Viennese Peak, Recourse Peak, Mount Clarke

July 19, 2026

Viennese Peak, Recourse Peak, Mount Clarke

Viennese Peak - 2074M

134M Prominence

49.53858, -122.08746

July 19, 2026

Recourse Peak - 2104M

64M Prominence

49.53468, -122.09676

July 19, 2026

Mount Clarke - 2159M

687M Prominence

49.53295, -122.10278

July 19, 2026

VRC Day 1 stats, July 18, 2026

3H moving Car to Camp

780M Ascent, 150M descent

9.3KM

VRC Day 2 Stats, July 19, 2026

17 H 30M Camp to Camp 16H moving

1530M Ascent, 1960M descent

17.6KM

VRC Day 3 Stats, July 20, 2026

1H moving Camp to Car

80M Ascent, 290M descent

4.5KM

The VRC traverse is a bit of a classic as far as technical alpine traverses go in SWBC, and as soon as I opened the SWBC Alpine Climbs book for the first time, I knew I wanted to do it. I had lined up a trip with Finn for it only a few days after my Tantalus traverse with Tyler, and with that trip going off rather successfully, I was confident in the VRC. On Saturday afternoon we met up in Harrison Mills and sorted out gear then made the trip out to the trailhead. The Sts'ailes West FSR and Mystery FSR were a lot longer than I was bargaining for, but the roads are not in horrible condition, just a fair bit of wash boarding on the Sts'ailes and a fair amount of potholes on the Mystery FSR. We began the hike to upper Statlu lake at around 4:30 and we didn't really take any breaks. The trail to the head of Statlu lake is in good condition, including the dodgy log crossing (for now). We then traversed around the edge of the lake along the upper Statlu lake trail, the trail deteriorated a bit around the lake, and the boulder field crossings offered some mild navigation challenges. The trail then broke off from the lake and made a steep ascent up to the upper Statlu lake. The trail was in much better condition for this section, aside from the final few hundred meters to the edge of upper Statlu lake, where the trail just seems to disappear into nothing. Once at the lake we set up our bivvys, ate dinner and tried to make out some of the terrain in the clouds around us. The next morning we got a 6AM start and began the hike up to the peak 6500 - Viennese col. We hiked up a creek bed for a while, then pulled up some steep bush. We then hiked the wet slabs for a while until we transferred over to the slog up the boulder field. I picked a route based on what I could see ahead, and it went perfectly, with very minimal snow, and a slight bit of dry scrambling to top out to the col. By the time we got to the col we took a break and got some gear on, it was a bit of a whiteout, and we couldn't see the first peak, so we made a bit of a dive into the unknown. The start of the ridge was an easy hike, with some increasing difficulty scrambling the closer we got to the summit. The 5.8 pitch is just below the summit, I thought there would be more climbing, but when I thought I saw the start of the climb, I was in fact wrong, and there was still more to scramble up the ridge. At the base of the climb is an exposed slab, with the pitch above. I traversed the slab to a big boulder with a small ledge besides it, then set up an anchor to belay from. In hindsight I wish I had not even traversed this ledge, as it was quite sketchy, maybe even the scariest part of the day, and I think it would have been possible to build an anchor before traversing it. Either way, due to the fact that Finn had the cams, he geared up before traversing the ledge, and so he took the lead. The slabs lead to a tricky move with a sort of a mantle in a chimney with a hand crack in it. Finn eventually made it up and set up an anchor on the summit to belay me up. The pitch was short, but definitely not soft, especially with a backpack. On the summit we immediately spotted the rappel station and got moving. At the bottom of the rappel was a ledge, and once we were both off rappel I suggested we simul climbed the next section. The next section followed a steep traverse over extreme exposure, then a traverse along the knife edge ridge, after these difficulties were over, we un roped and continued to scramble up and over two deceiving bumps along the ridge. When we could finally see the Viennese - Recourse col there was a rappel station, and that basically brought us down to the snow right at the col. At this point we ran into a group who had climbed the snow up to the col, and were waiting just below the col to finish their summit push for Recourse. We waited a little while with them to see if the thick clouds would clear up. Eventually, after a food break we gave up and began the ascent anyway. We opted to downclimb a bit of snow, then traverse along dry rock, rather than climb the corniced snow ridge above. We still had to climb a bit of snow, but in a straight and less steep ascent line rather than traversing. After the snow section we hiked up the dry rock to the left of another snow patch, and we were soon on the summit of Recourse. From recourse we began the down scramble to the next col. A few tricky moves later we were standing on some slabs that dropped off to the col. Here there was another rappel station. We rappelled 35M down to a flat boulder just below the col, where I built an anchor for the pitch that was directly above. I led the first pitch on Mount Clarke, which I think goes at around 5.6. The bottom blocky section led to a cool section with some funky parallel cracks. I then mantled up onto a scrambly ledge and set up a station to bring Finn up. We got a cam stuck in the cracks, so I had to take some time and rappel down to retrieve the cam I had placed. I then pulled myself back up and we scrambled up a few meters of chill scrambling to move to the next pitch. There was a big comfortable ledge next to a snow wall, and Finn flew up the next pitch, which was shorter, but at a similar difficulty. Finn then brought me up, and we scrambled the rest of the way up to the summit on some fourth class terrain. We didn't linger around for too long as there was a long descent ahead, and it was already 4:40PM. We began the 3rd class downclimb via the South East ridge, but we opted to take the more "standard" route all the way down the ridge to the bushy col rather than rappelling onto the glacier. The other way would have saved at least an hour upon descent, but the ice had been rumbling all day and we only had ice axes and no crampons. We scrambled along the SE ridge until it became too steep and exposed, then descended onto the boulder field and traversed under the ridge until making a short ascent at the low col through a short section of dense trees. We then started our way down into the large bowl, trying to keep elevation as much as possible until we were up and over a large ravine that looked like a nightmare to cross. By this point we were back on the ascent route from the morning. We hiked down the wet slabs, and back down the creek to upper Statlu lake. When we got back to camp we quickly packed up, and tried to make the most of what little remaining daylight we had. We made it down to Statlu lake in good time, then in a series of unfortunate events things took a turn and we had to end up bivvying one more night at the head of Statlu lake. The next morning all that was left was a quick hike back down to the truck.