Mt. Begbie

Grade I, Class 3-4
Revelstoke, BC

As Aaron put it, climbing Begbie gives you a little bit of everything. A nice, steep'ish approach through old-growth forest, then into the alpine and across the mountain's lower slabs with good views of the route ahead and of Revelstoke and surroundings behind. Up a small but quite heavily crevassed glacier. Back onto rock across an exposed ledge, followed by a long stretch of mostly easy scrambling with the odd tricky bit to the summit. Oh, and some very cool geology thrown in as well. We had a great day (about 12hrs car-to-car). The crux of the climb for us turned out to be the glacier, which was a surprise. Despite thoroughly researching the route (a 5min look at a couple of blog posts; there were photos) we underestimated it a bit and weren't entirely prepared. We had axes, and Aaron and Pip had micro spikes, which were just good enough, but Ben had yak tracks, which were not (on the advice of his more experienced partners he left heavier boots and full crampons in the car). Nevertheless, after a bit of screwing around we got up and over it and onto the rock. Across the ledge we made use of the bolts to fix a line; not strictly necessary but a nice bit of security. After that we could've (but didn't) dropped all the climbing gear as it wasn't needed for the scramble to the top. This felt like a bonus outing at the end of the season. Great day. Great company.

Participants: Aaron, Ben & Pip

Gear: 30m scrambling rope (8mm), ice axe, crampons (sort of: see above), 4 slings w. biners (to clip bolts on ledge), harness and belay device.

Trip photos   GPX   KML