Wedge Southwest Ascent


With the weekend offering spectacular sunny blue skies it was time for an epic and Wedge in a day qualified.

5:30am – Parking Lot
We arrived at the parking lot of Wedge. Having been there just two weeks prior to do Weart it was amazing to see how much the trail had melted out. It is now snow free until you get to the final steep ascent just before the hut.

8:00am - Hut
We chatted with the folks that camped overnight to see if anyone had made an attempt on the route. It was clear already that the snow was going to be slushy. The snow didn’t freeze overnight and all parties that attempted the Northeast arête bailed on account of snow conditions.





9am – Glacier
We decided to go up the glacier as opposed to the Parkhurst ascent. It was far faster moving on snow and the glacier is still well covered with snow although melting out fast. The 30 degree heat that day wasn’t going to help matters but it did make a most magical emerald blue lake.











11am – Parkhurt / Wedge Col
We elected to take the scrambles route for 3reasons – 1) Everyone that day had turned back on the Northeast approach 2) With slushy snow we felt we might have a greater chance to summit via the Southwest ridge 3) No one had done a report “up” that side yet.




Noon – Basin to Approach Ridge
It makes your heart sink a little when you have to lose elevation but that’s just what you have to do to get into the basin behind Parkhurst. It is my humble opinion that Wedge is BEST DONE when WELL covered with snow. Without it, it’s a nasty nasty scree slog with lose horrible boulders. As we looked at our desired approach cornices hung as high as a house. Avalanches had dropped everywhere so we weren’t going into ANY bowls. We chose an ascent that seemed we could crest onto the ridge.









Above the Cornices




1pm – Tenacity
The book calls this section “a fairly tedious ascent up dry-sun blasted slopes on a perpetual sliding treadmill – Tenacity is required”. Hmmm yeah that’s an understatement. Everything here is lose. We took the snow wherever we could and made the exhausting, never ending ascent up.







3pm – The final approach
I cannot describe how tired we felt at this point. It felt like every step was climbing Everest. Every step took more energy than I had. 200m from the summit I had to stop and eat a chocolate bar because I had no more “up” left in my legs. We had ascended over 8,000ft thus far in slushy sinking snow and 30 degree heat. It took everything we had to cover the last push up.





4pm – Summit
The views from the summit are beyond words and for my third attempt in the area, Wedge finally gave me the views I had yearned for. We could see as far as Baker and Shuksan, every ridge and mountain in between visible. It was truly a WOW moment.





8pm - Squirmy Wormy
It took forever to descend the boulders, the cornices, and get back up to the col and onto the glacier. But as we ran through the snow we noticed the glacier was no longer white, it was black. Millions upon millions of ice worms had surfaced and were feasting on the snow algae. In case you’re wondering what those are well, they are SUPER cool. They only exist in BC, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska and only in glaciers that have a certain level of humidity it seems. They have anti-freeze so they can survive the ice and above 5 degrees their membrane structures disassociate and fall apart (i.e., "melt") causing the worm itself to "liquefy.” Yup, scifi awesome.








9pm – Hut
By now the day was getting to be lonnnngggg. Our boots were soaking wet so we stopped, changed socks, kicked off the mountaineering boots and put on trail runners. It’s the small things that give us joy and dry feet are one of them!




12:20am – Back at the car
It actually took us longer to descend the last part than ascend it. The creeks had become swollen with melt and we had to jump around trying not to get our feet wet. At a certain point everything hurt. It had now been 18hrs of moving, 24km and 8,660 ft of vertical gain and we just wanted it to be OVER.

CONCLUSIONS
If I had to do this again I’d camp just past the Parkhurt/Wedge Col in the basin. There’s a flat plateau there, you have a direct line of sight to Whistler with full reception and it’s before you start the long slog up. I also think Wedge should be done with snow. It can be done in summer but the rock isn’t stable and it’s exhausting moving through lose large boulders.

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And I thought when me Leigh and Spring did it, we had a long day. And in that heat no less...tenacious!

Nice working getting the summit. I'll be going back for it.

We followed in your footsteps on Sunday, left the parking lot at 3:30am hoping that the snow wouldn't be too soft when we got to the glacier. We bailed on the ne arête and did Parkhurst from the Wedge/Parkhurst col. Was an 11 hour day for us in the heat after 1.5 hrs sleep.

An epic trek! Love the ice worms shots. It's like finding some odd creature on another planet.

Awesome spectacular. Super well done Masiar.

A lot of awesome pictures, and a cool enlightenment on those worms.

K

Love the reflection pond photo. Very nice.

A friend of mine renamed iceworms as "glacier pubes".

LOL...dammit now that's gonna stick in my mind forever.

It is LIKE an alien creature! They didn't believe they existed until 1887. Kinda made my day after reading more about them. Apparently they are being studied for the anti freeze to see if it can be used in organ preservation and transplant...which would make them a wildly valuable commodity.

Epic day trip! Well done!

Turns out they sequenced the genome of the glacier pubes as long ago as 2002. Very interesting story of evolution - aquatic animal colonized glacier ice, probably in Alaska
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22370043

Well done! I took this picture from across the valley at 1pm but it isn't good enough to see you guys. Did you hear the helicopterfest on Rainbow mtn.?

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Nicely done! Those ice worms are the coolest creatures.

Very nice Wedgemount is a toughie but what an awesome place. Got to do that this year with a backpack. Thanks for the report and pics.

It has been often surmised by evolutionary biologists that such creatures as ice worms and deep sea sulfur based bacteria hold out great hope for life on such inhospitable worlds as Jupiter's moon Europa. Who knows, under the many km of Europa's ice surface there might be Ice Worms 100 meters long

Hmmm, might be a good Sci-Fi film in that!