Adapted from the 2022 trip report by Christian Black with collaboration from Hayden Wyatt and Keenan Nowak.
AUGUST 2022
In February of 2022, my friend Hayden called me to catch up, the conversation ending with him asking if I would be interested in a summer rock climbing expedition to the Coast Ranges of British Columbia. Having spent three summers working and climbing with Hayden in Yosemite, I knew our similar climbing styles and banter would make for a great trip. I committed to taking time off, asking minimal questions about what the expedition would entail.
“It's called Mt. Bute. It’s 50 pitches of rock climbing; it’ll be sweet”! I was sold. Our plan was to climb the 6,000ft School of Rock (VI 5.11 A2) route on the west buttress.
As we began planning, our friend Keenan, who was joining in on the trip, happened to know the first ascensionist of the route we wanted to do. Through many questions, we gathered enough information to figure out where to go and (roughly) how to get there.
A slew of phone calls later to boat, plane, and helicopter companies, we settled on chartering a 32-foot Zodiac boat to take us two and a half hours up to the end of the Bute Inlet from Campbell River. August came quickly, and soon we were getting off the Zodiac at Homathko Camp, an old homestead and logging camp where our journey would begin.
We knew the hike into Mt. Bute was going to be a challenge. One trip report called it a "bushwhack from hell," so we came prepared with what we guessed was an appropriate kit of cut-resistant gardening gloves, mosquito head nets, long pants, sun hoodies, trekking poles, and one machete.
However, our packs were about 80 lbs each, loaded with ten days of food, camping gear, climbing gear, and an additional bolt kit with 35 bolts for potential new routing.
The strawberry rhubarb pie strapped to the top of my pack didn't help with the weight, either. Nonetheless, psyched, we shouldered our packs and began hiking.
The approach to base camp took us two full days of bushwhacking. The first day involved two creek crossings followed by an uphill battle through new-growth logging cut blocks, and groves of Devil's Club, a spiky 6ft tall plant occupying most flat areas near the creek. Day two proved to be just as bad but was made worse by sections of sidehilling through sideways-growing maple trees and tromping through a final section of 8ft tall berry bushes and a wet meadow before pulling into basecamp.
Two of the afternoons we spent scouting the final approach from base camp to the base of the climb, where we were humbled by the horrifyingly dense foliage guarding the path. The machete, which we jokingly thought was dead weight, became the MVP of the trip as we chopped an approach trail from camp through thick berry bushes, Devil's Club, and even sawed off a section of a downed log to put across a creek to strengthen a small but consequential tree crossing.
Our second day of cutting in the approach trail and we finally made it to the base of the route to look at the climb for the first time.
"This thing is huuuuuuuuuge!" we said, as we stood at the base of the lower 3000ft buttress. “It’s finally time to rock climb instead of bushwhack.”
…And then Hayden's pinky finger gets split wide open by a sharp boulder near the base, almost tearing his nail off, finger covered in blood.
We returned to camp to clean and disinfect his finger, creating a splint concocted out of disinfectant spray glue, superglue, roll gauze, and climbing tape. His finger hurt, but the splint looked good, and we had already made it this far, so we decided to rest up one more day and start the climb during the second day of a sunny four-day weather window.
Our alarms went off at 2:45 a.m., and soon we weaved our way through our machete-chopped trail and made it to the base of the climb at 5 a.m., just as the sun rose. We had tiny packs with us, hoping to go light and make the 3000 ft of climbing we were supposed to do that day easier. Between our 20L, 15L, and 12L packs, we had two and a half days of food, one stove, one fuel canister, short sleeping pads, and one sleeping bag for all three of us to share.
By 6, I was off leading the first 5.6 slab pitches to start off the route. Simul-climbing the lower 800ft of the route, we placed microtraxions to protect the followers as we wandered up terrain anywhere from 5.4 waterfalls to 5.7 friction slabs.
After a couple of hours, we arrived at the base of the slightly steeper climb, which was described to us using the vague phrasing "...from there, I think we climbed some bushes for a little while…." The next part of the route ended up being at least 1000ft of dirt-filled cracks and 5.9+ bush climbing, often slinging bushes as the only protection. It felt like someone was actively fighting you while you were trying to climb, brushing branches out of your face as they snag and pull on other parts of your body simultaneously.
Relentless bush climbing at its finest.
Eventually, we exited the bushy climbing and continued onwards up cryptic, often dirt-filled cracks linking ledgy terrain until we reached the easier ridge climbing, topping out near the first buttress. We found a patch of snow and took a break, filling water bottles from the drips and melting a few liters of water to quench our dehydration. A few hundred more feet of easy climbing and we found our bivy for the night overlooking the valley and glacier below just as sunset came. After dinner, we cuddled up in the single quilt-style sleeping bag we had to share for the night.
At breakfast the next morning, all was going well until I suddenly heard the jetboil turn off as it ran out of fuel… our only canister of fuel. We were worried we might run out because we hadn’t planned on melting snow on-route the day before. This put a big wrench in our plans and prompted a group talk after we summitted the buttress that morning and got a first look at the upper 3000ft of the route.
Ahead of us lay the hardest climbing terrain and seemingly no snow or water running on the route. The answer was obvious, albeit unfortunate. We couldn't reasonably continue onto the upper 3000ft buttress with only a liter or so of water each for the entire second part of the route that day. We made the difficult call to bail from there and abandon any summit attempt.
It was a great exercise in flexing the bail muscle and making a safe decision, but we were all a bit sad to have gotten so far only to have a fuel miscalculation stump the whole trip.
We started our descent and began hiking down a series of grassy ledges, sometimes needing to climb steep dirt down and duff with our ice axes to avoid slipping on the foliage. Eventually, we made it to the cliff edge and rappeled a series of trees to reach the base of the route again seven hours later that day. The climbing was over, but we were back on the ground safely instead of epicing while dehydrated on a remote peak.
The next morning, Keenan spearheaded the route finding on the bushwhack out and did an amazing job connecting the best parts of the old growth forest for easy walking, eventually linking into an old logging trail and an overgrown logging road that led us back to the initial river crossing.
Luckily the bushwack out took half the time it took on the way in which was a huge blessing since we were exhausted by this point. Arriving at Homathko Camp that afternoon was a blissful sign that, finally, after eight days, the hard work was over, and we could relax. No more bushes, no more scary route-finding, no more constantly swatting at bugs on your face. Maybe life wasn't so bad this way. Soon our boat came, and we were back on our way to civilization, the blur of the previous eight days forever seared into our memories.
We are humbled and grateful for the challenges the beautiful coast range mountains presented to us. Despite our thwarted attempts, we feel a small sense of joy knowing that these adventurous experiences are readily available to those who seek them out. What we will take away from this trip is the memories made with good friends in a beautiful place, working together and working hard to try to realize a dream.
Watch parts one and two of the expedition to Mount Bute by Christian Black below!