Waddington West Ridge and Traverse

To start at the end, with dramatic license.

“Glenn Woodsworth wants to meet you”.

“Oh, delighted. I would be delighted”.

“His accomplishments make what we've done look like child's play.”

So when we landed I left Simon to chat with this icon of old school Coast Range climbing. The disheveled PhD chic dirty-white-cotton clad bonhomme at the landing pad, a legend? Only judging from the tone of respect in Simon's voice, cause Simon is nothing if not a Coast Range legend.

How had I never heard of Glenn? How was my history knowledge so incomplete? Our traverse of the complete north-south Waddington ridgeline child's play? What had he done that measured so large in comparison? Refreshed from a wash, and letting my elders and betters chat about their shared passion and experiences, I surreptitiously fired up my moreish pocket computer and consulted the search engine behemoth, for I just barely fit into that generation that believes if it isn't on the internet it hasn't happened, unlike history, which has, happened.

Oh, U-Wall. And Pipeline. His identity popped out at me from the www.

Simon had mentioned a note on an airdrop he had come across in his wide wanderings. “If we aren't back in two weeks we have headed north from this point”; to paraphrase. It was the closest thing to communication and rescue that Dick Culbert and Glenn had on one of their trips. “1964 saw Dick Culbert and Glenn Woodsworth dedicate five weeks to the Range that summer, knocking off a dozen first ascents (including Serra Five), and barely setting foot where anyone had been before.” (The Waddington Guide, Don Serl, p. 59.

Five days or five weeks. Times have changed. I couldn't even be bothered to ask the man himself or join the conversation, relying on digital media to form my impressions.  I rushed over just in time to meet the man.

“You live in Golden? Then you know Bruce Fairley?”

“Barely. I'm not in town much.”

“Come on Glenn, we've gotta go.”

So it was I barely met a living legend. Chances delayed are chances missed.

But I did spend five days with another legend of the Coast Range.

Simon says he doesn't like to fail. Which is fine because he doesn't, at least not in the 8 trips he has done in the Coast Range, during which he has climbed a major new route on every trip. We "cheat" though, cause we fly in to the start of our routes (Culbert and Woodsworth flew in in 1964 too...), and tap the InReach when we want a pickup at the end of our five day journey.  And we cheat with a little insurance, cached bags of food and fuel at the start (Fury Gap) and the end (Rainy Knob) of the trip.  Still, Simon thought we didn't have much stuff for a Waddington traverse. 

Simon's plan (he is the man with the plan) was to traverse Waddington via some new ground, from north to south. Another brilliant plan hatched like our last new route from a John Scurlock photo.

Simon has an eye for a line.

Red- Dias Glacier/ Angel Glacier route

We thought about bringing snowshoes, but on touching down on Rainy Knob to drop our end cache there was no blowing snow. We figured the week long storm we had delayed our trip for hadn't materialized in the mountains.  Or maybe it had just been blown by the "river aloft" onto the north-east slopes.

Ohhh, this isn't going to take four hours.  Not going to repeat Colin's effort...

We weren't going to beat Colin's time, we weren't going to walk about for a month, but it did seem we had our work cut out for us.

By 3 pm Simon suggested we stop for the day.  "I am not in the habit of stopping at 3 pm when there is good weather in the mountains." "We aren't going to climb the ramp tomorrow, so why not let it clean off another day, and this is a perfect campspot."  The voice of experience.

But the Wadd still seemed a long way off.

The spot was wonderfully flat, a perfect spot to camp. Important, as Simon doesn't believe in bringing unnecessary weight.  The rad Rab two person tent is evidence, and if not pitched perfectly flat can seem a little "close".

On the second day we did much the same as on the first, climbing over peaks named artfully by the Mundays; Fireworks, Herald, Men-At-Arms, Bodyguard, Councillor. I was just silently glad we hadn't undertaken Simon's grand plan of the much longer link-up with the distant Mount Bell, above the appropriately named Remote Glacier.

Bell is in the central distant background in the photo above.  When I mentioned to my well informed buddy Paul McSorley that we were flying in to the Remote Glacier he thought I was obscuring our goal.  In fact, the usually uber-casual Paul had a tinge of worry in his voice when I mentioned that I was going to Wadd at all with Simon, for it is like bringing in the pinch hitter when you are playing away.  The Bell/ Remote Glacier/Wadd linkup was thwarted by an unusually rainy June and July, but that is the type of line Simon sees in his mind.

By the second day we were camped at 2 o'clock, ready for an alpine start for the upper section of our ridge.  Positioned across from the Skywalk buttress on Mount Combatant, I was beginning to feel like we were getting level with the big walls across the way.

I proposed afterward that we call the ridge "Tower Ridge" after the classic line on the Ben (Simon being the guidebook author). See why?

The next morning we were greeted by one of the magical moments that make such outings so memorable.

The tower ridge above, "the spine-like upper continuation of the ridge" (Serl, p.239), was going to provide us with a break from breaking trail. It's always fun going where nobody has been before. The climbing up the snow ramp on the south side of the ridge made a welcome break from the glacier walking.

There was no denying that three days of gaining elevation was starting to have an effect.

Before things heated up in the incredible continued high pressure, Simon was cresting the ridge as I passed onto the seemingly untrodden Epaulette Glacier.

Unprotected snow climbing is my least favourite kind. As we traversed through the top-out of Eamonn Walsh's Uber-Groove, we encountered just that.  Surfing the very top of the snow ridge for a rope length, Simon belayed off a snow bollard using a somewhat old-school belay technique, telling me, "If you fall, fall to the left". As I was pirouetting on the cornice in an effort to au-cheval, I had to somewhat briskly ask which left.  With no snow stakes present, we opted for a very powdery traverse of a 50 degree face.  "It reminds me of the Cowboy Traverse on the Cassin.  We just agreed that we would go as far as seemed reasonable before an avalanche would really cause you problems." With 4 screws total the math wasn't in our favor.

Simon isn't nearly as off-put by risk as I am after two years of guides' training.  I was drilling v-threads on the traverse to keep the distances reasonable.  Simon, when he took over, clearly embraced the age-old British strategy (as I believe Leo Houlding once put it) of running it out.

Then something I have never experienced alpine climbing happened. I have never down-dynoed alpine climbing before.  When I seconded the traverse, Simon called up, "You have to jump into the bergshrund." And so that was how we joined the upper Angel Glacier. I hear that dynoing is all the rage in comp climbing, so logically it is the future as climbing moves into the Olympics.  So, is down dynoing maybe the future of alpinism and Simon is just way ahead of the curve?

"Now you jump into the bergshrund"

The rest of the tale is more conventional.  We summitted the North-West summit and the false summit, we camped out on another amazing flat spot at 3800m as our friends Paul and Tony hooted at us from the col, and the next day we climbed the highly enjoyable summit tower on Scottish style ice and solid cracks.

Little tent below.

I generally try not to look down on people, especially my friends, but I have to say it was a trip looking down on the inlets, the interior plateau, and our friends who were crack climbing across the way on Combatant that day, in one of the great alpine granite meccas of the world.

I couldn't possibly think of looking down on Tony though, cause at that moment I could look out and see the far off valley to the east that is home to Mike King and Whitesaddle Air, who had flown us in.  It is also home to the Fosters ranch, from which Tony and Jason set out under their own steam to walk in, cross Fury Gap, make a strong attempt on a new route on Waddington, and then traverse far down the glaciers to the inlets I could see stretching off to the west, and the Pacific. Not to mention Paul's new route on the south side of Waddington. Respect to the pioneers come and gone, and to the youth who have the energy and the time and vision to undertake these great adventures.

And respect to Simon Richardson, the man with the plan and the Scottish climbing technique to boot. The Scottish belay technique I'm still not convinced about, but neither is he convinced about my claim that if we had tripped on the way down the upper Bravo Glacier we would have been visiting our friends sooner that expected.

Thus it is with adventure.  Our friends become our friends by spending time together and trusting each other, and respecting our differences but sharing common goals.  The genuine experience of common thrill-seeking courses through us. Something we recognize in each other, and keeps us striving on.

So, if you are interested in our adventure or conditions or going in there, why not get in touch.  Or better yet, get in touch with Simon, cause he is the man with the plan.  And we could chat, like I should have with Glenn, and we might become friends.

The Mandrill Mothercorp Mafia in Search of the Secret Scotch Synthesis

“I ken nay help yee”

Ensconced in our silver wedge hybrid conveyance Team Mandrill peered outside into the dank murk at our Talisman, a Scot houndstoothed pantleg to deerstalker, puffing pipe.  The Scot was cool in his belonging, calmly comfortable inside his natural fibre wool suit from sheep that had roamed these green mountains for millennia. Impervious to the rain, too confident in his belonging to react to such obvious new worlders, he didn't quite recoil from the surge of conditioned synthetic air we emitted, but a sly mocking grin crept across his lips. He recognised us for what we were.

Our Bleeding Edge poured from the lowered window. We sported our bright, primary colour Skittles suits. Skittles, the protectively packaged sickly sweet high fructose corn syrup sugar pellets, fun in a pill. The Mothercorp adopted the colours to mimic the rumps of that most colourful of primates, the Mandrill. Key to the sexual appeal of the old world monkey, the colours were copied by the marketing minds at the Mothercorp, landing us like circus performing new world monkeys in the old world of Scotland.

Back at the factory in Vangroover the chemists of The Mandrill Mothercorp were all in a tizzy. Rumour had it a new petrochemical formulation was in the pipeline. Mad German scientists at the chemical conglomerates were working on a new formulation, Imipolex G, or IG for short. It promised to insulate hydrocarbons from water.  Endless uses could be imagined; oil spills into waterways would be rendered innocuous, pipelines under river-ways could burst asunder with nary a public comment, school aged kids would stop painting fishes on stormwater drains.. Our Skittles suits would soon be perfectly waterproof, isolating us further from our surroundings. City slickers in their trench-coats would be comfortably protected from the autumnal deluges on the wet coast.  Imipolex G: it had become the grail, the elixer vitae at the end of  the rainbow, like the magic protective suit of armour the Scot apparently possessed.  The only stumbling block; the IG remained to be found.

Boatloads of fleeing hot cash were washing ashore in Vangroover, feeding a frenzy for real assets; condos, apartment buildings, city blocks, art works, park benches, advertising spots on park benches, all being bid up mercilessly.  From the great boreal forests of the north, energy laden sands skidded their way east through the port and the pipe. The Mothercorp, through a virtuous process of recycling, dipped into the flow, headquartered as they were at the east/west nexus of the trade. If they could only find the Imipolex G the returns would make its present trade as merchants of Mandrill Skittles suits a pittance in comparison.  Our homeland replete to overflowing from the Drillers' success, we were on a mad hunt for the plastic.

 Basquiat, Morrisey, Andy and Otto peered out the window, dubious of our mission. Tasked with testing our new world mettle in this land of sheep, grass, North Atlantic gales, the Drillers' goal; send and track us on a Slothropian quest to confirm the promise of petroleum, “Plasticity's central canon; that chemists were no longer at the mercy of nature.”

As Andy said back at The Factory, “I love Hollywood. They're beautiful. Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.”

The Mothercorp courted the plastic Hollywood look. Images of youth, beauty, and power were its current commodity. The Skittles look sold it, the immediately recognisable look that said,

“We have more money than you for we are Canadian at the beginning of the 21

st

century. We are rich in resources and we are young. We have petroleum, we are privileged, we have fish and timber and gold and diamonds, and we don't mind you knowing. We have been sent by the Drillers to produce images of youth shining through the old world murk with the brilliance of our plasticity. We have plaything-like petroleum products protecting us from your populace pleistocene political problems.”

Morrisey, our Hollywood visuals man, didn't enunciate as such but the Scot knew us none the less.

“We are seeking the bracks”, Morrisey admitted.

“Aye, Glenelg” the Scotsman assented. “ I hope you find what you are looking for”.

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Uisdean had welcomed us to the lands of his ancestors, land of marauding pirates wagering island castles on drinking competitions, of faeries and magic stones, sheep farming and enclosure, ghosts, peat distilling and hostility to mercantile southerners. Uisdean had nobility of blood deep in his roots, was cool in the Farris Thompsonian sense, like Barack Obama is cool. As the comedian said, you hear the name Obama, you picture a tall warrior holding a spear. You hear the name Uisdean (U I S D E A N), you hold a mental image; hunts deer for cash, freezers full of black pudding, doesn't spare words or idly spread sea foam spray further than needed, tells jokes in calm half-sentence dry replies.

“I grew up in the Bracks of Glenelg.”

What makes one more Scot than mangering in a 2000 year old stone tower?

“We would sit on top and toss stones down on visiting tourists.”

“Aye, twas good fun.”, smiled the young celt.

“The Bracks hold a special power, maybe they hold what you are seeking”

“The oldest bracks in Scotland; undoubtedly the oldest Bracks in existence”. This last a typical example of humour that Uisdean occasionally shared.

We found the Bracks. Dark ruined turrets of stone, lichen black tubular protrusions from the oak cloaked croft fields, homes from the age of Christ. Their lumpen soaked forms reeked of discomfort, arthritis, gout. Passing a youth here required a force from before the current age. No laboratory substance could possibly fend of this weight of wetness.

Basquiat, the natural athlete, did as he was born, he climbed the Bracks, laid his hands on and tested the tone of the stone. A visual tug of war, the Skittles suit outshining the senescene colors of the oaks, but overborn by the ancient strength of the black stone.”

“I this disrespectful?” from Otto.

“How are the holds?” Andy.

“I feel the power Uisdean spoke of”. Basquiat was entranced.

“Enough of these lowland wanderings. The Corp wants us to seek the Imipolex G up high. It rises above all other substances, will be high in the towers. These bracks are much too crude for our needs. We must refine our process.” Morrisey peered from behind his black Ray-Bans. As the acquirer of the images, the commodity, he held the purse from the Mothercorp, the producer of the product. Calm, quiet, competent, and responsible, he was the sensible side of the team, with his eye on the prize. And he had his gaze firmly fixed past the image to the treasure in the hills, motivated by the mission of the Mothercorp.

Our Moveable Feast went seeking the furtive molecule in the highlands.

Hurin the Tall opened the door to the keep below the Ben. Mole on his cheek, his bulk framed the small guarded entrance behind him. His gaze quickly registered our panoply of primaries. We explained the Mandrill Corp had sent us on this Team Canada trade mission, unnecessarily as word had leaked. .

 “I don't believe in the mythical Omipolex G. I accept that I will be as my ancestors, wet as nature in the Isles has it. By moving through the mountains I remain warm. Those new fangled clothes of yours, the Mandrill mania, they only work for a few outings then wet through. It's like everything these days, planned obsolescence, works for a year then you get a new one. It's just the Samo.”

“My true love, my Paramo, my mistress, this suit has kept me dry for a decade without infidelity. Everyone wants the new look, but my baggy pants have an assuaging valence in my mind.”

“All very well,” says Morrisey,” but the semiotics of the Corp represent a new era of expressionism, it peddles the stylish cut. We want to show the clean lines of youth cutting through this old world sentimentalism.”

Andy breezed in, flattering in encounters, lubricating our entrance with easy bonhommie. He had a way of holding his cigarette low between the crotch of his two fingers and scratching his nose lightly and repeatedly with the same two, giving the impression he had been to all hours hoovering cocaine up with the film set he at the same time associated with and denigrated. He was rewarded well for his whiplash looks and had featured in front of the camera, but was more happy as a fixer, a social actor. He was a personification of the IG molecule itself, smoothly easing our admittance.  Upstarts traditionally were not welcome at these high mountain bolt holes. Generations of Scottish bloodlines previously were checked before entry was granted but the rich Mandrill crest and colours, like a club tie, opened many doors.

In every corner hung a Mandrill competitor in ersatz Skittles pigments. Humidity of a jungle, a westcoast marijuana manufacturie, or a Scotch hut jammed to capacity with cups of tea on high rotation, an ideal laboratory for testing our latest amalgams; we were practically the crude material in a fired heater, paused ready to shot up the towers.

All settled in.

An eager youngster, new to the pursuit, effused, having spotted one of the stars of the sport.

“GADD...IS your name Wyatt, the minister's son?”

"I had a down day due to weather, and was just reading a heavy tome I found in the pile of literary detritus on the shelf in the corner, along with the usual Climb and Alpine Journals. It is thick and difficult to understand, and I suppose someone did not want to carry it out. There was no cover and the title page was missing, so I don't know it's name, but somehow I thought I was having a recognition."

“No, my name is Jean Michel.”

The rest of the hut crew were cool enough to accept Basquiat by whatever name he chose to go by.

“Wow, I like your jacket. I love the Mandrill colours.”

We took her to be a starstruck philistine.

“Yeah, they set us up. But it's the same as yours...”. Jean Michel, the quiet type, more a man of action than words, was never confrontational.

She missed witnessing the next day;s performance as Jean Michel settled into his natural setting. Unhindered by team, irrespective of audience expectations he climbed into the storm straight from the keep. Jacket flapping wildly from blown zipper, shambolically traipsing through the swirling jets of vitality robbing moisture, skipping up the Ben. Veritably, he was not a suitable test subject for the Drillers' substances, studies; his numa protected him, his drive innate, anima complete from an unknowable history, the Skittles merely colours on his palette.

Moments of numinosity flowed through Jean Michel, his transgressivity revolutionary, not following the recognised rules. He was playing the organ to crash the cathedral, the bird blowing his sax, brush strokes of brilliance, his emanation powerful, his protective halo (his afro hair in wind rime) enough to repel the spectres, the puer eternus floating up and down out of the heavens, encycling the mountain at gathering speed.

Below, Morrisey masterfully captured the required images in monochrome, to be edited later to highlight the colour signifiers. Jean Michel in his Skittles suit contrasted starkly, differentiated from the grey of the old Ben, location chosen by the Mandrill minds for its severity, its harshness, its threatening unhindered brutality of climate. The uninitiated viewer would associate the colors with Basquiat's growing repute, his otherworldly performances. The Mothercorp usurped Jean Michel's morning energy; just as the art critic takes ten percent for a positive review so it cost the Drillers a small tip to the youth to claim association with him.

Paul of course knew this; he had read his Propaganda; he even prepared a sauce a la Bernays the evening before to butter up Jean Michel. He needed, but had failed, to convince Jean to tie in with Andy. There had to be a way to make Jean Michel's feats comprehensible. The Corp needed less an ascending angel, too holy and venerated, more a griot, that travelling storytelling musician of African lore. For a moment or two Jean Michel had acquiesced and partnered with Andy but the result was much too banal for him. Sensitive to his true calling he had reneged. At a moment of rapture he backslid to his solipsistic ways, addicted to the high.

Spied passingly through the cyclone, Jean Michel encoded the Corp's product; the claim of spirit, verve, youth, enthusiasm, freedom in nature, energy. The Drillers spent entire lifetimes prospecting, extracting and processing energy in the new world; they even had a term for it, they called it their “advantage”. By the suggestive dichotomies revealed through jet travel, here in the old world Jean Michel held the advantage, that he had a pure talent others idolised. He represented all that the Drillers desired.

And Jean Michel was willing.. Conscious of his critical reception he knew the path he had followed with singular righteousness was unsustainable; he needed to make the crucial commercial tie-in. He was a worldly prophet, not aloof to profit.

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Through the day Jean Michel's movements were lost to the Team, like a club kid ecstatically dropping in and out of a show. Mid afternoon, a scene developed in one of the alleys high up on the west side. Andy, Otto, and Paul Morrisey were there for a performance by two Scots, a happening that attracted an eager crowd of actors, photographers, media types. Wealthier patrons were at hand, their gallerist dealer guides pointing what was what, who was who.

In slid Jean Michel down from the heights in the cloud, alighting the event. Heads turned, whispers spread.

“Is that the guy who was alone on Point Five?”

“He fourth classed that Cerro in Argentina a few years ago, that's him.”

Juxtaposition with the audience was stark; they stood soaked, shivering, damp with inaction. Clutched hoods, numbed digits, they were the Mandriller's dream consumers. Basquiat was a radiant child in comparison.

Whispered discussions within the critics.

He has an “innate capacity to function as something like an oracle, distilling his perceptions of the outside world down to their essence and, in turn, projecting them outward through his creative acts.” (Fred Hoffman)

"He is certainly prolific. He has already produced 7 masterpieces today alone.”

“Call it a seventh sense. Certain artists intuit they are going to die young, so they produce huge bodies of work in condensed periods of time.”...”But fast and furious by themselves are not enough ...There has to be an unexplained and original edge to this velocity and ferocity, an element that transfers desperation and desire into something new and compelling.” (Jerry Saltz)

“How does he do it by himself, without the safety of a partner?”

Yet another critic offered his answer.

“What identifies Jean Michel as a major artist is courage and full powers of transformation. That courage, meaning not to be afraid to fail, transforms paralysingly self-conscious “predicaments” ...into confident” outcomes. (Robert Farris Thompson)

Hearing the critics fueled Jean Michel further. He could not contain his energy standing around. His “vitality in motion” (RFT) required an outlet.

“Andy, what is that dark tower?”

On the far side of the alley stood a dripping dark tower, removed from the spotlight of the happening.

“They call it the Dark Lord. The German chemists might call it a schwartzgerat, a black device to separate the wheat from the chaff, the crude from the lighter elements among us. Only the highest grade reaches the top.”

“Locals say it is infamous, that under great pressure you get stuck in the chimney, like a vapor stuck in a stack. To continue upward you reach a sidecut, only the lightest fraction continues upward.”

“Are you thinking what I am?”

“They say the Imipolex comes from a dark source, that it is lighter than all other molecules. The Corp would love us if we found it.”

“Somehow I feel drawn to the ascent. Whether it is the flesh or the spirit I don't know. But if there's a treasure to be found up there they'll give us all blue ribbons.”

His internal dialogue was obvious.

“I have achieved a lot but,”

“When we reach the peak and look down at what we've come from, see mists and clouds, not the base of the mountain”(Rene Ricard) ,

“I feel I need to achieve more. I need to have the Corp behind me. If we find the Imipolex G we'll be set.”

“It is important to form the right connections; for your own protection you need to trust someone. Someone else has to have a personal commitment to your work- so that it isn't shopped like merchandise.” (RR)

Sometimes he thought of himself in the third person in his mind, using the zen mind of the observer trick when in action,

“Can I trust you Andy?”, Jean Michel asked, returning from his reverie.

Up he began, avatar in modern king's clothing, wearing his crown and carrying the torch of old and new alike, the until recently undiscovered genius of the Fraser River delta.

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“Everything is covered in a carbonaceous sludge, blackened”, he called down. “Yet all the sidecuts are covered in a light white powder. I can practically touch the next level, I almost have to talk myself out of getting higher.”

This as Jean Michel made the effort to pass the channel which would separate the one heavier fraction from the others.

“Only do what you can get away with”, Andy's advice form below.

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“Uh. Are you guys leaving? I could use some help here.” A faint childlike voice came from the dark gash.

Without questioning, Andy and Otto walked around to the top of the alley and dropped in on Jean Michel, picking him up along the way, saving him from the heights and his predicament.

On the way down past the dispersing, gossiping crowd he summed up the dichotomous forces pulling at his psyche. Everyone wanted to know: how did he risk so much in pursuit of his calling, why did he do it?

“You've got to realize that influence is not influence. It is simply someone's idea going through my new mind.”(Jean Michel Basquiat)

“But I don't want to die young and leave a beautiful corpse.”

“I don't want to be blown off by the Drillers once they have refined out of me what they can take.”

The last word went to Andy .  "We, who have always thought of happiness as climbing or ascending would feel the emotion that almost startles when a happy thing falls."