Completed September 7, 2024 by Julian Larsen (me) and Nick Ayers
Mount Slesse North-East Buttress
The year is 2014. I’ve always liked the small hikes I’ve done with my family, so for my birthday, my dad decides we should hike Mount Cheam. It’s a Chilliwack classic. A rocky peak that you can see from almost anywhere in town. Although I’ve done some small, forested hikes, I’ve never really hiked into the alpine. The road is long, steep and covered in deep water bars, but we eventually make it to the trailhead, already in the subalpine. Quickly the trail breaks into open meadows with breathtaking views like I’ve never seen. As we hike to the summit an impressive fang looms in the distance across the valley. The mountain looks almost impossible to me, so steep and imposing. From the summit of Mount Cheam, I take in the 360-degree views and decide that I like the mountains a lot more than I ever knew. The way down provides more views of the mysterious fang. Back at home my dad confirms it is Mount Slesse. I’d heard of it because there is a school named after it in Chilliwack, but since it is tucked behind mountains and difficult to spot from my area of town I’ve never really known what it was. My dad talks about how there was a major plane crash that struck the mountain in the 50s, it all captures my imagination, but the thoughts drift away in a few days.
A few years later I join the outdoor education program at my school, and while on the summit of Elk Mountain, the fang of Slesse emerges again. My teacher calls it “a climbers mountain” – one that doesn’t have an easy way to the summit. He says that people from across North America come to climb the famed NE Buttress, a rock buttress that climbs almost a kilometer from the treeline at its base. I’ve never even thought about or seen anybody rock climb before, but this definitely leaves me awe inspired. Later that year I get to try a bit of rock climbing and that gets me even more interested.
The year is 2020. I’ve graduated high school in the midst of lockdown and haven’t seen my friends in person for months. At this point I hike all the time, and the summer lockdown has had me hiking almost every day. Experts are starting to agree that outdoor activities aren’t going to spread COVID, so I finally meet up with my friends at the trailhead for the Slesse Memorial Trail. The top of the trail ends at a cairn with a propellor from the 1956 plane crash. At this cairn, giant face of the East side of Mount Slesse stands so high you stumble backwards when you look to the top. At this point I decide the next time I come back here it’s going to be to climb. In September I join the VOC, but given the pandemic I never end up doing anything. The next year when school is back in person, I immediately sign up to learn at rock party. Not knowing many other people I struggle to find partners to try climbing with but in the spring I decide to suck it up and start going to the aviary alone in the hopes of finding partners and progressing my abilities.
Photo of Mount Slesse from Mount Parkes further along the ridge
Now we come to the present. I stare at the propellor cairn once again, its image framed by my headlamp in the dark of the early morning. I venture across the wide slabs beneath the wall, searching for the gap that leads over to the start of the route. Eventually we make it to the base of the towering East face, which disappears far past the extent of our headlamps. We begin our traverse onto the NE buttress just as the faint glow of dawn starts to silhouette the eastern skyline. Nearly 10 years after hearing about this mountain, I’ve finally learned all I need to climb it. Nick Ayers and I had been talking about doing it since spring, and the day before I had spent hours researching and combining information into my own document. The beginning goes smoothly, and we fly up the route. Unfortunately, thinking there was no way we had already made it to a certain traverse ledge already, I continue up 2 or 3 pitches higher on the buttress completely off route. Luckily there was recent bail gear from somebody else who had clearly done the same, and we got back on route, though now having lost a lot of time.
We continue to cruise the rest until about two thirds of the way up where I once again get to hard terrain and spot bail anchors above. I decide to traverse right, but clearly go too far, as I get into difficult terrain with worse rock. I see where I need to end up though, so I continue on and make it back on route, just a bit delayed. The drop off the left side of the buttress gets closer to the route and the climbing more exposed as it steepens towards the top. From here the rock becomes steep and juggy, but increasingly loose. Luckily my adventures in the Rockies this summer taught me to dance through choss without much issue. We pass one party that were doing the route in two days and had slept overnight on a large ledge halfway up the buttress. The rock had been an interesting fusion of types the whole way, but nearing the top it begins to flip from solid granite to hollow metamorphic every few meters. With the summit in sight, I start to climb faster and faster, until I pull over the top and belay Nick up.
It should’ve been a time to celebrate and take in the views, but the summit is not the end of a day up Slesse. Some lament that the descent is the true crux of the route, and reaching the summit might only be halfway through your day. Knowing this, we waste no time and start getting ready to leave. Luckily, I had climbed Crack O’ Noon Club (another route) and the nearby Mount Parkes the weekend prior, so I knew a lot of where we would be going. Although we do most of the descent relatively smoothly, it is still long and technical, so it takes a good while. We also take a few paths that are not the fastest, as our general fatigue is starting to really set in. By the time we get to the familiar descent around Mount Parkes, we have been awake for well over 18 hours, having woken up in Chilliwack at 1:30am. Without my route-finding mistakes we likely would’ve been close to the car by now, but instead the sun is setting, and there is still a lot of rappelling and trail to slog down. This section is easy to figure out since I had done it before, but physically it was starting to get challenging. With sore feet, lack of sleep, and minimal water, we march down the trail swatting away the moths that dart at our headlamps. Many outdoor trips end with relief at finally making it back to the car, but this one is certainly among the top. Nearly 20.5 hours after leaving the car we were ready to go home and sleep.
So, did this route live up to the dream I had pictured since long before I started climbing? Well, it was certainly an inspiring line with plenty of cool climbing in an amazing position. By all metrics it is a classic route that is worth doing if you have the skills and have done the research to complete it safely. Despite this, I find myself more satisfied by what I’ve accomplished in pursuit of this goal than by the goal itself. The inspiration of this peak helped push me towards climbing, and the goal to complete this route made me learn new skills and develop new goals in the process. Whether your goal is to summit a mountain, climb a route, or do a certain trip, there is value in aspiring to something beyond your current capabilities, because you never know where it will take you.
Inspiring!! Great read Julian, amazing to see you finally tick this off.
Thanks, we’ll have to plan something else in the area soon…