Tantalus Tantalizing

Exploring South Tantalus Enchantment From Lake Lovely Water

Along with Artem Bylinskii, Geoff Martin, Laura Morrison, Maria Markov, Nick Gobin, Nick Matwyuk, Nathan Ma, Veronika Schmitt and myself, we were stoked to check out Tantalus Range over August Long weekend.


Day Lovely Weather, Lake Lovely Water. Geoff had the key to the cable car so we would reduce the crossing faff and have more time to attack the notorious steep trails to Lake Lovely Water (LLW). But when we arrived at the bottom of the tower, the cable car was locked at the other side, over the torrential Squamish River. A couple of us couldn't wait to Tyrolean across on the cable for the experience and fetched the cable car over. The trail is rustic but full of bugs. I happened to bring up a folding hand fan for keeping cool and avoiding a heat stroke and it kept the bugs away! As I came to check out the LLW Hut when we arrived, we found Ron Royston, the hut caretaker, was hosting a fundraiser with North Shore Rescue; sizzling BBQ and neatly set dining hall, fully catered and all flown in on a float plane. What a way to start "Tantalus" Range experience!



From the map, the stretch from LLW to Red Tit Hut is about 3 km as the helicopter flies, so the second day would be pretty casual. While the rest headed out early westwards to scramble Alpha, Laura and I decided on exploring towards Tantalus to make my Jupiter-sized blister worthwhile. We broke camp early, wandered past Lambda Lake and came to this immense field of gravel and berry bushes, which was the fabled 'Russian Army Camp' (RAC). [photo:Tantalus Range-17.jpg, Caption:Russian Army Camp, Credit:Laura Morrison] From encircling cliffs capped with broken glaciers, we picked a fault line to our right to go up along. After about an hour of steep and loose talus field ascent and a couple of pine tree belayed cliff traverses, we started to kick steps in the snow and made it to the Ionia-Serratus Col shortly. After a scramble over the rather sharp and rocky col, we were within a kilometer away from the Red Tit Hut and the newly built Jim Haberl Hut. There was two options to reach the hut; directly across a steep, crevassed slope of ice and rubble above a cliff band or by dropping 150 meters below the cliffs, traverse and climbing back up to Red Tit Col. Without caring much about Laura's opinion, the direct route seemed 'my way or the highway' to me. The blisters were just making me hate everything that requires movement. The hut was so close, and we had ice screws: "why go down?" We busted out the rope and running belayed with two ice screws deep into a rotten layer of ice. Just as I got to about 20 meters away from Laura's belay, we heard a loud cracking followed a deep vibrating rumble of something falling off, directly underneath the ice we were climbing on. This was the closest feeling I had next to being scared shitless. Immediately after, I put in another ice screw and staring at the Smiley Face engraved on the handle and belaying Laura across - you know, just to get the other ice screw back from her.


We crossed the direct route and made it to the Red Tit Hut. The Red Tit Hut is rather a crude shelter and its name does not fit with the lofty Tantalus Range naming theme. This fiber glass dome hovel derives its name from its unusual paint job, the white base with bright red tip on top. The walls of the hut are joint fiber glass wedges glued together and mounted on a hollow wooden floor and tied down to a rock platform. As it will be air lifted out in the next a couple of weeks as of the trip date, we were probably the last party to sleep in this hut which has served climbers for over 40 years.

Dinner was of course triple bacon Sidekicks. You had to see my expression when Laura was holding the package of bacon three feet away from me.

The Jim Haberl Hut is a masterpiece. The beautiful hardwood flooring made us hesitate to step on it with dirty boots. Inside there was a modern kitchen with neatly placed tables and chairs, nice dining sets and silverware. Two separated bedrooms had foot-thick mattresses on bunk beds. The hut was equipped with a BBQ too. I was totally underdressed for the setting.

With The Tantalus tantalizing afar, we continued onto Dione Glacier as the 3rd day's activity. As we scrambled up from the bottom of Dione towards Tantalus, the low snowpack year made made route finding interesting. The normal route from snow to rock was gapped with a few meters of snow moat and the gap goes alongside the rock, dropping down to bottomless darkness. We tried to go into the moat, hoping to get to the rock route, but it got too narrow and we had to backtrack. The Rumbling Glacier on our right steepened out, but we could follow it down about a rope length. So I asked Laura to pound in the picket and give me a belay while I kicked steps down along the snow moat lip, hoping to find a place to drop to the rock side. Lucky I managed to cut off a section of moat to get onto the rock route. I shouted for some slack and then went for the rock and belayed Laura over. The scramble from where we were standing to the next belay-able ledge is along a loose rock fault covered in dirt in a corner of a featureless rock wall to the left. Laura had an idea about letting me solo up without my backpack while she spotted me, then I could haul up the packs after I got up. So I started to make my way up tip-toeing on the loose rock and inhaling the dust cloud from loose surfaces. Stumbling my way up, I jammed in a nut to back up the piton and set up a pulley system, and started to haul up my backpack. The pack wasn't really heavy but it got dragged over the angular rocks and finally got stuck near the top of the route. I could not reach it and neither could Laura. Both of us actually couldn't see anything at the time due to the dust clouds from dragging my pack, absolutely filthy in the air! She offered to climb up with her pack while pushing my pack ahead of her. I dropped the other end of the rope and started belaying her up for the two-pack ascent. Meanwhile on my end, belaying her and the backpack at the same time, I was hauling the pack on the single nut over a carabiner with no prussik, myself daisy chained into the rusted piton and I was belaying Laura off a sun-bleached, single knot webbing choke. Of course, everything was redundant with luck, equalized with both of my legs and non-expanding if nothing pulls out. To keep the pack above Laura so she could climb, I needed to switch hauling and belaying. When the climber's rope had too much slack, I stepped on the hauling line to take in belay slack; when the pack got slack, I step on the belay end. I promise I have formal training in climbing and passed the belay test. After a half hour of hairy scrambling, we arrived just below The Witch's Tooth. (See photo) Laura went ahead on an exposed ridge. Not being roped in, sitting on the ridge with both side 800 meters of sheer drop cliffs was crazy. A slab of rock along the ridge at about my chin height in her pathway, she could choose to scramble over top of it or to stand up, holding onto the top edge of the slab and overhang her back towards the 800 meters of West face of Tantalus and shuttle her feet on the two finger width ledge. Both of the options are super hairy. I was hoping she picked the third choice, and she did. I went for a visit, hugged the slab rock and had a look over the other side. About 2 meters away, it was barely downclimbable to a platform, and beyond that, a short section to a saddle connecting the base of the Witch's Tooth, then after a rappel into Darling Couloir we would be picking out on a route on the ridge crest to the summit. We had come so close to the summit and it is very tempting just to bag such a peak that many other climbers had spent dozens of visits to summit. That would have been too easy for us. Besides the real meaning of the Tantalus Range trip is supposed to just get tantalized and not summit. So on my side I mentioned that I wasn't really wanting to rappel in the dark into Darling Couloir, then dodge hungry crevasses under the starry sky. After I told my thoughts to Laura about rappelling in the dark and hearing her comment that "I might not have a headlamp with me neither", I knew that we were on the same page about the final summit push. Importance of happiness is agreement and we were happy about just getting Tantalized first time being here. A few of rappels brought us down to Dione Glacier in the sun and kicking the slushy snow back to camp.

We took the low route back to Ionia-Serratus Col on the last day of the journey. It wasn't much easier than the crevassed route we took to come in - it involved more route finding around snow moats to get on and off rock scrambles. Up to the col and around, we packed the ropes like a bird nest, thinking we wouldn't need them again. We took a higher traverse and the never ending screes and talus fields led us into a plateau of a boulder field surrounded by trees. Maybe there is a less steep way down just right behind the trees. The mosquitos started to swarm around my head and I was eager to find out the way beyond. After we got close to the trees, there was only sheer cliff bands into a creek. Having my mind wondering about if the rappel is more than half the rope length and the fact that the rope is a tangled spaghetti mess in the pack, the mosquitos seemed a lot more annoying now then they were before and I had to bust out my handfan to fan them down. With the swarming mosquitos the rappel looks a lot shorter than half rope lengh now and Laura is helping sort out half of the taggled spaghetti mess. Anchored off a small tree we quickly toss down the ropes, my end was still spaghetti-ish landed on a rock and the other went down but couldn't see the end. This was probably the fastest record time for putting on my harness and rappel, with the hand fan in my mouth. Sorting out the rope mid-way down, the end just got to the bottom near the creek so it was all good. This time we actually coiled the rope nicely before packing it away. Arrived at the lake later on, I had a short session of black fly and mosquito killing at the dock, to get my revenge back.

The cable crossing on the way out was fun. I walked on the lower cable with my backpack hanging off a shackle with a homemade copper plane bearing and some bicycle grease. Dragging it behind me was pretty smooth. Overhead was two carabiners to clip over the plastic buoys on the upper cable. A bit of walk in the dark and we were at Squamish Valley Road. Laura took off to get her car 15 min away. I got my headlamp on and kept on fanning off the mosquitoes. Just as I expected Laura to arrive, a police cruiser pulled in. The officer turned to me and asked if the girl walking along the road was friend of mine, I replied yes and the officer said she can't come so he offered me a ride to the parking up road. My heart started to pound and couldn't help looking worried and asked what was going on. He said her vehicle got broken into. I got a ride up to the car. The car had broken glass all over inside and the passenger side and rear windows were completely gone. The windshield had a big star-shaped crack too but good enough to still see through. No content lost. The drive back to Vancouver just past midnight with no windows was refreshing. I want to bag the peak next year.



Mount Tantalus