Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

September 13, 2020

2958m

Bugaboo Provincial Park, BC

Brenta Spire is a little bit obscured in the Bugaboos but climbers do go there. It’s the highest of the spires in the “Colbalt Lake Group” immediately to the north of Crescent Spire and Crescent Towers in the “core zone”. The standard access is however, from Crescent Spire/Towers col, which itself is accessed from Applebee Dome camp via the standard approach. Ambitious parties might prefer a traverse of Brenta Spire and Northpost Spire finishing by an exit down Colbalt Lake trail, but it seems like the “norm” is to just climb the south ridge of Brenta Spire in-and-out from Crescent Towers col. I had climbed a few spires and routes in the Bugaboos in the period of 2013-14 back in my Rockies days but had never come back since I moved to Vancouver. For obvious reasons I wanted to climb Snowpatch Spire and the Howser Towers but I didn’t think I was there yet, so among the easier peaks that I hadn’t done, Brenta Spire was the highest on my priority list. Towards the end of 2020’s summer alpine season I finally found an ideal partner for the mission. Winnie M. and I had spent a good number of days scrambling and mountaineering together and she expressed how much she wanted to just “be in the Bugs”, so the trigger was pulled.

Earlier in this mini road-trip we climbed Uto Peak in Rogers Pass before moving to the Bugaboos. In our first day in the “Bugs” we carried overnight gears to Applebee Dome camp and made an ascent of Lions Way on Central Crescent Tower. This was meant to be a warm-up climb but turned out to be much harder than Brenta Spire itself. In the morning of our second day we woke up with a thick layer of smoke but such wouldn’t bother us from carrying on.

We again, had a lazy morning making Winnie’s coffee and my spicy ramen and didn’t start our day until probably 9 am. The first stage of this ascent was to slog up to Crescent Towers/Spire col. The lakes and tarns were still beautiful but the views were heavily obscured by the thick smoke. We had seen this stage of the hike in the previous day so didn’t take as many photos. We stopped at the outflow of the glacial lake under Crescent Glacier for drinking water, and had a little bit of struggling to scramble up the 4th class step immediately above the outflow. This was my third time scrambling up this step and every time I felt it a little awkward. Then we easily traversed the base of Crescent Towers and slogged the loose gully up to the col. This stage was overall easier and shorter than expected.

The next stage was a short traverse/descent of Crescent Spire’s east face on choss. I was expecting permanent snow patches and/or complicated route-finding but it turned out to be quite easy. We did have to deal with some compact choss but the scrambling had never exceeded “moderate”, or “class 3-“. This short descending traverse brought us to the broad NE Ridge of Crescent Spire. We then followed the climber’s path descending the north side and around a buttress and then onto the more exposed section of the NE Ridge of Crescent Spire. We followed the knife-edge to a dead-end, and without an existing rappel station we knew this was not good. We backtracked for about 20 meters and found a possible line to down-climb onto a ledge system on the north side. In retrospect we should have backtracked farther but the line we took still worked (awkward 4th class on questionable rocks). Traversing that ledge was very exposed, but not difficult and the next thing we were at the 5th class crux down-climb. This short down-climb looked more like what we had been reading so we set up a station (sling around a pitch point) and went for a short rappel. After that we still had to traverse and down-climb some sketchy 3rd to 4th class terrain before reaching Crescent/Brenta col.

We ditched snow gears at the col as it’s apparent that they weren’t needed on this particular day. The lower portion of Brenta Spire’s south ridge was a tedious plod on talus and boulders which none of us enjoyed, especially in this thickening smoke. Eventually we came to the false summit and the ridge narrowed down. We took a very long break near the false summit before going for the summit push. There was at least one awkward step before the final “5th class chimney”. I’d seen various grades from 4th class to 5.6 and I was expecting it to be difficult, but we ended up just scrambling and soloing all the way to the summit. The hardest part of that chimney was to mentally trust a few blocks to grab onto. The rock on this peak is granite, but never felt solid enough to put all our fate on.

The view from the summit was not very good thank to the smoke so we didn’t linger too long. None of us was keen to down-climb the chimney so we were looking to rappel. I was surprised to find no existing rappel stations but thankfully we had brought enough cords. We found a bomber boulder on the south side and did one easy rappel to get off technical terrain, followed by a somewhat tedious descent to Crescent/Brenta col.

To re-ascend the NE Ridge of Crescent Spire we more or less followed our own route. We both soloed that short 5th class step because we were too lazy to take the rope out again. I didn’t even bother to swap my footwear back to rock shoes and I had to say that to climb that step in mountaineering boots was a tad challenging and awkward. We made better route-finding decisions on the ledges above that technical step that we didn’t encounter any sketchy spot on the return. That traverse from NE Ridge of Crescent Spire to Crescent Spire/Towers col was not very pleasant, but not difficult. The descent of the loose gully on the opposite side of the col was also not very fun. We took our time packing up the gears at camp, but once committing to the return hike we settled for a relatively fast pace.

The drive out of the Bugaboos was a slow show thank to the washboards and pot-holes. I was also tired from the climbs and the drive so in that evening we only made to past Golden. I knew a good car-camping spot somewhere 20 km up the Bush River FSR so we drove there and settled for a night. There was nobody around as expected. On the last day we woke up again, in thick layer of smoke so just leisurely drove home. We made multiple stops along the way including a luxurious Chinese lunch in Kamloops.