A Summer in the Coast: Toba-Jervis Divide

Evan G.
Oct 13, 2016
9 min read

3 amigos stare silently at a Coast Range sunset.

An attempt to summarize Summer 2016. To give the reader some context the entire Summer was spent in the Eldred River Valley, 50km North of Powell River on the Sunshine Coast. Developing multi-pitch trad routes, traversing vast granitic ridge networks, scrubbing boulders, and most important of all simply living in paradise. An entire 75km river valley & 560 sq. km's of surrounding wilderness for a group of five is a lot of space to move around and be free you will see.

Having spent my time in Squamish, learning the basics, living in various caves, taking my lifestyle to extended heights from Squamish to Stl'atl'imx and a little bit past. Somewhere more remote, more wild was needed for 2016. Having visited the Eldred for a week in September 2015, I knew it was the next stepping stone. Something about it gave me tingles in the spine. It felt right to be there. Home on the Coast. Ever since I was 12 years old riding Mount Seymour every weekend, staring out at Kulshan to the South and North towards Coast Range infinity I knew I would end up in a place like the Eldred.

Summer began in earnest mid-June after I finished planting trees up North. One last food bank in Squam, the tribe assembled, we set off on the journey to our to be home . 8 hours after leaving Squamish we were plunked right beneath Psyche Slab & Carag-Dur at the Colin Arthur Dionne Memorial Climber's Camp. We became the newest residents of the Eldred River Valley. There is a story being written on the stone here. You read it as soon as you walk up to The Beta Board: Colin had a dream that one day the camp might evolve into a type of "Camp 4" like in Yosemite. These words sunk to my stomach the first time reading them in 2015. The Eldred has it all. It is everything I could dream of and more. Valley elders share this sentiment. Dedicated locals like Colin, Rob Richards, & Christie Dionne continue to this day to pour their energy into the Eldred. They established the first routes on these intimidating walls as far back as 1988, they discovered infinite pebbles to play on, the highest quality boulder problems, along with building all the access trails. They started creating the vision for what the Eldred may one day be...

Amon Rudh, The Hidden City of Gondolin & Lone Wolf. More rock than Squamish in this one corner of The Valley.

Routes such as, "Psychopath" IV 5.10 10 pitches, "The Mainline" VI 5.11 A4+ 18 pitches, & "On the Virg" V 5.10- 10 pitches, immediately reflected the spectacular nature & quality of climbing in The Valley.A half dozen 500-800m granodiorite walls line the entire Valley and its tributary valleys, Something felt proper about what we were doing out here. We are some of the wild ones dreamed of, and here we were ready to be taken to school in The Valley.

Zoe saunters along late season snow. Connecting On the Virg to Pastel Peak. June 2016.

The first adventure of the Summer saw Zoe & myself getting the 4th ascent of "On the Virg" V 5.10-; a 10 pitch classic on the 500m dome -- Amon Rudh; a wall which rivals the Stawamus Chief for free climbing potential. We bivy'd just below the summit, the next day connecting the once thought "isolated dome" to Ironface Pk and the ridges east to the Mount Alfred trail. New school alpinist attitudes. The start of July was marginal weather wise, but stoke was high with moondawg mania. Good friends Colin & Cam came from California to see what Coastal BC was all aboot! They got a grand tour of The Valley, but the real dream was with The Daniels...Yes, The Daniels. Some of you may not know yet, but you soon may. It materialized so easily but would not relent to our ambition quite so soon. We spent seven days in the most mystical river valley I may ever see. What did we see??? The largest granite monoliths in North America? The new mecca? What we definitely saw was mist. More questions than answers after machetes could clear all but the heavy shroud of cloud hiding this fairyland of 1400m walls from us.

Cameron Moustaffi leads the 2nd pitch of Building Gondolin

After some time at sea we were back home in the Eldred. Feeling ready to get on some longer hikes Zoe & I attempted to get on the North Powell, a 40km ridge walk extending from the Eldred valley North to Toba Inlet. The "getting on" proved tougher than thought. While putting our shoes back on after a river crossing, with our packs on the ground beside us, a beautiful grizzly came grumbling around the corner. His head low and not budging any of his ground, we backed off unable to grab the bags. I returned a few minutes after to go get them, but Zoe's was nowhere to be seen, and to this day is still not found! Startled, we returned to base camp and we turned our efforts to developing a line on the far-right side of Carag-Dur. Weaving up and in between overgrown abandoned projects, out emerged a beautiful direct 4 pitch crack line with climbing to 5.10+, a sure to be classic, "Building Gondolin".

Two rucksack wanderers cross a glacier during sunset on Brighton Peak. North Powell Divide Aug. 2016.

Soon came Redbeard to mix up the elements for the rising full moon of August. Four of us, Red, Max, myself & Zoe started out for real on the North Powell. Story of the Summer, the forecast was splitter, it turned out to be marginal and changing by the hour. The divide was magic. The perfect amount of exposure along the sinuous ridge. Constant shifting cloud cover created sublime colours all day, unforgettable sunrise and set. The views of John Clarke's Castle stood out the entire trip. This mountain is surrounded 360 degrees by forest valley; completely unique as every other mountain in the entire divide connects one way or another to each other. It rises vertically off the valley floor in all 360 degrees. Multiple 1000m walls, all barren of vegetation create a permanent Ansel Adam's vista. On Day 4 of the route, 95% finished the divide, the weather took a turn, and we were held in a cloud for 72 hours. Out on Day 7 with a small clearing, down the steep, bouldery Well Creek. A magnificent Coast thrash under 1000m walls lining an hourglass shaped canyon. 15km into our logging road tromp we were picked up by fallers finishing their day, who without hesitation brought us all the way back to town even dropping us straight off at Save On Foods.

Momentum weather and the moon on our side Zoe, Red & I hitched another ride up Powell Lake a few days later to get on the Daniels Divide. A little more confident with the Daniels after seven days there in July. August 17th we set off from the docks at the head of Powell Lake and spent the day walking the 19km of logging road, elk trails and sometimes the river itself, eventually finding a perfect campsite on a spacious sandbar. Day 2 got us up to Daniels Lake, an out of this world teal alpine lake pouring off the El Cap sized walls falling to valley floor.

We got high above Chusan Creek climbing three peaks in the afternoon heat, reveling in views going way up the Tahumming River. We chose to travel at night to avoid the +30 degree temps. Zoe woke us up around midnight and got us going on the ocean of pure white slab. It got a little vertical, and we did some good things under the moon. 5 or 6 hours later we crashed just before sunrise for a few hours of rest. Up with the blazing sun soon after, Day 3 was never ending and carried us over nearly the entire divide. We saw a small friendly grizzly above Marika Lake. We then got to summit some of the Daniels' largest walls. Too magnificent to describe, you gotta get out there if you are into putting up 40+ pitch trad lines in an easily accessed river valley. We traversed the slabs above Sac's Lake, gawking over its what must be 1200m wall rising from lakeshore to alpine summit. Camp was made on heatherbed on top a chiseled flat summit surrounded by tarns right at the apex of the Powell, Daniels Rivers junction. Epic.

Finding a campsite isn't too difficult out here. Daniels Divide Aug. 2016

A lot of hiking called for more climbing shenanigans. There was a wall, splitted and vert that we had scoped in June. On the word of a local, we found our way to the base of what has become "Amon Gwareth, The Hill of Watch".

Binocular prophecy fulfilled we went one pitch up and rapped. A taste of the wall which is defined by its dozens of columnar corner systems. We drove back into The Valley to see Max & Redbeard working the Weenite Roaster; an overhanging 9" offwidth splitting a 50ft tall boulder. Above us two more were new routing on the West Main Buttress, while a couple corners over two lovebirds fondled the classic 13 pitch "Against the Current". The Valley was feeling good. Adventures on Amon Gwareth soon produced two ground-up traditional lines: Look Before You Leap III 5.10 R 7 pitches, and Shenanigans 5.9+, neither requiring a single bolt, the latter producing stellar free climbing on a flawless corner system from bottom to top of the wall.

Amon Gwareth

Poised in pink, Zoe leads the 4th pitch of Shenanigans on Amon Gwareth. Slide Mountain hides all but a beautiful basin..

September soon saw us scrambling to the clinically clean alpine granite in the Emerald Valley. A three hour hike from the Emma Lake trailhead, we found ourselves camped in splitter heaven. High on South facing cliff bands our party of five climbed one after the other five star, 20m splitter. Hands, fists and fingers were all overwhelmed with abrasive joy jamming the perfect alpine rock. Views of the Pacific Ocean, jagged skylines and infinite ice to the North created an incredible ambiance.

Zoe Manson crushing perfect alpine granite. Emerald Valley. Sep. 2016.

Some late season rambles on the ridges behind Carag-Dur & The Mainer gave us some of the most unforgettable views of the season. A sunset rainbow over Mount Alfred, a goat dyno'ing up fifth class terrain; waking a black bear up from his bed early one morning, and getting to walk The Peninsula , a seldom visited spur of ridge coming off the SE side of Slide.

A rare sunset rainbow blankets Mount Alfred creating one of the most magical sunsets of our lives.

On the last weekend of the season as Zoe & I enjoyed the last alpine frolic for the season, good friends Matt & Rob were across The Valley new routing on Amon Rudh, while another friend climbed Alfred, all of us connected by a magical spirit -- the spirit of the Eldred.. Serendipitously Western Forest Products happened to be surveying their "to-be" cut-blocks beneath Amon Rudh. Cut-blocks which would not only see a the complete removal of an 8000+ year old ecosystem, but would destroy access to an amount of rock on par with a good chunk of Squamish. This caused immediate concern from all of us in the local climbing community. Our initial thoughts were the cut-blocks might see the saws in a very short time, perhaps as soon as the next week. The poignant timing of the whole situation, being that Rob (the founder of climbing in The Valley) was on Amon Rudh for his first time, having taken a small physical hiatus from climbing in The Valley was a sort of apex for the abuse that has been going on in this valley for decades. This energy transmitted its way from the wild spirit place (Eldred) into our hearts and poured itself out through social media, rapidly. Within a day we were organizing ourselves. Online petitions, and hundreds of helpful "shares" helped make this issue viral in the climbing community, locally and internationally. All of this on the same day the Federal government approved a $28 billion LNG Plant in Prince Rupert, the same month the Musgmagw Dzawada’enuwx Nation of Kingcome Inlet banned all fish farms in their territory, and not two weeks before thousands of gallons of diesel emptied into the Central Coast near Bella Bella. It is no surprise after 40+ years of privatized industry being allowed to do whatever they want in the back country, people are now standing up for the preservation of what wild land we have left.

All of a sudden there is the smallest amount of optimism on the Coast. People are banding together, the stoke is spreading, hope is on the horizon and we are headed in its direction. The area of ancient forest proposed to be logged beneath Amon Rudh is still scheduled by WFP to be logged by 2018, and many more immediate larger blocks are scheduled in just as valuable valleys nearby. Not to mention General Electric plans on building run-of-the-river hydro projects in nearly every river valley adjacent, etc etc. The situations are complex, but action is simple: be there to be witness to what is going on; tons of major climbing development, world-class back packing, and the chance to live free in a wild spirit place.

For now the Eldred rests for the Winter, but as Winter turns to Spring a wave of enthusiasm is poised to sweep over the magical, the mythical, Eldred River Valley.

The entrance of the Eldred River Valley. Walls From L to R: Caradhras, Carag-Dur, The Citadel, The Promised Land, West Main Wall, & The Wall of a Million Dihedrals. Topped off by Slide Mtn in the back ground.