North Ridge of South Nesakwatch Spire 5.7 and North Ridge of North Nesakwatch Spire Easy 5th

North Ridge of South Nesakwatch Spire 5.7 and North Ridge of North Nesakwatch Spire Easy 5th on July 13-14, 2025.

We woke up at 4:30am to meet at 5:20am for the drive to Nesakwatch. I was so happy and excited to see Sho as I had not seen him for almost a week since our week long time in Squamish together. The drive took us about 2.5h with a stop at the Chilliwack gas station. 

The approach to camp took us about 5h. 

My muscles were already fatigued and I was feeling tired from lack of sleep that past couple of days. Sho kindly carried so much of my gear on his pack for the way up. He was already carrying so much with the rope. Somehow he still had the energy to be romantic. All the way up Sho would take breaks to take me in his arms and kiss me so lovingly.

Once at camp, we spent an hour setting up camp, getting organized for our first climb, melting snow for water, eating lunch. 

Sho made these delicious arugula, artichoke, prosciutto with sourdough bread sandwiches. He also did all the work for melting the snow for our water.

 

He enjoyed the electrolyte powder like a champ before the start of our climb.

The scramble up to the col of North and South Spires was pretty straightforward for us. It took us about 1h from camp to col.

The climb from the col to South Spire -3 pitches. We climbed the route in 3 pitches. I led P1, and my partner led the rest. We followed the Matt Gunn scramble route to reach the start of our first pitch. Pitch 1: Slabby crack in a corner that leads up to the base of the prominent curving crack. See posted photo. Pitch 2: The curving crack—super fun and aesthetic—leads into a short offwidth section. The offwidth felt stout, maybe comparable to Pipe Dream (5.8 at the Bluffs). See posted photo.

 Pitch 3: From the top of P2 we went climber’s right, using a side crack and a pinnacle to reach a big ledge. From there, we climbed onto another ledge and topped out. 

Skipped the final off width pitch due to not bringing a #6. 

You can see Mt Rexford in the background.

Sho tried a couple of times to take a photo of us using the timer but the angle and 10sec was not enough to get it quite right.

Descent (about 1.5h): We downclimbed skier’s left. One step was a bit reachy for me (I'm 5'6"), but my partner gave me a hand. From there, we reached a bolted rap anchor (!), which brought us down to the col between South Spire and Rexford. We scrambled down the rest of the way on the loose scree slope. descent using those.

We got back to camp at around 10pm just as the sun was setting! Once at camp, we changed and cooked our food. I was organizing things, as I usually do before bed, when Sho called me over to sit by him to watch the sunset. I was a little taken aback—on these mountain trips, I’m so used to staying in motion, focused on practical tasks, with no time or energy left for romance or simply soaking in the moment.

But I sat next to Sho, and he wrapped me in his arms. Instantly, I felt this overwhelming happiness. His warmth, both physical and emotional, surrounded me completely. 

The next morning we got up much later than we had originally planned, at around 8am instead of sunrise at 5am. We had breakfast and packed for our second alpine objective, the north ridge of North Nesakwatch which we thought would be very straightforward and easy terrain to climb up.

1h hike from camp to base of the climb. 7h climb. 2?h descent. We left Vancouver at 5:30am and got back to camp at 10pm. We climbed the route in six pitches, using a rack of cams from 0.2 to #4 and a set of nuts. I led Pitch 1, and my partner took the lead for the remaining pitches. 

Pitch 1: This started near the base of the climb. The crux was moving through a corner and over a roof, where the rock above looked suspect—potentially insecure. I avoided pulling directly on it by stemming around and mantling onto the ledge without weighting that feature. My last piece would have protected a fall from the move, but it’s likely I would have decked if I came off—definitely a committing section. (See attached photo.) 

Pitches 2–4: These covered terrain that felt too sketchy to scramble safely, so we roped up for each section. We mostly scrambled between the steeper steps, belaying only where we felt necessary. Each pitch had moments of exposure and route-finding challenges. 

Pitch 5: The chimney system offered great protection using both cracks. It climbed well but felt harder than 5.7 compared to climbs at the bluffs —burly for some moves. (See attached photo.) Pitch 6: After exiting the chimney, we moved right to a crack system that required a few bouldery moves to start. Protection was solid, but it was very burly and airy to get from this crack to the next crack on climber's left. It felt harder than a 5.8 at the bluffs. (See attached photo.) 

We reached the summit at around 5:30pm.

Descent: We couldn’t find an obvious walk-off from the summit block, despite me having scrambled this descent two years ago. We eventually rappelled a short distance from a horn (leaving behind cord and a quicklink) to reach the dirt path. From there, we followed Matt Gunn’s scramble route to reach established rappel anchors and continued our descent using those.