Summit Elevation (m): 2549, 2393
Trip Date: November 05, 2016
Elevation Gain (m): 1600
Round Trip Time (hr): 8.5
Total Trip Distance (km): 18
Quick ‘n Dirty Rating: Class 3 – you fall, you break something
Difficulty Notes: Access from the west involves getting permission from landowners. Some slabs and routefinding but mostly hiking and easy scrambling.
Technical Rating: SC6; YDS (3rd)
GPS Track: Gaia
Map: Google Maps
Ever since reading a pair of trip reports from Brandon Boulier which detailed winter scrambles up both Centre and Caudron Peaks in the Livingstone Range near the Crowsnest Pass in Southern Alberta, I’ve wanted to do them both as a day trip from the west. Most folks ascend only Centre Peak and they do it from the east side – an easy to moderate, or even difficult scramble, depending on the route chosen. Rick Collier did both peaks as part of a grand traverse from Thunder Mountain to the Crowsnest Highway. Brandon gave me some key beta, including the advice to avoid his approach route on Centre and use his descent route instead.
Private property abounds in this area and you must cross it whether approaching from the east or the west. I know some folks have (unwittingly?) crossed these properties without going through the trouble of contacting the landowners and obtaining permission but I strongly discourage this practice. If too many people ignore private land by tramping across it without permission, the peaks that are accessed through it will become permanently cut off from anyone else. A few weekends before this trip, Phil Richards and I were surprised to find ourselves staring at a gate along the road from Blairmore up towards Grassy Mountain. We decided to turn around and do another trip rather than trespass. On hindsight this was a great idea considering the various landowners in the area and all the parties involved.
It took me about a week to find and chat with the various landowners on either side of the Livingstone Range, and I found most of them to be very pleasant to deal with. For obvious reasons, I’m not going to divulge their contact information on my public web site but you can contact me privately and I’ll do my best to assist you. I can tell you that on the east side, it is NOT the Hucik family that you should be talking to (despite hints to that effect on peakfinder.com), so don’t bother anyone with that last name. On the west side there are multiple landowners, some are friendlier than others and you should be aware that Brandon’s group got lucky with their approach as they were parked on property belonging to the less friendly variety. Put it this way – I strongly discourage you from using the same parking spot and initial approach that Brandon used.
The first permission you’re going to need in order to access Centre / Caudron from the west is from the Riversdale Resources mining company that is vying for rights to lob the top off of Grassy Mountain in pursuit of Metallurgical Coal. I found the local Riversdale contact, Keith, to be extremely friendly and helpful in granting me permission to drive their road and providing me valuable information on other landowners that I needed to garner permission from in order to approach the Livingstone Range from the west.
Phil Richards and I went back and forth on which direction we wanted to use for our ascent. You might assume that the west access is the only good choice, but considering the number of landowners and potential issues we were facing from that side, and the shorter / easier approach from the east, we strongly considered the east approach before finally settling on the west one. The 2200m total elevation gain required to bag both Centre and Caudron from the east was what finally settled it for us. We knew that going all the way up Centre, then down and up Caudron and then down and up Centre AGAIN before finally heading down to the east was just plain dumb. And while dumb ideas haven’t stopped us from having ‘fun’ in the past, we like to think we’re slowly learning to make reasonable choices. Yeah right! Put it this way – if you’re only interested in Centre Peak, I would recommend an approach from the east. You’ll only have to deal with one landowner and the route is much shorter and less involved than from the west side. After all of the planning, cold-calling various landowners and mapping out different routes for our drive and approach, climbing the darn mountains themselves seemed like it was an afterthought rather than the main event! As Phil and I drove up the road along Blairmore Creek towards Grassy Mountain, we wondered how dry our route would be. We were hoping to scramble it in light approach shoes if possible. Our first surprise of the day was coming across a closed gate for the Riversdale portion of the road! My initial thought was that I wasn’t clear enough with Keith that we would be needing access on Saturday but we soon discovered the gate wasn’t locked. PHEW.
The road was in decent shape and soon we were turning down a smaller side road towards other private properties. This is where we encountered our second closed gate of the day. Thankfully there was a route around this one and soon we were parked at the third closed gate of the day – but this was expected and marked the end of our approach drive. We set off up the road through the private property that we had permission to cross easily following the route that I’d mapped out using Google Earth beforehand. Soon we were on a surprisingly large and well graded gravel road that led east, up the Caudron Creek drainage. Our view of Caudron Peak was intimidating from the approach – it looked harder than advertised, especially up near the summit block. I had information that there was a trail alongside Caudron Creek below us on our left, but the road was easy to follow so we stayed on it until it finally ended at a huge gravel platform with a capped gas well at its center.
From the large gravel platform at the end of the approach road, we descended to Caudron Creek and picked up the obvious trail on its left (west) side. Where the old ATV track crossed the creek towards Caudron, we stayed on the left side and continued on towards Centre Peak. We ‘enjoyed’ staying either in the creek bed itself or on either side of it, depending where the bush and debris were less oppressive. As the creek turned left up the drainage between Centre and Caudron we stumbled up gravel and boulders on fresh snow and through the occasional alder or two. So far the route had been fairly obvious, but looking up at the approach (west) ridge that Brandon had used on our left, I wasn’t 100% sure where we had to ascend up Centre to get onto the south ridge.
As we followed an increasingly choked up creek bed, I suddenly noticed a flash of brilliant white moving rapidly up a scree slope nearby. This was the first long-tailed weasel I’ve ever seen in the wild. Apparently their numbers have been declining rapidly. We continued up the drainage before Phil started asking if maybe we were a bit too far. He could see some cliffy terrain ahead that didn’t seem to fit Brandon’s description. Sure enough! When I decided to look at the GPS I realized we were too far upstream. We briefly debated sticking right in the drainage but there had to be a reason Brandon didn’t do this (and there was). We decided to start ascending a steep scree slope to our left before contouring back around slabby cliffs to gain access to a large scree bowl leading up to the south ridge of Centre Peak.
On hindsight our mistake actually turned out great. We ascended loose slopes above the creek on it’s north side, contouring back around to the west before groveling up a large, loose scree gully to the south ridge high above. Views to the south towards Caudron and west towards Crowsnest Mountain kept improving the higher we went. The weather was very warm for November, but the wind was getting pretty strong as we finally gained the upper south ridge and finally got our first views of Centre Peak in the distance – still high above us.
Despite the strong winds, we both enjoyed the south ridge of Centre Peak. The views were excellent in every direction and the terrain was fun, easy scrambling on pretty good rock and scree. As we approached the final slopes to the large summit cairn, the wind became especially fierce. Several times we were forced to sit down or risk being blown off balance! I managed to tuck in around the huge cairn for some relief as I took in the amazing views in all directions. Thankfully the wind wasn’t too cold, thanks to the unusually warm temperatures.
After enjoying the views from a very windy summit, it was time to turn our attention to the descent and possible ascent of Caudron Peak. We enjoyed the warm sunshine as we descended the easy south ridge towards the scree slope we’d utilized to gain the ridge on ascent. We were a bit surprised by some of the slabby cliffs lower down in the scree bowl (we’d missed these on ascent when we went too far up Caudron Creek) but found mostly easy scrambling paths through them. We started traversing a bit to skier’s left as we got closer to the creek in order to put ourselves in a good position to ascend Caudron. We weren’t feeling 100% like another 400-500m of height gain but the weather was fantastic and the route looked pretty good so we knew we’d have to give it a shot.
Once we finally thrashed our way through some annoying alder bushes in Caudron Creek, we found ourselves with a 450 vertical meter height gain on Caudron Peak. I was feeling much better than expected and Phil grudgingly agreed that it was definitely worth giving it a go while we were in the area anyway and started leading the way upwards.
Caudron Peak
As part of my long-planned trip up Centre Peak – the highest peak in the Livingstone Range – I always wanted to tag Caudron, it’s southerly neighbor, in the same trip. It just seemed to make sense. Given how much work went into planning the route and getting permission from various landowners to drive and hike on their land, it made even more sense.
After a great ascent of Centre Peak, we turned our full attention to the west ridge of Caudron. We both had commented more than once over the approach and scramble of Centre that Caudron looked more involved than we were expecting. The west ridge looked easy enough, but just under the summit block, the slope steepened somewhat alarmingly and we wondered how easily we could scramble it. Lingering snow and ice were also visible, making us feel like our approach shoes might be too light. But there was nothing to do but get our noses in it at this point – so up we went! You might wonder why we didn’t just traverse the ridge between Centre and Caudron, but we assumed based on Rick Collier’s report that this was suicide. Upon reading of such a traverse in Caudron’s summit register, we now wonder if Rick didn’t look closely enough.
Once we got over a few humps and bumps on the west ridge of Caudron, we were faced with the imposing sight of the narrowing and steepening ridge to the summit. We could see a route that deviated slightly climber’s left near the summit block before likely going back right to the apex. As usual, the terrain wasn’t as severe as it looked once we got our shoes into it and soon we were traversing climber’s left to an obvious chimney next to a rock pinnacle just under the summit block. As Phil ascended the chimney, I noticed that he had excellent holds and ledges to work with and soon made short work of the moderate crux. I followed him up and then led up some slabby terrain to the summit itself.
It was strangely windless on Caudron Peak – very odd considering how windy Centre Peak was! There was a glass jar standing in as a summit register, with only one entry from July. Cornelius scrambled the ridge directly from Centre to Caudron – only offering that it was very difficult. Kudos to him!
After taking in the views and enjoying the surprising lack of winds at the summit of Caudron, it was time to start down. We descended the west ridge until it forked left leading down to Caudron Creek. We were very happy to follow the easy ridge through light forest all the way to the ATV track we’d noticed on approach. We continued following the old ATV track as it crossed Caudron Creek at which point we followed the same trail we’d been on earlier in the day. We followed this very pleasant track along the north side of the creek until it became obvious that we were deviating too far from the road. At this point I simply crashed right through the creek and up the steep embankment to the road. Phil reluctantly followed. The cold water felt pretty good on the tired feet.
Both Phil and I enjoyed Caudron Peak much more than we thought we would. Originally it was a matter of bagging the named summit since we were in the area anyway and it made sense on an energy level. After the moderate scrambling on the upper mountain and easy descent ridge, we both agreed that we enjoyed it more than Centre Peak. The views and lack of wind at the summit didn’t hurt. If you have the energy and you’ve done all the work of getting permission to drive and hike into Centre Peak from the west, I’d highly recommend tacking Caudron onto your day. It’s worth it.
