Yak Peak via "Yak Check," 10a
July 21, 2022
It was a random Friday after I graduated college, and being that I was getting a lot more into climbing, I was starting to look for more alpine-ey adventures. My friend Mike had the grand idea to go climb Yak Peak, which is probably the most obvious and impressive peak you would see when driving the Coquihalla highway. Since he’s a pretty strong climber and trustworthy lead, I figured he’d be the right person to take it on with, since I was fairly new, and unsure if I’d be able to swing leads all day. Mike is the type of guy to be so unbothered by leading the whole day that he’ll tell you it’s a privilege to get to do all the adventuring, an attitude I would not adopt until quite awhile later.
I’m not really sure why it didn’t occur to us to start earlier, but we honestly took a pretty chill start, thinking “well it’s only 13 pitches of mostly low 5th, and shouldn’t take us any longer than the chief.” The sun was high in the sky as we hiked in through the forest, and quite easily found the place where the route starts.
Mike took the first lead, with the idea that we would swing leads as long as possible until I was too tired. The first pitch was only 5.7, with some slab and a funky looking roof that’s way easier than it looks, and he belayed me up at the base of a beautiful hand crack. I climbed this one as far as it would go, marveling in the quality of the rock, and blissfully unaware that it would be the last good crack climbing all day. I believe I linked into part of pitch 3, and then stopped where there was a slabby move I didn’t want to do on lead.
Mike happily led us up from here, and the crack entirely disappeared as he scampered up the blank slab. It continued in this manner for multiple pitches, so I was happy for him to keep leading. Eventually as the day progressed and we moved from blank pitch to blank pitch, with Mike placing 1-2 pieces for entire 60m lengths of rope, it became very clear that I wouldn’t be leading anymore. Around halfway up the wall the route links up with the rappel route, and I offered to Mike the option of bailing in case he didn’t want to lead the rest. He was stoked though, so we decided to keep on.
The route topo, from Mountain Project
Mike hiking up to the base of the route
Into P1
Part of the crack, about to start on P2
Around pitch 7, mountain project describes “5m up from the belay, on rock resembling oatmeal…” which was where the route took a turn for the worse in my head. Not only was it run out, but now the rock quality was also garbage. I took a video of this section, where I am looking for something to grab but everything under my hands just peels off and falls wayyyyyy down the face below me. It was pretty horrifying, and I’m not entirely sure how Mike lead it. Even on top rope I was pretty terrified.
On pitch 8, Mike traversed out left with no cracks for pro for nearly 20m, then climbed straight up onto this famous rock “bridge,” a feature that involves balancing on a rock flake that is barely stuck to the wall, where you can see down to the ground on both sides of it. That part was certainly memorable! Especially since the bolts I was belaying him from sounded suspiciously hollow…. 🙁
After the flake, the route winds up a cool looking corner, then up towards the 10a pitch. This near vertical slab pitch was arguably the most fun and well protected part of the whole route. They actually put bolts into the wall for us, it was a miracle!
The wind had picked up a crazy amount by this point, and our energy was waning. The delicate, exposed and somewhat terrifying climbing was taking the life out of us, and the sun was also starting to set. Looking back on this, I obviously would have started way earlier in the day, but it was my first real alpine climb and I’m not sure I fully grasped how involved it would feel until I was in it.
Regardless, we were nearly done the route by this point, and after the 10a pitch we were nearly jogging up the low angle slab between the trees. As a side note with a bit TMI, I’d started my period unexpectedly around pitch 9, and so by pitch 11 or so I was just bleeding straight down my pant legs. It was almost comical how much I was needlessly suffering up this wall, and I was pretty thankful for wearing black leggings…!!!
Trying to show the camera the “oatmeal rock”
Hard to tell from the photo but this rock was squishable under my fingers!
Pitch 7(?)
The famous bridge!!!
Mike on the 10a pitch
Mike and I as the sun started to set!
I look happy but if you look deep in my eyes you can see how wind blown and exhausted I am already….
Beautiful sunset!
We reached the summit in the pitch black, and spent a few minutes making sure we were truly on the real summit since we’d expended so much effort getting to the top. We took some photos by headlamp, ate a snack and then quickly began our retreat. We assumed it would be an easy hike down with it being July and a summer hiking trail, but unfortunately we hadn’t even reached the scariest part of our day.
As Mike pushed ahead, he quickly reached snow and then….. a 20 meter vertical drop off. What? With our headlamps at maximum brightness, we could just barely see where the snow had sheered off below us in some massive slab avalanche, and was now piled in massive blocks on top of the summer hiking trail. We were very fortunate to have service up top the mountain, and quickly found out on Mountain Project that there’s an alternate 3-rap route on this back side of Yak to bypass snow in early season. With headlamps on, I miraculously located the shining bolts on the backside of a rock, and we got out the rope and the tagline that we didn’t think we’d have to use.
I tied the ropes together in a system I’d never even tried out in the field but that I was thankful to have practiced back home, and we rapped down to the second hanging bolts. From there, our rope somehow got stuck below us while pulling it out, and Mike had to descend to go fix it. This was very time consuming, and I was freezing by the time he climbed back up so he quickly descended to the third rap station below me.
On the last one, we were in for a bit of a shock. As I arrived at this station with Mike, we could very clearly see below us a rather large bergshrund, then an absolute mass of snow piled on itself. It seemed we hadn’t dodged the snow using the raps, and instead had put ourselves right in the middle of this avalanche debris.
Mike opted to go second and coil up the ropes while I found us a route through the snow. This was honestly the most challenging part, since we just had trail runners, no poles, no gloves, and absolutely no way to balance nicely over these massive snow blocks. I waited for Mike to come down behind me, and then began delicately weaving a path to the other side of the debris. As I took a few steps in, I realized the snow chunks themselves weren’t even stable, and some of them shifted as I walked, making these awful crunching sounds as they teetered under my feet like a large boulder would. I gripped desperately into the snow with my bare fingers, acutely aware that if one of these large snow chunks toppled on top of me there would be truly no way for Mike to get me out.
When I finally reached the other side of the snowy avalanche path, I was shaking from fear. I said to Mike that I had never felt like I was so close to death before, and asked him to give me a tight hug for my nerves. As he squeezed me I could feel my teeth chattering, and I was almost in tears as I finally gave myself a moment to feel the exhaustion and stress from the day.
As we set off down the hiking trail, finally with our feet on solid ground, it was nearing 1am. I sent texts to all my worried loved ones, assuring everyone I was fine, it was just an extra long night. When I pulled into my parents garage, the sun was rising again, making it more than a full 24 hour day.
Instead of going to sleep though, I drove over to Francis’ apartment and apologized profusely to Francis for my lack of sleep since he was counting on me for a pretty full weekend. I had a short nap on his couch and then somehow pulled off Kangaroo temple and then Mount Baker right afterwards, making it a full 3 days of massive adventures with little to no sleep whatsoever…. What a weekend!
On the summit 🙂
Mike looking at the stars 🙂
Chucking the ropes into real darkness
The best picture I could get of the snow chunks which were a minimum of 3x4m, and some maybe up to 6x8m
Gear
- 1 60m rope + a 60m tagline
- Double rack of cams, a set of nuts, lots of slings
- Wish we had some snow gear, but I would just recommend waiting until snow is gone