Oyster Peak

Published by vdewit on April 29th, 2009

Trip Details

Trip Activity:

Scramble

Attained Summit?:

Yes

Location:

Banff National Park

Trip Date:

September 7, 2005

Summit Elevation:

2,777m

Summit Elevation (ft):

9,110ft

Trip Report

A very frosty morning of September 7 2005 found Rod, Jon and I hiking out of our Baker Lake backcountry campsite to tackle a long day of scrambling in Skoki. Our objectives for the day were a traverse of Oyster Peak followed by a hike through Jones Pass to Skoki Lodge. From there we would ascend Skoki Mountain and than head back up to Deception Pass from which we would bag the summit of Fossil Mountain. From there we would descend back to our Baker Lake camp and presumably fall asleep very early!

We decided early on that we would do the traverse of Oyster because of our good experiences with traversing two other mountains the day before, namely Anthozoan Mountain and Brachiopod Mountain. Kane also shows the scramble as a traverse.

We crossed the beautiful meadows of the Cotton Grass Pass and jumped Oyster Creek before heading into some light bushwhacking and Oysters extreme southern end. There was a little creek jumping down the rocks from a high alpine meadow that made us wish we spent more time in this lovely, remote area.

Soon enough we were grunting up the ridge on Oyster. There actually wasn't that much scree on the ascent because we really stuck to the ridge the way Kane shows in his book. The climbing was quick and fun on large rock and slabs. We topped out on the south peak to a beautiful morning view of the surrounding area. There was a register in the cairn that mentioned the true peak to the north and gave lazy people an excuse to sign a register without doing the traverse! ;-)

The traverse of Oyster was one of the highlights of our Skoki trip. The morning was cool and crisp and the traverse was just good fun without being too hard or too easy. Just before the main summit the scrambling got a bit more serious but again, nothing more than the upper end of 'moderate'. We spent some time at the summit looking down at the next part of our journey through Jones Pass and eating breakfast. (Advil and Powerade anyone?)

Following one of the most enjoyable times in Skoki came some of the least. The descent down the west slopes of Oyster at the north end was not what I was expecting at all. It was upper 'moderate' to low 'difficult' with lots of slab and scree downclimbing. Rod was pushing the limits of his scrambling ability which didn't help the comfort levels any! (He did fabulous though) Eventually we did work our way down through the cliff bands and steep, nasty scree but don't under estimate this descent - it's certainly not as easy as I was expecting! (Of course Kane doesn't actually show this descent line in his picture either... ;-))

Next we were on to Jones Pass and Skoki Mountain.