ACC Gazette Section Stories: Columbia Mountains
Overlooking camp on the edge of Carnes Peak.
Exploring The Northern Selkirks
In August 2023, a small group from the Columbia Mountains Sections traveled by helicopter to explore one of the less-accessible areas in the North Selkirks.
The following is a report from trip leader, Ben Clark (photos by Hilary Schrama).
We left town early in the morning from the Glacier Helicopters hangar travelling up Lake Revelstoke to our destination: a murky green puddle on a high rib at about 2,000 metres elevation, under the walls of Carnes Tower. Below our camp, the rib dropped away a few hundred metres to the floor of the broad valley and McKinnon Creek.
We originally planned to climb Phogg Peak — a smaller, 2,700 metre mountain tucked away in the notch between Carnes Peak and Carnes Tower — on our second day, but had significantly overestimated how difficult this would be. Instead, we climbed it almost by accident on our first afternoon. The scrambling was easy, aside from a few small steps which we crossed one at a time. The summit, right at the nexus of Carnes Glacier, Phogg Glacier, and Abyss Glacier, was wild and awe-inspiring. Predictably, glacier conditions were rugged. We walked about two kilometres across the Carnes Glacier to get to Phogg Peak and only crossed about 80 metres of firn. Despite the relatively flat, concave topography under the glacier, it was still wildly cracked; I suspect (as an armchair-glaciologist) that this might be because the large volume of water running beneath the glacier, brought on by a long, hot summer, is accelerating its downhill travel.
Our scramble on the South Ridge of Carnes Peak the second day was both easy and stunningly beautiful. We wove between marble moraines and hanging meadows with breathtaking drops on either side. We also found some deep caves with sculpted walls that we estimated to be very, very deep (based on our highly scientific process of dropping pebbles into them and listening to them ricochet deeper and deeper for what felt like forever). Looking across the glacier at the huge west face of Carnes Tower and down at the jumbled serac field below was equally impressive. We turned back at the first big gendarme just below 2,700m.
Unlike most of the climbing around Revelstoke, Carnes Peak, Phogg Peak, and Carnes Tower are all part of the Badshot Formation which is mostly dolomitic marble rather than quartzite. I’d never climbed on marble before this trip, and since it’s a bit uncommon, I think it’s worth a little description. The marble was pretty compact, and cracks (even for pitons) were sparse. Lots of holds would wiggle and release fine dust when pulled —even some of the larger ones — so everything had to be evaluated with extra caution. Where it wasn’t weathered, the friction was like velcro, to the point that most of us had small perforations in our hands and clothes after a day of scrambling. Notably, we didn’t see any natural rockfall during all three days, with the exception of a bit of gravel released by melting snow.
The whole area felt unique and special: a mix of the huge and imposing grey walls of the Rockies, but with our inter-mountain climate and flora. The Carnes Glacier was uniquely beautiful too: having carved itself into a deep channel through the marble at its toe and undercut the bottoms of a few of the tallest walls above it.
– Ben Clark (ACC Columbia Mountains Section Leader and Section Activities Director)
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