Wright and Algonquin via the Angle Slide

July 6, 2013

Rob and I rolled out of bed at the Tmax and Topo hostel and had a quick breakfast. A short drive brought us to the Loj and we started hiking down the Van Hovenburg expressway. We did not know exactly what we were in for so we packed a rope, harnesses and a rack of trad gear which made the packs heavy. This weekend was my last training run before heading out west so I did not mind carrying the extra weight. That that does not kill you, only make you stronger, right? Or should that be spelled Wright today? Anyway, we flew down the trail, passing many people along here. The weather looked threatening, but it was not raining yet, so the plan was to try to climb the slide beofre the skies openned up. At Marcy Dam we got a glimpse of our objective, set a bearing and bushwacked off from behind the lean-tos. In short order and a remarkably open forested whack we found the apropriate drainage and scrambled into it over a bunch of broken trees and boulders. The next section was an awesome canyon scramble which was pretty neat. We moved on upwards and a section of broken trees choking the entire slide forced us back into the woods for a short bit. We rounded the bend of the angle and viewed the lovely clean slab above us. Even though it had lots of wet spots, the freshly exposed rock surfaces were very grippy. Near the top, the slide split into two. We chose the left arm as it looked a little steeper and had a neat crack to finish. We did not bother getting the rock gear out and just soloed this all the way up. The crux was about 10m below the top. This was the steepest part, and some ledgy stuff required traversing across in an exposed position. The final crack turned out to be very loose, dirty, and not so much fun... in fact a little bit scary. Nevertheless we reached the trees safely, and with much difficulty pulled ourselves into the dense forest using rotten roots and twigs for hand holds. The climb was over almost dissapointingly quickly. We still had 300m of vertical to climb, but now faced a bushwhack from hell. We swam through the cripple brush, climbed over rotten logs and pulled lieback manoevers off of roots while smearing on 20cm thick moss cushions. Occasionally the forest would open up and we could move a little faster, but it would quickly close back in again to dense inpentrable bushes. Finally we puched out onto the ski trail and had a fairly easy, albeit switchbacky route to the summit. We topped out just as it started to rain. We hunkered down in a sheltered spot and chatted with the summit steward as we ate our lunch. On the way down we checked out the airplane wreck which was pretty interesting. As we made our descent the clouds cleared. At the trail junction we decided to take a run up Algonquin as it was now a pretty nice day. With all the gear in our packs the climb was definitely an aerobic workout, but in short order we found ourselves on top along with a small crowd of others enjoying the spectacular views. We relaxed in the sunshine for a while and wandered around exploring the different lookouts. The trek over to Iroquois looked tempting, but we resisted its pull. Finally we head back down the relentless 1000m boulder hop. Stopped once to refill some water bottles from a stream, and another time to look at a neat waterfall. Finally we reached the Loj after a 9 hour day. Went back to the hostel and had some beers on the porch prior to going for a yummy supper across the street.

First bit of bushwaching... fairly open forest.