Rohr to Marriott Traverse

The Vitals

Date: August 6-8, 2023

Location: Duffey Area, BC

Distance: 40+ km

Partners: Dave, Christian, Jason

Resources: Scrambles by Matt Gunn, Various

Photos: Dave and Jason

The Trip

Day 1 – Highway 99 to Rohr

I went to Marriott basin in 2014 and scrambled some small peak to the west of Wendy Thompson hut but had not made it back to scramble any of the named peaks. In the past 10 years this area has greatly grown in popularity so we looked into traversing the basin’s eastern ridge to connect Rohr to Marriott in order to find some solitude.

Something else that has changed in the past 10 years is the quality of the logging road off the 99. We parked on the highway with just a couple of cars before shortcutting to the logging road and discovering dozens of vehicles stretched across all of the small pullouts. The first day we ran across a few dozen people day tripping Rohr or camping at the lake.

The hike to the lake is pretty forgettable following well-trodden paths before the views open up at the treeline. We lugged our overnight packs to the ridge north of the peak and dropped them to tag the summit. Rather than follow the standard route, we traversed east to catch a N-S oriented ridge that provided excellent easy scrambling to the summit and the first of many ptarmigan.

From the busy summit and through a light smoke haze we could see the Joffre landslide debris from 2019 and the crumbly and imposing red face of Cayoosh. To return to our packs we followed the standard Rohr route which is fairly eroded and loose as a result. I would choose the N-S ridge again for ascent and descent.

We finished the day descending to a small lake east of the ridge that runs towards Marriott. A swim in the lake and dinner overlooking more lakes at lower elevations with alpenglow thrown on the small peaks closed off the first day.

Day 2 – Alpine Ridge

The second day held the most uncertainty. It was clear other people have traversed the ridge before but we didn’t know how technical the travel would be.

We rejoined the ridge from our campsite and began to push north through bush and goat paths (tufts of hair stuck to bushes to prove the goats’ passage). The first summit north of Rohr is the most prominent and was easily reached. The descent from this peak was rockier and had one step of technical down climbing through a short notch. This turned out to be the only technical section of the day and summit cairns on every small peak show that other people do this same route with some regularity.

After the first peak I lost count of the small summits (3 or 4 more?) as we easily traversed the ridge. We didn’t have a plan on where to camp when we set off but as the day wore on we decided to shoot for the highest elevation, significant lake south of Marriott. This means we eventually left the ridge to scramble down a rocky slope before climbing back up 100 meters or so to the lake. When we arrived there was a fairly big group swimming but they were camping at the hut so they soon left. We had the perfect flat camping area on the north shore to ourselves. Another swim and dinner capped off another excellent day.

Day 1 – Mt. Marriott to home

The last day we awoke to swirling clouds around the peaks. The plan was to tag Marriott before heading back to the highway. We found Matt Gunn’s route fairly easy to follow but the scramble was more difficult and took much longer than anticipated.

We found the valley described by Gunn and at its head found the ascent route to the ridge but this ramp has a lot more loose rock than expected. I don’t mind technical climbing and exposure on compact rock but these slabs feature loose grit and rock litter that just increases insecurity and the chances of rockfall on your partners. With careful route finding and taking turns when rockfall was most likely, we reached the ridge incident-free.

From here I expected a ramble to the peak but there were actually hundreds of meters of easy but continuous scrambling. This section was enjoyable on the ascent and the descent but took at least an hour longer than anticipated. We summited in the same swirling clouds but caught glimpses of all of the surrounding peaks including all the way back to Rohr to the south.

After retracing our steps back to camp the clouds lifted and we repacked our bags under blue skies. We rambled a bit on loose dirt and rock fields through small bluffs south of our campsite until we picked up pink flagging that eventually brought us to Wendy Thompson Hut. From here to the highway there was no more route-finding but everyone was getting quite tired and it became a bit of a slog. The logging road section seemed to stretch on for much longer than it had on the way in (as it always does) and we didn’t reach the truck until 6:00 or 7:00 after a very long day of travel with few breaks.

A watermelon and some clean clothes restored a lot of good humour before the long drive back to the lower mainland and real life.