Summit Elevation (m): 2240
Elevation Gain (m): 1700
Trip Time (hr): 10
Total Trip Distance (km): 18
Quick ‘n Dirty Rating: Class 2 – you fall, you might sprain something
Difficulty Notes: Easy scrambling and hiking on loose scree with some route finding. Note: This peak and the stats above are part of the 5 peak Livingstone Traverse.
Technical Rating: OT3; YDS (Hiking)
GPS Track: Gaia
Map: Google Maps
My 200th summit!! OK – not a very impressive summit but it’s a milestone that I’m quite proud of. Not many folks get up 100 summits in their lifetime and I was about to stand on my 200th! In order to get 200 summits you have to burn a LOT of calories, walk a LOT of kms and take a LOT of extra breaths! It’s also been a lot of adventures and a lot time spent pondering life and it’s many aspects. Without climbing I think I’d be a mental and physical mess, so mountains have impacted my life in a way that’s hard to explain. Back to the mighty Saddle Mountain…
The descent from Mount Livingstone to Saddle Mountain was probably the ‘worst’ part of the trip. It’s not terrible as far as descents go, but there was slushy snow, hot sun, thick trees etc. It was just a bit nastier than I was expecting, but short. Eventually we came up against a barbed wire fence and followed it out until we were gazing up at Saddle Mountain’s double summits.
JW, Keith and I figured that we needed some extra exercise (!!) so we bagged the lower south summit first. Probably the only real scrambling of the day was coming off the south summit, but it was too short. Soon we were laboring up the 3rd summit of the day and then I was standing on top of peak number 200!
There was some great photo ops on an outcropping of rock near the summit and after a quick break (the wind was getting stronger and cooler as the day progressed), we were on our way to Hornecker.
