Whatcom Peak: Challenger in background
The events I relate here sandwich the bear encounter
described in “Of Gundelberg and the Bear”
In other words, it explains why we failed to climb Mt. Challenger,
twice.
Our first attempt was thwarted by Nature and my lack of self-confidence. The route we had chosen required us to traverse
on smooth rock from Whatcom Pass to the foot of the Challenger glacier. The smoothness of the rock was owing to
erosion by the Whatcom glacier, which had retreated but still was alive and
healthy, grumbling away not far above our path.
The”path” itself was on the side of a sloping half dome,
which steepened to our left, away from the glacier. On that side the smooth rock
dome steepened and eventually fell off almost vertically into a valley filled
with dead trees. To our right it rose
but flattened, to the nose of the growling, grunting glacier. I knew it was stupid to walk out under that
billion-ton sheet of ice, but the way looked so easy and we had hiked so far…..
Well, half way across we encountered an unexpected impasse. There was a steep-sided channel in the smooth
rock, at least 100 ft. deep and filled with colossal blocks of ice. There was no obvious way to get to the other
side. We were carrying full packs, of
course, We should have known better, but
we set them down and began scouting around for a quick fix to our dilemma. And
then Nature took over, as you would expect.
A huge block of ice broke loose from the Whatcom glacier,
perhaps 200 m. above us -- and came crashing down, straight at us. The smooth rock surface that I have described
had “steps” every so often. Through the
good offices of whatever agency of Fate takes care of idiots, there was a
substantial one, perhaps a meter high, right at our feet. We ducked down beside it, and watched the
broken ice avalanche pass right over us, so close you could have grabbed a bit
to cool your evening cocktail. And so we
survived.
However, we were nowhere near out of the woods yet because – where were our packs? Nowhere to be seen. Remember that everything we needed to stay
alive was in those packs. If the ice
fall had shoved them into the deep valley described earlier, we were in very
serious trouble. After searching for a
frantic twenty minutes or so we located them, far down on the smooth rock
half-dome. In the meantime the Whatcom
glacier, which was in full sun, tossed out another little bouquet of ice. I may be stupid, but I can tell when Fate is
giving me advice, so I strapped on my pack and traced a bee-line back toward Whatcom
Pass (and, of course, the bear), all the while hurling profane imprecations at
Bob, who was back searching for a way across the big gully that had stopped us
in the first place. But in the end he
relented, and so survived to try again another day.
We did try again a few days later, using the Easy Ridge/Perfect
Pass route. As this already is too long,
I will describe that “adventure” another time.
Good grief.
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