The Fed on Grohman

Members of the FMCBC on the ridge leading to Mount Grohman

That's the Federation of Mountain Clubs of BC, who were holding their annual general meeting in Nelson this weekend. The Fed is an umbrella organization with about 20 member clubs whose primary purpose is to protect the interests of non-motorized users of BC's backcountry. Much of the weekend was taken up with meetings, but on Sunday, the KMC hosted a couple of trips so that people from out of town could enjoy our little place in British Columbia. Unfortunately, many people were short on time, so could only do a half day hike. We drove the Grohman Road to about 2000 metres and hiked along the ridge towards Mount Grohman - the VOC members of the BCMC were last seen racing towards the top of Mount Grohman - this is a really scenic area, especially once you get past the village that now makes up Baldface Lodge.

Afternoon Rock in Nelson

Vicki Following a Route at Sunnyside

Vicki and I hooked up for an afternoon of rock climbing around Nelson. Although the alpine climbing around Nelson is spectacular (the Valhallas for example), crag climbing around Nelson is not all that great, as most routes suffer from an overabundance of trees and rainfall - resulting in lots of moss and vegetation on routes - and a paucity of climbers to keep the routes clean. Nevertheless, its close, and there are some good climbs to be done. We started off at Railway Crag - which is actually quite clean and has two good climbs, a 5.7 and 5.10a, and then moved up to Sunnyside and did three slab climbs on somewhat more mossy rock. By the time we'd done that, we had used up all the time we had as we both had somewhere to be that night.

A Three Hour Tour: Hiking Mount Ludlow

Mount Freya from Mount Ludlow

Apparently, more people in the world can identify McDonald's golden arches, than can recognize the Christian cross*, so I'm banking on quite a few of the boomers on this site recognizing the theme song from Gilligan's Island. However, our hike to the top of Mount Ludlow was hardly a fateful trip, and could easily be done (return) in under three hours.

A series of peaks and interconnected ridges runs along the Koch-Hoder Creek divide, starting with Mount Flynn in south and stretching 25 km to Woden Peak in the north. Mount Ludlow lies between Mount Freya and Mount Harlow about half way along the divide, and, like all the other peaks along the divide, is easily ascended from either the east or the west side. Logging roads travel up most valleys and make ascents of all the peaks easy, most are half day affairs, but the potential for a great ridge traverse along the spine of the divide crossing all six peaks awaits younger, fresher blood than mine.

Doug and Kumo on top of Mount Ludlow

A good logging road travels up the middle branch of Watson Creek to about 1900 metres and ends in a cutblock roughly southwest of Mount Ludlow. From the very end of the logging road, it is an easy hike up through light bush and meadow to the southeast ridge of Mount Ludlow, and once there, a short walk along the ridge to the summit cairn. From about 1850 metres on the logging road (just before a big washout and about 400 metres from the very end of the road) it took us under two hours to reach the top. You could also climb Mount Ludlow from spur roads off Hoder Creek FSR, the distance would be a bit further, but if you timed it right (say mid to late June), coming up from the east would be a pleasant snow climb.

* Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser

Slapping the Stone at Slocan

Top Roping After Breakfast 5.9

Delia and I tried to get out rock climbing most of last week, but it kept raining, and raining, so it wasn't until today that we managed to hook up and head up to Slocan City bluffs. It was Delia's first day back on the rock after almost a year hiatus, and I am a timid leader at the best of times, so we climbed mostly easy routes. One thing about climbing with beginner climbers is that you have to do all the leading, and, in the end, this makes you less timid. I always warm up on either Pie or the Big Easy (sport 5.6 and 5.7 routes respectively), so today we warmed up on Pie. Pie is a full 30 metres long, but has 11 clips so it is well protected, and has lots of incut holds – it feels like a Skaha climb. After Delia had seconded the climb, I ran up it again in a pair of new rock shoes I bought – they are pretty good, but not as sensitive as my Bongos.

Next off we moved along to the right, and I led a gear 5.6 called Sunny Side Up. A nice easy route with good gear and good stances to place gear. The bolted anchor is shared with After Breakfast, a 5.9 (or 5.10b if you pull the roof) sport route, so, as we had the top-rope up, we climbed that too. You can climb it as a 9 by deeking around the roof to the left – I've never managed the 10b variation, but, actually I've never tried. Maybe I should.

Time to move on, over to Sahara, which is a really fun 5.7 gear route up a huge corner. The opening moves are the crux, a bit of a slippery layback, where you'll smack on to a ledge if you peel, and, as I don't like leading laybacks, I bumbled around a bit before finally pulling the moves. After that it is pretty easy with good gear and good stances.

This is the last route I climbed, a 5.7 slab climb, but this is actually Hamish climbing it on another day

Finally, one last mixed 5.7 slab climb, which I led but we ran out of time for Delia to follow. Too bad, but it was getting mighty hot in the sun anyway.

Slapping the Stone at Slocan

Top Roping After Breakfast 5.9

Delia and I tried to get out rock climbing most of last week, but it kept raining, and raining, so it wasn't until today that we managed to hook up and head up to Slocan City bluffs. It was Delia's first day back on the rock after almost a year hiatus, and I am a timid leader at the best of times, so we climbed mostly easy routes. One thing about climbing with beginner climbers is that you have to do all the leading, and, in the end, this makes you less timid. I always warm up on either Pie or the Big Easy (sport 5.6 and 5.7 routes respectively), so today we warmed up on Pie. Pie is a full 30 metres long, but has 11 clips so it is well protected, and has lots of incut holds – it feels like a Skaha climb. After Delia had seconded the climb, I ran up it again in a pair of new rock shoes I bought – they are pretty good, but not as sensitive as my Bongos.

Next off we moved along to the right, and I led a gear 5.6 called Sunny Side Up. A nice easy route with good gear and good stances to place gear. The bolted anchor is shared with After Breakfast, a 5.9 (or 5.10b if you pull the roof) sport route, so, as we had the top-rope up, we climbed that too. You can climb it as a 9 by deeking around the roof to the left – I've never managed the 10b variation, but, actually I've never tried. Maybe I should.

Time to move on, over to Sahara, which is a really fun 5.7 gear route up a huge corner. The opening moves are the crux, a bit of a slippery layback, where you'll smack on to a ledge if you peel, and, as I don't like leading laybacks, I bumbled around a bit before finally pulling the moves. After that it is pretty easy with good gear and good stances.

This is the last route I climbed, a 5.7 slab climb, but this is actually Hamish climbing it on another day

Finally, one last mixed 5.7 slab climb, which I led but we ran out of time for Delia to follow. Too bad, but it was getting mighty hot in the sun anyway.

Three Sisters - North Peak

Kumo - sticking his tongue out - on top of North Sister

I drove up Sheep Creek FSR with aspirations of hiking to the top of Yellowstone Peak. TRIM maps show an old mining road going to 1550 metres on the northeast side of Yellowstone Peak. That leaves only about 400 metres of bushwhacking to the top. However, to get to this mining road you have to drive about 1.5 km up Curtis Creek FSR. Alas, the Curtis Creek bridge is no more – pulled by forestry as I discovered today, and not all that recently by the look of things. Sheep Creek is a big river, and pretty much in flood at this time of year, so crossing it was not an option. Luckily, I had a plan B - to hike to the top of the northern most of the Three Sisters Peaks that straddle the divide between Sheep Creek and Next Creek. An old miners trail, in reasonable repair, follows Panther Creek east to Panther Lake and continues to the ridge on the north side of the southern most, and highest of the Three Sisters Peaks. Kumo and I followed this until we were just below a blunt ridge between two drainages, and then we bushwhacked up slippery, wet bear grass to gain the saddle at the east end of the middle peak. From there, it was pretty easy to traverse north, mostly on snow, to the col between the northern and middle peaks. The final 250 metres to the top was a bit of a grunt as the ridge is relatively steep, but soon enough we were on top. The KMC has a summit register tucked into the summit cairn, but mine was only the second entry.

Have a Little Faith: The Short Way Up Mount Faith in the Christina Range.

At 2279 metres, Mount Faith is the highest peak in the Christina Range, a mostly gentle range of alpine and sub-alpine peaks and interconnected ridges running south from Inonoaklin Creek all the way down to the US border. The long route to the top of Mount Faith is via a 20 km long poorly maintained trail, used more by horses than hikers, that starts at Lynch Creek, north of Grand Forks. After about 5 or 6 km the trail forks and the route to Mount Faith follows Morrell Creek northeast to finally arrive at a small tarn (Cowpie Lake) half a kilometre southeast of the summit of Mount Faith.

Mount Faith From the East

The short route to Mount Faith is an easy days outing from logging roads on the east side of the Christina Range, and features perhaps 200 vertical metres of light bushwhacking followed by a delightful walk along a 2 km long alpine ridge to arrive at Cowpie Lake.

When we hiked this route in June 2007, the ridge was a garden of wildflowers – anenome, globe flowers, mountain bluebells, and jacobs ladder. Many wildflowers had not yet bloomed so you could easily be walking an alpine garden later in the year. The two unnamed peaks on either side of Mount Faith (locally known as Hope and Charity) are also easy ascents from this route, so you could comfortably spend an entire day wandering the ridge systems on the crest of the Christina Range.

Mountain Bluebell

Monday Night at The Royal

Well, as you know, Monday night at the Royal is the night Guy Lapointe, Audio Engineer screens conspiracy movies exposing the NEW WORLD ORDER. Used to be, the conspiracy movies were screened in the basement of the David Thompson Centre. This was great, you entered this stygian cavern with LSD inspired art on the walls and a few hard backed uncomfortable chairs scattered about some rickety tables and the movies were screened right onto the wall. The place was dark and gloomy and everyone smoked loads of dope, so it didn't matter that you didn't have any yourself. Admission was by donation – suggested amount $5 – but if you'd blown your last dollar on weed, Guy would let you in anyway. But, the David Thompson Cultural Centre ended up in a big, black financial hole, and the building has since become some bland cookie cutter hotel. So, now, the conspiracy movies are at the Royal, the absolute worst hotel in Nelson, and the one that the tourists walk past clutching their bags and wallets peering anxiously inside in case the freaky people within will suddenly go crazy and try their hand at a bit of bag snatching.

This week was a double header – “double the conspiracy, double the fun,” the advertisement read. The usual crowd was there – past and present winners of Nelson's freak of the week competition in sandals, and hand knitted sweaters imported from South American countries and sold at fair trade rates. Instead of rickety seats, you can now sit on old leather church pews. These are great, you can slouch back with your head draped way over the back and you feel like you are riding the rails on one of the great railways of the world. The only problem with the Royal is that no-one smokes anymore. The only drugs available are the legal alcoholic kind.

The first movie was the last installment of a three part series by BBC film maker Adam Curtis, called “The Trap: We Will Force You To Be Free.” The three part Trap series is so mainstream, it actually has an entry in Wikipedia. In episode number three, Curtis explains some of the major world “revolutions” - the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, the rise of Pol Pot in Cambodia, the current war in Iraq - in terms of Isaiah Berlin's theories of positive and negative liberty. Isaiah Berlin was a political philosopher originally from Latvia and the first Jew to get a fellowship at All Souls College in Oxford. Berlin thought negative and positive liberty were pretty much mutually exclusive, but positive liberty was the most dangerous as, inevitably, followers of positive liberty would come to believe that their definition of freedom was the only tenable one and must be forced onto the population ineluctably resulting in repression, oppression and loss of liberty. However, in the west, we are all about negative liberty – which supposedly means that we are all free to do whatever we want without coercion or any over-arching authority – but all this negative liberty has left us in a world without meaning.

I don't think The Trap got much traction with the Nelson audience. We all know that the war in Iraq is all about the US controlling oil supplies – right now the US is trying to broker some deal with the Iraqi government so that big US oil companies can come in and “develop” the oil fields. In exchange for doing all the work, the US companies will get to take all their profits out of the country tax free – sounds like a good deal to me.

But, anyway, The Trap was a pretty good segue into Big Bucks: Big Pharma narrated by Amy Goodman, the host of the daily radio and TV program “Democracy Now”, that's all about exposing all kinds of conspiracies in the US government. Amy Goodman makes appearances all over the US but I'm pretty sure she must take the Greyhound bus, because her name has to be on the US no fly list by now. Big Bucks: Big Pharma was great. It was all about how the drug companies are manufacturing illnesses – premenstrual dysthymic disorder (a bad case of PMS), social affective disorder (shyness), and restless leg syndrome (or I sat at a desk too long today) – and then selling us a whole bunch of drugs to “cure” our illnesses. This got a lot of traction with the Nelson crowd, who know that the best medicine is a handful of the Kootenay's finest export.