Argus Mountain, Mount Harmston, Comox Glacier Summit

Sept 1-2, 2024

3050M+ Elevation Gain

17H 45M Moving, 30H 30M C2C

Argus Mountain - 1994M

269M Prominence

49.538584 -125.386618

Argus mountain was probably the most intriguing out of the three summits on this mission. I had been reading about it in my Island Alpine select book, and had marked off the page. The start of the Argus climb from the ridge walk is defined by a small scree slope coming out of the North East Gulley. This is the gulley which we would be going up. The NE gulley is made much more difficult by snow in other years, but this year, and increasingly more frequently, nearly all but one little chunk of snow has melted off. The gulley was not long or particularly difficult, maybe high third class, but it was extremely chossy. A constant fall of loose gravel and larger rocks were shooting down the gully. To make our travel up a bit more safe, I would complete a section, then pull over and let Jason catch up to me, before repeating until the summit. At the top of the gulley, we got a great view of the red pillar, and from this point it was far more solid rock to the summit. This final section to the summit may have been verging more on 4th class climbing, as it also showed a bit of exposure over the gulley. The summit was full of great views of the terrain we had travelled and were to travel, and covered in ants for some reason. The way down was identical to the way up, and soon enough we were back down at the scree slope and trying to find our way down to the Harmston ridge.

Mount Harmston - 2009M

375M Prominence

49.548618 -125.398353

The real goal of this expedition was to summit Mount Harmston, so I will recount the bulk of the trip here. I had been planning a trip to the island at the end of the summer to bag as many peaks as I could before I got bored. Unfortunately only a few days prior I hurt myself coming down from Mount Baldy back at home. I got word that Jason Addy wanted to go up Mount Harmston though, and I told him I would give it my best effort with my lazy knee. On Saturday@ night drove from Victoria where I had been for a few days prior, back to the Comox valley. I picked up Jason at the start of the logging road where the Mosaic Forestry gate had been long awaitedly swung open for the long weekend. We drove to the trail head in the dark, and quickly set up our sleeping pads for a night under the stars in the middle of the road. At 6AM we woke up to the sun just rising, and got ready to hit the trail. Unlike nearly all of Qathet, there was actually a trail to get up into the alpine. This trail sees quite a bit of traffic up to the glacier when the gate is open. The trail was extremely easy to follow and not overgrown at all, in some of the steeper sections there were ropes set up to aid getting up the dirt slopes. The sub alpine starts to open up and the trail flattens out for a while once you get onto the first ridge. After a while of easy walking through blueberries, scraggly trees and past ponds, we descended into a sort of gulley. The gulley was quite steep but there was a rope set up for over 50 meters. The slightly tree'd ridge continued on for a while longer, going up and down, eventually we started to make our way up less well defined terrain, where the trail was marked by sporadic cairns. We veered completely off the path once we made it up near the Comox Glacier, and kept left, aiming towards a sort of ridge that connected the Glacier summit to Argus. We continued along, finding our route as we went. We didn't really have any beta for any of this trip aside from the broad descriptions of routes in Island Alpine Select, and the slightly more detailed routes for the scrambles also in the book. We roughly followed some snow benches, before crossing some scree and making our way up and over a bump that gave a cool view of Milla lake off of it's exposed side. We stopped for lunch around this point, and enjoyed a nice rest with a view. We re evaluated how much time we had for the rest of the day and made a plan. If we could get up Argus in good time, we would go up and down Harmston slack pack style, leaving our gear on the ridge below to save time. After lunch we kept along the ridge until eventually getting to a small scree slope coming out of the North East Gulley which we would be going up. The NE gulley is made much more difficult by snow, but now a days, nearly all but one little chunk of snow has melted off. The gulley was not long or particularly difficult, maybe high third class, but it was extremely chossy. A constant fall of loose gravel and larger rocks were shooting down the gully. To make our travel up a bit more safe, I would complete a section, then pull over and let Jason catch up to me, before repeating until the summit. At the top of the gulley, we got a great view of the red pillar, and from this point it was far more solid rock to the summit. This final section to the summit may have been verging more on 4th class climbing, as it also showed a bit of exposure over the gulley. The summit was full of great views of the terrain we had travelled and were to travel, and covered in ants for some reason. The way down was identical to the way up, and soon enough we were back down at the scree slope and trying to find our way down to the Harmston ridge. This part of the route offered a challenge of it's own, mostly because neither of us knew exactly where the easiest descent would be. We skirted below a bit of a snow bank, and kept an eye over ledge perked precariously off of a scree bed. By continuing south, we eventually made it to a larger and less steep scree slope, and descended some 100 meters down. At this point the terrain mellowed out and we were starting to hike the ridge that would carry us to Harmston in virtually a straight line. Soon after getting on the ridge we dumped our supplies, and fast packed the summit. The way up was easy hiking for the most part, with two sections offered a little bit of easy scrambling. Not long after we had dumped our stuff there was a bit of a notch that we had to descend into then climb back out of. The other being the final stretch to the summit. This part involved making our way up a nicely green carpeted gulley that split the summit in two, then a few scrambly moves up to the top from the gulley. We ended up cruising up in half the time we expected it to take, so we took a good long break on the summit. After relaxing for a while we took it easy and made our way back down to camp. Jason went to collect water off of one of the many glaciers surrounding us, and I started to cook up some dinner. Sunset was quite spectacular, and made the west side of all the surrounding peaks glow orange. Day one ended at roughly 11 hours moving time. The night cowboy camping was cold, but a nice tea in the morning warmed me up. We knew we had to be back at the car around 4 in order to catch the ferry, but we did not rush ourselves, we had a perfect idea of how much time it would all take to get back, so we took a short detour over to the Comox Glacier summit on the way back. The glacier summit is a flat section of rock that sticks out on the North Western side of the glacier. The main route to summit barely requires any glacier travel at all. Unlike the day before, the crowds had worn off and it was just us two on the summit. We hung out for a few minutes while taking in the views and questioning the odd metal structure/summit cairn. The views looking over at Harmston are pretty spectacular from the glacier summit. Eventually we made it back down to the col that connects to Black Cat mountain and further east down the ridge to the frog ponds. After taking a decent break and refueling around the ponds, we made our way down the vegetated forest trail back down to the truck. My knees felt like Jello, but all and all I felt very accomplished and happy to have knocked off three summits which have been taunting me from the other side of the channel for years. We were back at the car in the early hours of the afternoon, and day two's descent took roughly 6 hours and 45 minutes.

Comox Glacier Summit - 1963M

220M Prominence

49.55219 -125.36445

On the return from the two peaks we had summited yesterday, we knew we had time for one more. Bypassing it on the way in was a bit irritating, even if it is far from the most striking of peaks. The Comox Glacier summit does not even require any glacier travel. It is a broad exposed bump that sits on the west side of the glacier. It was definitely worth going up though, as we got a better view of the glacier, and a great view of Mount Harmston and the ridge we had climbed up. The previous day we could see a handful of people coming and going from the summit from a far. I am glad to have come up here before this quite spectacular glacier melts away any further, as it is quickly receding. I have been looking at this patch of white from across the waters since I was a kid, and it always caught my interest in how it stood out. It also gets a few brownie points for being one of the 25 highest peaks on Vancouver Island. On the return back to the truck on day two we had more than enough time to hop over to the summit. As I mentioned before, it is quite an uninteresting summit.