British Columbia Mountaineering Club. The club enjoyed a very active year with 80 scheduled trips, many to new areas and ranging from easy hikes and ski tours to artificial routes and expeditions. Average outing attendance was 15. Three camps were run: a ski-mountaineering camp north of Wedge Mountain in Garibaldi Park, a popular family camp at Mount Assiniboine, and the expeditionary camp in the Waddington Range. The Waddington camp was a great success. It placed 13 people on the main summit of Waddington, saw the second and third ascents of Waddington’s spectacular Tooth, the first traverse of Claw Ridge, and a new, shorter approach to the area. Members were busy abroad during the year trekking in the Himalayas and climbing in South America. Most notable reports from the Andes have been of a new route and traverse of Yerupajá in Peru and a new route on Ancohuma in Bolivia.

Locally there were fewer first ascents reported in 1968 than in prior years, owing to a trend to new routes in replacement of exploratory mountaineering. New routes of some importance included the west face of Mount Tantalus; the west buttress of Mount Dione; the north face of Mount Alpha; the east face of Mount Lydia; the north ridge of Mount Pelion; the west face of Mount Garibaldi; the north buttress of Mount Harvey; the north face of Edge Mountain; the southwest face of Mount Habrich; the southwest buttress of Mount Hozomeen; the north face of Mount Larrabee; the south buttress of Claw Peak, "Rattlesnake Ribs” (Keremeos); and routes on Three Sisters and Mount Eisenhower. During the summer the Himmelsbach Hut was erected at Russet Lake near Singing Pass east of Whistler Mountain. It will hold 24 people in a pinch and is open to the public. The Guidebook to the Coastal Ranges of British Columbia is sold out, and a supplemented edition is being completed, hopefully by spring. The club has also started to prepare a hiking guide to southwestern British Columbia.

Richard R. Culbert