Sept 1st we hiked through the rain to the Whitehorn Camp, which was the only site we could get given the long weekend (It would have been better to have reserved a site at Emperor Falls in advance, or leave early enough to make it onto a bivy on Dog Buttress).
Sept 2nd we forded the Robson River directly across from the tip of the lateral moraine that contains Mist Lake and is the moraine that you need to walk along to get to Dog Buttress. The river is braided there and wasn't deeper than knee level (It should be noted that good bivy platforms exist soon after fording the river). Dog Buttress is a dog, miles of low level scrambling first crossing left of the main drainage, then back right. We camped on a small in situ platform at 3/4 height and got the crap blown out of us that night.
Sept 3rd we climbed to the top of the Dog, a few centimetres of new snow on the upper quarter. Increasing cloud and whiteout chased us off of the glacier and back to the top of the dog to camp. Easy level camping there. We encountered several fresh windslabs on the glacier. Finding a route through massive crevasses is complicated there now, much like the Mousetrap in the Kain Icefall was like in the late 80s and early 90s.
Sept 4th we cracked the riddle of the crevasse maze aiming to get into position camped below the North Face, or at the Helmet/Robson Col. A poor weather forecast heard on Environment Canada's repeating broadcast sent us packing all the way down the Dog to camp at it's base.
The weather man was right, we walked out through the rain yesterday.
Happy trails,
Barry Blanchard
Mountain Guide
www.barryblanchard.ca
www.yamnuska.com
