Bugaboos 2007

the best one week climbing trip any two people have ever taken since the beginning of time

I've been wanting to climb the "Beckey/Chouinard" route on South Howser Tower in the Bugaboos for over ten years. This summer Ellen and I decided we were going to go for it. Notorious for bad and unsettled weather, we resigned ourself to committing for this one climb - all we needed was 18 hours of good weather out of seven days - and we could most likely get it done and be happy. If we sat in the tent for the rest of the time - we were both fine with that.

Being working stiffs with limited time, we decided to try to maximize our vacation time, and minimize our hiking time - therefore we "babied-out" and took a helicopter into East Creek (just below the Beckey Chouinard) - one of the best decisions I've ever made. It is the WAY. We took TONS of food, beer, wine, booze, gear, multiple tents, etc. It was totally worth it. We had to walk a total of about 100ft from where the helicopter dropped us to where we set up our tent. We had the entire basin to ourselves the whole time - though we did see and talk to some parties on their way through to do the B/C. It was truly amazing. Here are photos of our flight in, our camp, some friends that stopped in, and lots of BD product shots I was taking.

the Beckey/Chouinard

The weather forecast was looking good for the next 10 days - maybe we would be lucky. We flew in, set up our tent and the decided to go after the main objective first thing. The next day we were up at 4am, left camp for the 10min downhill approach to the start of the route by 4:30 and started scrambling. (note: we wore approach shoes, no crampons, no ice axes, one pack, one belay jacket, one 60m 9.7mm lead line, and a 7mm rap line, a healthy rack, and rock shoes) We roped up by about 6am - finished the AMAZING roped climbing by about 6pm or a bit later; we kinda botched finding the summit and rap anchors, but made it down just as it was getting dark. Hands down this is one of the best routes I've ever done in my life - it gets lots of hype because it deserves it. We did it in 18 pitches, the climbing is mainly 5.8 and 5.9 with two GREAT pitches of 5.10. Check out the photos with nothing but blue sky (photos of Beckey/Chouinard).

The next day we were a bit worked so just hung out in camp in shorts and a t-shirt, ate food, hiked around a bit, and just enjoyed our relaxing vacation time away from the office. After ticking off our only real objective on the first day, everything else was gravy - so we started going for the classic mellow routes under perfect weather skies day after day.

Pigeon Spire

We started a bit early because we were anxious, and it was a bit windy in the morning - so it started off chilly, but ended up being another spectactulr blue-bird day. We were the first ones up and down the route simul-climbing the whole thing in about 40 minutes or so. We met lots of other parties from all over the world on this classic route. W. Ridge of Pigeon Spire

the Kain route on Bugaboo Spire

another unbelievable day, another super classic route. The route is the right ridge skyline in the photo below. The whole thing in t-shirts no-less - unreal. Bugaboos Spire

the Pigeon Feathers Traverse - with Flat Top thrown in for good measure

and agin - another amazing weather day. We decided to switch it up and do a bit of snow/ice/rock climbing. This was a great casual moderate day - again done in t-shirts (Pigeon Feathers Traverse) We went up the obvious snow gulley and traversed the entire ridgeline in the photo below - almost all on snow. We added in one more peak which is to the right (not shown in the photo) which was more of a rock scramble with the odd 5th class move.

SnowPatch

and another beautiful day. Once again we started too early because we were anxious and excited - so it was chilly in the morning. The first two pitches were good, then we ended up doing our own variation (ie. we were off route) on Surf's up on Snowpatch. Though we were off route, we ended up sniffing our way to the top doing some good, and some not-so-good climbing along the way.

Helicopter Flight Out

On our final day we were going to try to bag one more peak - but decided to just hang out and wait for our helicopter flight out. The photo below was taken from where our tent was set up - that's the distance we had to carry our gear - rough...

It was an absolutely perfect trip - other than the fact that we got back to SLC to find that our basement had flooded while we were away - that was fun...