Bonus Adventures at the Mummery GMC
Dylan Cunningham starting up the ice arete during the F.A. of Smokeshow. Photo Tanya Bok
It’s been 45 minutes since we started up the Blaeberry Forest Service Road near Golden and our convoy is now slowing to pull off into a clearing. The valley here is filled with a fog from last night's heavy showers and it tangles with smoke still lingering from a summer of intense forest fires. Soon I’ll be flying back into the Mt Mummery area for another week of guiding at the ACC’s General Mountaineering Camp. I wait for others to park and I wonder if we’ll have the visibility to fly. As the morning sun creeps its way into the deep valley I get a glimpse of treetops on the far side of the river. Things are not quite as murky as I’d originally thought. I park and unload my bags.
Cedar groves on the hike out. Photo Dylan Cunningham
Chucky Gerrard, GMC Manager, is coordinating the helicopter exchange with the week six participants. He gets a break in the action and pulls me aside. Chucky is excited that Kathy Meyer and I, both working at the camp and training to become mountain guides, are planning to stay up in the area after the week is over. We want to do some exploring and perhaps attempt an unclimbed route on Mummery. The ACC has always supported aspiring guides and exploration is what the GMCs are all about. With this tradition at heart, Chucky encourages our budding plan.
On our short flight from the staging area to the camp we break out of the gloomy valley and into the alpine. The helicopter lands and a flurry of moving bags and welcoming smiles command my attention for a short while but not for long. I can’t help but take in the area. Sun showers are making their way through the mountains and they cast the peaks in a dignified light. Mt Mummery’s towering east face dominates the view. It’s an unclimbed bastion of rock and almost all of it is threatened by seracs that periodically send avalanches of ice roaring down to the glacier below – not where you would want to climb.
Still, one feature protrudes enough to escape the hazard while drawing an aesthetic line directly from glacier to summit. It’s the NE Buttress that I first noticed while guiding on week three. Looking at it, I feel a familiar giddiness bubbling up inside me. I love the process of imagining a new climb. Will we get a chance to explore it? Would such an adventure be fun or would it be “fun?” I look forward to finding out!
Plan falls apart
As the week goes on, the feelings of expectancy only deepen. Kathy and I spend our spare time conceiving a plan for the NE buttress and take every opportunity to get up close and personal with the mountain. On the first full day of camp, she and two other guides climb the Southeast Ridge which is our most plausible descent route. Later on, the two of us manage to get a few free hours to sort out the approach to our line. We ascend the Karakal Glacier a short ways and climb up a rock corner that brings us to the hanging glacier below the buttress. From there we can tell the route looks promising.
As our fellow campers witness these excursions they start probing about our intentions and it's fun to feel the curiosity building in all of us. For many GMC guests, the concept of new routing in the alpine is somewhat exotic and we enjoy sharing in the excitement. They take it as hard as we do when things take a turn and the plans that we’ve been concocting look like they won’t come to fruition: first, the weather forecast is looking bleak, and then Kathy decides that she will have to leave camp right after the week is over. I feel the three-legged stool of conditions, partners and time beginning to topple. On it sits my aspiration to climb Mummery and excitement gives way to achy feelings of disappointment.
Smokeshow on Mt Mummery IV 5.6 45º 850m. Photo Dylan Cunningham.
New partner search
I choose not to give in. Instead, I prop my stool up with a healthy dose of hope. So begins the search for other potential partners at camp. I start with the guiding team: Jordan is keen but has to be home for family; Nino is leaving on another guiding stint the day after our week at the camp; Darek is encouraging but personally uninterested; Jim also has other commitments. It’s now the night before the week is to end and I’m starting to feel like a crazy person that just won’t give up on a failing idea.
That evening, Jim suggests I ask Tanya Bok. She is one of the participants at the camp and has more than enough climbing experience to be a worthy partner. I had the opportunity to see Tanya’s skills in action during the rope rescue course I taught that morning and while we went ice climbing in crevasses that afternoon. I enjoyed her sharp wit and I admired her fluid movement. Jim recommended her as a strong partner to try a new route with. What more encouragement did I need?
I found Tanya soaking up the last rays of sun behind the dining tent with a glacier ice-chilled cocktail in hand. I tried to recruit her for my plan, but she was surprisingly hesitant. Unsurprisingly, she needled me about being the sixth to get asked. She was excited by the idea and wanted to go, but was concerned about her fitness for a big day on a technical route. I agreed to her wise suggestion of a rest day before launching out and she signed on. Our outlook brightened further when Chucky let us know that the ACC wanted to feed and house us at the camp free of charge while we stayed.
Our fellow GMCers were once again just as excited about our adventure as we were. So began all kinds of support in the form of leftover snacks and bars they thought might help ensure our success. Tanya and I were well on our way in transitioning from a guide and a guest of the camp to a pair of alpine climbing dirtbags. All we needed now was for the bad weather that was spinning our way to take its time arriving.
Game on
Kathy climbing the slabs below the hanging glacier during our reconnaissance mission. Photo Dylan Cunningham
For our rest day, we napped, ate, packed our bags and gleefully embraced an improving weather forecast. All the new arrivals to the Artists Week – the traditional last week of the GMC – took an interest in our plans and ushered us off to bed early.
In the dark morning I was eager to wake to a starry sky, but I crawled out of my tent to feel a warm sort of snow falling from the sky. But not snow exactly…ash. I looked up and my headlamp illuminated little bits of the BC forest coming down to rest around the camp. Not exactly prime alpine climbing weather, but better than rain!
Tanya and I ate a few bites with a cup of tea and then resolved to eat properly at an hour more befitting of breakfast. Off across the glacier we went and soon we were weaving amongst the massive crevasses near the base of the route. Chunks of ice on the glacier evidenced our short-lived but very real exposure to some of the looming seracs above. We scampered along as quickly as we could.
Less than an hour from our comfortable camp, we were at the base of the climb. I embraced the very rare pleasure that the GMC had afforded us. We hadn’t experienced any of the usual “pleasures” that commonly precede racking up. There had been no getting lost, no bushwhacking for hours, and no fight with a treadmill of scree or talus. I also wasn’t groaning from poorly rehydrated goulash, rather, I could still recall some of the finer flavours from the previous night’s gourmet enchiladas.
A new route on Mt Mummery
And the route itself? I am happy to say that it lived up to our expectations! Overall the line was intuitive and provided enjoyable climbing throughout on rock that was “AAA” by Rockies’ standards. Tanya and I found a nice climbing rhythm with only one part of the route that threatened to break our stride. A wide and overhanging corner crack in the upper ridge presented a significant crux but it was overcome with thrilling stemming with hands on wildly incut jugs. The upper ice arete then put us in fantastic positions. We were in awe of the glacial ice tumbling down from seracs on both sides and found ourselves climbing into a massive bergschrund to belay a final pitch directly to the summit.
From there, we assumed coming off the peak would be straightforward if not a bit protracted. After all, Kathy, Jim, and Jordan had described their trip up and down the Southeast Glacier and Ridge fairly casually. Tanya and I found good humour in how they underplayed it but we also made use of the long rest it afforded partway down. Just off the ice and onto the rock we laid down near a tarn in the warmth of a sun cutting through the smoke for the first time that day. What better than to name it Smokeshow? A nod to the unexpectedly high quality of the route as well as for the hazy conditions we climbed it in. So, take it all with a grain of first ascensionist salt but I reckon it’s worthy of being a Rockies Classic. I can truly recommend going to do it, even if you have to hike in from the road.
One last terrifying adventure
Our time on the mountain was over but our adventure was not yet complete. During each year’s Artists Week the club invites an artist – this year it was Patti Dyment – to take up residence and host art classes for participants. The emphasis of the week is on hiking to viewpoints, setting up easels and interacting with the landscape in a different fashion from what’s done in the other weeks of camp.
As Tanya and I shared our story of the climb, the artists urged us to elaborate and interpret our adventure by putting it down on paper. My plan was to have a hearty breakfast and be on our merry way down the valley, but Tanya had the vision to accept the invitation and try our hands at watercolours.
Tanya with our watercolours of Mummery. Photo Dylan Cunningham.
Little did I know that painting a watercolour could be so terrifying. I’m accustomed to the hazards of climbing that are pointedly life-threatening, so how bad could landscape painting be? After 10 minutes of waffling over a pen stroke and another few minutes balking at the idea of adding a shadow of colour to my page, Patti came to my aid. “Be brave,” she said and I laughed audibly when I recognized my trepidation.
Patti then shared a favourite quote from artist John Singer Sargent: “watercolour is an emergency in progress, make the best of it.” It reminded me of the commitment needed in climbing and the philosophy of movement begetting itself. I remarked at how I had left my sphere of confidence and succumbed to fear. Patti’s encouragement and wise instruction helped me push into it and stretch myself. I’m thankful for being put in that place. The experience of painting put a special twist on my time in the Mt Mummery area. It helped me see the mountains in a different way and broadened, if even for a moment, how I experience the mountains.
Ultimately, the climb with Tanya on Mummery was a highlight of my summer. I know Tanya feels the same way and we have each other to thank for making it so, the GMC for enabling it, and the art for adding a whole new dimension.
Dylan Cunningham
Dylan Cunningham is an ACMG Ski Guide and Apprentice Alpine Guide living in Canmore, Alberta. He feels tremendously fortunate for the mountains and for the people he shares them with. Dylan’s boundless energy and adventurous spirit are a source of both joy and frustration to his partners but he hopes they won’t abandon him...there is a whole lot left to go see.
Join the 2022 GMC
The ACC’s annual General Mountaineering Camp (GMC) has been a Canadian mountaineering legacy for over 114 years. Set in a different, remote, and little-explored mountain wilderness of the western ranges each summer, the camp gives everyday folk an introduction to modern-day mountain exploration.
This year’s GMC will be held at International Basin, BC.
