Williams Peak, Goetz Peak -- lightly annotated trip report originally posted to clubtread.com
August 9-10th, 2005
Participants: [clubtread.com members] cjb, tash

I routinely spend forty to sixty hour weeks at a busy retail job where I interact with people all day long, and people are a mixed bag. So, in my spare time, I like to go where other people aren’t. In practice, this means visiting places that haven’t been written up a million times online. The Black Tusk is a fun hike, but there is nothing new that my trip report or photographs can add to it. Remote and obscure places, on the other hand, allow me to get out and feel like an explorer, let me contribute new details to the online world, and help focus my attention on all the things around me – plant and animal life; physical geography; even weather – slighted by a culture that valorizes Hard! Extreme! Climbing! over everything else.

I found Goetz Peak last year by browsing bivouac.com for peaks with little or no online documentation. “Oh yeah,” said [brother] Dru, “you’ll have a good time. The approach is kind of bushy, though.”

Three attempts, 2004:

1. Drove to Foley Lake in torrential rain. Tried to drive up the Williamson Lake road for a better view of the south side of the valley. Got the rental car stuck in mud.

2. Hiked along the Foley Creek FSR past the lake. No sign of the logging road supposed to lead to the scree bowl below Goetz’s northwest face.

3. Hiked to the end of the Foley Creek FSR and up into the drainage between Goetz and Northgraves. Almost stepped on a surprised and unhappy black bear in an avalanche swath. Retreated with Mr. Bear huffing and bluff-charging me.

Some time in fall 2004 ace solo scrambler Don Funk posted on bivouac.com to the effect that he was also eyeing Goetz. What was it about this scruffy, seriously obscure peak? At any rate, I figured I’d better go climb it fast, before Don beat me to it.

Late summer, 2005: I posted a trip for my only two free days in August, a Monday and a Tuesday, thus eliminating 99% of clubtread’s membership as companions. Only one brave soul, tash, signed up. I’d never met or climbed with her before, but her trip resume sounded pretty skookum.

We rendezvoused at tash’s house in Burnaby and drove out to Chilliwack with a stop at Tim’s [Canadian doughnut chain] to examine the map and at Save-on-Foods to pick up a disposable camera. Tash was politely incredulous at my misguided three-peaks-in-two-days plan (Williams, Goetz, “Porcupine”), and my sixty five pound overnight pack.

We parked at the Williams Ridge trailhead, mounted the obligatory DON’T BOTHER BREAKING IN – ALL VALUABLES REMOVED FROM VEHICLE sign on the dash, and set off up the 26% grade trail. Tash had climbed Mount Price the previous day with a group of female triathletes, but that didn’t stop her from pulling ahead of me in short order. Then the bugs, blissfully absent at the trailhead, started covert surveillance runs. I struggled into my new MEC [Mountain Equipment Co-Op] “Original Bug Shirt,” only to discover that this was like hiking in a scuba suit, and that it is very hard to avoid veering off the trail when the bug mesh over your face is totally covered in a thick film of sweat.

The Williams Ridge Trail lived up to its reputation for steepness. We took a lunch break in the shade shortly after reaching the ridge crest, and checked out great views of Webb, McDonald, Rexford, the Illusions, and Slesse, shimmering across the valley in the heat-haze. tash particularly admired Mt. Rexford’s two huge mid-fifth buttresses, and quizzed me on the approach beta. Then we were off again, tash leading the way and me sweating and cursing in the rear.

Another hour or two, and we reached the knob at the end of the ridge overlooking the infamous “scree bowl” between Williams Ridge and Williams Peak. We climbed up above the knob for a better view, and to enjoy the super-concentrated ripe blueberries that were everywhere on the ground. The scree bowl looks strangely reduced in photographs, like something you could cross in ten or fifteen minutes. It took us about an hour and a half to descend into it, cross it, and then slowly work our way back up under Williams’ west face. Matt Gunn’s Scrambles guidebook identifies a distinctive “dirt ramp” leading up onto the south face from the top right hand corner of the scree bowl. We cached our packs at the base of the ramp, then scrambled up the ramp and traversed several hundred feet across the south face to reach a distintive heathery gully dropping straight down from the summit. We climbed straight up the gully, exposed but never difficult scrambling, until level with the summit ridge, where we enjoyed the late summer sun, swapped VOC tales, and surveyed the ridge north toward Goetz. A long way to go, much longer than I’d expected, with lots of complex micro-terrain. The ridge walk from Goetz to Northgraves or Porcupine looked even hairier, thin in places, dropping over a thousand feet in others to forested cols. My plans for a grand tour around the ridgeline took a beating.

“Well, we can always come back,” said tash tactfully. We deployed Rose the stuffed cat, took some summit shots, then scrambled back down the gully and back to the packs, arriving just as the sun was setting. We camped on a flat little heathery platform just west of the appraoch ramp, tash in her tent and me in my new bivy sack. How, I wondered, had tash managed to fit so much gear into what looked like an ordinary daypack? The bugs were fierce, so we quickly turned in, waking several times in the night to gaze up at Williams’ huge silhouette looming blackly overhead in the starlight, the Milky Way spilled out in a north-south line, and the occasional glint of a satellite or redeye flight passing high overhead. A warm wind blew through the night, gently rocking the trees.

Dawn. We struggled up, and, with a daypack between us, hiked up to the col between Williams and a subsidiary bump to the west [GR 097430 on 92 H/4 (grid reference on federal 1:50,000 map sheet)]. Goetz looked a long way off. I mentally anticipated the trip there, the trip back, and the long slog down the ridge. Then tash and I looked at one another, nodded, and we set off.

We descended from the col, sidehilling across a mix of boulders and talus below Williams’ west face to reach the base of a 120m bump northwest of Williams [GR 098436]. We scrambled up through stunted trees, heather, and small rock bands to reach a fine position overlooking Williams’ huge north face and a beautiful small blue hanging lake, surrounded by enormous white granite boulders (This lake is shown on the TRIM mapsheet but not on the federal 92 H/4). The eastern edge of the “bump” is sheer, overhanging in places; we saw no easy way to descend to the lake. From the bump’s summit we descended north along the ridge through small bluffs and rock bands, then back up toward Goetz proper. Much of this terrain is complex; the best route to follow wanders back and forth on both sides of the ridge crest, and involves scrambling up and around rocky defiles, small sets of bluffs, and thickets of stunted trees. In every case, we were able to find a 2nd class route up, with the exception of a half pitch of 3rd class scrambling right below the broad summit ridge, which involves climbing loose rock using tree roots as handholds, with a steep drop below.

Once on the summit, we added a few stones to the pitiful cairn (3 stones when we arrived!). We lingered for half an hour on the summit, naming peaks and swapping stories, then carefully downclimbed the ridge. The heat was now fierce, and we were both out of water. We slowly made our way back along the ridge, resting here and there in the shade, climbed back over the “bump,” and dropped down to the boulder field, where we refilled our water bottles from snowmelt and I interrupted two flies busily copulating on my leg (tash: “Jeez! Get a room!”). Rehydrated, we crossed the col and dropped back to camp.

By now it was midafternoon. We packed quickly. Tash found a 10 cent Euro coin in the heather by her tent, I struggled with my pack’s compression straps, and then we were off again.

The descent down the scree bowl in the blazing afternoon sun left a lot to be desired. The trek across the baking white rocks in the middle of the bowl wasn’t much fun, either. I stalled out halfway up the gully on the far side and simply lay with streams of sweat pouring off my forehead, puffing like a steam train.

Ten or fifteen minutes in the shade provided enough incentive to stagger up the rest of the way to the knob and the beginning of the marked trail. The descent down the ridge was almost pleasant, with more VOC adventure stories and a shared dislike of the Gordon Campbell government to pave the way, but once we started the final descent from the ridge tash powered on ahead and I was left hobbling, leaning heavily on my trekking poles, with my toes knocking against the ends of my boots. More than once I had to sit down, wipe the sweat out of my eyes, and continue, until at last I staggered out of the forest right at twilight to find tash and the unmolested rental car. Quick stops at 7-11 and Starbucks and we were on the highway home, hydrated and happy, but a little puzzled at civilization after thirty-odd hours without seeing or hearing anyone but ourselves.
- posted by cjb @ 10:14 PM