Princess Mountain Northeast Buttress Monarch Icefield

Fred Beckey always calls on the phone pestering people to go on climbing forays into some of the coolest places of North America. This time he was bothering me to go into the Monarch Icefield. For this trip we had time to actually plan it out fairly well. Matt Perkins, David Parker, Fred, Bill Pilling and I would fly into the Monarch Icefield just below Mount Monarch's west face somewhere. With all of us in this helicopter it would be cheaper. Matt had spawned the idea to make a climb of Princess Mountain on our trip. It seemed like a possibility we would have to see for ourselves.

We all met up at Matt's place near the University District and headed out after a short meal. The following day after camping out east of Chilliwack we arrived at Williams Lake to do some shopping. Here we purchased the kitchen sink and enough food to feed an army then we made the ride out west to Bluff Lake to see Mike King again. We arrived at White Saddle Air and it was a bustling place this time. Climbers everywhere and it was raining. It was clear the our unscheduled flight was not going to work out with all the business piled up here. The next day we made out west to Bella Coola and after passing Anahim Lake we dropped down off the Chilcotin Plateau. The forest changed and the road got more primitive for a while. Apparently sections of this highway just erode and disintegrate leaving the people in Bella Coola cut off from the rest of the world by road once in a while. On our way down it was getting dark so we camped out not far from Hunlen Falls. The next morning we saw a pair of young grizzlies run in front of our cars on the road for a short while and eventually made our way into town.

West Coast Helicopters found some spare time in the flight cycles of the pilots here and arranged a flight into the icefield. After loading the myriad of unnecessary items, and a few necessary ones onto the chopper we took off. Our established camp was on the glacier just north of the Page (mountain) and west of Mount Monarch. A fantastic spot with incredible views. I wanted to rock climb on the Page but never aroused anyone else's interest on the trip.

After a couple of days laying around we made a scouting trip west towards Princess Mountain. During this trip we found a couple of key passages that allowed for direct travel west and also scrambled\hiked up a feature we referred to as the Turtlehead. We took some photos here on the Turtlehead and came up with the plan to make an attempt on the northeast buttress of Princess Mountain. There appeared to be some steep rock and lots of snow on the route. We were not sure if the route would be easy and most of our concerns were with the central rockband.

Arriving a couple of days later and setting up a sweet camp we had the necessary climbing equipment and strategy to make a real attempt. The campsite was situated in a perfect position looking across at the route and on the main portion of the icefield revealing nice views of Cerberus and other peaks in the distance. Before dawn we rose and packed our gear for the climb. The approach was fairly trivial with a few crevasse turns here and there leading to the base of the feature where there was a bergschrund to cross. This was a potentially dangerous schrund so being extra careful was important. There are no real rescues out here, mostly just body recoveries. Matt crossed first and without options placed a bad ice screw with Bill following on his rope. David was climbing with me and looked like he was motivated so he went first. The intial bit was steep 55 degree snow without any real protection other than the crappy ice screw already mentioned. We climbed together and finally set a belay amongst some rocks. From there we dry tooled left and over a small groove in the rock formation, placed some ice screws and went up to a perch of rock on the buttress crest. This was a great belay spot overlooking the icefield and we were within a pitch of the rock bands which didn't look easy from here.

Eventually we arrived at the rock band and set the belay with a piton and cams. Matt tiptoed up above and slightly right for a ropelength with Bill behind him. I lead this pitch in the plastic boots which was interesting and took a slight variation up a chimney where I set a piton as our belay at a stance on steep rock. Dave came up and we moved out right to the crest and mixed climbed up and out of a small chimney onto more rock. The rock was brown in tone and didn't reveal too many cracks but did expose good holds for hands and feet. We continued up a steep and dangerous snow pitch which ended in more mixed climbing with dry tooling at the end. A final stretch lead us to the summit ridge. We easily made it across to the top and had lunch in the sunshine.

The entire descent was tedious to me. I was out of shape and extra fat. Smoking and alcoholic tendencies had betrayed me over the years. Habits which I dropped a year or so later. We scrambled down the summit blocks roped together and placing protection. Then we moved out west and followed the northwest ridge down, around a couple of rock bands. During the descent we had amazing views way down into the Sheemahant drainage and northwest towards Cerberus again. Then there in the snow and rocks while descending we saw the skeleton of a mountain goat. It was a very strange place to find the remains of this creature. I had to assume that the goat travelled up here with intentions to die or was completely lost and starved to death trying to find it's way out of the icefield. There certainly was not anything for it up here. In fact even birds rarely visited the main part of the icecap. Our group made it to a position north of the mountain where we made a rappel from a couple of pitons in order to cross over some steep ice. This permitted us to gain the flat icefield and make our way back to camp via headlamps. I complained a few times about needing a break and at around midnight stumbled into our camp.

Early that morning a small storm was brewing. It was dumping snow and visibility was poor. Quickly we rose and packed our camp as we knew it was important to get moving while we could actually navigate. Later that day we made our way back to our main camp where Fred had been sleeping for a couple of days.

My partners made an attempt and almost reached the summit of Monarch via the west ridge a few days later while I lay in the tent not feeling well. It sounded like they had a great time up there and I missed out for sure. It seemed fairly obvious that they didn't make the top because of the rime ice which was plastered onto the rocks from a short but intense storm we had just endured. There's nothing like being holed up in a tent with Fred Beckey who has to whizz in a piss bottle every few hours.