Devastator Peak

May 19-20, 2024

2327m

Pemberton, BC

Devastator Peak, or “The Devastator” is rather a peaklet in the Meager Group but has the most impressive name. This is the only one out of the 6 here that does not boast over 100 m prominence. It was officially named after a landslide in 1970 killed five people working in the Meager Creek valley. The south side of this peak is actually quite impressive but the north side appeared nothing fancier than a walk-up. At least that’s what I thought based on the very limited “beta” that I could dig out of the internet. It turned out to be quite a bit more involved than a “walk-up” but it was a non-technical climb from the north side nevertheless. Alex, Chris and I climbed it in the morning of the second day of our Meager Group slam. Earlier in this trip we had made the approach from the Upper Lillooet River, climbed Plinth Peak and Mt. Meager and set up camp at Plinth/Meager col.

The night was cold and we had already decided to skip Capricorn Mountain and Mt. Job, so we were in no rush in the morning. We leisurely woke up at sunrise and spent another hour and half cooking and melting snow. A thin layer of high clouds rolled in so the temperature stayed below freezing for the entire morning. This made us want to stay in the sleeping bags for even longer, but it was eventually the time to get going. I estimated the round trip distance to Devastator/Pylon from our camp would be 13 km and there’s technical climbing and route-finding challenges with unknown difficulty so the day was nowhere “short and sweet”.

We started the plod with snowshoes on, but a steep traverse on the south side of Meager/Capricorn col forced us to swap footwear to crampons. The crampons stayed on our feet for most of the day afterwards, but we opted to carry the snowshoes and that was a good decision. Later in the afternoon the snow did become mushy and the snowshoes were quite useful. It was then a long slog side-hilling across Capricorn Glacier to the low point on Devastator Glacier. We made the decision in situ to aim straight towards Devastator Peak, dealing with as much painful side-hilling as possible but trying to minimize elevation change. Chris led across the Devastator Glacier and the side-hilling was quite steep for a while. It appeared that we had to drop into another bowl with more side-hilling on the icy north-facing slopes so I took over the lead and explored a route weaving around several rock pinnacles and eventually found a bypass on the south side of the ridge. Instead of dealing with the icy slopes we had to made some post-holing on the soft snow, so it was essentially picking-your-poison. There’s no “no brainer” way to get to Devastator Peak.

Me leading us down from Meager/Capricorn col with Pylon Peak ahead

Alex traversing onto Capricorn Glacier with Mt. Meager behind

In the distance are the group of peaks that I slammed on Overseer trip

Traversing a few kilometers across Capricorn Glacier

Me side-hilling across the immense Capricorn Glacier with Pylon Peak ahead

Chris starting the side-hilling across Devastator Glacier, aiming at the peak

In the far distance is Elaho Mountain. I’ve got close to it but no time to bag.

Alex adjusting his crampons with Mt. Meager as a backdrop

Mt. Job is also an attractive objective, but have to save for another time.

Chris leading across the never-ending and painful side-hilling

Looking back towards Mt. Meager, with Plinth Peak also visible on the far left

Chris and Alex gaining the ridge with Capricorn Mountain behind

Me and Chris about to traverse around these pinnacles into the unknown

Chris now leading towards Devastator Peak on the south side of the ridge

Despite having only 60+ m prominence the climb from Devastator/Pylon saddle did not appear to be a “walk-up”. Instead, we noticed some steep knife-edges that made us not want to stay on the connecting ridge. I was able to find a meandering route by staying entirely on snow all the way to the summit ridge, and this route turned out to be quite straightforward. The snow slope was consistently 40 degrees but steepened towards 50 degrees at the top. The orientation was south-east facing so it had been cooked by the sun rays for a while. We were able to kick in some good steps instead of making another tiring front-pointing ascent, and that was especially appealing as we did have to climb across several runnels which could be really icy. Upon topping on the summit ridge I discovered that we still had to traverse across a section of knife-edge after all, and one step had already melted out. There was some shenanigans involved but we did not need to take the rope out, and we all made the summit shortly after. The difficult terrain made this short climb sweeter than expected, and so did the impressive view towards Pylon Peak.

We were about to climb onto the summit ridge ahead

Me examining the step while Chris au-cheval on the snow arete

Mt. Meager from the summit of Devastator Peak

The south slope of Capricorn Mountain is the only easy objective here

Another view of Mt. Job, from the summit of Devastator Peak

Not doing much lingering we quickly reversed the shenanigans back across the exposed summit ridge, and then down-climbed the SE Face following the exact route that we took on the ascent. We were back to Devastator/Pylon saddle and took a much needed break there. Instead of fussing around with any other idea we went back around those rock pinnacles following again, the exact route that we took an hour or so earlier. We then started a higher traverse towards Pylon Peak, which turned out to be the most difficult climb in this group of peaks.