Elevation Gain: 2,729m
Distance: 31.4km
Total Time: 1.5 days
Date: May 21-22, 2025
The best adventures can often be the spontaneous ones you didn’t expect. Such was the case when Brayden and I found ourselves traversing across the convoluted east ridge of Capricorn Mountain. Our route, decided on the fly, was comprised of mixed steps of loose sugary snow on choss, mud slung gendarmes and the vagaries of steep volcanic formations. We never planned on this route though. In fact, Capricorn Mountain was intended to be a quick traverse in order to reach our true goal: Mount Job. Both summits were part of my goal this year to get into the Mount Meager group north west of Pemberton. I had missed out on a similar trip last year when Alex, Steven and Chris spent a few days in the area and longed to get back there.
A chance would come after my Ha-Iltzuk expedition was cut in half by weather and a last minute recruitment of Brayden. We’d leave mid-day Wednesday and get as high up as we could before dark and then start early to get up to Mount Job. When tires eventually hit the pavement we found ourselves walking down the last remnants of the Pumice Mainline road around 5pm. A route finding error took us through an hour of unnecessary cutblock bushwhacking but we eventually found ourselves in more open ground.
Here we contoured around the North side of Plinth Peak across a labyrinth of old and new landslide remnants. The forests in this zone were uncanny with some large old growth standing still after various mud flows covered the under story. Eventually, we reached the long running valley up to the Affliction Glacier. We rock hopped up the large creek bed until reaching the terminus of the glacier. Active rock fall was occurring frequently around us and fresh evidence of microwave sized blocks skipping across our route were present. Brayden and I pushed up towards the centre of the glacier as the light began to fade.
We found a suitable camp site at around 1400m, but I didn’t like being downwind of the huge fumarole below Mount Job. With just enough sunlight left we pushed on to a perfect overlook at 1800m and setup camp. On the following morning we woke up at 4am and staggered our way up to the Capricorn-Meager col. Here we left the known for the unknown as a glance at the topo showed a straightforward traverse to Capricorn where we could drop down and climb Mount Job.
The route did indeed start of straight forward enough, but we soon found ourselves in progressively more interesting and technical terrain. We had to traverse across several steep rolls and down climb around rock bands to make progress. A few sections offered now continuous snow and required some delicate mixed down climbing on the choss to continue. Time ticked away as we worked through each section step by step and the sun was beginning to beat down on the snow. We pushed ourselves through on especially rotten steep choss section and reached a steep pinnacle that was beginning to get quite sun affected.
It was at this point that we made the call to bail. The gully below us, while steep and rocky, seemed to offer an exit route. Brayden offered to climb the pinnacle and see if the last section to the summit would go. Were were still 300m to the top, but the next bit was supposed to be relatively unobstructed to the top. As Brayden crested around he called out to say it would go. I rushed up and we traversed around the pinnacle to discover a true heart breaker. In between us and easy climbing to the ridge was a single deep notch flanked by steep choss glued together by mud. The connecting terrain was simply a large cornice. With a bit more time available to us, we may have been able to rappel down, but we were racing against the sun now and made the call to just get out of there.
From the pinnacle we downlcimbed through a steep gully surrounded by overhanging choss and small ice formations. Much of the route was disjointed with rock protruding through the snow but we managed to find a semi continuous bands to get down. Finally near the last 60m we hit what we thought was an impasse. We resorted to setting up a rappel and Brayden went down first. To his surprise the problematic section we hoped to avoid was passable with careful down climbing. As a result, Brayden pulled the rope while I retrieved the anchor and then I down climbed through the tricky mud section.
Finally, there was one narrow band of snow loosely covering rock with crappy holds to negotiate and we reached terra firma at last. That was a fine adventure, but weren’t satisfied to go home empty handed. The topo seemed to show the south ridge of Capricorn was mostly a walk up on steep snow, so we made the last minute call to give that a try.
We briefly roped up on the Capricorn glacier and then ascended up the snow face on the South East side. That lead us onto the south ridge proper and from there it was a straight boot up to the summit. Both of us were exhausted at this point and our window for Mount Job was long out the window by now anyway. As a reward for our efforts, we were given some of the best views in the house. Capricorn is almost dead center in the Meager complex and that gave us unparalleled views of all the nearby summits and far off views of the Manatee and Bridge Glacier group.
With a power nap calling our names we were beckoned off the summit and descended along our tracks towards the Capricorn glacier. Here we traversed on the tame south side of our east ridge and reached the Capricorn-Meager col again. We descended one final steep slope and then reached camp shortly after. Alarms were set for one hour ahead and we promptly passed out in the tent. After our power nap, we packed up and made decent time back to the forest below. Some prolonged bushwhacking later and we finally reached open road back to the truck.
While we didn’t achieve our original goal, this one certainly fit the bill for what we wanted. I won’t soon be back in this area, but I’ll say there is a lot of potential and unending steep terrain to explore.