01.05.2016
Been a while since I posted here, basically living life at the speed of light so the hikes are still happening regularly, but the tr's are far and few between. Anyways...
We had to park about 3km from the Mt Sleese Memorial trail head ... if you had a very robust 4x4, raised and short wheelbase you would be able to continue on, but it was a too much for the Jeep YJ, Nitro and Tacoma parked at a 20m wide rock/log slide.
The log bridges across the Nasakwatch Creek are still passable but slowly getting shifted around by the raging waters... this may be a problem if nothing is done about it soon.
We went up the memorial for some pics and then circled back 200m or so to grab the trail that shoots off to the Crossover ridge.
An easy creek crossing and then up and up in steep'ish forest following the blazes and flagging most of the way until we popped out into some sub-alpine terrain... snowshoes went on here... the markers became intermittent here and we just used our previous track to find our way up to the rampy rock/tree bands that cross under the ridge under the eastern peak.
Two of us went NE to a nice large plateau on the ridge that offered 300 degree views of the Chilliwack River valley, Cheam range and Illusions while the other two in our party took an alternate and what looked like a steeper and longer route up to gain the ridge a little further along. ...traded snowshoes for crampons and ice ax.... We continued along the ridge and connected with the rest of the party before climbing the last rise before entered the bowl SE of the peak.
We ditched our snowshoes to lighten things and carried on up 40-45% grade slopes to the other side of the bowl before we started our final scramble of 70-80m to the peak. Initially it was just simple route finding on dry C3 rock which then turned into a handful of exposed C4 moves to get us to the top. We all had harnesses, helmets and rope, but we were able to all make it to the peak without aid.
We found an easier down route that bypassed the 'crux' of our up track, which simplified things for us but it would not have been any easier if we had tried to ascend it earlier.
Our pace was moderate with lots of breaks so it took us 8 hours up and 6 hours return.
Stats: ~20 km, cumulative gain of 2000 m, average grade 18.5%, 14 hrs total, about 9 hours moving at a moderate enjoyable pace.
A brilliant success on a stellar day with an excellent group of people.
Full album here... Crossover Peak - East, May 1, 2016
Regards,
Rex
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