Mount Slesse

I’m not a fatalistic person, except when I’m sitting in a passenger jet 12,000 metres in the air. Such an unlikely position, sailing through the stratosphere at 800 km/h in a metal tube. From those heights the earth looks like a colourful atlas rendered massive and 3-D, the closest I’ll ever get to achieving the planetary perspective of an astronaut. Inevitably I’m seized with thoughts of how I would react if the improbable happened. Would I involuntarily hug the people next to me as a final desperate act of humanity, send out frantic texts to loved ones, dutifully reach for the overhead oxygen mask and life jacket as per the absurd in-flight safety briefing, shriek like a colic child, or simply sit stoically in silence, mesmerized by the incipient spin? I’m thinking of this as I stand on Mt. Slesse’s northeast buttress, at the base of pitch four or five—I’ve lost track already. “On belay,” I call out.

JF gets set to climb up and join Steve and I. Twenty metres skyward, Jasmin, belayed by Steve, monkeys around on the unnerving and occasionally loose 5.10- crux pitch of the direct route, which is easily bypassed on low 5th class terrain to the right. JF is perpetually optimistic and cheerful, Jasmin, driven and strong, and Steve, as always, patient and prepared to overnight on the mountain without food or water if it means capturing that perfect alpenglow panorama with his camera. Me, I’m plagued with that internal dialogue between secure and insecure selves, admittedly not an advantageous state of mind for scaling mountains. A sense of invincibility is preferable. Ogle and I share a cramped and uncomfortable belay ledge. I look at the shoelace of 7mm cord tethering me to the mountain, the airiness below me. The late morning sun, hot for the alpine, has struck the mountain. My feet cook and swell painfully, and I have an urge to drop my constricting rock shoes into the void below, toward the North Slesse Glacier that has been cracking and rumbling all morning—the sound of ice cutting loose. Earlier in the morning on the approach to the northeast buttress, the August morning sun was just starting to glow over the Cascades. The four of us out on a rocky ridge, where a solo camper was emerging from his tent to greet the sun and brew coffee. “I love this spot,” he said.

FOR GOOD REASON. From his tent door you can gaze out over the rooftop of the Cascades and the Chilliwack River far below. He sipped his coffee, while we stood next to a dented propeller, twisted pieces of airplane fuselage, hydraulic lines and other unidentifiable scraps of metal piled high with rocks into a crude cairn—the “propeller cairn,” as it is prosaically known. Silence, like that of an empty cathedral, seemed like the only appropriate response. On December 6, 1956, the unfathomable loneliness of a winter storm battered Slesse. The granite slabs around the base of the mountain were buried metres deep in snow. The blizzard intensified. At 18:43 that evening, a half hour after take-off from YVR, the flight deck of Trans Canada Airlines flight 810 reported icing on the wings. Nine minutes later there was an engine fire and an emergency decision to return to Vancouver, followed by a request to drop elevation to 10,000 feet. Then there was radio silence, and the plane vanished from the radar screen. Shortly after, Flight 810 crashed into Mount Slesse, killing all 62 people—the entire complement of passengers and crew. How quickly the silence, the rush of wind, must have returned to the alpine, the wreckage of the plane quickly overcome by the next snowfall.

I had been to this place before; a decade ago with my friend Ned. Rain derailed our plans for the NE buttress. Instead, we hiked around Slesse’s base. In the alder-choked avalanche basin below the north face, Ned found a cleat, its rubber sole dangling from the leather like a half-peeled banana. We left it where it was, on a bed of moss barely concealed beneath an alder branch. Among the people who died on Flight 810 were members of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Saskatchewan Roughriders returning from the east-west CFL all-star game in Vancouver a few days earlier.

IT’S NOON. SLESSE is in full sun. The four of us bask in the warmth, enjoying lunch on the massive bivouac ledge. It is the last place to sprawl comfortably before the summit pitches of moderate but sustained 5.7-5.9 climbing above us. Steve and I lead off, ascending parallel low-angled cracks until we converge at another crowded belay. We each stuff a couple of cams into a diagonal crack, fashion anchors then start bringing Jasmin and JF up to join us. JF arrives first, then takes off effortlessly up the 5.9 crux pitch, following hand-sized cracks for 15 metres. An under-cling hold enables a delicate stem that allows JF to pass the small roof. He disappears. In a few minutes, we hear a shout from above, muffled by the wind. and carried away on the breeze buffeting the ridge. Moments later, the remaining rope between JF and Steve spools rapidly upwards. Then comes the words, “On belay!”
When I reach the left trending under-cling hold, I notice Jasmin has clipped a rusty 1/4-inch bolt that looks so ancient that it might have been placed by the hands of the late legendary alpinist Fred Beckey himself. I look down at the triangle of air framed by my stemmed legs and spot other climbers we met lower down on the root. There was a stoic trio of guys with European accents who seemed annoyed when we passed them and a competent and confident team of two women—one from Canmore, the other from Whistler—with whom we shared a few laughs and belay ledges.

TO GEOLOGISTS, SLESSE is an igneous marvel of mountain architecture, a product of the Pemberton Volcanic Belt formed between 26 and 29 million years ago. To climbers it is a coveted prize, first climbed in 1927. However, it was, of course, the prolific Beckey who spied and then pioneered the NE buttress with partners Steve Marks and Eric Bjornstad in 1963. Bold and committing for its day, the route was classic Beckey, aesthetic and eminently worthy of repeat ascents. Its inclusion in Fifty Classic Climbs of North America, a tome first published in 1979 that sits dog-eared on climbers’ shelves around the world, has made it a bucket list mandatory for alpinists. To the families and friends of Flight 810 victims, the mountain is something else: a monolithic tombstone of grey diorite and phyllite piercing the sky.
The late Vancouver newspaperman and mountaineer Paddy Sherman wrote about Slesse in his 1965 classic of Canadian mountain literature, Cloudwalkers:
“This is a peaceful place I would gladly lie. The rock is clean and bereft of sadness, the deep quiet has a tranquility all its own. At their heads, peaks reach for the sky in a sweep of grandeur, and the mountain itself is their monument.”
Despite his eloquence, I disagree with Sherman on one point; Slesse does indeed have a sadness to me, a mournful quality, that no amount of time passing will erase. Five months following flight 810’s disappearance, climbers discovered the wreckage on Slesse. What a haunting discovery it must have been, a form of closure for the families and friends of the deceased, and perhaps some solace knowing that death would have been swift, instantaneous. Four decades after the crash, on May 29th, 1995, the BC government declared a 582-hectare commemorative site encompassing the crash area, making it illegal to disturb crash debris or remains.

I SUCK THE last few drops of water from my bottle after we all have pulled through the crux pitch. Tufts of grass grow stubbornly from narrow fissures in the rock; life proliferating where life has no business being. My mouth is pasty from dehydration. I look upward. Jasmin dances up the crest of the buttress following the first of the final few pitches of 5.7 leading to the summit. Forty-five minutes later we’re posing for a summit photo atop a confusion of boulders that seem barely adhered to the mountain. Jasmin and I coil the ropes hastily. Another mountain climbed, another mountain that we must get down. It’s 5:30 p.m.: a long and notoriously convoluted descent awaits. None of us wish to navigate it in darkness.
We scramble south un-roped following cairns that direct us down a loose defile and to the first rappel anchor, a giant boulder slung with a few decades worth of webbing and cord. I rap first then wait for the others, savoring the last few slices of sweet navel orange, the only source of moisture remaining in my lunch. Sections of steep down climbing on shattered rock separate each rappel. With four of us, it is tediously slow. Ninety minutes after leaving the summit, we finally reach the base of the last rappel. A forest fire haze fills the valley of Slesse Creek, turning the sky an eerie amber hue. We move now, mostly in silence, following a trace of trail in the rocks. At the point where the old descent route plunges directly down the fall line into the Slesse Creek valley, we angle up for 75 vertical-metres toward a notch in the ridge, aiming for Crossover Pass. My legs feel like lead.
I look back at the NE buttress. The team of two women is only now topping out on the crux pitches. They are likely destined to spend a thirsty night somewhere on the mountain. Luckily it is warm, and the sky is non-threatening. Soon we’re crossing a steep grassy slope above a vertical drop, following bucket footsteps in the dark rich soil that gives rise to a profusion of mountain harebells and other wildflowers. In wet conditions this traverse would be dangerous.

IT’S DARK NOW. We’re in the forest. Reflective markers on the trees shine in the beam of our headlamps, making the steep trail simple to follow. At the valley bottom, we beat our way through thick alder, close to where Ned found that football cleat years ago. Ahead of me, I see Jasmin’s headlight bobbing in the darkness like a firefly. A final steep climb delivers us back to the Slesse Memorial Trail. I drop my daypack, then walk back up the path to where we left our bivvy gear next to the memorial. I’m bushed from 17 hours of continuous movement on Slesse; that monument to loss and grief etched by the beauty of a climber’s line that dances up the NE buttress. A six pack of beer chills in a back eddy of Neskawatch Creek, less than an hour’s walk downhill from here. An achievable target. The four of us shoulder our packs one final time and begin marching in the darkness, one foot after another. Nobody talks. We cross a side channel balancing across a log, greasy with condensation. I catch the toe of my boat on a branch, and it sends me sideways into the trailside bush, right palm down to brace for the fall. I feel a stab of pain when I hit the ground.
I shine my headlamp downwards and see a Twoonie-sized flap of flesh peeled back on my palm, matted in blood.
“You okay?” JF asks.
I dip my right hand into the creek and watch a helix of dark red coil away into the current, dissolving into nothingness. There in the cool waters one second, gone the next.