Last summer my fiance, Lisa, and I dedicated a large chunk of our spare time travelling the province climbing new routes. Our first project had been on my radar for a couple years. A landslide on the Crossover Descent route of Mt Slesse made it impossible to navigate this route safely to get back to your car after climbing the NE Buttress for example.

We teamed up with our friends, Kate and Sean, for a June attempt at hauling equipment up into the alpine to scout a new descent route that would avoid the landslide. We planned a weekend trip with bivi gear and headed off up the trail. hitting snow below treeline combined with rain prevented us from actually getting into the alpine. Instead we cached some equipment for a return trip and hunkered down to a comfortable tarp camp in the forest.

Later in July the four of us returned to the alpine and scoped the Crossover Ridge from below. Its was hard to see what would go from the ground but one buttress stood out as a contender and looked like a very achievable objective for a new alpine route. Even if our new climb did not help the descent we figured we could establish a new multipitch alpine route in the 3 days we had. On the first day we made great progress and ended up climbing Crack Of Noon Club 5.7, iii, 10 pitches. Upon topping out the route, I walked up to the ridge crest and discovered that it couldn’t have been more perfect. The route actually put us smack into Crossover Pass intersecting the Crossover descent route.

The following days we climbed the route again - establishing some route finding clues including rock cairns through the talus below to join into preexisting trail. In the process of climbing Crack Of Noon Club we got to spend some incredible time in the alpine near Mt Slesse. We established an outstanding bivi location on rock slabs at tree line.

To our surprise this route became a somewhat easier and better descent than the original route since it became a series of fast single rope rappels from comfortable ledges, avoiding a steep loose talus and scree down climb. Later that summer we heard about multiple parties climbing the route as a fun and easy alpine route. This is what truly makes the hard work worth the effort - creating a product that the community appreciates.

After Crack Of Noon Club we set our eyes on a trip to Cathedral Provincial Park. On previous reconnaissance I made a mental note of the sea of unclimbed granite faces in the range. We booked a trip up to the core area with the Cathedral Lakes Lodge transportation and hiked our heavy climbing packs with camping gear into the alpine back country.

Again, Lisa and i teamed up with Kate and Sean. We spent 4 days in the alpine and climbed a new route 3 out of 4 days! On the one day we took a rest day we fished in a small alpine lake catching numerous tasty rainbow and cutthroat trout. very few places outside of the Sierra Nevada where you can have an experience like this - climbing and fishing for supper.

Stay tuned for further details on our trip to Cathedral where we climbed 3 new routes in 4 days!