Olympic-sized dreams come true at the 2023 Chess Group GMC
With 84 years of adventure under his belt, Mike Hubbard wasn’t about to let a little long-distance drive, a whole lot of wildfire smoke, or the effects of altitude stop him from reaching the peaks calling him from our annual General Mountaineering Camp. Below is Mike’s account of the wild and wonderful Chess Group Week 2 experience.
Chess Group GMC 2023. Photo Aurore Kurc.
Getting there
When our ACCVI (Vancouver Island Section) summer camp was unfortunately cancelled at the end of June, I checked with the national office in Canmore and found that there was space available on week two of the General Mountaineering Camp (GMC) from July 15 – 22. After a rather strenuous drive to Golden from the West Coast on my own, I met up with our GMC group at the Golden airport. The smoke was intense and it looked as though a nuclear winter had descended on the world.
On Saturday, we drove in convoy some 100 kilometres north of Golden on the Bush Creek Forest Service Road to the helicopter staging area. By noon, Alpine Helicopters had deposited us at the camp, a spectacular, although rocky, site below the Chessboard Glacier at an elevation of 2,020m. The smoke at camp was considerably less than in the valley, but it was still very hazy. After settling in and having a wander around camp, we had a meeting with our camp manager, Simon Grafton, and were introduced to our guides, amateur leaders, and doctor.
Camp. Photo Dean Cameron.
A week in the life
Sunday was an instructional day with snow school on the toe of the glacier. This was good for acclimatization as those of us from the coast were feeling the effects of altitude. I was in a small group with the lead guide, Dylan Cunningham, who gave us a basic introduction to travelling on snow, and proper use of crampons, ice axes and rope: an excellent presentation and useful refresher.
After returning to camp, we signed up for the next day’s trips and enjoyed an excellent meal.
My choice for Monday was Queen’s Gambit which involved descending below camp and traversing several slopes before again going up to the ice and snow. Our group made the col about an hour below the summit, but with the weather deteriorating, we decided to return to camp. A major thunderstorm and heavy rain set in and beat us to camp. We were thoroughly soaked to the skin.
After a windy night during which the tents were almost flattened, we woke for the usual 6:30 a.m. breakfast to greatly-improved visibility and weather.
On Tuesday I elected for a rest day to dry out my clothes and recover, as did Katherine Thom, a retired Professor of Pharmacy from Salt Lake City. She helped in the kitchen while I had a most enjoyable day reading Ben Gadd’s Handbook of the Canadian Rockies, which I found in the tea tent. I drank a lot of tea, wandered up the creek to the fresh water intake, and snoozed in my tent.
On Wednesday I elected to climb Princess Pyramid (2,700m), an aptly named mountain to the west of camp. The guides suggested that Katherine and I should go to the col and then scramble around, but it was a beautiful clear day and Princess Pyramid was beckoning. Apart from one low 5th-class pitch which our guide, Alex Geary, belayed us up, it was mostly short-roping on a rather steep and narrow ridge. The crest was sharp limestone slivers. After an hour and a half of rather tortuous scrambling we lunched/perched on the small and precipitous summit, rather dreading the descent. It was, however, negotiated without accident, although short-roping on such terrain is not my favourite activity, especially with a companion who had not done it before and had the occasional panic attack.
Mike on King Peak. (Photo by Bridget John)
That evening Sandy told me of his day on King Peak (3,100m) followed by a snow and ice climb up Bishop in glowing terms. I decided to sign up for King Peak.
Thursday was a crystal-clear, bluebird day. After a rocky scramble up to the snow, we crossed the lower glacier to the foot of the ominously-named Black Gulley. This is composed of crumbled black shale and we climbed it wearing our crampons on a well-established but narrow, zig-zagging trail. On one exposed portion the guides had driven in rebar and fixed a hand line as an aid. The view from the top of the gulley was spectacular. To the east, a big glacier led to King Peak, which was not visible from camp, and in the middle distance was Mount Columbia and the Columbia Icefield. To the north one could just make out Mount Clemenceau and to the west Mount Sir Sandford. My heart jumped. This was my sort of mountain.
Descending King Peak. (Photo by Mike Hubbard)
After an hour or so of glacier travel during which we had to avoid some crevasses near the summit, we had an easy scramble up slabby rock to the top. My face pictured above tells it all. I could not have been more delighted in reaching such a high and spectacular summit of a caliber that I had doubted I would ever reach again.
Thanks to guide Darren Farley and my rope team of Allan and Doug for their patience in going at my 84-year-old pace! A leisurely lunch with many photos was followed by a three-hour descent back to camp, where a fine meal awaited.
By Friday I felt up to climbing Duchess and a second attempt at Queen’s Gambit, but one has to put a second choice on the sign-up sheets and the powers that be (the guides and amateur leaders that is) decided that I needed some Rock Schooling. They thought I would hold up the rest of the party on the Duchess. Teige Frid, who hails from Squamish, had set up three ropes on a fine out-cropping of fairly solid limestone about 400 metres from camp. Interestingly this continues in the folded strata to the one piece of good rock we had had to belay on during our climb on Princess Pyramid on Wednesday. Two of the climbs were somewhere around 5.6.
Climbing them and being lowered back down made a relaxed and enjoyable end to my week of climbing in the Chess Group. It left me with some energy to enjoy the 1st Annual GMC Olympics organized by our kitchen crew, the program of which is shown on the below photograph.
The first annual GMC Olympics
The boat race was down our water source creek. Various boats were constructed; some quite elaborate with sails, others made of duct-taped beer cans and plastic bottles. A hilarious race ensued, with some of us delegated to catch wayward boats that missed the finish line and were heading downstream for the Fraser River.
The GMC Olympics. (Photo by Mike Hubbard)
The Boat Race. (Photo by Mike Hubbard)
The egg toss resulted in many broken eggs and more laughs. The dirty sock shotput ruined one of my socks. And I don’t know how those who took part in the cold plunge survived the glacial temperatures for the 10 minutes or so that it took to go from feet-only to total submersion.
The Guides Treasure Hunt involved the guides scrabbling through the foul-smelling remains of all our meals for hundreds of dollars (plastic bills). It was a riotous evening that went on until after dark and culminated in awards and skits.
Paris and the IOC wish they had the GMC’s events. (Photo ACC Collection).
Friends for life
Week two was made up of a great and varied group of people. We had a doctor from Brooklyn, New York, Bruce Gelb, who emceed our story-time every evening and who in real life does leading-edge face transplants; a Ukrainian mother, Nataliya Zadorozhna and her teenage son, whose father had been in the Soviet Armed forces, and Robert Boucher who had driven all the way from Quebec. There were many others from all sorts of backgrounds too varied to list, but all of whom became like old friends. The GMC experience is not to be missed if you haven’t been to one. The price makes one appreciate the great value of our VI Section summer camps, but it was worth every penny.
-Mike Hubbard