by Chris Comair
In 2022, Jess and I culminated an amazing season with our first Bugaboos experience. It had been a dream of mine for years, and it outperformed expectations. Fast forward a year, and our 2023 season was dominated by poor weather and unescapable work and personal plans. And while we did get on a few classic climbs like [...]
After an awe-inspiring climb of Bugaboo Spire’s NE Ridge, we woke up this morning late. We both rolled out of our tents around 9AM (a far cry from our previous day’s alpine start at 2AM), and made coffee. We had 1.5 days left of food, making for a pretty hard end to our trip by the next day. We toyed with the idea of taking a jaunt through the range’s cols to attempt a route on Brenta Spire, or to go for the classics Ears Between. We had enough of the rubble wrangling, so by the time 11AM came, we made our way to Ears Between. [..]
Funnily enough, Will and I didn’t come to the Bugs really planning to climb this mega-classic. I actually had this climb on me and Jess’ list, which is why we had climbed the Kain Route a week and a half prior. However, with conditions making our primary objective hazardous, the NE Ridge was an undeniably worthy backup objective.[..]
The Snowpatch Route, also known as Wiessner’s Route, seems to be one of those routes that everybody looks at. The climbing line up and around the massive namesake snowpatch feature towers over all those who walk far enough the trail to get into shooting distance of any climb. Apparently at some point in the first half of the 1900s, it was talked about as North America’s most significant climbing “problem”. Now, boasting the “modest” grade of 5.8 IV, it was not lost on us that it still presented 19 pitches of wandery potentially rockfall-exposed climbing. [..]
The McTech Arete seems to be one of those ultra-well-known area classics. When people say Applebee Camp, it feels almost synonymous with these short climbs- Lion’s Way and the McTech Arete. Everybody up there seem to have these on their current, past, or future lists. The McTech made it to our backup list for a marginal weather day, which happened to come the day after we arrived. [..]
Our alarms rang early, and we made our journey out around Son of Snowpatch, then over the Bugaboo Glacier, over the Pigeon-Howser Col, down the Vowell Glacier, and up to the Bugaboo-Snowpatch Col. And while we kept moving the whole time, checking the clock, it took us a whopping 5 hours. And we knew the trip back would take probably another 3. Looking up at the Buckingham, we wondered if we had time for the route finding, and whether or not we had the desire for a potential epically long day. We looked over at the Kain Route on Bugaboo Spire. We had done a little research on it and had very little beta in our phones about it. [..]
I had been wanting to come to the “Bugs” for years. That desire outlived the age of this blog, and in many ways, had evolved from a desire to a dream. I hadn’t found the right partner to turn that dream into a reality, and for year’s course those massive granite towers would just be photos I’d look at dream about. [...]
Eastpost Spire’s SE Ridge received a single star in the Atikson Piché guidebook, a guidebook not loose with the starts whatsoever. I had also seen it pop up on some various “must do” lists from guiding websites here and there, mostly as rainy day objectives around camp. Eastpost Spire imposes itself over the campsite, with two ridges cutting into the skyline, being an undeniable objective for even some of the most technical climbers who arrive. Most folks seem to scramble up the NW Ridge for the killer views, but how could we deny that single star the guidebook gives to the SE Ridge? [...]
We had a great previous day climbing the beautiful West Ridge of Pigeon Spire. We were also afforded great views of Crescent Spire, giving us a chance to spot a couple routes we had out eyes on for the next few days- Lion’s Way and Ear’s Between. We planned to target Lion’s Way, a classic moderate objective close to camp.
Our goal for our first full day in the Bugaboos was to acquaint ourselves with the area, and what better way to do so than with the ultra classic Pigeon Spire West Ridge. I had already found that things felt very similar to home, but a little different. The biggest impactful difference I really noticed was the scale. Standing below these massive spires, it was hard for my mind to really gauge how truely large they were. My first realization was when I saw tiny human dots making their way up the Bugaboo Snowpatch Col. [...]