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[TR] back of beyond,bendor,cayoosh 1st ascents, etc...- Brambles Buttress Sky, nothing, partial revolution 7/16/2004


layton

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Climb: back of beyond,bendor,cayoosh 1st ascents, etc...-Brambles Buttress Sky, nothing, partial revolution

 

Date of Climb: 7/16/2004

 

Trip Report:

After playing Marco Polo in the fog for a week, Jordan, Justin and I decided (unwillingly) to head to the mysterious Bendor range in British Columbia. The forecast was crap except for the last day, but instead of heading to WA pass and actually climbing something, we head out into the great unknown.

 

Much driving ensued as we zoomed past pemberton, and headed to the urban sprawl of Gold Bridge! We were stopped b/c of active logging, but after some beers were passed around, we were let through. We passed Dru's megaclassic, Turax. Looks f@#$cking terrible. Don Serl was suckered into climbing it i guess. hahahahaha. lesson learned: never trust Dru.

 

Some hearty slogging brought us above treeline and there we entered Newfoundland. Mist and green meadows swirled around us with glaciers looming everywhere. I expected to hear the 3pm work bells from glacier bay and bag pipe music as we traversed to our unknown objectives. Some snow slogging got us to a notch and we gazed down upon the mighty Bendor range!

 

Our jaws dropped. It was amazing. Huge granite peaks everywhere! Little did we know that most of the rock is garbage or no cracks w/lots o' roofs. Every route we scoped looked like a hard aid climb. The only thing worth doing was a 2000' + ridge on some tripple towers. It was only 1500' of elev from base to top, but each tower dropped down a ways to the next. As we got closer, the rock looked wicked loose and scary. We headed back to camp and were ready to get up early to do this new route.

It should be noted that the whole time the forecast was for 50-60% rainstorms and 0% for the last day. We had decent weather those two days, so to our surprise when we woke up the last day to climb, it was pissing rain.

Justin drove like an asshole on the way out and popped a tire. Luckily he has no toolkit in the car, so like a scene out of 2001 a space odysey, we used makeshift tools out of knifeblades, ice axes, and hammers to change the tire.

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The next trip Jordan and I went back to Back of Beyond Buttress to do a new route. I was a giddy as a schoolgirl on free condom day since Back of Beyond Buttress was one of the best routes I've ever climbed. Surely everything must be good there?

We started way to the right up an AMAZING 1st pitch. Splitter clean crack led us up a full pitch to a ledge. Jordan did a great lead! I tried to tackle an overhanging upsidedown offwitch roofcrack on my pitch. I gave up after my #4 cam ripped out while I had both feet jammed in the crack and way trying to jam a hip in. It would've been a hard 5.11 o.w., but I pussied out and traversed around. Jordan then got a serious lead in. He fell some distance when a block he was laybacking ripped out, and also ran it out on a knifeblade. My next pitch probably took two hours of hard serious climbing and aid climbing w/o aiders (A1+ french free). Many pitches later including a magnificant mantle onto 100,000 tons of stacked blocks by Jordan brought us to the top. We then tagged the summit we forgot to tag two years earlier and did a super easy walk off to the car.

Brambles Buttress Sky. 1st ascent Jordan Peters, Mike Layton. 7/12/04 (5.10, A1, D+, serious. 9 pitches)

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The next day we drove to the ice climb Carl's Berg and went up the dirt road behind it. The cayoosh range there makes a complete circle. A 25 mile ridge above 7000' with over 26 summits. We planned on 3-4 days, no rope.

 

The intial ridge gain took 4500' of hard approaching including a cougar stalking session. Then the thunderheads began to build and the delicate sound of thunder crackled across the horizon. We kept on going since there was no lightning visible.

 

The ridge got knife-edged and tedious and we tagged summit after summit. Pooped, we camped on a saddle and melted a shitload of snow for water. Blue skies the next morning tooks us further on the ridge. Sometimes it felt like we were in the sierra. We were utterly worked. Miles and many summits later we arrived at the crux.

FUCK! We needed a rope. Maybe not for getting up (look like 8 hours of 5.7 climbing), but getting down. The range continued dizzingly into the horizing. Miles and miles of peaks, ridges, and summits to go.

Should we bypass a good 1/4 of the traverse? No, the last 1/3 was the easy section. Our feet were hamburger by this point anyway. Next time I'm bringing sneakers. I did part of the traverse in my sandals to ease the pain, although it was really really sketchy 4th classing in sandals w/big tottering blocks!

We probably would be in the hospital for most of the summer if we continued on our mangled feet. I don't even know how many miles and mountains we went. It was a shitload. So we began our epic decent. We made it down to a basin but were totally cliffed out. We had to do a high traverse for a couple hours up and back to a major scree gully.

We got to the road and realized we had 8 miles to roadwalk back to the car. Many drugs were consumed, and we stumbled back to the car totally fucking hosed. I haven't been so abused in quite a long time. I had blisters the size of cherry tomatoes on the tips of my big toe and blood blisters from sandle scree climbing. Jordan's bad ankles were hugely swollen, and he had blisters as well.

Oh well, maybe we'll go and the the whole thing another time. It was really really cool, but we'd need a rope and more than 4 days worth of food, and a better forecast.\

I have been non-stop eating since I've been back.

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Gear Notes:

Bendor range-boots

Brambles Buttress Sky-full rack w/knifeblades

Revolution Traverse-comfy shoes, small rope and rack, 4-5 days worth of shit.

Edited by michael_layton
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