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kunlun_shan
Mountain climber
SF, CA
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Jun 26, 2017 - 10:30am PT
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Thanks for the links and mentioning the prior traverses, F. The two Fernie women, in their blog, do say they incorporated Ryan B.'s GPS track into their planning.
I agree that the biggest props for this route go to the pioneers, Vance Culbert, Guy Edwards and John Millar, the latter two of who were never seen again after setting out on a climb of Devil's Thumb in 2003. It's obviously much more difficult to be the first on a route of this magnitude, not knowing if its even possible.
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Oplopanax
Mountain climber
The Deep Woods
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Jun 26, 2017 - 10:30am PT
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Worth noting that the 2001 crew skiied the whole thing.
The Traverse the Coast 2013 had to packraft a significant component due to low snow that year, and did a shorter traverse as a result.
The 2017 traverse skipped a couple sections (including the entire Waddington Range, and the ski and walk out from the edge of the Monarch to the Bella Coola Valley) using a helicopter. At least they were honest about it though.
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Timmc
climber
BC
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Jun 26, 2017 - 04:23pm PT
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Had a chance to help these cool women out on their journey. Very inspirational.
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Oplopanax
Mountain climber
The Deep Woods
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Jun 27, 2017 - 03:09pm PT
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From their final blog:
"This was a hard day for me. The biggest storm of the whole trip had kept us tent bound as around 2oo mm of precipitation dumped on us over 3.5 days. This was the day after it finally cleared and we got our first look at the Devil’s Thumb rising up from the Stikine Icecap. The infamous mountain claimed the lives of two of the most heroic and tough mountaineers in Canadian mountaineering history, Guy Edwards and John Millar. It was hard to see this sacred place and think of them still out there somewhere under the ice and snow. As huge slab avalanches released all around us that day when the sun hit the slopes for the first time since the storm, I vowed to stay as safe as I possibly could for the rest of the journey. They were the first pioneers of the Coast Range Traverse and while we came close, we could not accomplish what they did – traversing the entire coast range in a single winter season (we skipped a couple hundred kilometers including Terrace to the Nass River and Whiting Lake to Juneau.)We made mistakes, we got lucky. It’s so unforgiving out there. I firmly believe our greatest accomplishment was surviving in those mountains for 5.5 months, over all that terrain and never having to pull out the first aid kit for more than a band-aid. I hope people never forget the two brave men who accomplished so much in such a short time. Guy was the same age as I when he climbed the Devils Thumb and John was even younger. They will always be my personal heroes and I feel a great privilege to have been able to visit their final resting place."
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