BETA PHOTO: NE Buttress Route Approx. location of the first ra...
Description
This is an absolute classic route, one of the 50, moderate, with excellent climbing, exposure, and adventure. It is not to be underestimated though, as it is also very remote and requires a certain amount of detailed planning and luck with the weather. It has been climbed in a day, but most parties do it in two nights and 3 days. Day one is to get there, arrange the shuttle and hike to the propeller cairn or wooded knoll, day two for the climb, and beginning of the descent to the forested knoll above Chilliwack-Slesse FSR, and part of day 3 for the hammer down the trail and back to the car. There is an optional bivouac ledge, big enough for several people and unroped walking with a permanent(?) snow field at the top of pitch 18 (approximate). There is an excellent topo available on NAClassics.com, and Kevin McLane's Alpine Select covers all of the bases. I will provide only a brief description of the climbing here, along with access information. The ramp from the Bypass glacier avoids the first 6 or so pitches of the NE Buttress Direct (5.10C) From the top of the Bypass ramp, the climb generally follows the crest moving back and forth, and going around a prominent gendarme. Many variations are possible. It is a mix of 4th class and moderate (5.7-5.8) 5th class climbing At approximately pitch 14, there is a 5.10A variation that stays on the crest. The actual route is right of the crest after a short traverse, in a prominent left facing dihedral. It follows this up for 3-4 pitches to the Bivvy ledge. We did the 10A variation, following slings close to the crest. It is not well traveled and the climbing was less than enjoyable, unless you like long runouts on gear placed in mossy cracks! The climbing out of the bivvy is 4th class for about 3-4 pitches. The last 6 pitches (above the large bivouac) were the best climbing. In all, we simul-climbed about half of the route. From the propeller cairn, to the summit, took us 12 hours. We had perfect weather the whole day and simul climbed about half of the route. Water was available from several streams on the approach, runoff on the glacier bedrock, and again at the snowfield on the bivouac ledge. We each carried two liters. Kevin McLane's guide describes the glacier crossings as having a degree of difficulty out of proportion to the climbing above, and we were fortunate that they had slid. Crossing the glaciers would have added several hours to our time.
Descent: There are a couple of options described in the guides, but by far the easiest one is to descend to the Chilliwack-Slesse FSR parking lot, located 8KM from the main road. From the summit, at the top of the climb is a small bowl. Traverse to the far side of the bowl and look for cairns dropping down to the first rappel. The way is not always obvious, but cairns are present, so keep an eye out. Make several rappels, interspersed with rightward traverses until you are above the col, and below the finish of the climb. One last rappel allows access to the faint trail heading southwest towards a prominent ridge that descends very steeply to the forested knoll. We arrived here about 10 PM, 4 hours after summiting and by headlamp. The trail from here descends quickly(read: very steep) but is more obvious as you get lower. Eventually, you will reach the old road bed, by a memorial, and from there it is an easy 3KM walk to the parking lot. Water from seeps and springs was available here. Except for a couple of folks hiking up to the Memorial, we did not see anyone else for 2 days.
Location
Access to the route is via Nesakwatch FSR, as described in Mt Slesse area section. Make sure you have placed a car, mtn bike etc at the parking lot at the top of Chilliwack-Slesse FSR if that is your exit point. It is about 20-25 KM from there back to the trailhead, so if riding a bike is your choice (it was ours) plan accordingly, and hope you don't draw the short straw. From the trailhead, or wherever your car can no longer take the punishment, start walking to the short spur(the right hand road from the TH proper) road and a bridge that crosses Nesakwatch Creek. We missed this, and continued up the main road to a faint trail dropping down to the creek. When we were there, there was a cairn marking it. The trail was fairly obvious so we weren't the only ones to go that way. The main trail does see some day use to the Slesse Memorial Site (a large plaque) and even up to the propeller cairn. We dropped down and crossed the creek, climbing the opposite side back to the better (and actual) graded trail. It then switchbacks gradually up to the Memorial. From here, access to the NE Buttress Direct leaves straight ahead across the cirque, crossing under the bypass glacier. With the memorial at your back, look for a faint trail following an overgrown road that moves up under the bottom of the wooded knoll. For a while you are beating through the heavily overgrown trail. Eventually the road opens up. At this point,start looking for cairns to the left which mark the start of the final climb up the wooded knoll. You have to scramble up the bank to continue on the trail. Our first try, we walked passed this. Pass through a shallow drainage and climb up to the propeller cairn at the edge of the Slesse Glacier. Approach time is about 3 hours from the TH. There was plenty of bear scat along the way, just to keep things interesting. As noted, water was available from several small streams. McLane's guide describes access to the NE Buttress from below the Propeller cairn, but this still requires a short yet treacherous traverse of the Slesse Glacier. As the glacier had slid, we continued up to the cairn and crossed the bedrock, which proved to be easy going. The goal is a wooded ridge on the far side of the glacier, and an obvious gully that provides access to the Bypass Glacier. Drop down the the other side of the ridge to the Bypass Glacier, and angle up towards the back right corner of the bowl either on bedrock or ice and snow if the glacier has not gone. Climb the ramp to its end, and the start of the route.
Protection
We carried two 60M 9.2mm ropes, with a alpine rack (BD .5-3.5 extra .5 .75 1 2 and 1-4 metolius) one set of stoppers and 16 slings of various length. We also had lightweight crampons and ice axes, bivvy sack and sleeping bag, two liters of water each and rain gear. No stove etc; iodine for water purification, no filter, and a few candy bars and high energy finger foods.
We just climbed Slesse yesterday and instead of shuttling a car to the slesse creek trailhead one must park alongside the Chilliwack Lake Road. (mislabeled Chilliwack River Road in the nelson guide) We pretty threw out Nelsons beta completely. Mileage is way off. -Drop 1st car off after crossing Slesse Creek. Drive over the Bridge and go about 1/2 a mile up a hill on the right to a large pullout in front of a military installation. Park there by the gated road (this is Slesse Creek Road) -Continue up Chilliwack Lake road several miles and turn Right into the second entrance of the Riverside Campground, Drive over bridge and take a right at the fork. Drive about 3-4 miles up the dirt road until one sees the log on the right side of the road which reads Mt Slesse in blue. This is the trailhead. If you have a truck and want to bivy at the trailhead drive another 1/4 mile up the road across some deep troughs to a large turn around. We found this to offer a flat bivy/parking. -We woke at 4am and prepared and drove to actual trailhead beginning our approach at 5am. 1 & 1/2 hours gets you to the memorial on a good trail, stop at memorial and walk directly down and past the memorial onto vague climbers trail, follow it up to the rightmost slabs underneath the buttress. (we walked right past all of this at first losing 1 hour backtracking to the memorial, but then so did the other two parties behind us) We soloed easy 5.6-7 slabs up to the pocket glacier and traversed all the way back to the entrance ramp and continued to solo for several hundred feet. After roping up and simul-climbing we reached the 4 person bivy in 2+ hours. Easy simul-climbing for several hundred feet took us to the headwall which we pitched out, allowing us to top out at 3:30pm. We made about 10 single rope raps down the gully between the SW side of slesse and the tall slender obvious gendarme. Make sure as you descend to note the vague climbers trail which traverses over to the wooded ridge. You will NOT see this in the dark!!! Follow this forever or 5000 vertical feet whichever comes first and then walk 2.5 miles along the old roadbed until the parking lot, from here its another 6 miles to the gate on the main road where you left your car. There is water available on the old roadbed and at the base of the route at the pocket glacier but nowhere in between. We carried 4 liters between the two of us and made the climb R/T in 18 hours. Perhaps the two biggest caveats are route-finding and descent. Don't pay too much attention to any one topo, just go up. And be prepared to get your mileage on coming down. Good route with some excellent climbing up high. One 60m rope a few stoppers and cams from 00 tcu to #3 camalot. We carried 1 and 1/2 set and 15 slings and it speeded up the simulclimbing immensely Peace
A topo for this also can be found in Jim Nelson’s and Peter Potterfield’s “Selected Climbs in the Cascades” (vol. 1), although it doesn’t show the direct start. We (Allen Sanderson and I) found the Nelson/Potterfield topo adequate for our August 3-4, 2008, ascent, although its lack of info for the direct start resulted in us doing some fairly stiff climbing that was probably unnecessary. After scurrying up the lower angle rock between the occasionally calving pocket (or “bypass” glacier) on the left and the Slesse Glacier on the right, we took a line left of the toe of the NE buttress that began in an easy looking, clean open-book that dwindled into a slab under a steep bushy corner. Our first pitch climbed this, traversed right under the bushy corner to another corner, surmounted it (around 5.9), then worked right to a belay behind a tree next to a vertical line of bushes. Our second pitch climbed the vertical line of bushes, moved left to easier ground and another vertical line of bushes, until it was possible to step left again to a nice-looking, relatively shallow left-facing dihedral. The top of the dihedral proved to be the crux (5.10+ with pack), protected by micronuts, but it put us on 4th class terrain that eventually joined the regular route. (Both the pitches were very long). Whatever we did seemed to have been climbed before, but it doesn’t appear to be the same start that George Bell and partner did in 1986 (as evidenced by the photos on his website) nor is it the same start described by McClane (and rated 5.10a) in his 2001 “Alpine Select” – neither of which we were aware of before our ascent. I'll post a photo of the 5.10+ pitch we did with the photos John Bradford posted for the route description and let someone else figure out what we did.
One other note: The Chilliwack-Slesse FSR was gated at the turnoff from the Chilliwack River Road, and it looked permanent. Future ascents intending on returning this way probably should plan on a longer walk out than described above. Other August 2008 trip reports can be found at cascadeclimbers.com.
Mt. Slesse
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