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Tsar Mountain 3424 m
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Tsar Mountain NW side (showing route). Photo taken from Mount Rhodes in Mt. Clemenceau area
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This fine peak sits west of Mounts Columbia and Bryce, and east of Mount Clemenceau in a rugged, little-visited corner of the Canadian Rockies. Until recent construction of a logging road up Sullivan River near Golden, British Columbia, very few parties had ascended Tsar Mountain. It was identified to me while on an Alpine Club of Canada climbing camp in the Lyells. It is also clearly visible from Mount Edith Cavell. Prior to about 1993, any approaches to Tsar were either multi-day overland expeditions or expensive helicopter flights. Not surprisingly, it had seen few ascents in the previous 20 years. Hard to imagine when Mounts Rainier or Blanc see over 200 ascents in a day.
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Sullivan River canyon. From Golden, some 160 km of bone-rattling
logging road leads to the starting point in a logging clearcut. En route, the road crosses
this fantastically narrow, deep gorge with silty Sullivan River thundering and churning
100 feet below. Worth a look!
no click! just plain small!
Spectacular views of Apex Icefield (left center of photo) in the upper Sullivan
River. This is probably one of the few places in the Rockies where glacial ice
extends below treeline level --- or at least it did in 1994. We've had a couple of
hot summers since then though...
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A couple of hours of moderate bushwhacking contouring around a
hillside led to the edge of ever-shrinking Tsar Glacier on the north side of Tsar
Mountain. If you continue to stare at this picture, you may actually see the glacier
shrink before your very eyes.
Here we are ascending the
icefall of Tsar glacier enroute to camp on the first day. Crevasses were wide open and
easy to avoid so we did not rope up.
Our idyllic campsite was
located on the north side of the peak in a small meadow with a pond of clear water nearby.
No need to boil or filter it either. Tsar's foreshortened summit is the snowy point left
of center. Don't you just wish you were there now?
© all photos copyright by the author 1999.
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