Slide Mountain, Slide Mountain South Summit

June 9, 10 2024

2000M+ Elevation gain

27H C2C, 15H moving

Slide Mountain - 2105M

1052M Prominence

50.173146 -124.298922

Slide Mountain South Summit - 2068M

68M Prominence

50.16995, -124.29306

This was the big expedition Tyler and I had been planning and waiting for. I sure didn't expect it to be a success two hours in, or even before we took off. Tyler had his grad ceremony and a pretty solid night of partying the night before, with minimal hours of sleep. I had caught a bit of an illness the night before, but we weren't gonna let this stop us. We drove down Goat main past climber's camp and down Dianne main, parking where we had parked almost exactly a month before for our Slip day expedition. This time we did not bother with bikes and just hauled our way up the significantly more overgrown road up to it's end. At this point it was a short and easy bushwhack by the side of a small patch of second growth. Quickly this became a gradual incline up through yet another gorgeous old growth forest, for approximately 400 meters of elevation. At this point Tyler started to nearly fall asleep standing up due to his extreme sleep deprivation. We took a few short breaks and tried to stay fed and hydrated, but the bugs were relentless in the forested areas, so we tried to make breaks quick. We eventually made it up to snowline, and started to walk along Slide's extensive South ridge, finally getting a glance at the beast herself. Pretty soon after, we found a place to stop and decided to call it camp, mostly because we didn't feel like getting back up and at it after Tyler's hour long nap. We Set up Camp, ate some food, then started to analyze what tomorrow could look like. I was extremely skeptical of crossing the South bowl, which was still loaded with snow. Nearly the entire thing was swept out by previous avalanches, and this made me very weary to cross it. We talked about it, and then we went up to a small sub summit with reception and consulted more experienced people. It was so hard for me to take in the information and assess it against what I was comfortable with and with what little knowledge I had. We decided that we would make a go for it at 3 AM the next morning, giving us loads of time to get up and back before sun hit it later in the day. One of the factors that gave me some peace of mind was that these avalanches were from nearly a week ago when there was an early June snow storm that loaded the slopes, but quickly came down after some rapid warming, and it has been warm since. We did our best to go to bed early, but despite both of us crying for a good night sleep, neither of us got it, I was having difficulty breathing, and we were both sweaty but cold in our bags.

After feeling like I had just shut my eyes for 5 minutes, we woke up. In the pitch dark we took off within 10 minutes. I threw on my crampons as an assurance for crossing the avalanche slope, but it was not all that steep and I could have gone without. Once we had crossed the bowl, there was a few small bush pull up scrambles before hitting the rock face. Still in the early 4 am dark and barely lit by the glow of our headlamps we looked long and hard for the easiest way up. The route that we had called for going up on the left of the face, but the completely exposed wet rock class 4 seemed like a recipe for disaster before even getting started. We went back and forth a bit on the ledge, before deciding to cross a quite steep rock face in order to assess the other side of the face. This turned out to be a good call, and the rock was slightly less steep on this right side, with far less exposure, and far more greenery to cling onto. The scramble on more wet and crumbly 3rd class terrain continued on for another good hour, with the odd bush clinging scramble. Eventually the terrain leveled out and the early morning sun start to hit as we rose above 2000 meters. The sunrise was disappointing, but we were happy to be nearing the broad south summit. After slogging our way up the snow slope for another good hour, we arrived at the completely fogged out south summit at exactly 6 AM. We took a 2 minute break, and then immediately took off for the true summit. I did not anticipate the true summit to be so far away from the first snow capped summit we reached. Blindly, we continued on the ridge through stop and start snow and rock patches, trying to stay quite high, but not high enough to trigger the pretty intense cornices that were overhanging the north side of the mountain. The ridge was narrow and steep on both sides, I had my ice axe out for safety, mostly in case I slid and needed to self arrest myself from sliding off into the foggy unknown. Eventually the main summit tower appeared through the white out, and we descended the snow slope until we reached the tower's notch. In the notch we started climbing wet rock again, and there was a quite enjoyable (on any other day) 3rd class scramble to the summit. It had started to rain as soon as we got to the summit, so we took a quick snack break and left the summit only minutes after reaching it. Pressed by time due to the increasing risk of the avalanche slope by every passing minute, we made our way back following the same route as we ascended. We made good time, and the sky even started to clear up by the time we crossed back over to the first summit and got back down to the first scramble we did in the dark.