The school year is finally starting, but I wasn't quite ready to settle into it. Luckily my friend Mark was feeling the same way too. We've both been wanting to climb the South Ridge of Mount Gimli for a while, and the forecast for the weekend looked decent enough to give it a shot on the friday. So we skipped our classes (first week of school, they don't mean anything anyways right?) and drove the 5 hours from Kelowna to the Valhallas on Thursday. We arrived in decent enough time and were setting up to sleep by 9:30 PM. Mark had his hammock and I set up in my bivy sack, perfectly clear skies with absolutely stunning stars led me to sleep thinking of the following days climb.
Alarms blasting at 5:30AM got me up to clear skies, albeit a bit cold. I shook Mark up in his hammock, stuffed down a cliff bar for breakfast, and started packing the last few things in my bag. Right from the trail head you can see the entire South Ridge, Alpenglow and all. With a beer each in hand we set off on the trail, stashed them in the creek 5 minutes into the trail and started huffing our way up the approach.
An hour and a half later, Mark and I were rolling into the bivy site, only to be greeted by his old goat friend. It was still chilly and all the rocks along the approach were covered with a fine layer of frost, slightly discouraged by this we finished off the approach to see how the route was faring, only to find that it was completely dry. Stoke levels were returning and we started racking up for the climb! I wanted the crux roof pitch, which meant Mark climbed first.
The first pitch consisted of some technical 5.8+ jamming and stemming, Marks favorite. Nearly an hour later Mark was at the top of this pitch and I was coming up. Second pitch was a blast! A few harder moves off the start then a enjoyable little scramble to a chockstone to belay off. Third pitch was more jamming, Mark kept getting all the good pitches!
"Mark flailed his way up pitches 1 and 3 (his leads), often pulling on gear and generally trying to avoid jamming in the jamming" - Mark Dalgliesh.
Fourth pitch lead me past a enjoyable undercling crux to the lunch ledge. Mark followed up and we were both on it by 11:30AM, a little early for lunch but we took advantage of this ledge and ate our gourmet steak and cheese sandwiches we'd prepared the day before. Much better than my usual cliffbar lunch.
Pitch 5 was long. A full 60m rope stretcher to just below the crux roof. Mark set off into the cloudy mists that were rolling in, plugging his gear away and making his way up. I followed up and took one look at the roof and knew I was going to have a blast. I set off and jammed my way up a short crack before getting settled beneath the roof. There was one single hold with so much chalk on it that I figured this was the "crux move" everyone talked about. Adding my own chalk to the pile, I held onto it, reached around the roof, found a decent hold, moved my feet around and then found a great finger lock for my other hand. I was over the roof hooting and hollering! A fun little runout over the roof led me to bundle of slings to belay off and Mark was up and over.
