Bugaboo Spire
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The Bugaboo Spire HONOURING THE SPIRIT OF CONRAD KAIN BY CLIMBING ONE OF NORTH AMERICA’S CLASSIC ALPINE ROUTES IN THE HEART OF THE PURCELL MOUNTAINS BY ANDREW FINDLAY PHOTOS BY STEVE OGLE un pokes through clouds for the first time in three days, drying soggy gear laid on granite slabs or fluttering like flags on tent guy-lines at the Applebee Dome campsite. S Climbers, some looking haggard from long days on granite walls and others fresh and anticipat- ing adventures to come, cluster in small groups to talk weather and climbing routes. Among the Anglophone majority, I detect a United Nations of other languag- es—French, Spanish and German, plus some others I can’t identify. Such is the international appeal of the Bugaboos. Last night we shuffled into the Conrad Kain Hut under darkness, then brewed up dinner to the sound of rain pattering on a metal roof. Above the well-scuffed wooden dining table is a simple tribute to Conrad Kain on a plaque that reads: “Guide—Philoso- pher—Friend.” THE YEAR 2016 was an important one for Bugaboo Provincial Park. This stunning cathedral of granite spires and tumbling glaciers in the Purcell Mountains was first set aside in 1969 as Bugaboo Glacier Provin- cial Park and Bugaboo Alpine Recreation Area, then combined in 1995 to form the 13,646-hectare park we know today. However, long before the creation of a park, the region had garnered the attention of climbers from around the world drawn by exquisite cracks and fissures that seem to soar into the clouds. The story of climbing in the Bugaboos began more than a century ago on August 29, 1916, when Conrad Kain, that understated yet visionary Austrian immi- grant mountain guide, made the first ascent of Bugaboo Spire up the mountain’s long aesthetic south ridge. The route’s legendary “gendarme” crux pitch still challeng- es and stumps climbers today. Like many students of Canadian alpine history, I felt the pull of the Bugaboos on this auspicious centenary. I booked off a tight three- day window to climb Bugaboo Spire by the mountain’s more challenging northeast ridge, with photographer Steve Ogle and his fellow Nelsonites Troy Swanson and Graeme Marshall, a high school teacher who founded the ATLAS program (Adventure, Tourism, Leader- ship and Safety) a decade ago at Nelson’s LV Rogers 54 • BCM BCM• 55 Secondary School. Given its notoriously alluring Purcell spires that had been STEVE, TROY, GRAEME and I have to volatile weather, allowing just three days spotted from Rogers Pass in the Selkirks time to kill at the base of the northeast to get up any chunk of granite in the 100 kilometres to the north. He vowed to ridge, which wasn’t climbed until 1958— Bugaboos has similar odds to hitting the return, and in 1916 he did so. After a long 42 years after Kain pushed his route up jackpot on a Las Vegas slot machine. approach from the Columbia Valley by the mountain’s opposite ridgeline. The After a comfortable night at the Conrad horseback and foot with his longtime cli- morning feels unusually cold for late July Kain Hut, we woke lazily to the sound ents and friends Albert and Bess McCar- so I hunker in the lee of a boulder. If I of more rain and wind rattling against thy, as well as John Vincent, they stood at was a smoker I would stuff my pipe with the side of the quonset. Optimism is the foot of Bugaboo Spire’s south ridge. tobacco and light up. Instead I eat choco- the mountaineer’s only option, so we The surrounding granite giants must late and gaze down the north side of the ate breakfast, repacked then hit the trail have astounded even Kain who had em- spire at a brilliant alpine lake, a splash of that ascends steeply up the wasteland of braced the wilds of Canada’s Western turquoise among the barren geological moraines leading to Applebee Dome. I Cordillera where the potential for first ruins of glacial recession. slipped into a slow, steady pace and no- ascents and exploration seemed limit- A decade earlier, I camped at this lake ticed life flourishing among the boulders less. He came to Canada in 1909, before by Vowell Glacier and am astonished by and hard packed glacial till—brilliant Europe was besieged by the First World the pace of glacial retreat—at least 200 purple moss campion, mountain hare- War, and that summer landed a job or 300 metres of ice had disappeared in bells and other resilient alpine flora. An working at the Alpine Club of Canada’s the years since my visit. We’re fourth hour after leaving the hut, we pulled into Lake O’Hara summer camp. It was a life- in line behind a backlog of three other the Applebee Dome climber’s campsite, changer for Kain and he would go on to climbing parties waiting to get on the which resembled a sort of alpine refugee amass a towering resume of first ascents route. Ten metres above us, a guided welcome centre. Tent real estate was in in the Columbia Mountains and Cana- client grovels slowly up the first pitch, short supply. We hovered while a group dian Rockies. Among them an audacious a scimitar crack that arced upwards to of exiting climbers packed and vacated, route up Mount Louis, that dogtooth of the first belay. We make small talk with then quickly moved in to occupy their limestone near Banff, which he executed three cheerful, 30-something Ameri- site, while a trio of female climbers did casually one afternoon while out for a cans, as well as veteran mountain guide yoga on a tabletop of granite overlooking wildflower viewing day-hike (there are Lilla Molnar who also waits with a client. the valley of Bugaboo Creek, an outdoor no shortage of stories of modern day Two nights ago, we spoke with Molnar studio without rival. climbers underestimating this climb and at the Conrad Kain Hut as she prepped Now sun fills the lower reaches of Above: The Conrad Kain spending an unplanned night on Louis). for a long weekend of guiding work in Crescent Spire and Applebee Dome so hut (ACC); Sunrise on the His 1913 ascent of Mount Robson is leg- the Bugaboos, a place that is close to Applebee camp, with the we decide to go for an afternoon climb, Bugaboo Glacier behind. endary; after chopping steps in steep ice her heart. Bugaboo Park was in dan- Graeme and I opting for an easy outing up the Kain Face and summit ridge, he ger of becoming of a victim of its own on Lion’s Way, which meanders up the arrived at the pinnacle of the Canadian Crescent Towers. Troy and Steve head for Rockies, turned to his clients, Billy Foster something more ambitious—the clas- and Albert MacCarthy, and announced: sic McTech Arete on Crescent Spire. Six “Gentlemen, I can take you no further.” hours later we reconvene back at Apple- He continues to inspire. bee Dome campsite for supper and a nip “Most other guides of the day were just of whiskey, our hands already nicked doing a job. They were good technicians,” with scores of cuts from the crystalline says Chic Scott, a pioneering ski moun- granite. Foreboding dark clouds boil taineer, author of Pushing the Limits: The ominously around the mountaintops, Story of Canadian Mountaineering, among obscuring Bugaboo Spire’s summit, and other books, and a dedicated chronicler that night wind tugs noisily at a nearby of Canadian alpine history. “But Kain tent as I snatch stretches of restless sleep. had a passion for the mountains and it We wake in the steely pre-dawn, to see came through in his style. It was always Bugaboo Spire’s summit still obscured a bold style.” by cloud, yet we cling to the favourable He was an alpinist of immense inge- forecast. After a quick breakfast and a nuity, able to see a way forward where double-shot of coffee, we recheck gear, others saw only barriers, blessed with load daypacks and trudge up the moraine a brand of extreme optimism without next to the campground, before plodding which one would be just another indi- along a well-worn path in snow pink with vidual or adventurer following paths algae that contours around an icebound forged long ago by others. He was also lake. Several parties had left before us a skilled woodsman and outfitter, could and I spot them as morning light floods shoot and dress a wild mountain goat or the alpine, five black dots traversing the sheep, prepare a meal worthy of a Cana- snowy cirque beneath Crescent Spire. dian Pacific Railway hotel kitchen, then spin tales around the campfire for hours IN 1910, KAIN joined an exploration while stoking a pipe that was his con- Conrad Kain’s bold style has inspired party hoping to investigate this set of stant companion. generations of mountaineers. 56 • BCM BCM• 57 Graeme Marshall (leading), followed by Andrew Findlay and Troy Swanson en route to the base of the North East Ridge Route. The start of the real route is above the black lichen-covered rock above the snow patch. 58 • BCM BCM• 59 Hiking trail Snowpatch Bugaboo Spire Alpine climbing Spire 3176m Northeast ridge Crescent glacier Applebee Dome campsite Bugaboo Conrad Provincial Kain Hut Park with stomach tingling views down the to the famous gendarme pitch. Kain’s mountains east and west faces, and the optimism was driven by a faith that he rock is reassuringly solid where, as Kain would not only get his clients to the top wrote after climbing Bugaboo, “difficul- but he would find a way down.