Ilia, Ben, Tina, Romina and myself joined forces for a climb of Mount Hartzell on April 5. We met at the trailhead at 4.45am and hit the trail around 5am.
Shortly over an hour later, after climbing the usual Joffre luge track, we reached Upper Joffre Lake and enjoyed sunrise over Slalok Mountain.
We soon crossed the frozen lake and began the climb towards the seracs at the edge of Matier Glacier, enjoying the sunrise as it developed.
Parties seem to take different routes here, with some opting to follow the moraine, while other’s (ourselves included) kept right of the moraine. Both have their pros and cons, the moraine is an easier climb, but getting off it requires some steep sidehilling, while right of the moraine is a more involved climb with route finding, but less side hilling. Either way, we soon reached the seracs, keeping clear of their fall line.
Eventually we topped out of the relentlessly steep climb, some of us keeping on snowshoes while a couple preferred crampons. Snow was mostly supportive, but some spots were icy and others a thin layer of snow over ice. Happy to reach the glacier, we assessed the condition and decided we needn’t rope up. We did all put harnesses on though.
The glacier was well filled in, and with sun on our faces and daylight upon us, crossing the glacier was stunning, surrounded by the majestic peaks like Joffre, Slalok, Matier, Spetch and our objective, Hartzell.
We soon reached the notch between Hartzell and Matier, where the wind was howling. The climb looked straightforward from here, but we all switched to crampons and got our axe out just in case.
Ilia led the charge up, and as expected it was simple, never too steep (maybe 35 degrees) and at no point felt like a fall would be problematic. Steps were easy to kick in. The views of Matier were ridiculous from here.
The climb brings you to the false summit, followed by an easy and insanely photogenic ridge walk to the true summit, with Joffre Peak and countless more offering a beautiful backdrop.
All that was left to do was enjoy the moment. The sun was out, the wind suddenly stopped and the views from Hartzell were surely hard to beat. Some of our crew have done Matier and noted the views here were actually better.
After soaking in the views and taking a stupid amount of photos, we headed back down (facing out) and across the glacier, which was still supportive and unaffected by the rising temperatures.
Back at the toe of the glacier, we put the crampons back on ready for the steep descent down to the lake. Descending this is much easier in terms of route finding, and we took a quick detour to the broken seracs for some cool photos.
In short order we reached the upper lake, and sheepinshly crossed it, since the thin layer of snow on top had melted away, revealing blue ice. Not fully confident in how thick this ice was, we didn’t linger. We soon joined the crowds heading back to the car, after what was a 10/10 day in the mountains.
Round trip was around 9 hours c2c.
