Iberville Climb

August 5, 2018

Deb was up and at'er at 03:45 as I graoned in my tent, having had a bit of a fitful sleep last night. Part of my restlessness was due to a lump under my sleeping pad which made it difficult to find a comfortable position, but the main part was nervous anticipation of the day that was about to come. This is the day that we had been planning for the last ten months. Today is the day we would attempt to climb the highest mountain of both Quebec and Newfoundland. Today is the day I will put my limited mountain leadership skills to their biggest test ever. We left camp at 05:00, a suitable alpine start time, anticipating about a sixteen hour day ahead of us. We hiked into Iberville valley along boulder fields, grassy areas, and across patches of snow that were very pleasant to walk on. The mosquitos on the other hand were very bad, so we kept a steady pace and welcomed the occasional gust of wind which gave some temporary relief. A bouldery ridge provided our ascent route to the upper elevations, and this made for an easy walk with the occasional scramble. This ridge brought us all the way to a lovely summit with outstanding views in all directions and down onto a large glacier in Labrador. Iberville summit looks very intimidating as a very crenelated ridge towered over us during the entire climb to this point. Several gendarmes, one I called the Barba Poppa guarded the start of the ridge, and a very distinct one that we named the Gnome, blocked progress along the knife edge about half way along. For now though, we needed to get to the base of Barba Poppa and take it from there. We made a 500 meter sidehill traverse on a steep boulderfield, where the ridge crest plunged down to the glacier with vertical or overhanging exposure. This brought us to a wide open plateau, known as the football field. Cairns dotted the area noting the impressive view points, one of them looking down into a beautiful basin containing a saphire blue glacial tarn. One of the cairns held a plaque paying homage to a couple that had died on this mountain, fifteen years ago. After a quick break we donned our climbing equipment and stashed the excess gear under a big rock, as the true challenge of the day awaited us. We started along the ridge and quickly encountered Barba Poppa. A descent down the left flank got us by this obstacle. We moved slowly and carefully as at this point we remained unroped and it was pretty consistent exposed fourth class terrain. We picked our way along based on what looked to be the easiest path, usually on the left (south) side of the ridge line, but sometimes right upon the crest where wild exposure was experienced with over 1000 feet of air between us and the glacier directly below. As we aproached the Gnome, a sketchy slabby down climb presented itself and I declared that it was time for a rope. I built an anchor and had Debbie belay me across. We tied Paul in the middle and Deb took the end of our 30 meter rope. Once the rope came tight against Paul, Deb would belay him, and once the rope came tight against her, we simul-climbed with me leading until I came to a difficult move which needed a real belay, or I ran out of gear... which was very frequent as I had packed a very light rack. Wherever possible I used terrain features to build anchors or provide protection to save the gear and keep us moving each pitch as far as possible. As necessary, I would stop, build a real anchor, belay Paul, then Deb, and collect the gear from her prior to this whole process beginning again. In this fashion, progress was very slow, but at least it felt secure. As we aproached the final bit of ridgeline, the route finding became tricky. At one point we dropped onto the north side, and while this went, I figure we had a YDS 5.5 pitch of climbing in here. We climbed over the top of the last gendarme and finally an easy but very loose scramble brought us to the top of Iberville! We de-roped and high fived. Took a bunch of photos, had a quick bite to eat, and Deb signed the summit register. The last entry was from August 2017, almost one year prior to today. The climb to this point had take us longer than planned, and as our day was only truly half done, we did not stay up here too long. We traversed back along the ridge in similar climbing fashion, picking an easier route, but with much looser rock. Several times I stopped to trundle large boulders which would have been dangerous to our health if we had dragged the rope across them. Despite the easier route, the way back took even longer, as we spent more time route finding, and sometimes even back tracking. The fact that we were all starting to get tired, hungry, and thirsty (our water supply had run out) did not help things. Just after we passed the Gnome, the terrain got slightly easier and we gladly de-roped, scrambling solo with slow and deliberate movements. We ended up further down the south side of the ridge than we should have, but continued on as we constantly saw ways to move forward. As we wondered where this would actually end, I looked back and saw that we had passed Barba Poppa, and I stated that I think the football field is actually directly above us. It took some more traversing before we found a safe scramble back up, but once we finally did, we popped up, much to our relief, right next to our gear cache. We had water stashed here, so we drank this and ate another quick snack as the sun began to set. I wanted to get down into the flat part of the valley before nightfall, so we finished up quickly and descended the boulder fields over the side traverse to the main descent ridge. From here it was basically a walk, but the boulders were relentless and slowed our progress. Paul tripped and broke his second hiking pole at some point which reinforced the need to be extra cautious again. Night fell, we switched on headlamps, and continued the descent. We came across a big snowfield which I did not recognize from the morning. It was too steep to cross safely without axes, so we skirted around it into steeper terrain. We went down some more and then found that we were on top of some cliffs that we had taken care to avoid during the ascent. There was nothing else to do here, but climb back up and around the high side of the snow, until we reached a much easier slope which brought us down to the bottom of the valley where we stopped for a real break, filling our dehydrated bodies from the cool running water melting out of the snow. We trudged out of Iberville valley, slowing down now as we all were pretty exhausted and footsore at this point. Paul casually piped up that he had two beers stashed at camp as a thank-you gift for bringing him along on this trip, even though he had only started climbing this summer. Like cows coming home to the barn, this news put a spring in our step... I never thought I would get a beer way out here! We left Iberville valley into Base Camp valley and started looking for camp. I would have thought that finding four huge white domes would be no problem, even in the dark, but we wandered down valley until it was clear that we had somehow passed them. I pulled out my list of campsite coordinates, but in this list provided by the park, the base camp was not listed! We studied Deb's GPS, and though she had not marked a way point, the tracklog showed a spot about 700 meters away that we had walked around in circles a few times. Making the gamble that this was the campsite, I set a bearing with the compass and started off in that direction. A few minutes later, four white domes stood clear in the beams of our headlamps and we had completed our day (and on into the next), finishing at 01:00, a full twenty hours since starting. We took shelter from the bugs in the kitchen dome, cooked up some food and drank Paul's beers. An exhausting, but successful day!

Entering Iberville valley in the early morning light.