We planned to leave late in the afternoon and wade through the crowds at Joffre Lakes being that Cerise Creek was out of the question. We wanted to camp up at the third lake for the night and get a good start on our summit attempt. We left the truck in the main parking lot of Joffre Lakes, which was shocking being a Sunday mid-summer. We slung on our packs and began the trek up the trail. We were met with many stares and questions as to whether we were “hikers” and if we would be climbing mountains.
After around an hour and a half we arrived at the upper lake campsite and dropped our bags where we would camp for the night. Quickly we hopped in the lake for a freezing cold dip before the sun set. It was suppertime so we set up camp and ate some food. We watched the crowds slowly dwindle and made friends with some other campers. We sipped some cool beer and watched as the many resident rodents made their way around us skittering in the dark.
The route up to Taylor was poorly marked and not super obviously travelled, but very straight forward. We just stuck to the ridge and kept our boots pointed uphill. We climbed some rocky steps to make things more exciting. We topped out on Taylor (2318m) at 1030. Here views of the Pemberton Valley unfolded below, and we could see Cayoosh across the valley. My cell phone beeped, as I got cell service up here. We had a couple snacks and then carried on back down to the saddle.
We carried on heading east down to another saddle. The route was mainly scree. Once down at the saddle we began the next climb and trended right following the odd cairn and instruction from the guidebook. The hiking turned slowly to light scrambling and we dawned our helmets. I knew the crux was coming. We ended up at a point where the ridge drastically steepened. There were a few cairns around and we weren’t entirely sure which way was best. I wanted to just go straight up, but Darryl led us around further right (east). We ended up on a steep ramp with a small ledge that traversed back left. It looked a bit committed and I worried what it would look like once we climbed up if it wasn’t the right way. Darryl went fearlessly first and hollered that it topped out on a safe flat section. I carefully followed. Here I grasped small handholds until I could do a bigger reach with my left hand to pull myself up. there is video below of some of this section. From here we were back on the ridge and just had a small section of scrambling further to the summit. The ridge was narrow here, capped with large boulders. We scrambled our way along and eventually topped out on the summit of Slalok (2653m) at 1310. It was windy and high clouds had moved in. We had some more snacks and took in the views. The rest of the Joffre Group was visible as well as the vast glacier down below. There were no signs of anyone else out around us, other than the swarms of people we knew were down at the Joffre Lakes. |