North Face on Mt Robson

Description of the Climb

Friday, August 17
11:00 Reached Robson Pass via a helicopter by Helimagic.
12:30 Crossed the stream at the N side of Berg Lake and reached the
moraine. Started climbing the buttress to the left of Mist Glacier.
18:30 Reached Berg Glacier at ~8200 ft. Bivvied there.

Saturday, August 18
5:00 Started on the glacier toward the bergschrund. The crevasses are
quite open, so had to do some tricky route finding.
11:00 Crossed the bergschrund just to the right of the main runnel of
North Face. Started climbing the face which was in good condition.
Some snow at the first 1/3 of the face covers solid ice. Hard ice at
the upper portion of the face. Used ice screws throughout the climb.

Sunday, August 19
1:30am Reached heavily corniced Emperor Ridge. Due to the time of the
night, the cornices were frozen solid which allowed us to negotiate 2
pitches of traversing the ridge.
3:00am Bivvied at the flat spot about 100m away from the summit.
8:00am Summit
8:30am Started down the track left by the previous parties on East
ridge toward Kain Face. Due to sun exposure and high temps, the snow
became soft very fast. Had to be extra careful on steep sections and
snow bridges.
12:30 Reached the "roof" of Kain Face. As predicted by the ranger at
the station (Wayne), the condition of snow was very much avalanche
prone. We could see little slides forming at the bottom of the face as
we probed the snow at the top of the face. After down climbing for 50m
with top belay, we decided to climb back to the roof and wait for the
face to solidify.

Monday, August 20
3:00am Started down climbing the face with top belay. The second
person was down climbing in the steps of the first.
6:00am Crossed the bergschrund using the rappel anchor left by the
previous parties. The anchor was directly under the cornices at the
top of the face (had to traverse the face to the left a little to find
it).
7:00am Started traversing the ridge around Robson Col. Used a rappel
ring at one point.
12:00noon Reached the col between Robson and Resplendid mountains.
Started down Robson col. The snow was already very soft, so we had to
be extra careful on the bridges.
13:30 Reached the bottom portion of Robson Col. This is where we saw
the tracks from the rescue operation a day ago. The tracks confused us
a little as we mistakenly took them for the tracks out of the glacier.
15:00 Reached Extinguisher Tower.
19:00 Reached Berg Lake campgrounds.