August 2, 2025
A few years ago, Jessie and I traversed from North Illusion Peak to Mt. Rexford, starting with the Northeast Buttress of North Illusion (a great route deserving of more attention) and descending Rexford’s Northeast Ridge. We were inspired in part by Kobus Barnard’s report in the 1993 CAJ ([Mount Rexford Traverse and Judge Howay South Face]) describing the first ascent of this traverse where they continued to Rexford’s South peak via the Pillar of Pi. Kobus also described their original intention of continuing all the way to Mt. Lindeman and exiting via the Radium Lake trail.
The idea of continuing the traverse around Centre Creek had been in the back of our minds ever since, so when we decided to nix our original plan in the morning while en route to the Fraser Valley, it was logical plan b.
The Northeast Ridge is a great and seemingly neglected route. The access from Centre Creek is quite good, with just a short section of unpleasant bushwhacking on either side of the creek. The initial dyke/gulley that gains the ridge looks unpleasant but is actual not so bad. The ridge itself has many steep little steps with good rock interspersed with hiking before the final headwall that is most easily climbed by trending up and left away from the crest.
From the summit, we descended south towards the notch below the Pillar of Pi. We initially followed the gulley adjacent to the ridge with one short rappel, then cut over to the ridge and made one more short rappel off a tree at the bottom.
From the notch, enjoyable scrambling took us up to steeper rock below the Pillar of Pi. We pulled out the rope and climbed what we thought might be the corner created by the extension of the north leg of the pillar described in Kobus’s report. This took us to the ridge below the north leg of the pillar. On the face was an ancient piton that perhaps could have been used to tension into a steep corner system. After some brief investigation, I decided this was not going to happen for us, especially considering that we only had a 30m 8mm rope and 6 cams.
In retrospect, this may be where the first ascentionists rappelled 60 feet off the east side as described in the Culbert guide. I suspect that Kobus may have climbed one of the corners further right. In any event, we rappelled back down what we had just climbed and then did a long pitch of simul-climbing up and right to gain the ridge just below the South Peak of Rexford.
From Rexford South, we put the rope and climbing gear away and started making our way south, happy to be covering ground more efficiently. However, the terrain in this section is not entirely cruisy as there are lots of little bluffs and also sections of dense krumholtz. In general, we stuck to the crest of the ridge, including over Cope North which required some steep bush pulling.
The ridge between Ensakwatch Peak and the Southwest Peak of Middle Peak becomes quite steep and jagged. It was abundantly clear that we would not be able to follow the crest so we opted to drop down some unpleasant scree and dirt into the bowl at the head of Centre Creek and climb back out to the shoulder below Middle Peak.
Once we had rounded the back of the horseshoe and started making our way north, the terrain generally became more efficient. From the summit of Middle Peak, we backtracked slightly and contoured on the east side to reach a snowslope to regain the ridge. Nice meadowy terrain on the crest then took us to Hanging Lake Peak.
We scrambled up and over Hanging Lake Peak, descending some glacier polished slabs on the north side. We then contoured on the east side of the ridge to gain the col below Lindeman where there were a number of groups camping.
Just above the col, we were able to get some much needed water and ditch our climbing gear before making the final slog up to the summit of Mt. Lindeman.
From the summit, it was just a matter of descending the straightforward, if somewhat tedious trail back to the road in Centre Creek. We eventually arrived back at the truck having narrowly avoided needing our headlamps, feeling tired but happy to have experienced another great day in this beautiful area.