Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

August 24, 2022

1557m

Vancouver Island, BC

Triple Peak is a classic on the island with easy access and quality climbing. The “classic” status is only by island’s standard as the approach is short/pleasant but not as short nor pleasant as some other areas. The rock quality is decently good but the climbing is not nearly as fun as some other areas neither. I figured if Triple Peak is considered one of the best peaks on the island then no wonder why few climber travel here to climb anything. I had planned to climb Triple Peak for years and I debated if this is a great objective to bring someone new to alpine climbing, but in the end I decided to just simply get the job done with an experienced climber. I’m only interested in the “standard route” of any peak and for this one, either the North Ridge or the SE Ridge offer similar difficulty. I received some recent updates that the moat situation on the North Ridge access is bad, so I opted for the SE Ridge which is literally the easiest route to the main summit of Triple Peak. The official grade is 4th class but I would call that “low 5th class”. Matt Lemke and I had climbed Warden Peak on the first day and this would be the second day of our island trip. At least a few spots on Triple Peak felt considerably harder than on Warden Peak.

Matt and I had a luxurious dinner in Campbell River and then drove southwards and then westwards past Port Alberni. The Google Map directed us onto the correct logging road and this road, though short, is considerably rougher than the one we took to Warden Peak. I think 4 wheel drive and maybe even high clearance is mostly likely required. I did not encounter any difficulty in the Tacoma but I did have to drive slow. Eventually after some steady elevation gain we passed Cobalt Lake trail-head and descended to the end of the road. The GPX file I was given started at Cobalt Lake trail-head so we had a pleasant surprise. Being able to drive to the road’s end saved at least 10 minutes of walking each way. We made to the trail-head at around 10 pm so we did get decent amount of sleeping that night. Again I opted to just sleep inside the truck for simplicity while Matt did his open bivy on the truck’s bed.

The trail quality is basically as expected. It’s impossible to get lost but this is also not an armchair-accessible trail like Garibaldi Lake trail neither. There’s even some route-finding involved as well as 3rd class scrambling. The annoying part was the beginning where we lost 50 m precious elevation that must be regained at the end of the trip. A few 3rd class sections were aided by batman ropes but we did not touch any as we wanted to climb the route by our own means. Once arriving at the lake under Triple Peak’s north slopes we took the first break, but the break wasn’t long due to horrendous mosquitoes. I had to put my jacket on for bug protection even though the air was smoking hot. It seems like every trip I did in this summer had been smoking hot so I didn’t even bother to complain.

We then followed cairns and paths ascending climber’s left and a while later we faced the first snow traverse. The slope was not as steep as appeared and the traction wasn’t needed. We then scrambled up on a mix of 3rd class rock and 35-degree snow for a few hundred vertical meters until we were directly underneath the NW Peak and the true summit. The final snow slope leading to the start of true summit’s SE Ridge (climber’s left side notch) required me to put on crampons. Matt climbed some tricky slabs to avoid taking the crampons out but on the descent we all had to don the crampons. I picked a poor route and got stopped by impassible moats. Meanwhile Matt was already on the far side and instructed me to descend 20 m to find a better crossing spot. The crampons-on and crampons-off transitions of mine meant Matt had to wait for me at the col. Matt then scrambled a tricky step and he did not make it look easy. I was too stubborn to think about donning rock shoes nor harness. I got halfway up that step before having to switch footwear to rock shoes. I was literally balancing on a tree branch to do this transition so that took a while as well.

We then scrambled through a tunnel passing the first rappel anchor. Matt said that he might want to rappel that step we just soloed, and I agreed. Upon trying the first few moves of the next step Matt made the call to take the rope out, so I gave him a belay. Matt only put in two cams as this was a very short pitch. At least one move was vertical with arm strength required so I was glad to have a top rope belay here. We then went back into the soloing mode and did one pitch of tricky climbing with slippery footings. We were both glad to have reached out some extended slings dangling from the rappel anchor above. The rest of the scrambling to the summit wasn’t difficult and we even on-purposely made it harder by climbing a direct crack up the summit block. We again got cell reception on the summit so spent over an hour there reconnecting with the society.

On the descent we down-climbed and then did 3 rappels using one 60 m rope and that got us down into the moat at the base of the route. We tried hard to find a route down the snow field that didn’t require donning crampons but to no avail. Matt didn’t want to downclimb his slab line, neither did I, so we just took the crampons out and walked down the snow field. We kept the crampons on and descended snow for as far as possible. There’s one melted-out section requiring down-climbing 3rd class slabby rocks. I don’t think that step is avoidable unless it’s earlier in the season with more snow. The rest of the descent was rather uneventful but very unpleasant in the heat and the humidity. The most pleasant thing of this trip was to take the wet cloths off at the trail-head. We eventually made back to Nanaimo at 4 pm but we faced two sailings’ wait. We were told that we might can get on the 6:15 pm ride but it wasn’t even close, so 8:30 pm ride and that’s it. Needless to say this was a very frustrating finish of the trip especially considering the 30-degree heat at the ferry terminal, but this wasn’t the worst I’ve experienced with BC Ferries so I’m not going to complain. I eventually got home at 11 pm and Matt had another 2 hours of driving back to Seattle.