Distance: 10.9 mi.
Elevation Gain: 6000 ft.
Jim had previously attempted to climbed in the Joffre area and really wanted to get back to climb the NW face of Matier. We both had time available to make it a 3 day weekend, so why not do the long drive up to beautiful Canada.
We left early Saturday morning for the 5 hour drive. We took our time, as we were only hiking to our basecamp at the bottom of the glacier, setting out just before noon. This trail is quite nice and we quickly found ourselves at the Upper Joffre Lake at 1:15. From the south end of the lake, the going was substantially tougher. We struggled at first to find a place to easily cross the braided Joffre Creek. We had to backtrack a bit to a better crossing and I still ended up with one wet foot. From here we headed up and left through talus and slabs past the toe of the glacier. There were some tricky parts through here with waterfalls coming down through the slabs. The weight of overnight packs and the heat was starting to get to us.
We made it up to where the terrain flattens out below Joffre (7,200′) at about 5:30 pm and found a suitable camp in the rocks. It had been a really poor snow year and with the heat this weekend the snow on the glacier was all soupy. Upon seeing the NW face we realized it was might not be the best climb. There wasn’t much snow on route and there were some large crevasses and debris that might not allow passage. We elected to just try to scramble the northeast ridge to increase our chances of success.
We enjoyed one of the brightest moons I’ve ever seen overnight and took our time in the morning. We roped up and left camp around 8 and headed over toward the NE ridge of Matier. We were had approached a snow ramp that went up onto the rocks but when we got closer we discovered the rock scramble looked inviting. We scrambled up just to the right of the snow the whole way and enjoyed an enjoyable class 3 scramble even though we didn’t really know much about the route. We did encounter two Canadians coming down the route and after a brief chat realized no one really approaches how we went anymore. The route up Cerise Creek to Keith’s Hut and the Anniversary Glacier is generally considered easier…well now we know.
We reached the top around 11 and enjoyed the views from summit to ourselves over lunch. The views are amazing here but it was a little bit smoky. We followed our route back to camp by 1:45; the glacier had creeks running on top of it by this point. We relaxed at camp for over an hour, while packing up, heading back down to the lakes at 3 pm. We were careful through some of the loose and wet areas but ended up having to rappel down one particularly slabby area. The rappel anchor was a mess of slings just through around different boulders. Jim unfortunately lost his footing at one point and ended up in a waterfall. I was very careful not to do the same.
We finally reached the lake at 6:30, where I took a diatom sample for a citizen science project I had been contributing to and then we found a nice camp on a peninsula by the lake. Since it was Sunday night, there were not many others around at this point.
The following morning we took our sweet time, since we had all day to make our way home. We left camp at 9 and hiked back to the car by 10:15. We stopped in Squamish for some food and beer at Howe Sound Brewery before crossing the border. My first trip north of Whistler and I’m itching to get back for more!
(Download the free Gaia GPS app on your phone to view tracks and then get a Gaia GPS membership if you want offline access. Discount below!)
Recommended brew: Howe Sound Woolly Bugger Barley Wine
Gear Used:
- Backpacking tent
- Gaiters
- Glacier glasses
- GPS
- Harness
- Helmet
- Ice screws (not used)
- Mountaineering boots
- Overnight pack
- Pickets
- Prusiks
- Rope
- Sleeping pad
- Steel crampons
- Steel ice tools (only used a single as an ice axe)
- Summer sleeping bag
- Stove
- Trekking poles
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