Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

May 19-20, 2024

2650m

Pemberton, BC

Mt. Meager is the summit of the namesake volcanic massif that is also the most geologically unstable mountain in the entire SW BC. There were at least two catastrophic landslides on Mt. Meager and the nearby Devastator Peak over the past several decades and some people were killed in them. It it unfortunate that Mt. Meager is slightly lower than Plinth Peak so it’s not the highest on the massif, but this peak is much harder than Plinth Peak. The only “beta” I was able to find was Fred Touche’s failed attempt on bivouac.com and if Fred couldn’t handle the choss up there then we knew it’s really bad. When planning this trip I was counting on having some snow to cover up the choss, but the terrain at the true summit turned out to be too steep to hold a snowpack so we ended up having to climb a pitch of unprotectable choss nevertheless. I even read a rumour somewhere that it’s technically “not allowed” to climb Mt. Meager just because it’s so unstable up there, but you all know how much an authority-hating person “loved” abiding the rules.

The approach that Alex, Chris and I used was different than documented in Fred Touche’s trip report because of the landslide had changed everything up there. Currently the only viable approach sans taking a helicopter in is by roughly following the Wahoo Tower’s approach in the old days. It turned out to be not as bad as we thought. It took us somewhere around 6 hours to carry the heavy loads up to Plinth/Meager col and we climbed Plinth Peak earlier in the afternoon. We had some conversations about the concern of the snowpack stability but our only chance of climbing Mt. Meager was right here in the evening of Day 1, so we agreed to at least make an attempt. The thin, south-facing slopes had become increasingly mushy but we did not observe any sign of avalanche.

We had to slog 200 vertical meters up a foreshortened glacier to a broad saddle on the west ridge before making the wrap-around to the exposed south face, and we used snowshoes to reduce the amount of trail-breaking. The west ridge appeared rather easy so we continued snowshoeing to the next rib under the obvious rock buttress and this turned out to be a mistake. There were some steep, icy and exposed sections that made us wish to have crampons instead. After ditching the snowshoes I led out a horizontal traverse, post-holing on thin and isothermal snow to the aforementioned uppermost south face. The only mentioning of this section was “class 3 choss” but we would have some very different conditions. Indeed, it was 40-45 degree climbing on soft snow for us, all the way to underneath the “south summit” mentioned in Fred’s trip report. The upper section of this south face was becoming thin and I’m sure the snow would be gone in a matter of days, and the entire face was longer and more exposed than I thought. My hope of seeing the true summit covered in snow stayed only as a hope, but we were able to formulate a plan upon inspecting the various options in situ. In short, there was no obvious “easy” way but we also did not come here expecting an easy path.

Fred’s attack was by directly traversing the jagged ridgeline from the south summit and the final rise to the true summit appeared very difficult, if not impossible even with a belay, so we would use a ramp/ledge system on the west face to make an attack. We had Alex here who had led just the crux pitch of Mt. Fee, South Tower earlier in the year so nothing would be too chossy for him. Our belay station was a deadman picket and Alex decided to do this pitch as a mixed climb. Wearing crampons did seem like the better idea for this type of choss climbing. There’s one section of steep snow traverse followed by a few meters of 4th or low 5th class to cut onto that ledge system, and the ledge itself was rather easy and even offered a few moves on ice, albeit thin. Alex was able to hammer in a piton but that’s it. There’s no more protection and Alex ran out the rest of the pitch. There’s one harder section to top out onto the summit ridge that was just as loose as the true summit pitch of Black Tusk. The pitch seemed to be longer than 30 m so Chris climbed it next using the rope as a fixed line, and I took the rear end to be belayed to the top. Alex claimed that the anchor was sketchy so making a pendulum fall would not be an option for me, so I climbed it very gingerly. It wasn’t dauntingly difficult (nowhere comparable to Mt. Fee), but the rock quality was definitely legendary. We were struggling to find a way to descend but eventually decided to wrap around the entire summit block (basically just a choss bollard) and rappel from there. There was some old slings but they were not even attached to the mountain currently.

To start the rappel I had to traverse to the other side of the choss bollard and that required standing on an extremely loose knife edge. I dislodged a shit ton of choss down either side. These few moves felt worse than the start of the second pitch on Mt. Fee and was just as exposed. Thankfully I was anchored to the “bollard” so I should be safe theoretically. I however, did not want to dynamically load the anchor so to get into the rappelling position was extremely awkward, but eventually I managed to sit down and fall into the line. The anchor held, and I was off rappel shortly after. The down-climb of the steep south face was actually not too bad as the sun was already off the slope. The snow condition did not get any worse than an hour or so earlier, and we also did not need snowshoes to descend back to Plinth/Meager col. I thought about to move camp slightly closer to the next objective but none of us felt like repacking after an exhausting 2300-m gain day. We still had a few hours of daylight and we should just set up camp at the col, relax and melt water. The winter camping routine could take hours and it’s always a good idea to get a head start at least an hour before sundown. The views were definitely memorable at the sunset with a moonrise behind Mt. Meager stealing the show. The night was quite cold but I had brought a +2C bag in addition to the -7C bag so it was okay. Chris took the open-bivy position (thankfully no precipitation) while Alex and I squeezed in my 2-person BD Hilight.