Mount Matier via Northeast Spur

MT MATIER (2783m) via northeast spur route on March 26, 2023.

We woke up at 4am as planned at dinner but Kai did not want to get out of his sleeping bag because it was way too cold and he didn’t have the right layers for transitioning. We decided to push back our wake up time by 3h. I’m glad he insisted because it was much warmer, and more pleasant to get ready in the light. The only issue was I didn’t have enough food and Kai had just enough, but he shared with me so we both had too little food for the climb… we had our two freeze dried meals ready for us when we returned to the hut.

We were actually discussing bailing when we were socked in on our way up to motel 66 from our campsite. But Kai was keen on continuing to go up in case the weather cleared up, and for exercise. So we did. And the weather cleared up!

We had a couple more times where we discussed bailing due to being mentally too drained from the climb and the thought of doing such a technical climb on a long day. But we persevered and kept pushing each other, motivating each other.

Of all the climbs we’ve done so far in the alpine, this one had the steepest snow climb and most exposed ridge walk. Kai and I were very good with communication this time, checking in every hour or so on our energy levels and the avi conditions along the way. We both improved on staying calm in stressful situations and being able to better control our scary thoughts or nervous breathing, heart rate. I’m really proud of us for doing Matier, it was just at the max of our comfort zone and we pushed ourselves just the right amount to learn and grow from the challenge. 

We climbed 8am-7pm then ate dinner while observing some quebecois men flirt with a quebecois ski touring guide - who was there with her silent (and probably amused) boyfriend - not having it, packed up our campsite for our hike down to the car, drove 2.5h back home. The walk from Keith’s hut to the car felt extremely long - Kai gets scared in the dark so I played pop music for him on my phone, placed it in his Alpha’s chest pocket to distract him. Sometimes he would get a little spooked (he says he gets scared of supernatural things) and would stare at that night’s beautiful crescent moon and forget about his worries. It was endearing to watch.

We had some of the best freeze dried food meals so far! We tried two new companies, peak peformance and west coast. West coast makes persian stews!!! Mine tasted a lot like ghormeh Sabzi. Peak performance just makes really tasty white food, they rely on heavy creams which makes everything so good. We ended up buying more from each company the next day when we went climbing in squamish. Kai trusted the companies so much that he bought ghemeh stew! We even found a 1300 calorie oatmeal for only 15 bucks. Kai claims he will be able to eat it for breakfast before a climb… he wouldn’t even agree to share it with me when the time comes for when we need to have freeze dried breakfast. I’ll be very impressed if he can finish it off on his own first thing in the morning before climbing…

We’re kind of sick of mountaineering at the moment. After two big objectives a week apart, we decided to take a bit of a break with outdoor climbing! Kai is taking Monday and Tuesday off as his work is slow, and we’re just going to enjoy the weather stress freeee.