Summit Elevation (m): 2627
Trip Date: June 25 2017
Elevation Gain (m): 1450
Round Trip Time (hr): 10
Total Trip Distance (km): 23
Quick ‘n Dirty Rating: Class 2 – you fall, you sprain something
Difficulty Notes: One of the easiest scrambles in DTC but requires a long approach along a somewhat rough trail – but there is a trail the entire way.
Technical Rating: SC5; YDS (Hiking)
GPS Track: Gaia
Map: Google Maps
When our plans for climbing Mount Lefroy fell through, Mike and I started looking at other options. After swearing that I was done with David Thompson Country for at least a few months, I found myself planning another trip to the area. Mike was still feeling ill on Saturday, so I solo scrambled Abraham Mountain – a delightful and unexpectedly short day out. Our plans for the Sunday and Monday were to scramble Mount Stelfox, spend Sunday night camping and then attempt to find a scramble route up Bright Star Peak, it’s higher neighbor to the north.
Thanks to Brandon’s recent ascent of Stelfox, we had a GPS track and general idea of the approach and the terrain. What we lacked, however, was any sort of details on either the approach or the mountain itself. I chatted briefly with Steven Noel about his ascent of the NW ridge, just above the easy scree gully that they used for descent. The ridge sounded pretty difficult but we decided to wait until we got there to see how we felt and how things looked. I finally got to wear my light scrambling shoes again, which made me very happy. I dislike my heavy scrambling boots intensely. Steven gave me some great beta, including where to camp and what to expect for water sources once above Whitegoat Creek (i.e. none).
I met Mike at the Cline Waste Transfer site along the David Thompson Highway. This isn’t the garbage pit that I had in mind the few times I drove past the sign along the highway. I could have camped there actually. There were a few other vehicles parked there along with fire pits. This is the same parking lot that accesses the Vision Quest hike which goes to a sub summit of Vision Quest Ridge (although many folks claim this much lower sub peak as the whole thing). It’s kind of strange because there’s a big sign blocking the Vision Quest trail stating that it’s not a trail. We went the other way around the transfer site fence before continuing along an OHV trail, marked as “Whitegoat Falls”. We followed the track past a small trail to the falls and continued along it’s muddy coarse while it gained and lost height in annoying fashion. Finally the track dropped precipitously down to Whitegoat Creek on our left – giving us a great view of both Stelfox and Bright Star. There’s been some suggestion that bikes could be used on this approach along the OHV trail. I’m not convinced. If you’re a machine on a mountain bike – sure. But if you’re a more casual biker you will hate your life as you push the bike up steep, muddy tracks and then lose all the height before gaining it back.
Since coming back from our hike, I’ve done some research and realize now that there’s a backpacking route along here called the “Stelfox Loop” that is detailed in a popular local hiking guide. This loop runs up Whitegoat Creek before crossing it and ascending to the col between Stelfox and Bright Star. From there it descends to Coral Creek and back out to the highway. Apparently it’s popular with the British army for military training, which explains why there was such a great (and unexpected) trail the entire way from the transfer station to Whitegoat Pass and beyond. The OHV trail is only supposed to be traveled from December to April, by OHV’s or snowmobiles, which is also interesting. We saw clear signs along the track that it’s been maintained since the 2013 floods and also that it hasn’t been traveled for a while, since there was some trees across the trail in spots. This OHV trail is impressive. I don’t like OHV trails in general because they tend to trash the environment they run through, but this one is different somehow. It’s not boring to walk on and it’s rugged as hell. Not just anyone can ride this sucker! The trail is long too. It goes way past the turnoff to Whitegoat Pass / Stelfox, running up valley before crossing another high col and descending either to Littlehorn Creek or even further, to the Bighorn River and coming out along hwy 11 where the Bighorn River passes underneath. Thanks to the trail, travel to the creek section was fairly quick. From here we made things a bit harder on ourselves than necessary on approach, correcting our mistakes on the way back out the following day.
The easiest way to travel along Whitegoat Creek is to stick to the OHV trail. It’s replete with ribbons (too many of them) and obvious. The only downside? No bridges and no logs at the crossings. There is a hiking route along the creek that shares sections of the OHV trail but it avoids the wider areas of the creek so that one can keep dry feet while crossing the creek on logs or well-placed boulders. On the way in we managed to keep our feet dry without wading the stream but it cost us some time and some debris-thrashing. On return I simply walked through the creek at the OHV crossings and saved a bunch of time / effort doing this. (Wet feet might not be fun on the way in though.) It sounded like others may have forded the river at the OHV crossings (i.e. take off footwear and wade across) but this would be very annoying as there’s numerous crossings. If you want to keep dry feet either hike in with river shoes or detour off the OHV track to cross narrower sections of the creek on logs or rocks like we did on ascent.
Eventually the OHV trail left the creek and spent a while gaining and losing height again through forested slopes on the east side of the creek. The trail was less muddy here than the first treed section, which was nice, but there were a few pretty steep rolls on it that got annoying. Overall it was a very pleasant section of hiking though. When we came on 5 or 6 brightly colored ribbons marking a small single-track down to our left, we knew we were leaving the OHV track for good. We dropped down through light forest towards the creek, running into the first random camp site just on the east side of it. Ribbons helped us cross Whitegoat Creek and pick up the trail on the west side and soon we were at the second (and larger) random camp. We were greeted there by 4 dogs and 4 people who were a bit surprised to see us at 09:30 in the morning. We briefly chatted (they’d apparently tried gaining Stelfox the day before but the terrain was too rough for them) before dropping our bivy gear and continuing up the trail. We made sure to fill our water bottles at the creek between the two camps as Steven Noel had warned me about a lack of water further on.
From the 2nd random camp the trail continued through light forest (tons of Calypso Orchids here) before running into a dry, rocky stream bed / drainage running down from the west. Here the route drops into the creek bed and is a bit indistinct for a few hundred meters. We stuck to climber’s left and soon ribbons and another track led us up the bank again before running into a washout. We traversed the washout and picked up an obvious trail on the left hand, upstream side of it again. I wasn’t expecting such an obvious trail, especially after our recent conversation with the group back at the campsite. From here to the Whitegoat Pass the trail was the kind where you feel like your bushwhacking, but your feet are on a very obvious track beneath the growth. After struggling briefly through some thick alders we veered climber’s left up a side drainage heading south back towards Stelfox and the col with Bright Star. This section of the hike was far different than either of us were expecting. Aside from the obvious trail, there was the strange “bushwhacking” through low bushes, combined with interesting meadows, short creek section and even light forested sections. After passing a recent blow-down we crossed one more section of valley, choked with knee to chest high bushes before spotting our route up and around the toe of the NW ridge of Stelfox. The only routefinding challenge on approach, other than the Whitegoat Creek section, was having the patience to wait for the correct ascent slope. If you head up too early you will quickly run into difficult terrain.
I spotted an obvious sheep track cutting across the toe of the NW ridge, which we followed up and around the ridge into the obvious NW scree gully leading up towards the distant summit. The whole approach had been bone dry and the gully didn’t have obvious water sources either. Do not assume you can find any water past Whitegoat Creek on this trip! We were considering camping at Whitegoat Pass since it would save us the approach to Bright Star the following day, but this would have been a bad idea due to the complete absence of snow or water nearby. The NW scree gully on Stelfox is a very easy scramble – pretty much only a hike. Sure – the scree is a bit tedious, but it’s much quicker and safer than the NW ridge above – which is a climber’s scramble if you’re up for that challenge. (At least you have an easy descent route!) The top 1/3 of the gully was foreshortened and by the time we popped out on the summit ridge we were both feeling it. We also realized that with day packs, Stelfox could easily be a 9-10 hour day – not too bad. With a bike (and lots of energy), Stelfox could even be a 7-8 hour day or less.
We had very little wind – the second day in a row for me – which is rare for this area, and we spent some time on the summit, taking photos and re-energizing. We realized at this point that we were going to be back at camp very early, so there was no need to rush things.
We scouted out our route on Bright Star for the following day and tried to pick out summits in the vicinity. The obvious ones were Cline and Resolute to the south and Vision Quest, Allstones and Abraham to the north. Eventually we started wandering back down the gully to Whitegoat Pass.
The return went pretty quickly and by around 15:30 we were setting up our camp. The party of four and four had left the site for us to enjoy on our own. There is no need to bivy if you’re only interested in Stelfox. As indicated above, 8-10 hours should be plenty of time to bag this peak in a day. I highly recommend Stelfox. It’s a rare easy scramble in DTC that’s to a legitimate peak that isn’t the named shoulder of a higher ridge. The approach is on trail and interesting almost the entire way, another huge bonus!
We were surprised to see yet another group pass by our camp on their way to Stelfox at 15:30 in the afternoon. They were back about 2.5 hours later having run into navigation issues and “cliffs”. This confused us again, because the route on Stelfox is really rather obvious – and there’s a darn trail the whole way to the ascent gully! I think this pair probably started up too early. This is the only way to run into “cliffs” on Stelfox.
We spent hours at camp – on hindsight it might have been worth checking out Vision Quest across the Whitegoat Creek, but eventually evening crept in and the forest got quiet and darker. It was very warm as we settled into the mid and tried to get some sleep before our next adventure the following day.
