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Tsar Mountain Continued  (Use the "BACK" button on your browser to go back)

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Evening view from our camp of Shackleton Glacier to the northwest of Tsar Mountain. A deep glacially-scoured valley and a river lie in between.

The weather held for our summit day and we followed a rock ridge bordering the glaciated north face. (Click to enlarge)

(Click to enlarge) On "the boardwalk", a wide flat part of the north ridge. Glaciers behind are part of a vast linked glacier system that comprise part of the Clemenceau to Columbia Icefields ski traverse, described in Chic Scott's popular ski touring guidebook, Summits and Icefields. And notice all those other peaks too! This is one of the reasons why I love the Canadian Rockies: So many mountains!

 After leaving the ridge, steepening glacier led directly to the small summit. You angle to the far right where the summit ice-cap steepens and go up maybe a ropelength (or less) of 45 degree snow. Gentle snow leads to the summit then. The view towards Mounts Shackleton and Clemenceau was fabulous. Our group found Albert Ostheimer's (with Fuhrer and Weber as guides) still-readable 1927 first ascent record in a small tin tucked under a large rock.  Neat, eh? Its now at the Whyte museum archives in Banff.

A brewing thunderstorm made us beetle back down to our camp, but fortunately, it fizzled out. John (lower left) was actually trying to fly. Total round trip time from camp was about 10 hrs.

Next day, rather than bushwhack the same way, we returned by following dry glacier around to the east side of Tsar and rappelling the 50 foot cliffband below into a gully. Here we are near the rappel point (red circle), which even had 2 pitons in place. Downhill bushwhacking for 2 hours led back to the car. This was a faster exit.

If the Sullivan River logging road in British Columbia remains driveable, (okay in August 2000) this is an excellent three day mountaineering trip into a beautiful, remote corner of The Canadian Rockies. And if the road washes out, it is still an excellent trip. You just won't be able to drive there...

Interested? Click here for directions to Tsar.

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