Elevation Gain: 2,063m
Distance: 17.33km
Total Time: 11 hours 53 minutes
Date: May 14th, 2025
Gabe, Calum and myself had reached the col of Provocateur and Defector without much issue and the remaining ridge appeared to be all scrambling. We all looked down at our clunky ski boots, wondering where we’d gone wrong. I was happy regardless though. After a long winter, there is rarely a better feeling than touching dry rock on a warm sunny day. The views down towards the Klinaklini did a phenomenal job distracting as well. We clunked our way up the ridge for a few hundred meters and then Gabe made the wise call to finally break out the climbing shoes. There was hardly any climbing terrain in sight, but nice agile footwear beats the ski boots any day. Calum and I held out a touch longer, but we eventually caved.
Armed with better footwear, we sped up the ridge line scrambling through generally 2nd and 3rd class terrain. As we neared the summit block, we were funnelled towards the ridge crest where a bit of 3+ class scrambling got us around a precarious hanging block. Another 20m of scrambling and we arrived at our third summit of the day. Oh what a summit it was too! 2000m below the Klinaklini snaked it’s way through the lush valley, nourishing the forests below. Rising high above the eastern end stood Waddington and the granitic giants around it. Closer to the foreground I could easily make out the rugged faces of Culbert Crag which Andrea and I had climbed the year before. Further North, Monarch Mountain displaced the sky. All the meanwhile, we had perfect sunny temperatures from which to observe this testament of nature.
If only we could have stayed all day, but camp was a long ways off and it was time to finally get back to it. We left our climbing shoes on all the way to the col, dodging snow to the very last minute. Eventually we plunged ourselves back into the last vestiges of winter and boot packed back up to Defector Peak. Our descent line was looking rather mangled from all of the foot traffic and so we diverted across the west face instead. A bit of down scrambling and testing of the snow and we found the sun hadn’t totally nuked the face. We proceeded with caution and reached the tame ridge without any problems.
Now we booted back up Subterfuge Peak, which had looked small from afar, but was now revealing it’s true height before us. A healthy dose of post holing landed us back at our skis on the other side and from there it was a good push back to camp. We reached our home base just before dark where Garrick awaited us.
