Summit Elevation (m): 2916
Trip Date: July 07, 2024
Elevation Gain (m): 1500
Round Trip Time (hr): 11.5
Total Trip Distance (km): 46.5
Quick ‘n Dirty Rating: Class 2/3 – you fall, you sprain or break something
Difficulty Notes: The main difficulty is accessing the base of the peak via a myriad of damaged OHV trails and an old outfitter route or bushwhack.
Technical Rating: SC5
GPS Track: Gaia
Map: Google Maps
First Recorded Ascent: Frank Campbell, Karl Nagy, October 22nd, 1988
Mount Davidson is located in a sort of “no man’s land” at the headwaters of Waiparous Creek on the border of the Ghost River Wilderness Area and Don Getty Wildland Provincial Park. Access is through the Ghost Public Land Use Zone (PLUZ). Prior to 1988 there were no recorded ascents. Since the first, there haven’t been more than a handful additional summiteers – this peak is simply too far off the easy path and not high enough to attract hardcore alpinists. It’s been left to an unruly lot of mostly Albertans who have fallen in love with the unique character of the eastern Rockies to put their footsteps here.
Way back in late March 2017 Eric Coulthard and myself made a valiant attempt on Mount Davidson. I’m not 100% sure what exactly we were thinking at the time but we must have been desperate to get after a peak to make such an early season attempt! The reason this became an “attempt” rather than a “summit” was simply due to conditions. We ran into way too much snow on the approach and ended up bagging a subsidiary summit to the NE, dubbing it creatively “Waiparous Peak” after the approach creek. This mishap proved fortunate in the sense that we got to experience fantastic winter scenery while snowshoeing up Waiparous Creek. Cornelius Rott ascended both Davidson and Waiparous over a 2-day trip in September, 2019. Subsequently there have been the usual determined local peakbaggers following in his footsteps, including Devan Peterson who free soloed from Waiparous to Davidson via the east ridge in 2023. Ephraim Roberts (bright pink summit registers with assorted sex toys) made a late May 2024 ascent. Brandon Boulier was nipping on Eph’s heals with a June 2024 ascent.
Of course, in the end it doesn’t really matter much if 1 or 10 or 100 people have bothered with an obscure, hard-to-reach summit and Davidson stayed on my radar over the years. When scrambling the relatively nearby Castle Rock Peak in 2017 and Astral Peak in 2018 it went up my list a little more. I knew since my first attempt that I would be doing this as a 1-day trip rather than 2. Sure! Two days gives more “soak time” in the wild, but as you can read in Cornelius’ report it can also result in a restless night. I knew from the stats and from my previous attempt that Davidson wouldn’t even come close to my longer days in the hills. I also knew that Wietse and I could pedal further than most others on the approach and when we broke the numbers down, we planned for a 12-hour day. With a late spring snowpack in the Rockies we finally decided to tackle Davidson on a very warm Sunday on July 7th 2024.
Wietse picked me up at the early hour of 05:25 and by 07:11 we were starting our Gaia GPS recordings and pedalling up the series of backcountry roads and OHV tracks into the front range Rockies. Let me preface any of the biking commentary with a quick note about driving (much) further than we did. Depending on your vehicle and your appetite for rough roads, it is possible to drive another 9-10 kilometers of the approach that we (and pretty much everyone else) biked. There is a good argument to be made that any time saved by driving would be less than you’d expect due to the rough conditions but it would certainly save you a lot of physical effort! We saw Dodge vans and campers pulled much further down these roads than we expected. It was quite busy with campers and vehicles parked all the way along the series of rough tracks and deeply pocketed rubble roads that we biked over the next hour. The route was obvious and of course I had my previous track to follow. The last few kilometers were much less occupied, but there was one stubborn Toyota 4Runner parked right at the end of the road where our first crossing of Waiparous Creek awaited.
We were nervous enough about water levels in Waiparous Creek that we packed our golf clubs along, just in case we couldn’t even make the first crossing. We’ve done too many other peaks in the area to have interesting alternatives so at least we could salvage the day with a round at Water Valley. The water was clear and fast at the crossing but didn’t look problematic. I hoisted my bike on my shoulder and waded across. On hindsight I should have scouted a little more, but we wanted to test some of the deeper water since the creek would be deeper and faster on exit than it was at 08:15 in the morning. Immediately after the crossing the road was destroyed by an impressive amount of deep holes and berms. (Interestingly, ATVs can – and obviously still do – drive around all the mess albeit, illegally.) At first we wondered if it was worth lugging the bikes over all the mess but soon enough we were riding again and grateful for our stubborn Dutch genes.
Wietse and I have a saying about bike approaches. It goes something like, “bike as far as possible and then keep biking until someone is crying”. So far it’s worked out pretty well so neither of us saw any reason to change our technique on this particular day. The next hour or so was typical front range Rockies pedaling. A delightful mix of wading fast water, pushing uphill, getting stuck on rubble flats and riding decent cutline trails. As we approached the spectacular gap between Sunrise Wall (L) and Pinto Wall (R) we wondered how much further the riding would last. “Waiparous Tower” on the north end of the Sunrise Wall towered high above us as we crossed a nice shallow spot along the creek. A massive lateral moraine to our left demonstrated the power of ice traveling slowly down valley, millenia before humans started prancing their vanity through the landscape.
We almost stopped biking after the shallow crossing. The trail continued ahead but it rose very steeply and was very rough underfoot. But nobody was crying yet, so we reluctantly pushed up the hill and rode down the other side to the last bike crossing of Waiparous Creek. After riding one last cutline we found ourselves high above a confluence of Waiparous Creek and two other lively bodies of water. Clearly we could ride down the track which continued up valley below, but I thought I heard someone quietly sobbing nearby – I’m pretty sure it was me. On hindsight we could have ridden another 1-1.5kms but our butts were sore and we wanted to start hiking. We also didn’t feel like pushing our bikes back up the road at the end of a hot summer day. Knocking a total of 30kms of approach off of a 46km day satisfied us. No sense making this a very reasonable 10.5-hour day when we could make it a wee bit more. 😉
After ditching our bike gear (we bring full repair and replacement kits including full size tires), we donned light packs and started down the steep embankment to a lively feeder stream below. The sun was now cooking hot and the creek crossing felt good on the feet before continuing upstream on a still-obvious track. We passed through a campsite along the creek and the marked boundary of Don Getty Wildland Park and what seemed like the end of the old OHV track and any hope of being bikeable. A small trail snaked upward from the wildland border as the creek thundered through a narrow canyon to our right. I remembered snowshoeing right through the canyon 7 years previous and how scenic that was. Today’s scenery was just as magical but quite a bit different in character. To our surprise, the trail became a very rideable road along a cutline again! (Hence my advice to ride a wee bit further if you’ve made it as far as we did anyway.) No matter. It felt good to be walking with summer smells and sounds all around and our peak rising majestically in the distance. We clearly weren’t there just yet.
The wide cutline track ended unceremoniously in a small clearing and we continued on a much smaller, ill defined singletrack into forested slopes ahead. Wildflowers rose through thick moss carpeting the forest floor around us. A cool breeze worked as natural A/C as we took in the sights and sounds of this wild place. Many people have come through here over the years, but there was only the 2 of us on this particular day. Many folks wouldn’t understand, but the feeling of putting in a challenging approach and ended up in these wild places is hard to replicate in other experiences. If you think about it, there are very few places on the planet that you can travel for a 12-hour day within a 1-hour drive of a city of 1.5 million people and see hardly another soul. We are truly lucky to live here. <soap box>For all the whiners who think Canada is such a terrible place to live, I say start walking and gain some perspective.</soap box>
After reading other trip reports we were expecting the faint trail we were on to end. It didn’t. The one thing that worried us was that it kept rising off the valley floor south of the creek. We could see on our GPS where Ephraim left the track to descend back closer to the creek, but we didn’t see any reason to leave the cool forest and relatively easy trail so we continued along it. The trail was obviously human-contributed with some clear blazes and cut trees along the way. Small stone cairns guided us across several rocky side drainages. Don’t get me wrong – this was a very old, quite overgrown and faint trail. Don’t go up here expecting a highway! Comparable to the old outfitter trail that Phil and I followed up McConnell Creek, we often lost it and had to spend a few moments finding it back. Unfortunately for you, my GPS track reflects our off-trail wanderings both on approach and exit.
At a large drainage with a small waterfall and some low cliffs high above we finally lost the trail for good. On exit we traversed above treeline to this gully before descending back to the trail but on approach we were nervous to gain even more height off the valley floor. A moderate bushwhack ensued until treeline descended to meet us. While the treeline descended to meet our line, the creek ascended to meet it. We walked off the south side of the creek at the perfect place to transition to its north side, south of Mount Davidson at precisely the ideal place. Talk about perfect! We agreed that we’d stick to the south side at treeline to the aforementioned side drainage on return.
From here the route became pretty obvious and straightforward. We were now over 4-hours into our day and starting up a 1000 meter grind to the top of our objective. At least it was a workout with beautiful views. As we ascended a NW branch of upper Waiparous Creek we took in the soaring cliffs and alpine meadows forming the headwater valley as it stretched out below. We followed the valley as it curved under south rubble and slab cliffs and picked a line ever upward. Despite appearances everything stayed on the easy side of scrambling. We looked for slabs and solid footing for ascent, making our way to the SE ridge with spectacular views back through the Pinto / Sunrise gap towards a diminutive Black Rock Mountain.
The upper slopes were still covered in their winter coat and we took turns kicking slushy (cold) steps until finally popping out at the summit, 6 hours from the parking lot. Views were naturally sublime from the nearly 3,000 meter summit and we spent time taking it all in. A cairn just off to the north had us traversing snow to see if it was higher but it measured the same as the first summit.
We found Ephraim’s register and moved it up a few meters. I also moved Devan’s register from its broken container to Ephraim’s. We didn’t bother digging around for another register which may or may not have existed under the snow and ice encrusted cairn. It was surprisingly cool at the top and soon we started slowly back down our ascent route.
After descending the giant south slopes of Davidson we crossed the creek and ascended slightly at treeline, stubbornly staying high despite our legs asking WTF we were thinking. It was totally worth it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – our secret weapon in the mountains is not worrying about losing or gaining a few hundred extra meters of elevation to find the best route. In this case we avoided almost 100% of the bush by first hiking along treeline and then descending to the old trail at the correct drainage. Everything worked better than expected and soon enough we were back on the old OHV track wondering why we didn’t bike the last cutline.
10-hours into our day we were back at the bikes. If we were a little nervous about water levels in Waiparous Creek at 07:00, we were most certainly more than a little nervous now! There wasn’t much to do but get into it. The first few crossings were easy peasey. The riding was decent too – much better than trudging along rocky roads with our home planet star baking overhead.
The next few crossings were slightly more challenging, the deepest being crotch high with a strong current. We made it. Somewhat strangely, the final few crossings were easier again although we did spend time looking for reasonable lines across. The final 10 kilometers flew by. It’s always surprising how much height you gain on approach but it was clear on return. A few uphill sections had us sweating pretty good but within 1.5 hours of starting the exit ride we were done.
What a day! I highly encourage this outing for folks who don’t mind backcountry biking and a sense of adventure. It doesn’t get much better than this, honestly. The riding is MUCH easier than other front range accesses such as the Cutoff Creek / Clearwater River and the Ram River approaches are. I would say this is a perfect test excursion for those other areas. If you love this, you’re ready for the other, even more remote rivers and headwater valleys that the front range Rockies have hidden from the average traveler.
