Wedge Mountain – Part 1

In southwestern British Columbia, Canada there is a beautiful peak called Wedge Mountain. At 9,488 feet, its summit isn’t the highest or the most difficult in the area, but nevertheless it has routes that can offer plenty of challenge. It attracts climbers from near and far, partly because it is the highest peak in Garibaldi Provincial Park and also because it has 7,379 feet of prominence.

My involvement with Wedge Mountain began in the fall of 1967. I had just come back from a field season of geological exploration in the Stikine River region of far northern BC, an area of rugged wilderness and spectacular glaciation. When I returned to my studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, I wasn’t ready to come down from my mountain high just yet. My roommate, George, a geological engineering student, was as keen as I to go and have an adventure in the mountains (George went on to become one of the world’s leading geophysicists, currently at the University of Texas, Dallas).

I can’t remember why we picked Wedge Mtn. Maybe because it was high and had glaciers, maybe because we secretly knew that reaching its summit might be more than we could really do, but we were up for a challenge. We were novices, and had yet to learn the pitfalls of Coast Range weather. Weeks were spent getting our gear together – I can still remember some of the crazy things we decided to cram into our packs, things that we thought were necessities, like a huge transistor radio and a bottle of booze. Neither of us owned a vehicle, so we took a passenger train and had it drop us off near the base of the mountain on its west side, about 85 miles north of Vancouver. We had huge packs filled with too much useless stuff. After many hours, we had probably gained only 600 or 700 vertical feet, ploughing our way through ever-deepening snow in the thick bush on the west ridge. We camped for the night, during which it snowed a lot more. We spent half the night  knocking the snow off our tent, and we realized in the morning that we were a couple of idiots. We staggered back down the mountain in the morning with our soggy, even-heavier gear, and flagged down the train back to Vancouver.

The following year, 1968, he and I went back to try again. This time, we figured that if we went earlier in the fall, the snow wouldn’t be such a problem. He had an old 1950-something station wagon by then, and we drove ourselves up there and parked pretty close to the start of the climb, near the railroad tracks. It was early October and we thought we had it in the bag this time. Our route was the west ridge. Well, the same thing happened again. There had been a lot of early-season snow, and I don’t think we got much higher than the previous year. Once again, Wedge had kicked our asses. By now, I had this strange love-hate relationship with Wedge and was determined to return and climb it some day. It was my first grudge peak.

My next chance came in the summer of 1973. I got married in late August and convinced my new bride that we should go on a mountain-climbing honeymoon. She was game, so away we went. We climbed Black Tusk in Garibaldi Provincial Park as a day-climb, returned to the highway, then drove up to Wedge. We parked at 2,200′ and she said she would wait there for me. Once again, I headed up the long west ridge, reaching treeline at 6,500′ in a couple of hours. The bush was mercifully free of snow. It was as if my feet had wings, I was so happy to finally be actually climbing Wedge! The weather was perfect and I knew that nothing could stop me now.  It was like a dream coming true. The scenery was fantastic, and, almost euphoric, I continued the remaining 3,000 vertical feet to the summit. I signed in to the summit register. Up until then, I wasn’t even aware that there were other routes up the mountain – I hadn’t actually ever spoken to anyone else who had climbed it. The descent was quick and without incident.

I had no plans to ever return to Wedge after that, but in the summer of 1977, just after my 30th birthday, my friend and climbing partner Brian and I decided to do some climbs in Garibaldi Park. We left Vancouver at a decent hour, drove up to the Black Tusk parking lot, and stormed up the trail with overnight packs. We got all the way in to Gentian Pass where we set up a soggy bivouac. It snowed a lot overnight, but we gamely continued up Castle Towers in the morning, only to be stopped high on the peak by thick clouds and heavy falling snow. We had to turn back before the summit. (As luck would have it, we returned to Castle Towers a few months later and completed the first-ever winter ascent of it in early 1978). After descending to Gentian Pass, we packed up our sodden camp and headed out, deciding to climb Gentian Peak en route back down to the parking lot. Once back at the vehicle, we drove north all the way up to the trailhead for Wedge Mountain. From there, we backpacked up the climber’s trail, a steep climb of 4,000 vertical feet to the hut at Wedgemount Lake and got there before dark. It had been one hell of a long day, but we were young and fit and ready to climb anything that stood still long enough for us to get at it.

Early the next morning, we climbed 3,200 vertical feet to the summit of Wedge on its northeast side via the Weart Glacier. The weather was great, and once we descended to the Wedge-Weart col, we thought “what the heck, why don’t we climb Mount Weart while we’re here”. After all, from the col it was only another 1,500 vertical feet. So we did. It may have been a bit much, in retrospect, because by the time we got back to the hut, it was dark. We were so exhausted we were giddy and could barely see straight. We descended the 4,000′ to our vehicle the next morning, and so ended that encounter with Wedge.

But, as you will see, Wedge was still to play a part in my life, and that was via Mt. Robson.

To be continued…………

(All of the photos on this page are used with the kind permission of John Stolk)

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