Rogers Pass, British Columbia: Two climbers are the first to complete the mammoth Horse Shoe Traverse in one push.
The route in Rogers Pass links 14 peaks over 38 kilometres, with a total elevation gain of 4,600 metres.
According to the Rogers Pass Alpine Guide Book, the route takes most parties three to four days, but on July 17, Eric Carter and Leif Godberson did it in 24 hours and 20 minutes.
The “granddaddy of traverses in the area” links Avalanche Mountain, Eagle, Uto Peak, Mount Sir Donald, the peaks of Terminal North and South, Youngs, Leda, Pollux, Castor, The Dome, The Rampart, Afton and Abbot.
“If you’ve ever been up any of those peaks you get the feeling of an ongoing ridge-line, so to be able to link that up is pretty dreamy,” Carter.
The experienced climbing duo from Squamish and Canmore have had their eyes set on the traverse for some time.
They attempted it in one push last August but had to pull the pin halfway through.
“You need the right combination of weather and conditions. If it’s too early, there’s too much snow on the big mountains, and if it’s too late, there’s not enough snow, there’s just ice (on the glaciers),” Carter says.
The pair cut the trip short last year due to a lack of coverage on the Asulkan Glacier as they attempted to descend off of Young’s Peak. It was too late in the season and there was too much exposed ice.
“It was quite tricky, we ended up having to improvise some rappels to get down,” Godberson says.
After getting through the crux, the pair realized they were moving too slowly, so they cut their losses and headed home through the valley.
This year conditions aligned.
“I think it was the heatwave we had at the end of June and beginning of July,” Carter says.
“We weren’t expecting conditions to be ready that early, after that, the snow melted off the big peaks but hadn’t quite affected the glaciers.”
The pair started walking around 3 a.m. They travelled light but made sure they had the necessities for a retreat or any unexpected scenario. They were prepared to leave gear behind and in the end, they did.
“We discussed different strategies and what would be the best way to attack it,” Godberson says. “We definitely wanted to get the Avalanche to Sir Donald and over The Terminals in the light.”
After a seamless start and successfully reaching the summit of their fourth peak, the iconic Mount Sir Donald, the pair found their way onto the two peaks, known as The Terminals.
In their attempt the previous year the pair cut off the ridge and bypassed the South terminal.
This time around, they stayed on the ridge and came across their first real challenge on the south peak.
“It was a little tricky getting off that peak,” Godberson says. “It was actually the only peak I hadn’t done before. I had heard that it was not too tricky, but getting off it proved to be one of the trickiest parts of the traverse. In the end, we had to leave some gear behind (to make an anchor).”
After navigating that challenge, the pair continued on, crossing the Illecillewaet Glacier before reaching the spot that had caught them out the year before. Much to their relief, the glacier was in good form and the pair were able to easily downclimb the north face of Young’s Peak using crampons and an ice axe.
They had now reached the curve in the horseshoe. They skirted the headwaters of the Asulkan Brook and began making their way back along the mirroring peaks, moving north again as the sunset.
“It was nice being up there, walking back towards the highway, slowly getting there and looking across at the other stuff that we had done,” Godberson says.
The pair navigated the final three peaks in the dark, by headlight. At sunset the smoke thickened, filling the cones of light from their head torches with an ashy haze.
“The ash was falling, it was like driving down the highway at night in winter with snow coming down on the windshield,” Carter says.
The hardest part was the mental and physical aspect of being awake and moving for 24 hours, although the heads-up nature of the terrain made it easy to stay awake.
“There aren’t a lot of record attempts, and there’s certainly people who could do it faster than us,” Carter says. “But that (the fact that nobody had completed it in one push before) was our motivation to do it in a day for sure.”
The pair had experience, and the right equipment and had exposed themselves to almost all of the traverse prior to taking it on, so they knew what they were getting into.
“When we finished and got back to our trucks, we crawled into our trunks and got a couple hours of sleep,” Carter says. “Just as I was shutting my eyes I could see the sun coming up on the horizon. I was like, ‘Oh man, that was a long day.’”
For more information regarding Parks Canada Rogers Pass, you can learn more at their website.
