Lotus Flower Tower.
A multi-sport family expedition with the ultimate goal of climbing the Lotus FLower Tower (600m 5.11) in the Cirque of the Unclimbables with my 54-year-old dad — as his second multi pitch ever! To access the Cirque we paddled the Little Nahanni and Nahanni rivers over 30 days, making our 500km journey entirely self propelled, from road to road.
Our team of seven consisted of: Bronwyn’s dad (Geoff), brother and lifelong friends Thor and Zack as well as Geoff’s original paddling partner from when they were teenagers, Ant Southam.
On June 17th 2016 Thor’s sister, Tia, dropped us at the end of a long abandoned mining road, a 10-hour drive from the small town of Watson Lake, Yukon.
Geoff had been here before. In 1980 he’d paddled this very river with Bronwyn’s mom when they were seventeen years old. Unlike our sporty modern gear, they wore work boots and cotton plaid shirts and paddled in first generation ABS canoes with sheets of plastic as spray skirts!
On that trip they’d marveled at the Cirque’s sheer walls. Now 36 years later, Geoff was coming down the river again, this time with two of his children and this time to climb the Tower!
The first days were jam-packed with the wild whitewater of the Little Nahanni, including running Crooked Canyon (Class IV), which Geoff and Ant had portaged around in 1980.
We left the river and after a mosquito-infested, two-day uphill trek with backbreaking loads, we caught our first glimpse of The Cirque of the Unclimbables.
We found ourselves in a lush meadow, speckled with Arctic wildflowers of red, yellow and white. A playful marmot scurried up to greet us.
Our mission was simple:
GET MY DAD GEOFF TO THE SUMMIT OF THE LOTUS FLOWER TOWER!
We set off up the Tower as a team of four: Geoff, Bronwyn, Jacob, and Thor.
The 600m of granite loomed above us. We packed for two days and spent a night on the only ledge, exactly halfway up.
After waking up to find our tent collapsed under snow at the bivvy, Jacob lead us higher on the tower in the pouring rain, trailing three ropes as “team orange” jugged behind. The summit seemed unlikely, but we kept going and saying: “just one more pitch…”
Thor’s positivity kept the stoke alive as he sang aloud,
“I’m jugging in the rain, just jugging in the rain!”
As we reached the summit, the clouds parted and revealed the full panorama of snow capped mountains of the Ragged Range.
After the climb, we still had two weeks and about 300km of river trip through the whitewater and canyons of the South Nahanni River.
The team after thirty days in the wilderness (left to right): Ant, Bronwyn, Thor, Geoff, Alex, Zack, and Jacob.
Want to know more?
Jacob Writes.
“I had always been a bit skeptical about the inflatable canoes, but it wasn’t until we began strapping all thirteen packs and four barrels into our strange “blue banana boats” that the full reality began to set in. The van dropping us off had left in a cloud of dust, leaving only the sound of the river. Over a hundred miles of dirt road lay between us and the nearest highway. The only way out now was down-river…on the banana boats.” …
Film Coming Soon.
We self-filmed the whole trip and have been working to put a short film together. Stay tuned!