Tricouni Peak via North Ridge, 5.4
July 1, 2023🍁
This summer, after recovering from a pretty bad broken leg, Ashley was brave enough to still want to get into alpine climbing. Being a great friend of mine (and even more so now that we do this stuff together!) I was more than happy to teach her everything I’ve learned so far about climbing. We did a crash course in my apartment on how to lead belay, practiced for a few months in the gym, and then went to try some outdoor climbing. I taught her what I could about trad, but she also took a trad course and then I proudly watched her complete her first trad lead this summer on her birthday!
Shortly after this accomplishment, we did her first multi pitch on Spirit of Squamish, which confirmed that she was more than ready to take on a bigger climb in the alpine. It was so fun watching her grow in confidence through the summer, and I was so stoked when she said she’d join me for the Tricouni North ridge. For this Canada day long weekend, we were supposed to do something much bigger as a group, but Francis and I managed to get covid right before all these beautiful sunny days and had to cancel any fun plans. Francis took it much harder than me, needing to take some real rest (a short hike haha), but I decided I’d still be up for a longer day in the mountains. Ashley was brave enough to risk getting covid to still hang out with me, so off we went early on Saturday morning.
The Chance creek FSR was in great shape, and her Subaru (Forester) made it up to the lower trailhead just fine. I think if you have a truck you could skip a few km of road walking, but it didn’t add too much to the day to just walk it. The air felt hot and humid as we made the initial approach, but after passing through the muddy forest, the meadows cooled us off with a fresh breeze.
Ashley on the approach trail just reaching the meadows
Looking up at some nice green in the meadow!
From the meadows, we ascended a short snow slope (you can see it in the middle of the first photo), skirting around the right side of the lake and then straight up. We used crampons for this slope as it was decently steep and pretty slippery, and we knew we’d need them to get to the start of the climb anyway. Once at the col, we had a great view of the expansive glacier below and leading to the climb, and made a decisive call not to rope up. There was another party ahead of us, and I could tell the glacier was more than well filled in. There were no visible crevasses until much much lower on the glacier, and not even a hairline crack anywhere near us.
The walk over to the climb was short but a little exposed at the end, so using the hole from the previous party’s snow picket, I hammered in my ice axe as an anchor as we got the ropes out for the climb. I’ve heard some interesting stories about crossing this moat, and it really didn’t disappoint. Ashley put me on belay as I made a very awkward step above it onto rock, and then continued climbing until I made my first rock anchor. I left my crampons on for the entire pitch because honestly I was too scared on the moat crossing and then couldn’t find a place to take them off. The climbing was really easy though, and I was happy for the dry tooling practice Francis and I had done at the crag because I felt totally fine in crampons.
The route drawn out (found on Mountain Project) – the snow is a little higher in this photo than when we did it.
The place where we started the route
Ashley belaying me across the moat
We regrouped a little after this first traversing pitch since we were at a good ledge anyway. I took off my crampons, but decided to leave my hiking boots on since the terrain looked fairly chill. The next few pitches to the snow patch shown above are a mix of really easy blocky climbing to just walking along beaten out heather ledges. It was beautiful above the glacier, and we had a very relaxed time admiring the views.
The snow patch crossing midway through the route was quite exposed. I would bet it varies significantly depending on how late in the season you go, but for us it was short and quite steep. I hesitated for awhile on whether I wanted to put crampons back on for this, but ultimately decided to lead us up it by stepping very carefully and using my ice axe just in case. For the second time in the day, I wished we’d brought at least a single snow picket, but the traverse went fine and was over before I knew it. At the top, there wasn’t really a great place to build an anchor, with a lot of loose boulders and rocks, so I slung something really big and then gave Ashley a tight hip belay. Not ideal, but it worked just fine.
From this point, it was an easy scramble to the North ridge itself. Looking up at it, it looked fairly intimidating, but there were lots of large blocks and tons of options to sling rocks or place cams as pro. I offered the option of simuling, but Ashley was feeling a little uncomfortable with calling it a scramble, so we pitched out a good chunk of the route. It didn’t take us too much time though, and the views were superb!
Me starting up the blocky north ridge
Looking back at Ashley on the ridge
Once you think you’re approaching the top of the climb, you reach a false summit with some downclimbing involved. I had Ashley “down lead” climb (placing lots of pieces for her) and belayed her from below on this section, then we pitched out the rest of the route to the summit as normal. It looked more complicated than it was, and the final pitch was especially fun and easy. I found a great spot to belay us up, and we were soon sitting on the summit enjoying some snacks and fantastic views.
Scrambling to the false summit
The false summit
Me on the false summit (taken by another party)
Our belay station before heading up to the true summit (behind me)
On the summit! looking dorky lol
Tricouni lakes as seen from the summit!
We still had lots of time before sunset with nice long summer days, but there was still a decent amount of route finding for our descent, so we made our exit pretty quickly. Steven Song has a great GPX for it since he scrambled up the climber’s descent route back to Chance creek, so we followed his beta as closely as we could. We only got lost going down one gully too soon, but once that was over it was easy walking over snow and then some heather scrambling/sliding back down to the lake we came up from.
During this descent, the sun set fast (!) and we enjoyed a beautiful golden hour on the snow, and then a moon rise over Mount Garibaldi across the valley. Although we were tired, I can not express how much I was in awe of the views during this day, and the beautiful lighting kept our spirits high as we descended the mountain.
The bad gully we came down
Traversing some snow slopes in golden hour!
Ashley coming up the final snow slope
Beautiful sunset & moon rise over Garibaldi
Neither of us took any more photos as we repeated our steps in the darkness, but we chatted the whole way down with our energy still quite high from a fantastic day. There was hardly any “suffering” on this climb, and it was basically a full type 1 adventure except maybe for the moat.. 🙂
Gear
- 60m rope
- Single rack of cams, a set of nuts, lots of slings (I would maybe even bring less and scramble most of it if I had a comfortable party on this terrain but for us this was the right amount!)
- Ice axe & crampons (annoying to carry up the climb but honestly so useful)
- I would also bring a snow picket if I did this again