Introduction
![Mount Huber via North Glacier]()
Mount Huber via North Glacier
Once again, Cam and I were prevented were climbing Skyladder due to weather. In fact, the weather forecast had deteriorated all week and it was starting to look like anything we tried would be a failed attempt. We settled on Mount Huber as our objective a few days prior over beers. We liked the idea of getting and 11,000er and it seemed straightforward. We knew we would have to walk up the O'Hara road, but we hoped to catch the bus on the way out. Without any real expectations of success, we rolled into the Lake O'Hara parking lot at 9pm on Saturday night, prepared our bags and then closed our eyes for 45 minutes.
Approach
We woke up at 10:45 pm to torrential rain. I remember thinking about just calling it quits right there, but then figured that the rain might stop on our way in. We had looked at the forecast and it seemed as if there might be a small weather window Sunday morning. It was still Saturday night, so we hauled ourselves out of the vehicle to get going. Sure enough, the moment we stepped out of the car, the rain quit! We couldn't believe it. It had poured all night and as soon as we got up it ended. We had unbelievable luck.
![Mount Huber via North Glacier]()
Mount Huber via North GlacierWe trudged 11 km down the Lake O'Hara road through the middle of the night. It was a good muscle warm up and it got our minds in climbing mode as opposed to sleep mode. At about 2 am we started up Wiwaxy Gap trail and reached the top of the gap around 3:15 am. From there we picked our way up and left through some ledges on the West side of Mount Huber. We knew we would be arriving at the first climbing section at about 3:45, so when we hit a wall at that time, we knew we had to be close.
Climb
We had read that there was a few bolts and an anchor station somewhere on the wall we were staring at. Both of the descriptions we had talked of a tooth or bulge in the rock that we would have to pass. We did not remember passing anything like that, but our guts were telling us that we were in the right spot. We put our packs down and looked around at several different places on the wall. For the life of us, we could not see the bolt. We knew this was probably because it was still dark and we were trying to find a tiny piece of metal on a massive wall using only headlamps.
At about 4 am, we decided to go with our guts and scramble up the wall in the place that looked the best to us. We went back to the original weakness we had stopped at and began scrambling up. Sure enough, a bolt suddenly appeared right in front of Cam's face. We should have trusted our guts from the start. We quickly tied in and pitched out the 20 meter low 5th class section. There were 3 bolts and then an anchor station at the top. The climbing was easy, but was made harder by the moisture on the rocks left over by the rain. After I belayed Cam up to me, we started to see first light on the horizon.
From the top of the vertical section, we began to pick our way up and left to the north side of Huber. We had to navigate through a huge system of ledges following scattered cairns and braided trails. This was some of the funnest 3rd class scrambling I have done all year. The ledges were very aesthetic and the rising sun was creating alpenglow on all the summits to the south and west. Clouds were forming heavily in the valleys but we were well above them. It was a fantastic little bit of mountaineering.
Once we got through the ledge system, we arrived at the lower glacier and got into glacier travel mode. Since there were only two of us, we pretied our prussics and put severeal butterfly knots in the rope. Cam lead the charge across the glacier. We had pretty solid snow conditions. I stayed afloat for the most part, and Cam only broke through the frozen crust here and there. At one point a cloud rose and stole our visibility, but it passed over very quickly bringing us back to bluebird skies. At the end of the lower glacier we had to scramble up a bit of rock to gain the upper glacier.
![Mount Huber via North Glacier]()
Mount Huber via North Glacier
The upper glacier was gorgeous. Fresh snow made the surface incredibly smooth looking and frozen rain made the cream coloured rock on Mount Victoria look amazing. We circled around Huber on the glacier, crossing a few well-bridged, but enormous crevasses until we reached the snowy northeast ridge. We climbed up the ridge, went over lip onto the steeper north face and continued a few meters to the summit. We arrived at 8:15 am and were treated to bluebird skies and an inversion. The valleys were filled with clouds and only the highest of the Lake O'Hara 11,000ers were poking through. It was an incredible sight.
![Mount Huber via North Glacier]()
Mount Huber via North Glacier
Descent
We talked for a moment about doing Victoria as well, but given the fact that we did not know if the good weather would hold, and that the glacier was deteriorating quickly, we elected to save it for another day. A short 20 minute summit break later, we were trudging back down through the snow. It was a straightforward descent. We just followed our tracks out. The ledges were a little more involved on the way down, but we easily found our way back to the rappel station. We rapped down to the lower ledges, descended Wiwaxy Gap and then hung out at Lake O'Hara until a bus picked us up and brought us back to our vehicle. Not bad for an rainy day attempt on an 11,000er. Not bad.
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