Day 2: Dexter Crik Slabs: Alpine-Schwalpine

Okay. Think of hikes or approaches you have done and said later, been there , done that.

Been there-done that.

I am sure everyone is familiar with interpreting the directions in a ^$%#^$%#@^ guide book. Well since neither of us have ever been to the slab visible from the road and Wayne & Jennifer Stone's kitchen window when they lived there, we followed the guide as best we could; we think the guide book meant to say 2.2km instead of miles, since the latter took us well onto some godawful snowy road that threatened to strand us off the side of the mountain......2.2KM....

The hump with all our ***** took us up this snowy mountain logging road up the mountain. At one point we were directly under the slabs in the distance but for some reason we continued up the road thinking we'd reach some obvious sign we were on the right path. When you see this rock follow the immediate gully to the base of the slabs.

We continued up the logging road and saw a snow gully and what appeared to be a broken trail up the @*&^%# steep mountainside with an enormous head wall looming far above.
I said to myself, ok, this is the approach. Higher and higher, steeper and steeper, the snow giving way to scree-frozen scree. How awful is frozen scree on a steep 30-35 degree approach underfoot. It sucked. The snow was good because you could "kick" your way up, but the frozen scree made it increasingly harder to keep from falling back down the 500ft gully.

Not as bad as what was coming up next. I was happy I brought my piolet as I usually do when ice climbing-it is my walking stick.....came in very handy today.

Naz and i followed John Smith, Lee Jenkins and John Oster up this gully to what we all thought was the side of the slabs' amphitheater. We got to the highest point on this gully where we could get off and traverse over to what we thought was the base of the climb we were headed to. There was a stand of pine at the base of a buttress but it too was very steep and frozen. HA!

I heard Lee say, "we've come too high and we have to rap down to the base of the slabs." SHIT!
Coming up this effin gully was one thing but some how descending this was going to be a nightmare.

I walked to what i thought was going to be the edge of the amphitheatre and it was a terrifying traverse across a rib of steep frozen "san juan" rock (shit) on one side to the other north facing side which was equally steep but snowy. Both sides ended abruptly over the edge of a cliff which we had absolutely NO way to keep from going over if we lost out footing.Bill Liske told me later that this drop over this particular cliff was 100-300ft. I was a half step from my life a few times on this fucked up traverse. Every step and every hand hold was carefully placed as if my miserable life depended on it. It was scary beyond what i signed up for. With all the rope gear, crampons, ice screws, ice tools in my pack on my back for protection weighing me down, it all came down to gingerly moving to any place for foothold.


The first image is the first traverse and I didn't think to photograph the end of the cliff but the 2nd picture shows the other side of the rib and the drop off the cliff... I followed the lower band of snow across this expanse following what to me were foot prints. At midpoint I looked down closely to see to my horror that these were actually deer tracks with NO boot marks of any kind. I am really scared at this point since where i thought I was going was even more precarious. the loose scree shit came up and formed a small 3ft sloping wall with nothing solid on it. I back tracked, in tome to look up at Naaz, who was carefully moving on all fours in slow motion. She moved with the graceful precision of a leopard! It is difficult to look at these images...Would have been a pretty place to die.

We made it across to a precarious rap above the base of the slabs but had to rappel about 180 ft. We were at a place where we could see the 3rd pitch of this climb from our rap.

We finally got to the base where you see the climbers below and Lee Jenkins Launched into the lead, followed by Oster and Naz.

We took cover under the 2nd step belay from Ice and rock dislodged by other climbers hundreds of feet above us. John and Naz were tagged by ice shrapnel and escaped with minor injuries. So why are we all smiling? Cuz John Oster is leading the last pitch we decided to do!

Now we all descend down the right gully back to the road! You can see the big rock formation from above in the first image, and John Oster below it in the second.

So, Been to Dexter Crik Slabs, done that. Alpine experience is fabulous! The views are incredible!