North America, Canada, Interior Ranges, North Howser Tower, Southwest Face, Bugaboos

Publication Year: 1971.

North Howser Tower, Southwest Face, Bugaboos. After reading the title of this entry students of the minutiae of this journal might well ask if the real west face of the Howsers would please stand up. Claims to have climbed the west face have been advanced by Beckey in 1963 (A.A.J., 1964, 14:1, p. 198) and by Zvengrowski in 1967 (A.A.J., 1968, 16:1, p. 174). North Howser is a complex mountain, and as it is one of the finest peaks in the Purcells, it would be pleasant to sort all this out. In conversation with Fred Beckey we concluded that the Beckey-Greenwood route was more correctly identified as the West Buttress, the Zven-growski-Campbell route as the Northwest Face, and our 1970 offering as the Southwest Face.

Galen Rowell and I had been planning to go into the Howsers for some months when I heard from Brian Greenwood that a group from the Calgary Mountain Club was going in, and would I care to come along? In the end Galen was unable to make it, but about a dozen of us assembled at Boulder Camp. After three wet days we established a camp under a boulder, in true Bugaboo tradition, near the western faces of the Howsers. Two more days of rain and snow followed, then on our sixth day we had our first real view of the faces, probably the most impressive group in the Bugaboos. North Howser was particularly imposing, for the west face dropped away below the ridge we were camped on. An obvious gangway led from the glacier under Central Howser out onto the southwest face. On August 1st Archie Simpson, Oliver Woolcock and I crossed the gangway and made a diagonal rappel to gain a crack system. Some good climbing took us to a light grey headwall where running water from the previous days’ storms added to our problems. Some aid was needed here; then towards evening we entered an icy couloir, and as usual ended up preparing our bivouac in the dark. Clouds began forming to our west early the next morning as we climbed on, the route becoming predominantly snow and ice with a final icy chimney, and then easier ground. The couloir ended close to the summit, which we reached about midday, and with clouds and occasional snowfall we were in no position to stay around to admire the view. NCCS V, F7, A2.

Christopher A.G. Jones