Cathedral Lakes Park

July 27-Aug 2, 2023

Spurred on by the promise of beautiful alpine granite, Nicole and I had been scheming a climbing trip into Cathedral Lakes Park for most of the year. The park offers a wonderful combination of fairly high peaks, amazing granite, and mild weather. All this without any pesky glaciers to hinder access after such a warm spring.

Day 1: Approach

With some forecasted thunderstorms on the first day. I came to the conclusion that since the rock would dry fast we may as well brave a storm on the approach to give us an extra day of climbing . We drove from Vancouver turning off before Keremeos to Ashnola FSR. We took Nicole’s RAV4, the road was in great shape and would have been manageable in a low clearance car and careful driving. Past the main entrance for Cathedral Lakes, there is a small pullout for a few cars at the Wall Creek trailhead. We shouldered our oversized packs and hit the trail.

The hike started off sunny and clear, sweating in the summer heat. After an hour though the expected thunderstorm rolled in. Shortly before leaving the well trod centennial trail, the heavens opened up, and hailed down on us. The trail to wall creek is often faint and sometimes seemingly non-existent. There is very little bush to whack through, but the astounding amount of deadfall more than makes up for it. We soon found ourselves awkwardly clamouring over these slippery wet logs, soaked from the rain and hail. The 70lb packs left little grace in the operation. Despite the trail being faint if you simply follow your way along Wall Creek, you will find your way to the meadows.

The storm was short lived and after a few hours the clouds broke and we found ourselves in the meadows south of Mt. Grimface. These lush meadows would serve as our camp for the next week.

Day 2: Matriarch-Macrable-Grimface Traverse 5.7

We set off in the morning with our sights set on the Matriarch-Macabre-Grimface traverse. A moderate traverse crossing over three weathered granite summits. The Beckey book has a fantastic hand drawn topo for this route. From the camp we headed east to the Matriarch-Deacon Col, and then North Towards Matriarch.

From a notch in the ridge, I belayed Nicole up a short section of modest 5th class. After rambling along the ridge through easy terrain, a short and perfect hand crack guards the summit of Matriarch. From the summit of Matriarch simply follow the ridge and you can’t go wrong. A couple rappels, a bolted au cheval, and a short bolt ladder brings you to the summit of Macabre Tower.

From the summit of Macabre, another rappel brings you down onto a huge chockstone spanning a deep gully. From here a couple moves brings you onto easy walkable slabs. Walk along the ridge until you start scrambling down towards the col before Grimface.

From the Grimface-Macabre Col, you follow the SE notch route up to the summit. This section quite intuitive to follow. Try and find the path of least resistance up a series of low angle chimneys. The original grade for this is 5.7, but it’s very featherbagged by alpine standards, and the cruxes are short and secure. We ended up soloing this section to the summit of Grimface. The climbing although easy, is very fun and 3 dimensional, working it’s way under multiple large chockstones.

After summiting Grimface an easy scramble continuing west from the summit brings you to perfect scree slopes of weathered gravel. A short descent will have you hooting your way back down to meadow camp in less than half an hour.

Day 3: Attempt on Sentinel Direct 5.10C

This would be our hardest day of the trip, setting off to climb the Sentinel Direct up the Deacon. An 8 pitch 10c up the NE face. Not being heroic climbers by any stretch, I knew climbing alpine 10s on a remote wall would be near my limit.

We found the first pitch easily from a good mountain project route description. Nicole took the first lead up a beautiful steep splitter 10a hand crack. The pitch was beautiful and rivalled quality pitches in Squamish and the Bugaboos. After following I took the second lead, a 10C fingercrack. This pitch shut me down, I hung on the rope as I used my nut tool to excavate lichen out of the crack for gear placements. After hang dogging the low crux the pitch eased off into another beautiful hand crack.

The next couple pitches deteriorated in quality, following dirty cracks, and not very notable, save for a wildly exposed step across at the beginning of the 4th pitch. After this we definitely lost the route, we traversed right along a ledge looking for a reasonable weakness to follow. Nicole lead up a cool flake, I took a lead after and found difficult climbing with little protection. Unable to aid or safely climb it, I bailed off the pitch.

Pretty certain we were off route at this point and losing time in the day we decided to bail. Every option looked steep with limited protection. With our double ropes we managed to sling 3 horns and make it back to the ground in a few long rappels.

By the time we were back at the Deacon Matriarch Col the sun was starting to set, I was happy to be off the wall and heading back to camp.

Day 4: Hiking & Exploring

Wanting to explore the area, we left the rack at camp and hiked around for a full day. Climbing up the ridge we gained Cathedral Rim Trail, before dropping off the ridge down to Ladyslipper Lake. If you go for a climbing trip to Wall Creek, I would highly recommend you hike around and explore the lakes on the other side of the ridge. The combination of weathered granite, larch forests, and stunningly blue lakes make it a spectacular area to hike.

Day 5: “Rest Day”

We decided to have a more relaxed day and spend some of the time resting and reading in our gorgeous campsite. We played around on the boulder at camp and read our books lounging in the sun. Eventually the sheer amount of flies and mosquitoes started to drive us crazy, we took shelter in the tent. After an hour sweating it out in the tent we decided to scramble back up into the alpine to take refuge from the bugs and heat.

We decided to scramble back up the SE Notch route on Grimface. We scrambled up the gully towards the notch S of Grimface. Easy scrambling/hiking lead us back to the base of the route described in the Traverse on Day 1. On the way up we passed by many beautiful looking and possibly unclimbed splitters.

Near the summit of Grimface we found a blissfully bug free and shady spot to read. We pulled out our sleeping pads and lounged in the alpine for a couple hours. Before screeing back down to camp for dinner.

Day 6: Needs More Cowbell 5.8

We headed out from camp and wrapped over Deacon Matriarch Col again, traversing below Denture Ridge. Eventually we made our way over Denture Ridge and over to Goat Lake side to climb Needs More Cowbell 5.8.

The climb had some nice sections, but was also ledgy and dirty, and I was a bit underwhelmed. But all in all it was an enjoyable climb and we topped out another summit, climbing to the top of Boxcar. We downclimbed south of the Summit to Boxcar Denture Col. On the way back we scrambled all of Denture Ridge till we got to the notch with Matriarch. It was nice scrambling up to 4th class. The rock was good quality on Denture Ridge save for a few loose gullys.

Day 7: Hike Out

Hiking back out took us half the time as the way in. We stopped by Keremeos to get some delicious fruit for the drive back to Vancouver.