Hike In (to the 1/2 col)

Photo credit: Simon Lamberts

Crossing the glacier shortly after daybreak, heading for the north end of the Lyell line from the hut.

(From left) Devan Peterson (2 legs), Rocko (4 legs), me (2 legs on a good day!) on the Lyell Icefield, with Mount Forbes on the skyline.

Rudolph & Edward (Lyells 1 & 2)

The approach to the col is busy with slots.

It’s still early enough in the day for stiff bridging, but it’s summer snowpack and some of these bridges are pretty thin. Wind moves the recent snow, smoothens the surface and makes the sneakier slots tougher to spot, though easier to probe for (I pop the basket off a hiking pole).

In the mid- to late spring, about three months before I snapped this shot, I could ski right up to the col!

We hiked up the middle to the low point between the two peaks (the col). From there, it was easy third class on talus up to Rudolph, then easy hike up the snow ramp to Edward.

(The shot's foreshortening makes these two peaks look closer and smaller than they are)

Slot shot

If you can spot this slot in the last shot – it’s near the col and closer to Rudolph (on the right in that shot) – you get a sense of the scale and the “foreshortening” in that shot.

You also get a sense of just how easy it for the wind to toss large volumes of snow around up here: the layer of new snowpack tapers from 8-feet to nothing as you look up slope maybe half a dozen meters.

Note the slots forming in the older layer where they’re exposed, then slipping under the new layer just up slope from Devan. Then look at Devan for a size comparison.

Hence the rope.

His slots are too narrow to collapse the newer pack on top that hides them (the larger slot on my left did us a favor by doing so) but not so narrow they can't grab any or all of us.

Sneaky!

This layer of snow pack is supportive now...

The Foresty Forest YouTube team!

...this layer of snow pack is supportive now,

Good thing, we’re all standing on it!

But we’re still early in the day and the summer sun hasn’t been on it that long.

An uneasy truce, at best.

Seasonally warm temperatures don’t just melt the snowpack faster at the surface: the pack’s lower reaches rise closer to melting as well. Now, when the sun bakes it on a warm day, the pack loses more supportive strength as it nears the melting point throughout its thickness rather than just at its surface.

The web of narrow but deep slots lurking underneath – like those upslope from Devan in the last shot – are now a real threat.

We could still move up here but we’d need to be much pickier about how we move, where we move, and I’d feel better with a longer probe – not just a ski pole sans basket.

I'll come back to that, below.

Rudolph (Lyell 1 summit)

Edward (Lyell 2)

Hmm.

(crickets)

Not much to say here. I snapped this shot of Devan doing the same on our way off this bump, heading for Ernest and Walter. (first and second from the right. Much more exciting!)

I barely noticed Edward's summit.

So... let's do the "half-glass-full" thing and send a nod to it's namesake, Edward Feuz – one of the guides the CPR hired at the tail end of the 19th century to promote their railway through tourism. He's one of three brothers for which three of the five Lyell peaks are named.

An accomplished and pioneering alpine guide and mountaineer, he lived for 96 years.

Truly remarkable!

(unlike the peak)

---

Ernest (Lyell 3)

photo credit: Devan Peterson

Simon and me heading towards the snow ramp to gain Ernest's upper ridge

Steepens...

photo credit: Devan Peterson

Step back for a better look...

Ernest's north face from Edward.

Is Ernest a little trickier this season for the ice?

Maybe the brief, ten or so meter stint of ice (WI3 for angle and exposure) on top of the schrund is firm snowpack other seasons? Before the ice stint, Ernest is just a glacier hike from Edward with a steepish (to 50') snow ramp to the schrund's lip. The three of us had a short break on that lip.

I slung a boulder on top of the ice wall for a station. Several already had tat, but weathered enough I felt better using mine. My 40m was a nice fit.

From there, it’s an easy ridge walk to the summit with some incredible views from Lyell’s tallest peak! I left my rope for the quick rappel back down to the schrund’s lip. Then it was a quick downclimb and glissade back to the 2/3 col and around to Walter.

Cool Exposure!

photo credit: Devan Peterson

Nothing too steep or busy, but it’s still ice, still a long way down and the nasty climber-gobbling schrund is right below me, just out of the frame. Its upper lip is near the bottom in the shot, which Devan snapped from its lower lip.

I’d say (WI)3- for steepness and exposure. By the book, I would think two screws would be adequate here. I was OK without them, though it was sure nice to have them with me had I needed them.

Looks like I was doing a better job holding on than my pants were (speaking of cool exposure!). It was feeling a little breezy back there and frankly, that was more my concern at the time: I really didn't want to look like a dork on that ice wall.

Oh well. Here we are.

(If you didn’t notice, let’s just forget I mentioned it)

Some ice...

photo credit: Devan Peterson

Much better.

Thanks, Devan, for this amazing capture!

Summit! (Ernest, Lyell 3)

Half way!

Looking from the third and tallest of the Lyells towards Walter and Christian, fourth and fifth in the gang of five.

I don't often see Twilight Peak mentioned as the sixth in the lineup. Walter (next in line) obscures its view, though we can see where the thick ice sheet buckles and fractures against its west ridge into the larger crevassed, convex roll that descends west towards Lyell Creek and eventually Kinbasket Lake. Twilight Peak is plainly visible in the view south from Walter’s summit (the shot “South”, below) and west from Christian's north ridge (in another shot down below), but would later be seen from our route along its saddle with Christian as nothing more than a gradual hump that reaches an apex about a little more than hundred meters ahead of where our route would turn west. Looking at the topo map now, it may have been worth the short walk for the view south from its south face. Its summit is just 250 feet shy of 11K feet.

Maybe next time.

Our route takes us west / right along this side of the roll after descending Twighlight's saddle with Christian, then circles around and left back to the hut (not visible). The west (right) side of the Lyell line is much more aggressively crevassed than the vast, relatively flat expanse of ice sheet on the east (left), our approach this morning.

A preview of Walter's north ridge (from Ernest)

I snapped it by hand (no tripod) from Walter's summit. It gets real right off the snow fin – a study in just how steep mother nature can stack choss without it collapsing.

More yap & notes below.

Meanwhile, back to our story...

Headed back for the rap

Follow the trail ahead of Devan, down and right to the cleaved Barad-dûr feature (minus the freaky eye. My Sindarin is a little rusty but I think it means "Dark Tower". More here) and my pack (the dark speck in the middle of the trail). Plenty of candidates to sling for a station and my 40m rope was just enough to get us to the schrund's lower lip.

That’s Edward (nearest behind Barad-dûr) and Rudolph (just poking out) in the background.

We were lucky to have had a break from the summer’s wildfire smoke (still in July, even way up here).

That's a rap!

photo credit: Devan Peterson

Devan & I rappelling Ernest's ice wall. His shot with the sun behind me wins, hands down. Can you believe this guy gets shots like this with his phone? Not your typical millenial, for sure!

Lots more of the same on his Instagram [@summit.up.in.a.picture]

(Glad I pulled my pants up for the shot)

Intermission

You GOTTA meet...

Walter's north ridge (gulp!)

I remember sizing up Walter's north ridge as we skirted it to the east heading in to the 1/2 col at the start of the day. I went from "looks steep!" to "maybe not so bad" as it got closer, then back to, “yeah, it’s steep” when we walked by it that morning.

It was worse than it looked, mostly because the rock is so bad, to the point where I’m not sure I could have free-climbed it without the tools.

It gets tough right after the snow fin. Walter’s crux starts there, with a section of slow, cautious placements (a hard M4 for being steep and exposed, “hard” for the horrid rock) immediately after the inital steep snow fin. Without the tools I liklely would have moved out of the chimney onto the nose – steeper and more exposed but the rock looked better.

From the small snowpack where we met at the top of that section, we moved left down a narrow ledge at the base of a short wall to gain another snowpack on a steep wall that moved into a chimney. The lower ledge was poor but the horizontal grooves along the strata made good hand holds. I think it's what what enticed me down the ledge – I was so happy to see some real rock, I chased it!

I moved into chimney – snow, ice and rock, definitely mixed tooling through here – then moved right onto a short, steep wall whose slope eased out onto the face, where I found a mix of verglas, snow and rock. Devan continued left up the chimney to gain the snowpack there.

Most of this section was definitely mixed climbing and without the tools I would have had to find another route.

Gaining the upper snow pack

photo credit: Simon Lamberts

The angle eased as I gained the upper snowpack. Simon’s clip catches me there. I gained the ridge earlier and lower down from Devan and had a chance to set up for a couple of decent shots of him coming up the snow pack. You can see those below.

I didn’t see any pro on our route – no pitons, no bolts, nothing. Tracks from where at least one other recent party gained the upper snowpack suggest they moved right and up from where Devan and I moved left down the narrow ledge (two shots back to my "gulp" shot: yellow, into the chimney). TRs I’ve read suggest that most folks might choose the other route, and I seem to recall reading about some protection there. But I can’t say for sure. It’s not how we did it.

As tough as it was, it was a whole lotta fun! And while I can’t speak for Devan, it didn’t get to where I felt I needed to place any protection.

Still, glad I brought some along.

"Ice Cream!"

I'm up top, setting up to snap Devan coming up the pack. That's Mount Forbes, on the horizon.

photo credit: Simon Lamberts

This trip was my first experience with a drone and it’s strange, having fresh memories of unpacking my camera and setting up to snap Devan coming up the snowpack while seeing a drone clip & stills of me doing it!

Once we gained the summit, Simon, completely out of sight and km away by then, flew the drone to within inches of our faces. Devan lobbed a smile and a thumbs-up while I resisted an urge to batt the thing off with an ice tool! Absolutely incredible, those things, and obviously Simon is a wizard with it. It did a funky aerial move when it backed off, then hovered, a few flashing lights and it was gone.

Just like that.

The whole thing brought me back to this panic attack I had when the alien craft flew by Richard Dreyfuss and Cary Guffey (“Ice Cream!”) on the highway in an early Spielberg flick. I was with my parents in the theater and couldn’t have been much older than that kid at the time. Good thing my parents were there: I was terrified.

Simon’s drone brought it all back.

Steep!

In the last shot, I'm setting up for shots of Devan on that snowpack. Here they are.

(Yes, it really IS that steep. And yes, Devan is free-climbing it)

Why?

That's why.

Walter & Forbes

The last few steps to Walter's summit, with Forbes on the skyline.

photo credit: Simon Lamberts

Another amazing & incredible still from Simon's drone, making us look super cool.

Thanks man!

Summit!

From whence we came, snapped from Walter's summit (4/5). The first of two summit shots from this peak.

(From left:) Ernest, Edward, (just barely) Rudolph.

...and one stoked millenial.

(The Gen X who snapped this shot is pretty stoked too!)

South

The second of two shots from Walter's summit and a look across Walter's summit ridge towards Christian, the fifth and our last for the day in our north/south traverse of the Lyell line. Twilight Peak, sixth in line, is the rounded, glaciated hump just west (right) of Christian and on the far side of a thick break in the ice sheet. Bare rock from its lower-angled face looks west. The view from the top of Twilight’s south face could have been worth the few extra meters' walk from our route. Maybe next time!

The traverse across Walter and off its summit is really just third and fourth-class terrain: slow-going with some tricky route finding. I tried to stay up top. Looks OK from this shot, does it not? A scenic afternoon stroll, albeit a bumpy one, over to Walter's south peak?

No.

I kept getting cut off and forced down onto shelves and ledges on the right. Devan pointed out that Mr. David Jones^[3] warned against staying on top of the pinnacles (but didn't mention it until I'd already been forced off two of them).

Anyways, a pile of fun in the choss up there, or choss in the fun if you prefer, crawling all over those pinnacles. Scenic, hands-on, challenging scrambling with tricky route finding and precarious exposure.

Tasty!

If its north ridge turns you away, its summit is much easier to tag as a traverse of these pinnacles from Walter's south ridge.

...though you miss the fun & bragging rights of tagging Walter's tricky north ridge.

(Just sayin')

Break time!

Looking southwest along Lyell Creek from Walter's south peak.

It took nearly an hour to traverse to Walter's south peak from its summit - some tricky route finding up here, but not technically difficult. Should go much quicker if I hit it again. Maybe I'll look at what Mr. Jones^[3] has to say first this time.

Time for a break!

I think there's a newer cabin down there, maybe 5km from here. Would be a nice ski touring stop. Kinbasket Lake is just visible in the distance.

---

Christian (Lyell 5)

Heading down Walter’s south ridge to the 4/5 col

(More ice ramp than ridge. The ridge is buried in this ice sheet)

Newer makes an obvious "do-not-cross!" fracture where it shrinks away from older snowpack. This line marks the start of unsupported cornice, and it's a long way down (several hundred meters to our first bounce). That line would be tough to spot if I were up here with newer pack hiding it (thinking skis).

The older, exposed pack is more névé than ice and an easy walk with a crampon. Not so, just a few meters down slope. The sheenier section frame right is solid ice, hidden under patches of newer, melting snow. It's low-angle but high consequence and if that ice were further up slope, I would front-point traverse this section, using my ice tools, as I would traverse any other ice wall. And I would consider placing screws for a belay.

Being up here without the appropriate gear and know-how would be reckless, even if I don't use it.

It doesn’t matter that it’s not steep. It matters that it’s solid ice. Yet for now, and right here, it's not ice. It’s an easy walk. The mountain gods have decreed it thus.

I’ll take that.

Near the 4/5 col

The walk from Walter over to Christian is tame, the concern being not to move out onto unsupported cornice.

Closer to Christian, where the narrow ridge starts to break through the ice and snow, I didn’t want to bother removing my crampons so I stayed left rather than move onto the rock.

There was a moment where I was concerned I'd moved further out onto the cornice than I should have, so I backtracked a few steps and on we went.

I see where it was in this shot, and I was fine.

Still…

"Oh, Ye of Little Faith!"

Thankfully, where Walter was much tougher than it looked (and it looked tough!) Christian was just the opposite. Easy fourth?

(Mr. Jones^[3] says third class!)

My guess: when Christian is visible anywhere along the traverse and right up to the 4/5 col, the viewing angle is rotated out enough to its west face to make it look much worse than it is.

A Christian ascent

Here's a look back towards Walter from lower on Christian's north ridge.

Grippy, solid rock, an absolute pleasure to climb, fun scrambling and welcome respite after Walter. I think Mr. Jones^[3] only puts it at third class (I'll circle back with a fix if I'm wrong), which I’d say is a bit light (I’d say easy fourth).

West

Looking west over the icefield from Christian's north ridge.

That ice sheet is thick!

The ice sheet deforms against Twilight Peak’s west ridge into a descending, convex roll from its summit (poking out mid-frame from the left rock-wall framing this shot), then collapses to expose a thick glacial cross section in front of us. The rolling terrain makes for some big slots. (caught one below!)

Summit: A Christian Perspective

This shot looks north, Walter and Ernest are just left then the line curves northeast to include Ernest and Rudolph. And we're on Christian.

That's all five!

(...of the big peaks up here. Twilight doesn't quite make the cut: it's 250 feet / 80m short of 11K feet, though we would come within a little over a hundred meters' easy walk of its summit. Sorry, Twilight!)

An easy descent from Christian along its saddle with Twilight had a sheeny patch or two close to the ridge that were easy to skirt, though more ice would have slowed descent. As with Walter’s descent to the 4/5 col, the permanent ice here can’t be more than a few feet thick. Modest schrund crossing.

The sheet thickens considerably when we turned west onto the glacier on Twilight’s west ridge which, through the ice, presents as a long, convex roll (uh oh!). Slots on this side of the Lyell line are of an entirely different species than those on the east side, to the point where the word “slot” doesn’t seem to fit so well.

There is a better word…

The Shot

You really gotta see this beast on a decent 4k screen.

Follow the crevasse’s line under the snow and if you look on top of the snow pack, you’ll see that same line in the form of a trail-like impression as it heads into the distance. It’s not as easy to see in this shot as it was out there, but it’s there. And it looks like a trail – moreso from further off.

The gaping crevasse – large enough to gobble stacks of school buses – makes it obvious: the meandering line isn't a trail at all. I snuck back for this shot, otherwise the rope running along the slot would be bad practice: it should run perpendicular the slot, regardless of what direction we’re moving.

I've got a few versions of this shot, including a spookier one (if this one isn't spooky enough!), but this one's the best view of the crevasse itself and Devan gives you the scale. The highlights are a little blown out in the sky – the price paid to let more light in and coax more detail from the pack strata in front of me and as it heads into the depths. (I'm old school: hate HDR) If you have a decent monitor, you need to scroll for the whole scene. Just like I had to do when I was there, looking at it. So that's on purpose – an artsy thing (you like?). Right click it and open it in its own tab (Chrome/Chromium based browsers) if you want it all on one screen.

Pack problems

The depths of that pack are already warmer for the fact that it's mid summer, not winter or spring. A warm day with warm afternoon sun now brings that pack’s temperature closer to melting throughout its thickness, rather than just at the surface, to the point where a pack section close enough to the tipping point loses the strength to support its own weight and collapses.

I think that’s exactly what happened here.

During our cold Canadian months way up here on this glacier, this slab (before its collapse) would generally be much cooler top to bottom, throughout its thickness. Even an unusually warm day’s bump of several degrees up top that brings some melt won’t matter, even if some of that heat reaches into the depth of the slab. Its depths have more leeway because they start out cooler. The bulk of that slab, though warmed, remains frozen solid throughout the temperature bump.

Fast forward to July (our summer) and that whole system sits closer to melting. Dangerously close! Now, the lower slab's leeway is gone. That same temperature bump won't just produce surface melt: it will collapse the slab.

Feelin' the heat?

I have a theory: a bridging slab is more sensitive to this seasonal rise in temperature for its exposure to convective heat. In July, warmer air and more of that warmed air sits trapped against the underside of the bridge (where else can the warm air go?). In this way, convective heat gives the bridging slab a head start on collapsing, moving it closer to failure than the equivalant slab resting on deeper snowpack, all other conditions being equal.

(Easy enough to build an experiment: measure probe penetration depth for a fixed set of forces at specific locations on- and next to the bridge at different times of the year. Hey! You can fund me! All we need is your credit card number! I'll get us a helicopter, we'll pack the skis – who says science can’t be fun? – fly catering in...)

Drama!

All the clues to the drama are here: a thick section of bridging snowpack sagged, then broke off just to Devan’s left. The bridge's broken body is just in front of me, covered with newer snow. The messy, ripped break, the stress lines you can still see under the newer snow – you can appreciate that the experience of being anywhere near when it happened must be terrifying.

It is!

I was descending the Sturdee Glacier from Assiniboine the previous year while this natural process was taking place. Large sections of snowpack that still had my tracks from my way in the day before were collapsing into gaping chasms – just like this one – as I gingerly skirted the tricky sections on safer terrain. In much the same way that water turns to ice quickly when the conditions are right, bridging like what you see here quickly deteriorates from where it easily supports significant weight to where it can’t even support its own.

So it collapses. As it did here. And it happens fast. As it did here.

A little math...

Just for fun, let’s throw some math at this scene.

My rope is 40m. If the collapsed section is half my rope’s length and the span is a little more than that, so let’s say an area of 20 x 25 m², and if it’s nearly 2 Devans thick, say 3m, then a pack density^[1] between 280 to 460 kg•m^-3 puts the collapsed pack section’s mass between 420 and 690 metric tons. Ouch!

Look at the deformed bridge at the fracture. It would have happened in seconds. Putting it all together, that bridge went from happily supporting it's own weight – thirty to fifty fully loaded school buses^[2] – to the collapsed mess you see in this shot. In seconds.

When I crossed that bridge – even though Devan had probed and crossed ahead of me, I still probed. I could only sink my pole a few inches, with effort, and that was it. So the bridge was OK there at that time. Yet the collapsed bridge and meandering, trail-like depression show that it wasn’t OK not so long ago – I’m thinking less than a handful of weeks, even days. I’m glad I’m roped up.

Why all this crevasse yap?

Check Simon’s clip starting at 11:20. You’ll only need 20 seconds – if that. The right footprint at 11:30: can you see its bottom? I can’t. I’m not sure whether we made that print on our way in that morning and the bottom collapsed since then or that Simon punched through and returned to film it – the former is, I think, wishful thinking. Either way, it’s clear that the bridge can’t take weight and is close to being unable to support its own. It would be around 1 pm. Yet at 6:30 am, same snow pack near the same location (at 9:00 in the clip), my crampon spikes bite but I don't sink. At all. You can hear the difference and you’d have a hard time even seeing the tracks. I think the change was quick and happened throughout the thickness of that slab at the same time, as I yap about just above.

There’s Rocko, happily rolling around in the snow, frame right as Simon’s left foot sinks into the pack.

"Crunch"

It hurts to watch. I can't stop my head from chasing down how that scene could easily have played as the pack takes Simon's weight with that step.

At 11:35, Simon couldn’t give us a better demonstration of a bridging slab near collapse as he easily sinks his pole its full length. If the slab were cooler below, the pole would grab as it sank – as mine did when I probed the bridge in the shot above. My bridge was OK at that time. Clearly, Simon's was not.

Here are two sad examples of how I’m so very glad this scene didn’t play out – just two of too many! They’re both from 2013 and both fatalities are on convex rolls but don’t need to be (Simon wasn’t on one). One on Mount Hector and the other on the Wapta Icefield.

The "just for fun" math isn’t so fun anymore.

I’ll stop there.

ATEOTD

(“At The End Of The Day”)

Great trip! All of us – Simon, Rocko, Devan and I – summited Rudolph and Edward from the 1/2 col (safe to credit Rocko with two canine first ascents?), then Devan and I added the other three to complete a counterclockwise circuit of all five Lyells. Super hiking/camping companions, some spirited route discussion but nothing too serious. Walter’s north ridge was, easily and by far, the crux of this trip and if you don’t climb ice, you may run into trouble with Ernest. So bring your mixed game (and gear!) if you want all five in one shot (IMHO) on this great trip!

Walter would definitely be easier to tag from its south ridge, but summiting all five in the form of a 5-4 then 1-2-3 (or vice versa) would involve separate and significantly more time-consuming approaches from opposite ends of the Lyell line. Separating Walter from the rest also loads up the approach time. This or similar options would almost certainly need a second day.

Before joining Simon, Devan & Rocko, I’d planned to solo Walter from Glacier Lake and leave the rest for a ski trip. Instead, we hiked in from the Valciennes FSR. After joining them, I pushed to convince Devan for us to to get Walter on day 1, then return for the rest on day 2. But Devan weren’t havin’ none of that! – and I’m glad he won on the counterclockwise traverse of the five starting at the 1/2 col.

Regrets?

One.

If I could go back, after completing the five, instead of descending Christian's saddle with Twilight, I'd have descended Christian’s south face, then hiked the glacier east of the Lyell line back to the 3/4 col to collect Simon & Rocko – assuming Simon were willing to wait. We would then return to the hut the way we came in – roped up and as a group. We had more than enough time and Simon wouldn’t have had to hike the glacier back to the hut alone and unroped, armed only with my basketless ski pole for a probe. At least I should have brought & given him a radio.

In my defence, I didn't know he'd be joining us until after we'd left Calgary: I had no reason to think I'd be part of a group that would split up on an icefield.

Simon & Rocko joined and retraced our tracks back to the hut alone, yet the snowpack was much more supportive on the way in with the overnight freeze. On his way back to the hut, that snowpack had real teeth. Not good. Slots were smaller than west of the line but they were there. Growling.

If Walter’s north ridge proves too spicy for some of your group, perhaps the option I just mentioned might prove preferable to having them find their own way back to the hut.

Oh well, enough of that!

Another great day out in the Canadian Rockies, and thanks so much for popping by to look at my trip report! I hope you can find something useful in there.

Cheers!

Rob Walker

(post modified 2024 March 4)

Notes & References

1. Snowpack densities:Pahaut, E. Les Cristaux de Neige et Leurs Métamorphoses; Centre d’étude de la neige. St-martin d’hérés: Grenoble, France, 1975.

   My numbers are mean values from his measurement datasets for moderate to highly metamorphosed (MHM) and high to very-highly metamorphosed (HVM) snow pack

2. For a typical "Type C" school bus weight, I knocked 3000 lbs off the GVWR of a new C2 Thomasbuilt Bus (Some cool new features on this bad boy! “Drive the Future” with WiFi and their Zonar telematics system! Here’s a brochure just for you!) to get 30,000 lbs, or about 13.6 metric tons in Canadian currency. Generally agrees with what I dug up after a quick search and should be good enough for what we need here

3. David P Jones, "Rockes West" (volume 3 of "Climber's Guide to the Rocky Mountains of Canada" series), High Col Press, Squamish BC

Oh yeah!!!!

Almost forgot.

Here we are at...

***> "THE VERY BOTTOM OF THIS POST BEFORE YOU LEAVE"! <***

Simon ([Foresty Forest]) posted this this trip on Youtube. This link takes you to where our trip starts at about 6:30 in the clip, but watch the whole thing if you have the chance. It's only 13 minutes.

Amazing work!!!

More about this guy: I was up King George a few years back and the approach after the crossing was hell for all the deadfall.

He took a few days, went in there and cleared it! He does that kind of thing.

...and this guy is FAST, and FIT!!

If you like his clip, subscribe! It's superb content and it's how he earns his bread and butter (he has 391k subscribers at this writing).