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Early May I had minor surgery that was supposed to put me out for a month.. 4 day's after I was sitting on the couch with an ice pack and I got a call to go up to the Waddington Range of British Columbia and photograph a ski mountaineering project that Jack Hannan and Jon Johnston from Pemberton had been eyeballing.
(Aerial image from this site-- http://www.pbase.com/nolock/qbesschilko )
I called my surgeon to get the worst case scenario if my stitches blew out in this remote region. I likely under stated what I was doing but never-the-less his word was promising that nothing catastrophic was likely to happen so I decided to go. My partner Julie on the other hand just looked at me and shook her head.. Not much sympathy here!!!
I knew I would not be-able to ski but was confident I could climb with my camera bag and get some images of the attempt.
Before I knew it I was standing at the base of Queen Bess after a 8 hr drive from Squamish and a 40 minute Heli flight from Whitesaddle air west of Williams Lake.
The route looked in perfect shape so Jack and Jon did a quick recon on arrival and then prepared for a 3am wakeup to have an attempt on this unskied giant.
I felt like I just fell asleep and my alarm went off.. time to go to work.. I prepped all my camera gear/crampons/ice tools and took some shots before climbing above our camp to get some images of the the boy's climbing the face.
They quickly skinned to the base of the 4000 ft face and started climbing up the sustained apron to the upper headwall. It took about 4hrs of pushing hard in good winter snow conditions considering it was early May. To their disapointment they found rotten snow on unskieable 60 deg blue ice on the upper wall that held amazing spines that was the lure of the route.
Disappointed they safely turned around and shredded the lower face. A perfect case in point to climb objectives to have good understanding of snow conditions. A heli drop on this summit may have had different results.
Safely back at camp Jon and Jack looked for an alternative route and skied off of the ridge south of the main peak. A small consolation prize but a very aesthetic line none the less.
Everyone vowed to return to try again when condition are favorable..
Cheers,
Chris.
(Oh Ya, 3 weeks after the trip I returned to work and " My stitches popped.. I had to go back to emerg....)
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