Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

July 21, 2020

2264m

Clendinning Area, BC

“Hammerstein Peak” is the unofficial name of the long ridge that’s immediately north of “Inaccessible Pass” on the west side of Tinniswood Glacier, in the heart of the uber remote Clendinning area. This peak is mostly composed of gentle glaciers and snow slopes but does boast a somewhat rugged summit block, that all sides but the south ridge would require technical climbing. The south ridge is however, mostly just class 2 on loose blocks. On the 4th day of the traverse Alex, Vlad and I carried the heavy packs up and over the ridge of Hammerstein Peak from north to south. Earlier in the day we had ascended Blumlisalp Mountain.

We did not come prepared for the difficulties of climbing the summit block and the north side appeared vertical from afar, but we did have studied the Google satellite images. The plan was to traverse over the col immediately north of the summit block, then traverse across the steep east face to a notch on the south side of the summit. The ascent onto the broad NW ridge from Blumlisalp/Hammerstein col involved a few scrambling steps of steep heather or snow with excellent views into Hunaechin Creek valley. Once gaining the NW ridge we had a long plod up what seemed like a never-ending snow ridge/ramp to the col north of the summit block. The north ridge did not look like “scrambling” so we had to resume our plan, traversing over to the south side hoping for a route form the opposite direction.

From the col we got some head-on views of Mt. Tinniswood but the east side snow traverse looked incredibly steep and somewhat exposed, so we took our time donning ice axe and crampons. I then led the way across the east side snow slope and climbed a short section of 45 degree exposed snow with a daunting moat crossing near the top. This dumped us at the notch immediately south of the summit block. The ascent of the south ridge did appear much friendly so we ditched the packs and went for a short scramble to tag the summit.

Once having enough photos we carefully made our way back to the backpacks and continued descending southwards aiming for the very aptly-named “Inaccessible Pass” somewhat 600 m below us in Hammerstein/George Edwards chasm. The initial couple hundred meters of descent was easy on mostly snow but soon we had to face some narrow sections of ridge and rock steps. The crux came about 2/3 of the way down when we faced a steep and bushy drop. We tried a couple routes that all would require rappels through steep bush. I almost convinced us to rappel but Vlad had more experience in this type of terrain and managed to find a hidden ramp and gully that went at “class 4 bush”. It was not very pleasant to thrash and lower ourselves down on the moss and branches but it worked. Then we had a couple more interesting steps but none imposed much of a problem, that in a while we were down at “Inaccessible Pass”.

At this point we had some discussions. I had two separate weather updates. One from Winnie/Mel and the other from Lily both saying 2-3 days of rain coming up soon. The laziest option was to wait it out here at a comfortable location but we all wanted to keep moving taking advantage of as much as “good weather” as possible. The degree of uncertainty was too high for us to kill time at the pass, so we carried on to ascend Mt. George Edwards in the evening and then Mt. Tinniswood the next morning.