Labour Day Buttress: Concluding the (almost) Endless 2022 Alpine Season

Written November 2024

TLDR: A shocking continuation of dry weather (read: smokey) led to the finale of the extended 2022 alpine season. Rarely climbed due to it's proximity to the ever popular Slesse North-East Buttress, Labour Day Buttress offered an easier, shorter adventure to explore at new area.

After the Nesakwatch Enchainment with Ben, and three days after exploring Zupjok, Alpaca, and Llama Peaks in the Coquihalla, "Smoketember" rolled into "Smoke-tober". Still dry as a bone, the alpine beckoned for another mission, albeit a hazy one.

Ben suggested we climb Labour Day Buttress. I'd never heard of it.

Dwarfed by the ominous Slesse Peak to it's North, Labour Day Horn lies perhaps 2 km down the ridge as the crow flies. Everyone flocks to Slesse's North East Buttress, so why explore the smaller ridge bumps to the south? But, at 5.7, it felt like a good level of difficulty for a new area to both of us, especially as the days grew shorter.

So, we geared up again for a romp on rock, and set our alarms for 2:45 am.

The Approach

We parked at the Slesse Memorial trail, shared with the Rexford trailhead. I'd never gone up to the Propellar Cairn before - what a cool view of the prior week's accomplishment! The Rexford crown of spires were illuminated by the pre-dawn light. Since it was still dark (we left the car at 4 am, up to the propeller cairn by 6:30), we took a 15 minute power nap until dawn crept up a bit more.

Once the sun had risen, we were able to more easily navigate the rock slabs, heather, and scree below Slesse.

The travel is somewhat tedious, with steep slopes to side-hill. The sun-cupped snow was firm but basically a stair-master 3000 to gain the rocky ramps.

Above, you can see our rough route scrambling to the upper snowfield, where we roped up. The sun began to peak over the neighbouring mountains across the valley. We admired the spires of Nesakwatch North and South along with Mt Rexford, which we had just traversed a week prior.

The Climb

Pretty soon, we encountered some more serious scrambling, so we roped up to simul-climb.

As Ben led the way, I managed the excess rope. Unexpectedly, Ben was pulling up to mantle a ledge, broke a handhold, and abruptly slid backwards.

Frantically, since we had no gear between us, I looked for a rock to dive behind to catch the fall. Thankfully, Ben caught himself before tumbling back further. Hearts pounding, we looked at each other and agreed to start building anchors until we could place good gear consistently.

After some faffery, including me finding an old nut someone rappelled off of, and Ben losing a cam after it got stuck in a crack, we got ourselves sorted to start climbing.

The first pitch was my lead, which turned into a somewhat tricky section, the hardest of the route in my memory.

We had gone fairly light on the rack, and I found myself in a big-hands size crack with only one # 3 cam to place. I mentally decided to just pull the committing move with one cam, rather than double up. Above the crux, I was glad that I didn't waist another piece of protection, as it wasn't all that bad, and I needed the other gear higher up!

We ended up pitching-out seven ~20-35m sections up the buttress. The route can best be described as bushy and adventurous, with lots of options to ascend. One notable pitch included a leg-eating off-width ramp that I had to shimmy up until I could place a cam. We climbed in the shade basically the whole way up, which was chilly at times.

I can't recall any specific beta from each pitch, other than that they were all bushy and not very difficult climbing, interspersed with the occasional high-exposure move. Overall, it was FUN! Clambering over, up, and around big blocks of granite, we methodically made vertical progress to the top. After about 5.5 hours of climbing, we were just below the summit! We unroped to ramble up the last bit of rock, and burst into the hazy sunlight.

10 hours after leaving the car, we sat on the broad summit. Snacking and enjoying the views for a while, we debated which peaks we were looking at. Ben cracked a can of Coca-Cola, highly pressurized at 2,000m, and guzzled it down. It was quite smokey from nearby wildfires raging in the Cascades, so our views were somewhat limited despite the forecast calling for "clear skies." The faint outlines of normally recognizable peaks were like a water colour painting, with blurred edges and soft colours.

The Descent

Inevitably, we needed to descend, so we didn't dally too long on the peak. After taking a look down the south aspect, I decided that I was a bit too tired to deal with the potentially strenuous bushwhacky-downclimbing. So, we set up a rappel and lowered off the summit down to easier terrain. We'd read online that the descent route involved walking to the "2nd cirque south of Labour Day" and taking a ramp system down to the boulder field, then walking back to the Propellar Cairn. At the 2nd cirque, we were somewhat flabbergasted by the steep terrain and could not find a safe-looking way down. So, we continued to the 3rd cirque, finding a lovely ramp to walk down. We bushwhacked up to a notch and did one rappel to get over a small ridge. Then, we continued below the East face of Labour Day towards the propeller cairn.

After jogging, trotting, and walking down the brutally long switchbacking Slesse Memorial trail, we made it back to the car, 15.5 hours after departing that morning. Another massive day in the mountains and another peak stood atop!

Every trip out simply causes us to add more objectives to our list, and this was no different. The terrain around us was an alpine climber's paradise, with complex puzzles to solve to ascend and descend each peak. A veritable lifetime of adventure is contained in this valley alone. I look forward to exploring the Chilliwack River Valley more in the years to come with friends like Ben!

15.5 hours total... once again, "not moving" according to Strava since we were climbing slowly.