murchison

Mount Murchison

August 16, 2008

Mountain height:         3352 m
Elevation gain:            1828 m
Ascent time:                11:50
Descent time:              12:30

Scrambling and mountaineering with Mark.

A descent time that equals or exceeds your ascent time usually indicates an epic. In this case I’d call it half an epic. We did spend the night on the mountain, but there were never those emotions that are characteristic of an epic: ie. panic, major anxiety, fear, terror, impending doom or all of the above.

Mount Murchison is yet another poor soul whose height falls under the magic (?) number of 11,000 feet…or does it?? All sources claim the height of this massive and complex group of peaks to be 3333 m (10,932 feet). However, the mountain is a double-summit peak and 3333 m is the height of the northwest summit. Rick Collier, Reg Bonney, Jere Skvaril, and John Holmes ascended both summits in 1996, claiming the southeast summit to be the highest of the two by 50-75 feet. We thought it would be interesting to take our GPS unit to the summit to find out for ourselves.

Using Mr. Collier’s excellent instructions from the Bivouac website, we started the ascent to the constant sound of thunderstorms all around. Luckily for us the rain was short-lived. We made it to the bivy site, mentioned by Mr. Collier, in 4.5 hours. A couple of rock-bands below the bivy site gave us some problems, in terms of finding weaknesses in them, but everything else was straightforward. At this point we were ahead of schedule and quite confident we would make it down before dark.

Ascending the snow-filled couloir was very scenic and very long. We decided to go immediately to the northwest summit and then see if we had enough energy to traverse to the suspected true summit to the southeast. As indicated in the description, the northwest summit was easily reached once you get to the ridge. Needless to say, at over 3300 m, the summit view was outstanding. My GPS recorded an elevation of 3345 m, with an accuracy of 8 m. This elevation is 12 metres greater than the general accepted height. Of course, this is using an $80 handheld GPS unit and by no means am I about to claim the northwest summit to actually be 3345 m.

The southeast summit (besides looking absolutely beautiful!) did appear to be higher from the northwest summit and its lure was too great to pass on, even if it meant a very, very long day and doing some of the descent by headlamp. Mr. Collier’s party had taken 1 hour to traverse from the SE summit to the NW summit, without using a rope. We hoped we could do the traverse in the opposite direction in 2 hours, knowing full well we would probably want to rope up.

The first part of the traverse was very easy, but things took a more serious turn upon reaching the downclimb/rappel. We down-climbed the first part, but in the interest of safety, rappelled the last 10 m. From there, as Collier indicates, it’s a lot of up and down, interesting scrambling, a few route-finding challenges, and continued amazing scenery. We topped out at 6:20 pm, perhaps 2 hours behind schedule. The summit view from the SE summit was again terrific, especially the seven named towers of Murchison to the south. They were absolutely phenomenal!

And then for the moment of truth….what elevation would my GPS reveal the SE summit to be? ….tracking….tracking….tracking….3352 m, with an accuracy of 7 m. What does that mean? Well….to us, absolutely nothing. I cannot speak to the accuracy of GPS and who really cares if a mountain is 11,000 feet or not. Murchison is a wonderful mountain that deserves far more attention than the four recorded ascents (that includes ours) in its present summit register. I would say, at best, it confirms that the southeast summit is the true summit of the mountain. Incidentally, for those who might do the ascent in the future, the register has correctly been relocated to the true southeast summit - I’m assuming by Mr. Collier and company.

Given the lateness of the day, for descent, we had already decided to attempt an alternate descent route that would avoid having to re-ascend part of the northwest ridge and then descend all of the long snow couloir. This involved descending a long scree gully at the lowest point of the ridge connecting the two summits (right before the downclimb/rappel). Our record with alternate descent routes has historically been a dismal one and has got us into trouble on more than one occasion. We were fully expecting this to be another epic. Lo and behold, it actually worked! Not only that, but we were able to avoid the snow couloir (rock-fall and all!) completely. Mark skillfully guided us down the mountain with only a few steps of downclimbing and then lots of easy scree. In fact, if one follows this route UP the mountain, it puts the entire ascent into the category of a scramble and not mountaineering – albeit a bloody long and grueling scramble if done as a day trip.

We were very relieved to arrive back at the bivy site 3 hours after leaving the summit. It appeared we would be able to make it back to the car in another 3 hours, making a total descent time of only 6 hours – half our ascent time. Well…the mountain had a different plan. It was dark by the time we left the bivy site and the rock-bands that had given us a problem on the way up were an absolute nightmare on the way down. Looking for weakness in a rock-band from above in full daylight is hard enough. With only headlamps to light the way, it was an exercise in futility and extreme frustration. It took us 2 full hours of going back and forth across the slopes to finally descend past the rock-bands.

We then followed the main stream down for a while, but exhaustion and frustration were setting in and at midnight, we found a flat area to take a nap. We must have been extremely tired because we both fell asleep immediately, lying on the hard ground. At 3:20 am, we resumed the descent. Again, it was very difficult and somewhat trying in the dark, but at least we had a little energy because of the 3 hour rest. We arrived at tree-line just as the sky was getting light and stumbled back to the car at 7:00 am, 24.5 hours after leaving.

A magnificent day(s) on a spectacular mountain that may or may not be 11,000 feet. Definitely one of our most memorable trips ever in the mountains.