Core Lodge Quad

Shayne Vs The Unnamed Mountain

The Core Lodge Quad Route

Welcome back to the end of the internet.  The following is a recap of the awesomeness that took place on Saturday, June 10th, 2017, at the 'Core Lodge' in the Tumbler Ridge Geo park, when four ultra runners decided to attempt the Core Lodge Quad (CLQ).

First, about the CLQ.  The CLQ is a 30ish km hike/run/scramble over four mountains in the Northern Canadian Rockies where the runners gain and lose between 7000 and 8000 feet of elevation.  There are lots of bears, no people, no aid stations, and almost no defined trail.  This route requires bush wacking, route finding, and luck with the weather.

Second, the group,  I'll post instagram info for easy stalking.
Shayne Gunn (runninggunn), Our route finding expert, and trail sage of our area.
Tom Coveney (coveneytom), our defacto photographer, and incline junkie.
Joel Stainer, voice of reason and all around good dude.
Lastly me;
Joshua Slykhuis (Canadianghostrunner), free loading pack mule and bear bait.

Mount Kostiuk Strava Check

We left our comfortable beds in Fort St. John shortly before 4am to make the 3 hour drive to the staging area in the Tumbler Ridge Geo Park.  Like all excited children, I spent the night awake staring out my window waiting for my ride to show up to take me to what can only be described as heaven.  We did the super Canadian thing of stopping at Tim Hortons to grab some coffees, and headed on our way.

We arrived at the staging area just before 7am.  It was bright out, and very wet (the area had received over 50mm of rain the previous day).  The mountains were covered in snow, and we were excited to get moving.  Knowing this would take 7-10 hours, we packed a LOT of gear,  we are all fairly experienced in the mountains.  I brought a few Clif bars and some bottles of Boost for nutrition, as well as more clothing than a South American Dictator's wife.  Take no chances.

There, the set up is done.  Just picture four guys with more gear than the special forces heading off up a mountain, and you've got the right picture.

We began up our first mountain,  Kostuik (with an elevation of 1913 meters), and right away realized our feet were going to be wet, very wet.  The trail is marked part way up the mountain, and about 100 meters in, my shoes are water logged.  Luckily for me, we hit the snow shortly after this, because what says 'mountain safety' more than wet feet and snowy alpine summits, right?  Shayne was leading the charge, as we began the climb up the snow covered side of the mountain.  With the rain from the previous day, there was a thin layer of ice on the snow, so that each step, the ice could scrap any and all exposed skin.  I  was following in second, to ensure that if a Grizzly did appear, it would either eat Shayne in the front, or Joel in the back (this is basic back country safety stuff!).

Land Bridge Run

The super fresh four of us, scale to the top of this mountain in an eye popping hour and a half. High fives are exchanged, the sun comes up, and I briefly forget my semi frozen feet.  Now we are up nice and high, and we can see the cradle connecting Kostuik, to 'the unnamed mountain', our second peak,  Shayne and Tom discuss the rout: 'It's a steep scramble down, through some cloud inversion where we can't see where to go, followed by a nice straight up climb.  Looks fairly straightforward'.  I hear: 'We are going to jump off this sheer rock face into some Death Fog, then free climb up that rock wall'.  I was officially glad at this point, that I had Joel to hang with, as I was sure Shayne and Tom were suffering from altitude insanity.

Without warning, Shayne leaps down the side of the mountain, to begin his insane snowy decent, followed by Tom.  I look at Joel,and he doesn't seem too shocked, so it must be safe....ish?  I let out a loud yell, and begin my freestyle decent down this cliff.  It's about a 400m decent with around a 30-40% grade. I'm flailing my arms to keep my balance in the snow, looking more like I was doing interpretive dance than descending a mountain.  Luckily for me, I entered the death fog, and the trail leveled out.  We took one wrong turn in the knee deep snow, made a quick back track, and began the next ascent.

At this point my soaking wet feet, and really everything below my knees, is numb from the cold, so I can't feel any sore muscles on the next climb.  Climbing feels good at this point, as it gets my feet out of the snow, and by the time we reach the summit, life is coming back to them. We summit the beast, high five each other, then do what all modern runners do, take pictures and check our strava data.  Two peaks down, two big ones left, 3 hours in.  We are making excellent time.

Between Unnamed Mountain and the next Mountain (Terminator), there is a thin land bridge, and two smaller mountain summits.  The whole trip is alpine, windy, and damned epic. We take off running the land bridge, with sheer drops hundreds of feet on either side, careful not to get close to the snowy edge.  I'm running with Joel at this point, and I can tell he's thinking the same thing I am, 'how did no one bring a drone to film this?'

We race across the land bridge, and climb to the first snow capped summit.  The views are out of this world.  We stop to appreciate the view before heading across another small land bridge to the next summit.  This has to be one of the coolest feelings in the world.  We ascend the final summit before the main summit on Terminator, and stand in awe before it, like mortals before a god.  It is a rocky peak, barely sticking out of the snow, with no real way to summit it without some ingenuity and climbing. Shayne leads the charge, as we begin the assault.  It's steep.  It's cold.  It's windy.  We are four hours into this beast, and tired, the assault is relentless. Finally we get to the top.  High fives all around.  It's windy, I can't feel my feet at all, and I am in heaven.  All I can think about is how lucky I am to get to be here with this great group.

After a few moments, we run down the backside of the mountain, following wildlife trails, and clinging to small tress and bushes to slow ourselves, arriving in a meadow at the bottom of the mountain.  Shayne and Tom tell us there is something called 'the hot dog stand', across the meadow, an through a marsh.  Snowmobilers use it in the winter as a base for their adventures. When we arrive on it, we learn it is actually a fairly well built 10 X 12 shed on blocks.  We warm up inside (we are probably the only people that have used it this month), and use the facilities (an outhouse on the verge of tipping over, with a ripped vinyl cushioned seat),  Back Country luxury.

Next up is the main course, Mount Roman.  It has been all but inaccessible since mining restarted  about 8 or 9 years ago, but the mine was closed again, and the tall half of the mountain was left.  This mountain was the old site of the local 'Emperor's challenge', which billed itself as 'the hardest half marathon in Canada; for a reason.  1000m of ascent await us, and we begin clicking it off on an old mining road.  We are finally on the sunny side of things, and it feels glorious to be warm.  The mining road ends about 2/3 of the way up, and we are stuck at a crossroads.  One side, the summit, the other side, a pleasant detour to another summit.  Tom really wanted to do the other summit as well, and was making puppy dog eyes at us.  We couldn't say no to that face, so we began our jog up to the summit in the opposite direction of Roman.  We were rewarded with 360 degree (or 365 if you're Shayne) views of pristine mountains.  Epic.

'The Hot Dog Stand'

But alas, no time for navel gazing, so we look to Roman.  The summit is several km away, across a cradle of alpine meadow.  We began jogging, then running, the sprinting.  I was feeling great vibes running on the spongy earth.  Leaping over rocks, and mounds, this was a zen experience, and I was overwhelmed with emotion (or dehydration and hunger).  It was transcendent.

We got to the base of the final climb, and began following the old Emperor's challenge markers.  Old wooden stakes sticking out of the ground, like old, greying warriors, who have outlived their usefulness.  I have fond memories of the Emperor's Challenge from over 10 years ago, when this was the route.  It was actually my first trail race, and the catalyst for where I am today, and even why I was climbing the mountain again, 10 years later.

Shayne and Joel were super nice, and let Tom and I climb first, to be the first up (and the first eaten if there were bears).  We hit the summit, and found a nice area to sit, eat, and hydrate.  We were 5 hours into it, and only had about 6km of descent left (if the old emperors route was still intact, it was not).  I lead the charge down the final mountain, high on the fact we were going to finish this quest.  We were following the grey wooden posts, the ran parallel to the open pit mine that had been slowly eating the mountain.  suddenly the posts ran off a cliff where the mine began, and we were forced to bushwack.  We spent an hour climbing, and fighting through the thick forest trying to get back to the staging area. We were close, and we knew it.  On either side was a slowly encroaching ravine, in front of us, thick bush.

The bush used to lead to a small river, that had had a wooden bridge over it.  Our plan was to find the river, find the bridge, cross said bridge, high five, get back to the vehicles, and eat watermelon.  Pretty Simple.  Or not.  The bridge must have washed out years ago, and the small river, was a raging river due to the melt and rain, but it was only 12 feet across.  New plan, form a daisy chain across the river, get to the narrowing mining road on the other side, walk 5 minutes to the vehicles,high five, eat watermelon.  Pretty simple.  Or not.  I was the first part of the daisy chain (all link arms for stability, and safety) as I was the most valued member (or the guy that  didn't have car keys, and thus expendable),  followed by Tom, the Joel, and then Shayne as the anchor.  First step, ankle deep ice water (all good), second step, knee deep water,  Third step, waist deep ice water, chilling my children's children (if you catch my drift), fourth step, (I'm close to the other side it has to start going up right? ) my legs get sucked out from under me, and I'm swimming (I always wanted to do a duathlon).  Lucky for me Tom and the boys have been hitting the gym, and they pulled me out of the frigid water.  I get out and do what all ultra runners do at this point, make sure my strava is still running. 

We have two choices, try again further downstream, or trespass across an abandoned mining site.  As we are all law abiding citizens that would NEVER, EVER trespass on private property, we magically transported ourselves across the river, on the road near the mines gates, and began running the final Km of the day.  Tom decided I wasn't the only one allowed to have the final near death drama, so he decided to face plant into the dirt on the side of the road, hard.  I yelled at Tom for stealing my thunder, but he seemed more into his own pain than my emotions, so I let Joel and Shayne help him up.

 We jogged in the final victory lap, and again, did what all ultra runners do, compared out Strava data.  Everyone had something vastly different, which I said meant that we would just have to do the whole thing again with GPS more accurate than our phones.  Shayne wished me luck, and offered to time me.  I was contemplating it, when I realized that I was soaking wet, and may be suffering from mild insanity. High fives, and watermelon all around, and we began plotting our next Tumbler Ridge Geo Park adventure.  I was told tales there was a mountain called shark fin, with 3000m of gain, and a 60km round trip, and Shayne and Tom knew a guy, that knew a guy, that claimed it was doable.

Thanks for reading, and if you'd like to know more about the Tumbler Ridge Geo Park, or any of the mountains in this area, click here.

Crush your goals,

The Canadian Ghost Runner

Running it in