An Attempt on Bush Mountain

Dyson Duncan

FOR several years I have been trying to climb Bush Mountain, so that by this time it has become an intimate and unruly friend. In 1930 we were unable to reach the base of the mountain from the eastern side, and hardly hoped to be able to climb the great east face in any case.1 This year Mrs. Duncan and I spent three weeks on the trail with Mr. and Mrs. Henry S. Hall, Jr.; but, although we established a fine high camp just below timberline on the western slope of Bush Mountain and spent ten days there, we could not reach the summit. Actual attempts were made to climb the final 1000 ft. of the peak by the north ridge, the northwest ridge and the southwest face, and in all three cases we were turned back by genuine mountaineering difficulties. In the Canadian Rockies this sort of thing is news, and our guide, Edward Feuz, insists that our trip was unparalleled in his long climbing career.

To begin at the beginning of this tale, we left Golden by car on July 4th and drove to the bridge at the mouth of the Bush River. Pete Bergenham met us there with an enormous rowboat. Eight of us, together with all our food and equipment, piled into this craft and were poled a short distance up the river. Camp was pitched on the bank in the midst of incredible clouds of hungry mosquitoes. We could hardly see the beautiful view of the Selkirks across the Columbia Valley on account of the mosquito haze.

The next night found us camped some nine miles farther upstream, after a day spent alternately poling and lining the boat along the banks of the river. As we progressed upstream the water became gradually swifter and on the next day our real work began. Four of us hauled on the end of a long rope while Pete directed the boat itself with a long wooden pole tied to the bow. Some of the time we were all waist deep in the icy water, while much of the time we were knee deep. Personally, I greatly preferred this exhilarating work to the sluggish torpor which is usually brought on by sitting on an ambling cayuse. Incidentally, I might mention that a pack-train is not a practicable way of getting up the Bush Valley now. any more than it was in 1900 when the last mountaineering party tried it with such dismal results.2

Four days after leaving Golden, we reached the forks and camped in a fine spot on the eastern side of the south fork of the Bush near the mouth of a large canyon. On the following day Hall, Edward and I made a nine-hour reconnaissance of a satisfactory route for back-packing up to our high camp. This was literally virgin country, in all probability never seen before, and we had the thrill of coming out high above the deep gully which drains the crescent-shaped glacier on the west side of Bush, and of seeing the mountain at close quarters.

A day of rest was welcome, and as it rained steadily, all we did was pick and eat quantities of large huckleberries. On July 10th we all packed up our tents and supplies for a prolonged stay at the high camp. My wife took part in the load carrying, ploughing along with about twenty-five pounds. It was a most tiring trip. There were hours of side-hill gouging on loose shale, and when a severe thunderstorm drove us down into the shelter of the bushes we had a bad time climbing out over flexible willows and alders. Actually the trip only took eight hours, but the effort and curses which we used up were out of all proportion to the time. The camp was placed on a small mound protected from falling stones, in one of the most wildly rugged spots I have ever seen. It was surrounded by cliffs of twisted broken rock, and there were just a few small trees around to remind one of vegetation. Framed in the narrow entrance to the valley was the distant view of Mt. Sir Sandford, which alone reminded one of the usual beauty of these regions. Unfortunately, it rained so much during the many idle days which we spent waiting for good weather, that even the solace of this view was denied us.

Our first try for the summit was cut short by a driving blizzard which closed in on us at about 8000 ft. on the glacier. The second attempt, however, was a good one. An early start was made at 2.30 a.m. and progress was rapid up to the ice and over the lower part of the glacier. The climbing party consisted of Edward, who was leading, followed by Mrs. Duncan and myself, with Hall last on the rope. From the upper glacier basin we had our first good view of the steep north face of Rostrum Peak (10,770 ft.), the higher of the two mountains which make up the Bush massif. We chose a route to the left of the middle in order to avoid the ice cliffs of the hanging glaciers, and headed for the northeast ridge. The slope was covered with fresh snow and the angle increased as we climbed until it was over forty-five degrees when we reached the ridge at about 10,000 ft. This ridge proved to be enormously corniced, but we managed to follow it a short way. Finally we reached a point where the snow on the north face had avalanched and after cutting steps across this patch in the hard underlying snow we came up against a foot of fresh snow which seemed to be hanging precariously on an even steeper grade. Picture this situation. Cornices to the left at least thirty feet wide overhanging the eastern precipice, and avalanche snow to the right on a fifty-degree slope. We belayed Edward while he went a few steps up toward the ridge and a great section of the cornice broke out allowing us to look across the east face toward the summit. With good snow conditions, a half-hour’s walk might perhaps have taken us there, but as it was, none of us being suicidally inclined, we turned back.

Nevertheless, the day was still young (11.30 a.m.). We descended for eight hundred feet, crossed the north face above the hanging glacier and started up to attack the northwest ridge. We climbed for three hundred feet or so up snow gullies and over snow-covered rocks at an absurd angle. The snow was deep and Edward was doing a prodigious amount of work trying to find bottom for a firm step, and even had to indulge in cutting handholds. The three of us had nothing to do but stick on while he labored, and naturally we kept up a running string of conversation about everything in general. All of a sudden Edward could not stand it any longer. He leaned over and shouted, “Ach ! I never heerd sutch a racket, you sount like a talking picture outfit. I sweat to make shteppes on dis damn shlope und you chatter, chatter, chatter.” The four of us laughed so hard that the situation nearly became critical. Soon hard ice turned up underneath the soft snow, and we were turned back at about 9600 ft. when our progress had gradually diminished to zero. One of the real dangers of the first part of the descent was that of being kicked in the head by the boots of the man coming down above one. We got back to the bivouac after nearly fourteen hours of fairly continuous climbing.

The third and last attempt was a very long one. The plan was to go half way around the base of the peak above timberline and try the south face even though we had no idea what it looked like. It turned out to be a wide broken rock face with several narrow snow gullies and only broken occasionally by bands of steeper rock. Some very pleasant rock climbing and a lot of step cutting in hard snow took us up to around 9500 ft. From here on fresh snow covered the rocks, there was some verglas, and the snow gullies came to an end. We made no headway at all, also it got windy and terribly cold. It was impossible to get at the spare clothing in the rucksacks on account of the acute necessity for holding on to something, usually very little, with both hands. We came down the whole mountain backwards, yes, even Edward did ; and found to our disgust that there was no place safe enough to sit down on the way.

A bite to eat below the very small glacier at the base of the south face was most welcome, and we trotted (?) back around the mountain reaching the bivouac at ten minutes past nine, just before candle lanterns would have become necessary. It was thus that Mrs. Duncan decided that eighteen hours of steady going is an easy day for a lady. In order to round off one good day’s exercise with another we packed up bright and early the next morning and ploughed through the heavy timber back to our base camp. Pete Bergenham had recommended the valley route in preference to side-hill gouging. There is no accounting for tastes. We slipped off greased poles and fell into deep holes surrounded by yielding willows, the sweat stung our eyes, and just when one got most completely tangled up some mosquito would surely bite. The main camp and the rushing river seemed exceptionally pleasant that night with a large campfire beside the river and the deep balsam beds later on.

A few general remarks about our difficulties might be in order. On three sides Bush Mountain rises steeply seven thousand feet from its base. Being on the west of the divide it often has local bad weather, and July, 1934, was, of course, a very poor climbing month for the whole range. There was soft powder snow above 9000 ft. on both the north and south faces of the peak. The slopes and ridges leading to the summit are distinctly steeper than they look from many angles. Edward kept calling Bush a “he-mountain,” and said that mountaineering difficulties had not turned him back from a peak three times in a row during all his years of climbing in the Rockies.

Our return to Golden was astonishingly rapid. From the base camp at the forks we shot the rapids of the Bush River and coasted all the way down to the Columbia in less than five hours, there a car met us and got us back to Golden in time for tea. The next day Henry Hall was in Vancouver, Lydia Hall was on her way to Montana, while Mrs. Duncan and I were headed for Montreal. This should not be taken as an indication of how we felt about each other, however, even though we did spend seven rainy days in the same bivouac.

1A.A.J., i, 334.

2Stutfield and Collie, Climbs and Exploration in the Canadian Rockies.