Edge Peak - August 26th 2023

So this will probably be a long one because of what happened but here goes....

I'd been trying to line things up to climb Edge Peak for a while now with Logan and Jass and we had called it off the weekend before because of smoke but this weekend it looked good to go. I really wanted to climb Edge via the White Dyke because it looked super fun and was the "last" peak in Golden Ears I needed so I was eager to do it. As the trip came closer Logan invited his friend Tareef, who I knew from the Facebook group but had never hiked with. Before the trip I convinced everyone to bike the East Canyon trail and they all agreed so off we went.

The peak emerging after Alder Flats

We intended to meet at 6:30am at a parking lot outside Golden Ears park but that started off poorly with Jass showing up to my house to carpool half an hour late so we didn't get to the East Canyon parking lot until ~7:30 and by the time we got set up and headed off it was ~7:45. Biking was a bit harder than I anticipated mostly because of large loose rock so we didn't save a ton of time on the way up but it was still worth it in my opinion especially for the way down. Logan and Jass had regular bikes while Tareef and myself had e-bikes. We got to the top of the hill before the descent to the Gold Creek bridge at ~3.5km and locked all our bikes together to a tree and started hoofing it up. It was probably ~8:20 at this point.

Heading up the gulley towards the dyke

We made quick time to Alder Flats and this is where it would be fresh ground for all of us. The "trail" diverged from the Golden Ears trail here and headed towards the White Dyke. I had foolishly not loaded a GPX or really reviewed the trip report for a variety of reasons and committed to bushwhacking towards what I thought was the gulley to the scramble. Looking back I made a ton of mistakes that I will work on fixing for next time. Long story short after probably half an hour of bushwhacking, Jass, Logan and I converged on a rock and were waiting for Tareef who we had heard yelling a few minutes back. After waiting for 10 minutes and yelling and whistling without response I decided to head back and see if I could find him.

Some snow tunnels we went through

I bushwhacked back to where we had last heard him and was able to hear him, he had ended up going backwards and we met up in a creekbed which turned out to be the right track (Tareef had a GPX). We ascended this creekbed and periodically yelled for Jass and Logan. At some points we could hear them but not well but we figured they were headed in the right direction so we kept going. After quite a while we all met up about halfway up the creekbed and took a quick lunch break to get some water. At this point it was probably already 10:30 or 11 and we had wasted a good hour to hour and a half and it was a bad sign of what was to come.

Looking down after the initial crux of the dyke

After we ate we headed up, we could clearly see the White Dyke and navigating was easy. There was snow/ice still in the gully and traversing that was difficult but not too long. I quickly got far ahead of the group with Logan close behind. Jass and Tareef were coming up quite slowly behind us, I didn't know yet but Tareef was already starting to feel ill and that was causing him to lag behind. I was too eager to begin the fun scrambling and get to the summit.

Logan scrambling up the dyke behind me

The scrambling at the beginning of the White Dyke was puportedly the crux and we had read of some people protecting it (rare) and others at least using rock shoes. We had not brought protection but we did bring our shoes but none of us felt the need to put them on and we scrambled up. Overall it wasn't too bad and there were maybe one or two moves that felt exposed and difficult but really it wasn't terribly difficult and everyone made it up quick and soon the grade eased off but it was still fun scrambling.

Some of the terrain higher up after the dyke

After the initial white dyke the huge shelf angles up towards the Golden Ears / Edge col for a few hundred metres and its engaging and fun but never too scary with tons of options. This was the best part of the scramble and what I had been looking forward to this whole time and enjoyed every moment of it. However Tareefs pace was still very slow and kept slowing down. As we made our way up we encountered a wasp nest that we went around and Logan and I made it to the col first and had to wait a very long time for the others. At this point it was nearly 3pm and we still had to ascend the last bit to Edge proper. I realized it was going to be a lot longer than we had anticipated and was getting nervous but foolishly made the decision to continue.

Looking down the sea of rock we climbed up

dditionally on the way up we had made the decision as a group to not descend the White Dyke but instead connect to the Golden Ears trail and descend that way. We did this because we heard an enormous class 2-3 avalanche right beside us that sounded like a bomb going off that made us very nervous about descending the gully where it had happened. Also descending the white dyke would require some rappels and we hadn't seen any good tat or spots to rap off.

Rock formations near the top of Edge

The last 100m or so to Edge Peak was pretty straightforward with a short class 4 chimney section that was pretty easy to climb and soon Logan and I were at the ridge where we traversed to the true summit. We had to wait a painstakingly long time for Tareef and Jass who made it around 4pm. We ate lunch and decided to head down at 4:30 because obviously we had a long way to go and it was very late. At this point we realized we probably weren't going to make the gate but I was still optimistic about getting out by ~11 or 12 (wrong). I had reception and called Sam and told her this. At the top Tareef was feeling very ill and we were running out of food and water. He said his nausea is what was causing him to go so slow.

The ridge to Edge Peak

We descended down to the chimney painstakingly slow and went one at a time to avoid rockfall. Logan and I found some tat and rappelled off it thinking it would be faster (it wasn't really) and made our way to the cliffs we would need to rappel to connect to Golden Ears. From here we made two long vertical rappels. Luckily both rappels had excellent tat / anchors and the second one actually had a pristine 9.8mm fixed rope so we opted to use that to speed our rappels up. Still it was slow going since there were 4 of us and a few of the guys had little rappel experience.

On the summit looking at Blanshards

The rappels were complete at 7pm and we still needed to connect to the Golden Ears trail via a "short" trail. Everything was taking far longer than I estimated because of our pace which is very frustrating and I was getting increasingly exasperated since I didn't know what to do really and felt stuck. We slowly made our way over and connected to the trail. I felt great relief that at least we were on well trod ground but we took another long break where we ate the last of our minimal food. At this point we were basically at the emergency shelter and it was 8:30pm, I knew it was still probably a good 4 hours down.

Me on the summit

The first part of the way down went pretty well actually, it was dark now so we had our headlamps on but we made decent time as Tareef was feeling a bit easier on the easy trail. However that ended abruptly as we transitioned in to the forest. We would walk for 5 minutes and then he would need to rest for 10 minutes it was tortuously slow. We kept going but the subject of him bivying down for the night was broached. His main issue seemed to be a lack of sleep in the prior night / week and he insisted if he napped he would be able to make it. Unfortunately he was the only one with an emergency bivy and none of us wanted to wait while he napped. Additionally I was very anxious about getting home to Sam and Coen who were no doubt worrying about me.

Untangeling the rope preparing to rappel

We kept going and made it to the top of the dry creek bed down to Alder Flats and Tareef kept getting worse, needing more and longer breaks. At this point we actually would set a timer everytime he sat down and make him start moving after 30 seconds because we knew we needed to get out. However it was not to be and not long after we made it to the creek bed he sat down and said he was going to sleep and we could stay or leave. We hemmed and hawed about staying, I didn't want to and feel like Logan didn't either but Jass was torn. We contemplated calling Search and Rescue but we figured he wasn't in that much danger, just needed sleep and he was in a safe spot. We gave him all our remaining water (~1L), food (some melted starbursts) and made a plan to communicate to those outside and headed off, it was midnight at this point.

Logan rappelling

It felt good to finally move so all three of us actually ran all the way down to Alder Flats and then most of the way back to our bikes. Once at the bikes we headed out and we had made decent time, we got back to the truck just before 1:30am. I was very nervous about the gate being locked and we had come up with a convoluted plan to get out if it was but it turned out unnecessary as there was a gate keeper present who let us out. Once we got back to Logans car I called Sam who was obviously panicking and was actually on her way to Golden Ears when I called her and told her everything was ok. We split up and I dropped Jass off back at home in Abbotsford, I got home at 2:30am.

Final summit pic

The next AM I woke up to messages from Tareef who had made it home safe and had got out of the park at ~6:30. He said he slept about 2-3 hours and that was enough to get out. We talked a lot about what went wrong and I definitely have some lessons to take away. I feel terrible about leaving him however at the time it did feel like the right decision and everything turned out fine.