Tantalised | July 6-9, 2023

Justin Sze, Rosalie Gunawan, and Ewan Wright on the Tantalus Traverse, July 6-9 2023
Written by Ewan Wright

Justin traced his finger through the dirt on the back of his Subaru: ‘Tant Trav, 3x’. Three people. Three days. I thought: we’d be back by Saturday 10pm. Justin thought 12 hours later. Rosalie was less optimistic: 6pm Sunday. Closest gets a beer.

Alpine trip reports tend to focus on rock and ice: the exciting stuff. But day one of this trip was all trees. Ascending over 2000 meters from near sea level is nothing but a slog. A boring slog. There is very little to say about it; time passes immeasurably, you get thirsty and drink, get hungry and eat; I got tired and had a nap during one of our breaks. Occasionally we yelped to scare away the bears. It worked? But it did not scare away the mosquitoes. We kept walking, wondering why anyone hiked for leisure.

The only sign of mammalian life that day was a sporty couple returning down the mountain. They had attempted the traverse, but a steeper glacier had rejected their trail shoes and microspikes. ‘Snow like butter’, they said, and one had had to self-arrest after a slip. Despite this, two bivis, a bear, and a forever war with mosquitos, they seemed in good spirits. But the fact that this reasonably fit and sensible sounding (though insufficiently shoed) couple had been forced back added to my anxiety. Still, at this point, anxiety was outweighed by excitement – this was to be a fun trip, in lieu of a Bugaboos expedition thwarted by the weather.

Some scrambling took us up to the shoulder of Pelion, just beneath the midsummer snow, and we set up camp: instant ramen for dinner. After sharing the cramped space in the back of the Subaru the night before, I was banished to sleep on a sloping rock across our plateau, to snore in peace. I decided not to bring my glasses on the trip: they would take up too much space and require a delicacy that I lack in the mountains. Instead, I took three pairs of contact lenses. Staring up from my sleeping bag, the sky was myopic blur, but I’m sure the stars were beautiful. The next morning, I struggled in the wind to put my right contact lens in, instead dropping and losing it. I opened a second packet, only to drop that too. Third time lucky. As I resigned to wearing that pair of contact lenses for the rest of the journey, Rosalie searched for my dropped lens. Leave no trace.

8am. Snow, finally. I walked long zigzags at the fastest pace I could maintain, taking us up the easy slope. 9am. Over the col, now in view of the target. From here we could see our path: across the side of Pelion, through the mosquito ridge, around the rock lumps and up the steep slope that thwarted our acquaintances. Then the ridge itself, taking us to the summit of Tantalus. If we weren’t rappelling down by 5pm, we said, we would aim to bivi. Rappelling would be the crux.

10am, we’d skipped across the snow slope, onto Mosquito ridge. Fifty meters across and a few hundred long, it was a pick your own adventure of choss, trees, roots, and rocks. And mosquitos. 11am. Downclimbing dirt and branches wasn’t what I had imagined for the day. Noon. We had hit the rocky lumps, intending to ascend a snow slope on the other side. This was misguided: they were cliffs. The speedy route is actually right of the lumps, but after the June heat had melted the snow, we barely noticed it. 1pm. We had ascended the rocks, so we had to rappel. Some tat reassured us but didn’t speed us up. 2pm. Another rappel. This wasn’t the plan.

That was it. The sun was high, the snow thick, slippery soup under its heat. But we weren’t on the ridge, and there was no way we’d be rappelling by 5pm. So we stopped there for the day, more exhausted than we had hoped. We set up a shade using my emergency bivi bag and hiking poles, and cooked a meal –ration packs today – which cheered us up. My pork lasagna, 800 calories and 44 grams of protein, was a clear winner. There was nothing else to do but sit and rest, examining our mosquito bite chicken pox, eventually trying to fall asleep long before the sun set at 10pm.

My mind was racing. The slope that rejected the sporty couple was the first crux of the next day, sitting just uphill of us. With mountain boots where the others had approach shoes, I was to lead it. There was rain forecasted. Maybe. For some stupid reason I had eaten both my sandwiches, planning on Clif bars and energy packs on day three. But I’d left half of them in the car. We were slow. Turning back would mean a long slog and another bivi. Maybe we could get all the way across the summit and down to the hut tomorrow, or even down to the car?

In my dream that night I was sitting around the dinner table at home in London, surrounded by friends and family. But I couldn’t remember the end of my trip to Canada, let alone the end of the Tantalus Traverse. I asked those around the table what happened, but they wouldn’t reply. I realized I must still be on the mountain. Shit. What day was it? ‘Don’t worry about it, just enjoy being with us’, they said. Shit. I wanted to stay with them, but this was now clearly a dream. I jumped awake. 4.30am. Time to go. Shit. 

Small but heavy clouds were aiming at us the next morning, darkened by my sunglasses. The rain hit us just as we approached the start of the steep glacier, but we had no choice but to continue – we couldn’t sit through it, and there was little shelter. We roped up and I set out across the glacier. My lightweight skimo ice axe would barely plunge, providing little security on the now-frozen neve. 15 minutes later, we were down the back of the Bergshrund; the storm had passed. Still leading, a crampon boulder problem took me to a chossy slope, up which I stupidly ascended without any gear. It was 20 desperate meters before I found some tat from which to bring up the others. 

Around the back of the Zenith col, we dropped down on the glacier and took off across the next glacier, invigorated by our early success. At 8am, the distant hum of an engine became the beat of a helicopter dropping into the valley. A moment later it had landed onto the flat snow 60 metres from us, and three strong looking men jumped out like infantry; one even had a camouflage backpack. The helicopter departed and we shouted our jealousy before heading on our way as they fiddled with gear.

They caught up with us at the next col. Rosalie asked the group how much the helicopter trip costed, only to be blanked; one of them was a guide for the helicopter company. The clients were geologists from Squamish who had last climbed during their university days. We let them go ahead, listening keenly as the guide instructed on crampons placement and terrain belays. 

We were now onto the Tantalus ridge itself. A fantastic, safe, fourth-class scramble with a thousand metre drop either side. Looking steeply downwards in either direction saw the thinning glaciers give way to rocks and tree. Finally, on day three, it felt like we were on a high-quality route. Until I pulled a large rock onto my calf, narrowly escaping injury as I watched it bounce down the mountain. No time to analyse that. We rationed some energy bars: ‘CalorieMate’, designed for Japanese soldiers in World War two (total bullshit made up by Rosalie), was a scrumptious shortbread up here. My brain was fried but it was safe enough to traverse this ridge in a trance.

As we weighed up downclimbing vs rappelling off the top of the ridge, we observed the other group begin to rock climb up to the false summit – we had planned to scramble the choss to their left. We watched curiously, before rappelling. Snow, rock, ice, more snow, then the choss. We unroped to ascend it, deciding that falling rocks would do more damage to our rope than the rope would provide in security. We danced our way between the ridges, delicately replacing loose stones. This was supposed to be a snow gully. 

One terrain after another, switching between crampons and Vibram, ropes and soloing; it all slowed us down. Eventually, after some lower fifth class climbing, we were on a sharp ridge. My worst nightmare; I’m totally scared of heights. It was the summit of the false peak – just a few tens of meters from the true summit, but separated by a steep gully. We rapped off some tat, and unanimously decided to skip the true summit – we just wanted to get home. 

Joining the rappel descent route at the second or third belay, Justin and Rosalie took over the route finding. A traverse, another knife edge ridge and some fiercely horizontal rappelling that would cause serious swings; they navigated it adeptly. The only confusion came when Rosalie, traversing on belay around a corner to find the next rap station, instead clipped into the bolt and began downclimbing, impressively making it to near the bottom of the slope. Justin and I are rather less keen on downclimbing and rappelled after her.

We’d been on the shaded side of the mountain for a few hours, and it was cold. It was around 9pm and we didn’t have long left until total darkness. I was brain dead, useless, a shivering shell to be led down the mountain. Justin was seconding a traverse around a corner when I heard a muffled ‘FALLING’, and I jolted back alert. He had ripped off a handhold, falling onto the rope and managing to stay on the slab by friction. He needed a hug after that pitch. Like the hold, we too were broken.

With quiet relief, we gained the next glacier. I’d been holding out some hope of hiking all the way back to the car in the dark that evening, but we soon came across another rappel, and I decided enough was enough. We shared the final two ration packs between us – utterly bland fried rice and bibimbap, even for my white boy taste – and soon fell asleep. I slept much better that night; surely we were safe.

Today was the day we would have pizza. We’d been dreaming of Backcountry Brewing pizza for the whole traverse, and today it would happen. We’d be home by dinner time. Two rappels, along a glacier, back along the glacier (wrong turn), and a route march towards the Tantalus Hut. ‘Hut’ is an understatement; this is a $7k per month Kitsilano house. Of course, it was locked, but we could use the loo, with a view.

It was now 10am. ‘So it’s just like a 6 hour hike from here right, Justin?’

‘Err, yeah, sure’

‘8 hours?’

‘Something like that’

Justin was on a mission as he jogged across the next glacier, Rosalie and I slip and sliding behind him. Another col, another glacier, and finally we could see the valley floor. I was greatly relieved to step off the snow.

The descent information described an assortment of chossy slopes and trees. We crossed the chossy slopes and entered the trees, but soon came to a steepening cliff. Impatient to descend, we rapped off a large dead branch, but didn’t make it very far. Justin fixed slings to some skinny branches and we rapped further. Another would be needed. He slung a rock. One more; another tree. This wayward descent cost us almost two hours. Disappointing.

2:30pm. We took a break at the first glacial river, sharing two Clif bars between us and splashing ourselves with water. We were out of the metaphorical woods and into the physical one. It was to be another slog. But a safe one. Relief.

Lake Lovelywater is exactly as its name implies. It’s beautiful.  Crystal clear pale blue water overlooked by evergreen forest and perfect alpine summits. I didn’t care. It was a mark on a map, something to get past, then we’d be halfway down. We saw an assortment of canoes head out onto the water, an adventurous family vacation. I didn’t care. We met a chatty guy swimming by the Tantalus hut. I didn’t care. There was still 1300 metres to descend. Steeply.

It was a knee killer: unrelenting steep steps parallel to a powerful waterfall. Rosalie was losing it: ‘I think my watch is not getting a signal, it’s saying 800 m but we must be lower. Although my phone also says about 800 m’. Wishful thinking.

For the entire descent I was worrying about the Squamish river crossing. The final crux. I’d heard about this mythical crossing years before. Some people just swim the river, others pay $50 per person for a boat. 

[...]

I became a pile of kit on the other side. We had made it. We all but ran the last kilometer to the trailhead, before realising Justin’s car was parked at the wrong trailhead. Regardless, we were home. 10pm. I owed Rosalie a beer. Pizza time. 

—

In the week after our traverse two things happened. One was the release of the 2023 edition of Alpine Select, featuring far more beta on the traverse than we had managed to accrue from old trip reports. I recommend anyone interested to seek out the relevant pages. The other thing was a new Fastest Known Time for the route: less than nine hours. Maybe next time.