matterhorn of southwest British Columbia. The northeast Buttress, Fred Beckey’s signature climb up the peak, is one of the most classic and sought after mountain climbs in North America. Accomplished with partners Steve Marts and Eric Bjornstadt, their route climbs a beautiful ridge that is over one kilometre long. At the time of Fred’s ascent in August 1963, the peak was well-protected by dense vegetation and steep valleys. Fred and his team approached the peak from the south (USA), and it was a brutal way to get to the peak. The extremely rough terrain encountered was not for the faint of heart, and was almost as dangerous as the climbing on the mountain. Fred’s approach and climb took many days.
By the 1970s, the approaches to the peak were considerably easier. The old growth forests that surrounded the peak were being destroyed by the logging companies, but luckily for climbers the devastation caused by the logging had one major benefit. A rough road system now existed that climbers could use to access the routes on the peak from the north (Canadian side).
Clearly visible to the south as you are driving through Chilliwack, Mt. Slesse has seen a lot of tragedies and adventures. On December 9, 1956 TCA Flight 810-9 from Vancouver just failed to clear the south peak on an aborted flight to Calgary Alberta, and all 62 passengers were killed including five professional football players returning from an All-Star game. Most of the heavily iced up plane was thrown up and over the ridge and ended up on the north side of the mountain.
Aluminum debris is still scattered at the base of the mountain on the north side, as the plane blasted right up and over the top of the ridge that separates the two sides of the peak. The following winter avalanches swept both the crashed plane and human remains down into the valley below.
At the time, it was the largest air crash in Canadian history. Thinking about my own mortality as we ascended through this graveyard was not the best way to start a dangerous climb. It was the exact opposite of a Yosemite ascent of El Capitan, where your day begins in beautiful meadows covered in flowers. Bits and pieces of aluminum fuselage with rows of rivets are still visible to this day. In the 1970s, a few more organic remains were still visible if you looked carefully. Fortunately, with the passage of time, this is no longer the case.
For a mountain climber or rock climber Mt. Slesse consists of black crumbly rock (when you are following a crack system), and has ice- polished and hard to protect rock on the slabs between them.
The north side also has a dangerous approach as it is threatened by falling ice from the Pocket Glacier, and once reaching the top the descent, is both confusing and technical.
For all climbers in the 1970s it was a huge adventure, and was not a place for the faint of heart. Most technical ascents of the peak follow the previously mentioned northeast Buttress, and the Lowe route on the north face. Many other routes now exist but are rarely climbed.
The first ascent route was on the south face. In the 1960s and 1970s this “easiest” route was graded D5 in the old BCMC mountain route grading scale.
It was the highest rating that they had. At the time it was also the normal route for descending from the peak, but unfortunately it also sent you down the “wrong” side of the mountain. We were hoping to find the newly discovered crossover peak descent that would allow us to get back to the A&W in Chilliwack in only a few hours. It was the only “restaurant” open after 6 pm.
If you were a Seattle or Vancouver mountain climber, you had to at least attempt to climb the northeast Buttress. Many attempts were halted by the nasty coastal weather fronts, and you needed to be sensitive to the fact that if you were caught on the route in a storm, retreat would be very difficult. This mountain is the domain of expert climbers.
Possible routes were continually discussed in Vancouver at the Wednesday night Cecil and Ivanhoe drinking nights, and the “big wall” East Face always came up for discussion. Please note that the on-stage strippers were also often in our discussions, as life wasn’t all about mountains. Somehow, we all made it home safely at the end of these multi-glass evenings, thanks to the weak American style beer.
Slesse was our “big mountain,” and in our opinion fitting into the same category as the larger and even more rotten Rockies peaks. A required read in elementary school at the time was Banner in the Sky by James Ramsey Ullman, and this peak was where we wanted to raise our banner. Go Rudi go.
By the 1970s in Squamish, the local hard-core climbers had their sights set on more adventurous ascents in more exotic locations.
Hugh Burton successfully climbed the Cassin Ridge on McKinley in blue jeans, winning a bet.
In 1982, BC local Don Serl headed to Everest on the first Canadian Expedition which was led by Bill March from Calgary. It requires 5 years of planning, 100 Canadian companies, and nearly 20 tons of equipment and food. The summit was reached after the tragic deaths of 3 Sherpas and the cameraman Blair Griffiths in the Khumbu icefall. Don abandoned the expedition after these deaths.
Scott Flavelle and Dave Lane raised enough funds to go to the Karakorom in Pakistan, and ascended the left side of Bhagarathi 2 in a stupendous lightweight effort. Unknown to them a route had been climbed on the face previously using siege tactics, however this did not really matter for Scott and Dave as the style in which they climbed was vastly superior.
These adventures and many others did have one thing in common, they were conceived in the back of dingy bars in Calgary or Vancouver.
For a BC climber to be taken seriously as an alpinist during an intoxicated conversation at one of these choice venues, you had to have climbed the northeast Buttress of Slesse.
Now Slesse is a little different than the Matterhorn. No cog railways or ski lifts are available for approaches, nor are there fondues and hotel rooms for feasting on or relaxing in, after your ascent. At the base of Slesse, no town exists, and there is no Air Zermatt on standby if you or your partner require a rescue.
If the weather turns bad, you are not drinking excellent beer accompanied by delicious pastry in a beautiful mountain setting. You are much more likely to be sitting in damp clothes covered in mosquito bites and wasp stings, painfully bushwhacking your way back to the logging roads.
This mountain is more Fred Beckey than Gaston Rebuffat, and we loved it.
The second mountain that we aspired to climb was the grand Mt. Waddington, 300 kilometres north of Vancouver in the heart of the Coast Range. It was an expensive expedition requiring both a reliable automobile, and lots of cash for Mike King’s helicopter rides. Both of these were rare, and it would be another 10 years before we could afford an exotic mountain climb like this.
Only a few local climbers at the time had been to Baffin Island or the Alps or the Andes or Nepal. For most of us these amazing mountain destinations were unattainable. With perhaps $500-$1000 in funds for each climbing season, you were not taking flights, staying in hotels, or eating in restaurants.
In the 1970s the Vancouver climbing community had figured out how to survive with minimal funds in order to purchase the expensive equipment needed for our chosen sport. Hitch hiking to Squamish and camping under the Chief did not cost anything and we could exist for $10.00 a day if beer purchases were kept to a minimum.
We could never have imagined that 50 years later many climbers would own both a $100,00 Sprinter van and an apartment in the city ($80,000 cash would buy a house in Vancouver in the late 1970s).
For us cave-dwelling Squamish climbers, trying to survive in an era of 30% unemployment, owning a van or an apartment was not an option unless you had a real long term job.
Mount Slesse was a big mountain adventure that we could afford. You could even hitch hike to it from Vancouver although getting picked up for the return ride was difficult with all the “correctional” facilities in the area. Showing lots of climbing gear and ropes helped, a useful technique learned on other longer hitching journeys south. Often you could get a ride with a facility sheriff who was just making sure that you were not actually an escaped convict.
It was our local Matterhorn, go Rudi go.