On a personal trip into the Arjuna Group, my brother and I spent 4 days in great weather exploring some of the local Bella Coola alpine climbing. Over those 4 days we established two long rock climbs, some single pitch options and established some rap anchors on the only possibly-climbed route in the area (the NW Ridge of Mount Arjuna.
In general the alpine climbing around Bella Coola gets very little attention despite some dramatic summits, largely due to its remoteness and challenging access. We opted to fly in a basecamp to the Arjuna Glacier, thereby reducing the approach from a full strenuous day with overnight packs to an 8-minute flight with 300lbs of gear.
- Mount Arjuna, "NW Ridge," 5.8: With an old Cassin piton on the route and a cairn on the summit, it's presumed this route has been climbed before. However, a steep notch between a false summit and the main summit showed no signs of travel despite requiring technical solutions to navigate in either direction; it's possible heli hikers built the cairn on the summit. Whatever the history, this is a very moderate route for 90% of the climbing with a few short pitches in the low-5th Class grade to the sub/false summit. We bolted a rap station to get into the 50-60' deep notch and considered leaving our rope for the way back out but opted to pull it in case we needed it for the summit but it ended up being 4th Class to the summit. Climbing back out the notch was a left-facing corner/chimney, a bit scruffy, with climbing in the 5.7-5.8 range up a short pitch. Amazing views of the Monarch Icefield, Jacobson Towers, Cerberus, Saugstad, etc!
- Nakula Spire, "Quartz Arete," 5.9: We established this line through moderately complex glacier to a clean arete rising from the Arjuna Glacier. Once on the Arete we simul-climbed for 300-400m of low-to-mid 5th Class terrain to where the Arete met a steepening wall. From here 7 pitches of 5.6-5.9 climbing took us to an amazing series of bivy ledges just below the summit; however we tagged the summit and then established 10 rappels with bolts to get back down the general line of ascent. We kept the rappels fairly short (~30m) for the most part to reduce the potential of snagging the rope as it pulled. We also down climbed a fair bit of the terrain where it felt reasonable to move unroped.
- Sahadeva Spire, "Friends in High Places," 5.11: Our first objective of the trip was this 600-800' gently overhanging wall. Easier (and much harder) options exist up this steep face. We climbed 5-6 pitches on clean rock although, as with any unclimbed stone, there was plenty of loose rocks on the ledges we found. We established five 40-50m rappels on the descent, some bolts of which would share the line of ascent. Aside from a bit of pump on the ascent, it was more apparent how steep the wall was on rappel where just getting to the next rappel proved challenging! Keeping well-timed momentum on rappel was key.,
- Bhima Buttress: On a rest/iffy weather day we romped 15mins across the Arjuna Glacier to check out a 100-150m wall of dubious looking rock that turned out to provide some decent cragging. We climbed a 35m corner, "Bhima Corner," 5.8 to a ledge where we bolted an anchor that serviced a few other pitches in the 5.10-5.12 range.
