Windy Peak
Published by vdewit on June 2nd, 2009
Trip Report
On Saturday, May 30 2009, Wietse, JW, Naomi and Keith joined me on a 5 peak day in the Livingstone Range of the Alberta Rockies.
Wietse came up with the plan to hike / scramble the 5 peaks after reading trip reports from Bob Spirko. The 5 peaks (in the order we hiked them) were:
- Coffin Mountain
- Mount Livingstone
- Saddle Mountain
- Mount Hornecker
- Windy Peak
Windy Peak
After descending Hornecker we were staring at the steep south ascent slopes of Windy Peak. We grunted up the slope and were soon battling very strong wind (what did we expect right?!) to the 5th summit of the day.
Windy Peak is just a hike, but we had great views of some cloud formations coming over the Rockies to the west and a little bit of wind wasn't ruining our day any!
After a very short summit stay we descended the north side of Windy and after some bog ballet we were back at the cars.
Yes, I wrote 'car' with an 's'. There was a note on my seat from JP. It explained that my lights were left on and they had to boost my car. They ran it for 20 minutes but apparently it wouldn't start after they parked it again. I found the keys and tried starting it. Thankfully the car started no problem, so I think they weren't pushing the clutch far enough in. Imagine if they hadn't boosted my car and drove it out for us though? Wietse's car wouldn't have made it all the way in, so we would've walked at least .5 km to my car at the end of the day only to find the battery dead. Then we would've had to either push my car out to Wietse's car, or risk damaging Wietse's car by driving it all the way in. All of this fooling around with cars would've cost us at least 1-2 hours!
I indicated to JP that I will carry 2 beers up any mountain of his choice for him and his wife!
I highly recommend this traverse as an early season warm up. I would recommend a truck or 4x4 for the access road to Coffin Mountain but if you're lucky and it's dry, any high clearance vehicle should make it.
The route up Windy Peak as seen from the descent of Mount Hornecker;
Cool shot of JW and Keith nearing the expansive summit on Windy Peak.
Vern and Keith try to stay vertical in the strong wind (!) on the summit of Windy Peak.
The clouds made for interesting photos on this day.
The trees have a hard time growing in the wind!
Bear markings?
A final glance back as we complete our 5 peak day on the Livingstone Range.
