Mt. Fee (North Tower via SW Face)

I found myself driving at Squamish River FSR again. The plan was to explore the Shovelnose Creek area and attempt the South Tower of Mt Fee. I’ve seen Mt. Fee in different perspective; it’s very intimidating mountain. I managed to drive up to 700m until the washout and boulder had stopped me from driving farther. I threw my overnight gear in my 35L pack and walked up the rest of the logging road. I was certainly carrying too much weight with various protection gear, 60m rope, plus some crap that I did not use. From the 2nd switchbacks; I bushwhacked up into the forest, hit the end of the logging road, then through the clearcut. I stayed closer to the creek as a guide to the ridge. The approach was definitely I didn’t want to do with heavy backpack. I was knackered and could no longer continue after getting up at 1730m.

 Vulcan's Thumb from the logging road







The view of Mt. Fee from my bivy site.

 It was amazing to watch as the sky changes its colour. I can't believe the amount of rock falls coming from Vulcan's Thumb, it was pretty active through out the night.

 Got up at 4:30am, left the camp half an hour later. I followed the ridge parallel to Mt. Fee and continued North over to the basalt columns peak. I changed my plan after getting a closer look at the south tower, realizing that the rocks were no jokes at all.

 Pyroclastic/Cayley from the ridge.

Start of the climb

 This is what the route looks like. Looking back down the snow slopes. I probably should've taken more (better) photos, but I was pretty concerned about time. I started from the dirty snow deposit at the middle. The route follows hanging snow slopes which made me really nervous from an avalanche perspective.

 Its also notable that this mountain is composed of gently pasted together shit. A few meters from the summit. At this point I was a bundle of nerves, and didn't trust the rocks, which made what could be a simple slog quite scary. Actually, I was pretty certain that the smart thing to do was turn around, but hubris and the desire to never do the death-slog approach again motivated me to push on. View from the top. North face, logging road from Bradywine..etc. 

The plan was to descend the NW route - supposedly much easier, but it was almost noon and I was feeling really far from safety with the sun hitting the snow slope. I decided to reverse the route rather than charge out into unknown terrain. It was a good call - definitely much faster.

  I was dehydrated when I got back to my camp, had my lunch and took 2 hours siesta.