Slesse Speed Scramble // How-Not-to Kill a Mountain GOAT

Greg Luesink
Aug 5, 2024
7 min read

Updated: Apr 22

After a last minute decision and invitation to my friend Ihor, we set off early to summit Slesse, the famous peak in the Chilliwack River Valley.

Some adventures require a lot of planning, others can happen last minute. It all depends on the objective! I'd done Slesse twice before, so on the last day of August long weekend, I texted my friend Ihor if he was free to summit Slesse the next day.

He replied with an emphatic "Yes!"

Ihor isn't a rock climber, but he is very talented endurance mountain athlete and ultra-runner, with a long list of podiums for 100 mile + events as well as finishing the Barkley Marathons. Some might say he is a Mountain GOAT (greatest of all time). I met Ihor in 2022 while working at Mt Waddingtons, and over the winter of 2022-2023 we shared some miles of hill repeats in the dark and cold. He's a great adventure partner, with lots of good conversation and laughs to be had with every metre of vertical gain on a hike.

All that said, this was going to be a "Fast & Light" ascent. Packing the bare necessities, we'd drive to the trailhead on the West side of Slesse (the Scrambler's Route), hike to the base, scramble a bit, rope up for a pitch, and scramble some more to the summit. The way down requires at least 2 rappels (my 30m ropes wouldn't quite reach the bottom of the pitch), and optional down-scrambles or more rappels. In the back of my mind, I wanted to see how fast we could go. The first time up, it took 9 hours to summit with a large team of 4 and much rope faffery, resulting in a 15 hour day. The second time I summitted Slesse, I did a ridge traverse out to MacFarlane/Pierce with Brennan, and we did a speedy ascent in just over 5 hours. I knew sub-5 hours up was possible, so perhaps sub-9 hours return trip? Time would tell: Ihor was certainly a good partner for speed.

Gear List:

Firecrest 28L pack (Ihor brought Salomon ADV Skin 12L)
BD 30m 7.9mm half/twin rope + 30m Petzl RAD line as tag line for rappels
Climbing Harness
Small rack of nuts and cams (3 or 4 cams, 5 nuts?)
~4 alpine draws
ATC for belaying and rappelling (+ prusik)
Helmets
Rap tat (5m bundle)
InReach (despite cell service on summit)
Food + water (2L)
Shorts and a sun hoodie + hat + (unused sunnies)

Ihor picked me up at 4:30 am, and we scooted up the road to the trailhead. At about 5:15 am, we departed, making our way up the old logging road. The road is about 5km long before reaching the "climber's" trail that shoots straight up the hillside.

With light packs, we were able to step on the gas. Normally I'm quite pleased with 10 min/100m of uphill gain. This time, we were pushing about 7 mins/100m of gain. We were working, but still able to enjoy some good conversation along the way. 2.5 hours from the car and 1500m of gain later, we were high enough to see the sun hitting Larabee and the Border Peaks - stunning! Ahead of us was a short hiking section before the final scramble to the summit. Maybe we could summit sub-5 hours!

From the shoulder, the trail mostly disappears, and as with the last two times I'd climbed Slesse, we had to negotiate our way through the sub-alpine trees to reach the scree field. Once at the scree field, the speedy vertical hiking slows down into mindful scrambling. Many times while scrambling I've had minor (and major) scares from rocks crumbling in my hands or underfoot. The lesson each time is to double check each hand and foothold! We arrived at the "cave" (one of many bivy spots where climbers spend the night after doing the Northeast Buttress) in just shy of 3.25 hours, having climbed 1900m! Ahead we shifted mental gears away from the clock, put on our helmets and harnesses, and started up the first gully.

[photo from the descent] Ihor dove left and I dove under the right shelf — [*photo from the descent*] Ihor dove left and I dove under the right shelf

Halfway up the gully, I heard the crackle and rumble of rockfall from above. I screamed at Ihor "HIDE!!!" and we both dove under a chockstone just in time for several large rocks to come crashing down where we had just been standing.

Amidst the smell of gun-powder from the rock-strikes, I yelled at the top of my lungs, "CLIMBERS ASCENDING, DON'T MOVE, WE ARE COMING UP!!"

It was obvious in my mind that climbers had carelessly "trundled" some rocks without calling down their intentions. We climbed over the chockstone and up the rest of the gully to see two wide-eyed climbers, sheepishly seated on the ledge above us. We had a short interaction, in which they told us that they had in fact seen us hiking up the trail from below but "just assumed that we weren't coming up the mountain." Blithering idiots.

In the moment, I was more gracious that I should have been. Now, I wish I had been excessively clear about their stupidity and scolded them for 1) assuming we weren't climbing and 2) not calling out "trundle" as climber's are supposed to do. Their ignorance nearly cost Ihor and me our lives in a moment.

A very similar situation of a falling rock almost hitting my head had occured on Slesse two years prior, and my reaction was much the same: brush it off in the moment, only to realize the gravity of the potential outcome much later. As often happens in scary mountain moments, one must shove the feelings deep inside to be processed later when danger is not present.

We pressed on towards the summit, traversing the ledges and scampering up the gullies. There is one particularly neat feature of a "diving board" on an impossibly looking wall, but it is quite easy to traverse along a decent ledge.

Ihor on the diving board, the passable ledge barely distinguishable leading to it.

Thanks to my familiarity with the route, we cruised up a few more ramps without any second-guessing. Some of the scrambling is on loose, chossy rock, while other parts are on solid, confidence-inspiring granite. We down-climbed a tricky step to enter the final gully, which is full of scree and dirt waiting to tumble. Each step was a little more tenuous so as to not knock rocks onto Ihor!

At last we were at the base of the roped-up climbing, a closer-to-vertical section barring access to the summit. This can either be done two short pitches, or linked in a "simul-climbing" pitch where I lead and when the rope tied to Ihor gets tight, he starts up after me. We are both protected by the gear that I placed in the rock in case we fell, but the idea is not to fall and drag the other person down too. Once at the top, I secured the rope to a belay station and Ihor soon was at the top of the pitch standing next to me.

Ihor climbing up the last few metres, Shuksan, Baker and Larabee behind

Here, we ditched the rope and scrambled the rest of the way to the top. There's a couple tricky sections, but nothing sustained that requires a rope. A serious of ledges, ramps, steps, and gullies lead to the summit. After hiking, scrambling, and climbing ~2,200m, we arrived at the summit in 4h51m, dipping under 5 hours - a new personal record! We savoured the views and snapped some photos before heading back to our stashed ropes at the rappel station. I looked to the East at the Rexford Ridgeline, which was much less snow-covered than a month prior... now would have been a much better time to attempt that mission.

The way down always requires care, so we once again disregarded the time and started scrambling down. We arrived at the ropes, and I set up the rappel, tying the 30m climbing rope to the 30m RAD line for a tag line to pull the rope. This makes for a slightly mismatched rappel as the ropes are different diameters, but for only 2 rappels it doesn't make a difference. Soon, we were below the rope section, and worked our way down the scree gully to get back to the ramp system.

Back at the ramp and gully system, we ended up not needing the rope again. Prior trips I had done one more rappel, but with some careful down-climbing it was quite doable. Ihor did fantastically! Aside from the climbing rope skills, he is a exceptionally competent and confident scrambler, so the route went very smoothly.

Back at the gully where we almost died, we took a look back at the sheer walls leading to the summit above us. We were standing up there not long before! Back at the chockstone, we crawled through a tunnel in the rock. This is where the realization of how close a call the rockfall incident was a few hours earlier. If we hadn't been standing exactly as close as we were to cover, we would have been injured by rock strike or worse.

Finished with the technical descent, all that was left was nearly 2000m of quad-burning trail down to the car. We stuffed our climbing gear away and began traversing down the scree field. It had taken just about 1.5 hours to get back to the cave, now sitting at 6.5 hours total time for the day. It had taken 3 and 1/4 hours to get up to that, so going sub-9 hours round trip might be possible.

Down at the shoulder, we took one last look at Slesse and the Border Peaks before dropping onto the trail below. We sped down as fast as our legs would allow, pausing only for rocky step-downs before entering the lusher forest of towering pines.

The last time-stamp I have is at the water-refill before the 5km of logging road slog back to the car. We got down from the cave in ~1h40min - 50 minutes remaining to go sub-9 hours. This felt quite possible to hold a 10min/km pace back to the care. Brisk walking. Unfortunately, the overgrown FSR posed tricky to trot down and I had to burst out in a bit of an effort near the car, ending at 9h01min. Pretty dang close!

Overall, an exceptionally fun day out with Ihor, and I was even back home before 3 pm to hang out with Jas for the afternoon and evening. It is a pleasure to summit Slesse, and at this point it has become an annual adventure with different partners. Same mountain, same views, but different friends to enjoy it with. I'm looking forward to the next time on top, perhaps with a new or old friend.