Mount Nestor attempt

Mount Nestor attempt

February 22, 2004

Mountain height:    2,975 m
Elevation gain:       1,250 m (we made it about 3/4 of the way up)
Ascent time:            5:45
Descent time:         3:45

Snowshoeing, scrambling, and mountaineering with Mark and Holland.

We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to spend a second day in the mountains during this flawless weather weekend. Even though we came up short of the summit, the trip proved to be one of our most scenic, exciting, nerve-wracking, thrilling, exhausting, and rewarding excursions to date. It was also our 4^th consecutive ascent where we failed to make the summit – maybe we should try something a little easier….like Nose Hill!

One of the reasons we chose to try Mount Nestor as a winter ascent was that we could eliminate about 7 of the 8 kilometres of the approach trail by simply walking across frozen Spray Lake. The plan worked very well, although we were hampered a little by the fact that we only had 2 pairs of snowshoes between the 3 of us. The snow was very deep and unconsolidated during the first section and we were very relieved to make it onto dry ground on the south ridge. We had already decided to attempt the ascent right along the edge of the south ridge, as opposed to the Kane’s route up the gully to the left of the ridge. That gully was full of deep, powdery snow and, as well as being prime terrain for avalanches, it would have also been excruciating to ascend.

The first section of the ridge was easy and quite scenic. The view south towards Spray Lake and Mount Sir Douglas, Birdwood, French, etc. was unbelievable. Further up the ridge, we ran into a group of about 10 bighorn sheep. After several minutes of staring each other down, 2 of the larger animals actually made aggressive moves towards us, coming to within a few metres of us, and we had to back off. When they moved to the right side of the ridge, we snuck around them and continued on.

Higher up the ridge narrowed considerably, and exposure increased on both sides. When staying on the ridge became too dangerous, we traversed a little right, where we started to ascend steep terrain along side a snow-filled gully. Eventually we decided to rope up – a good decision considering what was to come! Before we knew it, we were on difficult class 3 to class 4 climbing. There were good hand and footholds, but a few sections were fairly exposed and I was glad to have the security of the rope. At the top of the gully, we returned to the ridge for more exciting scrambling and a little climbing. The winter scenery around us was phenomenal throughout – a perfect deep blue sky, numerous craggy, snow-covered peaks, large cornices, and frozen Spray Lake below. Stunning doesn’t close to describing it!

The first false summit was now in sight, but time was running out on us, and making it to the summit would have required a traverse across steep avalanche slope. Also, we desperately needed to find an easier way down the mountain, as using our ascent route would have been very slow, requiring several anchor set-ups and rappels and careful downclimbing. More than likely, we would have been doing much of it in the dark.

After a short break, admiring scenery that was second-to-none, we started our descent, down Kane’s alternate descent route. Although the grade of the slope was never too great, the descent was at times torturously slow, due to waist-deep snow. Unfortunately, it was not hard enough for us to glissade down, even with a Crazy Carpet. We spent the last 45 minutes in darkness and by the time we reached the car, the blue sky had given way to countless stars and bright Venus below a crescent moon – of course, we were far too exhausted to really give a &#$! about Venus, but in retrospect, it was a beautiful sight. A fantastic day!