Summit Elevation (m): 3002
Trip Date: September 13, 2024
Round Trip Time (hr): 10
Elevation Gain (m): 1900
Total Trip Distance (km): 19
Quick ‘n Dirty Rating: Class 4 – you fall, you break your head and die.
Difficulty Notes: A fun, moderate scramble leads to difficult, loose scrambling and route finding. A longer day than you’d expect given the stats.
Technical Rating: SC7
GPS Track: Gaia
Map: Google Maps
Way back in 1977, the Alpine Club of Canada held a family camp in Little Yoho at the Stanley Mitchell Hut from July 30th to August 13. Little did I know (I was only 2 years old at the time), that 47 years later I would intersect with this camp on the lonely, wild summit of Mount Marpole soaring high over Emerald Pass and Basin far below. While pondering objectives for the weekend of September 13th, I noticed good weather on Friday. Dang it. I would be scrambling on Friday the 13th?! I’m not superstitious but still – it seemed like maybe I should make good choices for this particular outing. I just watched an Apollo 13 documentary on Netflix and it seemed the height of hubris the way everyone on that mission mocked the number and then missed disaster by a hair’s breadth. But like I said already, I’m not superstitious so I made plans despite the calendar.
As I perused a shrinking list of peaks that still interest me, I noticed one with a name that I really hate. “CarMar” Peak, so named for its position between Carnarvon to the south and Marpole to the north, has come up on my plans before but I’d never actually planned it out. I knew there was a 3rd-class route from the Emerald Basin and plotted it out on Gaia. Looking at the satellite and topo maps it seemed fairly straightforward but I was a little skeptical. It was also over 1600 meters of height gain in a very short distance and I know that the travel in this area can be tricky for a number of reasons.
As beautiful as the Carnarvon and Presidents side of the Yoho Valley is, the same reason it’s so scenic is also what makes it somewhat tricky for off-trail hiking and scrambling. This has been a glacial landscape for millennia, but much of the glaciers have now retreated, leaving horribly unstable slopes on the one hand and horribly hardpack ones on the other. Many of the formerly glaciated mountain slopes are extremely steep. When combined with tons of winter snow and avalanches, all of the loose stuff has been scoured off, leaving rock hard “cheese grater” earth underfoot. Not my favorite terrain. The thing that kept me coming back to CarMar was an easy on-trail approach (no bushwhacking) and a relatively straightforward route.
While finalizing my plans for a Friday the 13th solo ascent of CarMar Peak, I decided to check one more time for any beta other than some old comments from Graeme Pole on bivouac.com. And I found some! The indefatigable Devan Peterson completed a traverse of CarMar to Mount Marpole in August of 2022 and shared a GPS track on Strava. His ascent route was Hamilton Lake but he returned via Emerald Basin – my planned route for both ascent and return. As much as I despise the whole concept of Strava, I appreciate when fellow scramblers share beta there. I also found a post on Facebook where Devan described the route to Marpole as 4th-class. This jived with other beta from Rick Collier on bivouac on that same traverse. I had no firm plans to ascend Marpole – it sounded way outta my league, but I had a track now, in case I decided to check it out while I was nearby.
I left the already busy Emerald Lake parking lot just before 08:00 and set a quick pace around the lake, following folks sipping their Starbucks along the way. I was a bit jealous of their laissez-faire attitude but I had adventures to seek and places to go! No time for me to lollygag at the lakeshore, taking in beautiful scenes of low-lying clouds over Walcott and Burgess. Such is the heavy burden of a relentless peakbagger. Sigh. I’ve often wondered how many hikes I could publish on explor8ion – most of them would be approaches to peaks I’ve done. It would be more than a few! Today’s hike was Emerald Basin, a hike I’d never done before. I didn’t take long and I was tramping off the lakeshore on a wide gravel path heading up the large outflow plain of Emerald River.
I almost missed a small sign and matching trail that sneaked off to my left, indicating “Emerald Basin”. Thanks to overnight rain or heavy dew, the trail was soaked as I started ascending steeply along the Emerald River. Not surprisingly for the area, the trail was very well maintained and traveled and I quickly gained height as it led NW into the basin ahead. Low-lying clouds obscured some views, but as I approached the basin I could see soaring cliffs and hear waterfalls plunging down their sheer rock faces all around me. Dramatic scenes were also opening up behind me as I slowly started up even steeper terrain to the base of two waterfalls marking my lower route and barely visible through morning mist. The basin was much more scenic than I was expecting and well worth a hike if you’re ever in the area with a few hours to spare.
As I suspected while planning this trip, the terrain was horribly foreshortened and a little unfriendly underfoot once I left the comforts of a good trail. Near the base of the falls (I still couldn’t really see them through thick morning fog) I deviated to my left to ascend steep terrain up and around the cliffs they were running over. I started in a loose streambed which foretold of challenges ahead. The rubble here was disturbingly loose and jagged, rolling as I stepped on it and very sharp. There was none of the usual “give” that Rockies scree has. It was rubble on concrete – definitely not the easiest terrain for quick and efficient travel. I exited the creek bed as soon as I could, angling up low cliffs to a slope above the waterfalls that held a bunch of trees.
Normally I avoid high elevation trees, but this time I stayed in them as long as possible to take advantage of better footing on soft ground. There were plenty of open patches here and views back over a rapidly shrinking Emerald Basin with swirling clouds were stunning. Views ahead were less so. I was a little puzzled by what I could see – thankfully the clouds were thinning and promised sun was poking through. Everything looked so bloody close but I knew it couldn’t be! Gaia was telling me how far I’d come and how many meters I had to gain and what I was seeing just didn’t jive with the numbers. Again, I was expecting this here but it was a little unnerving. I wondered if my plotted GPS route to the Carnarvon / CarMar col was even close to a good line. It was impossible to tell from this angle.
As I pondered things in a delightfully warm patch of sunlight, I heard some rockfall nearby. This was odd since I wasn’t on anything that steep. I whirled around and found myself face-to-face with a large Billy goat! Wow. Even better, he was joined by two other Billy’s and a mama / baby pair. So cool. He was as surprised to see me as I was to see him and led his troop to higher ground while I continued slowly upward. At this point I did what I often do part way into a trip. I changed my plans. Originally I was planning to ascend Marpole from CarMar and only if I felt like it, the route looked reasonable and the weather was holding up. Now I was rethinking that plan.
As I ascended under CarMar, I decided that I wanted a little more challenge today. So far the trip had felt quite reasonable and I forgot about the date. I had Devan Peterson’s GPS track from his traverse and decided that since his descent route was “easy” (his words), I could definitely ascend it. The traverse might even be easier if done the opposite direction he did, or worst case I would get the named summit and forgo CarMar. With renewed energy I headed for some cliffs on the opposite side of the rubble plateau that I was ascending towards CarMar.
At first I thought the route would bypass the cliffs on climber’s right, but nope. It went straight up and so did I! On hindsight there are easier ways from the first rubble plateau up to the second one, but the cliffs were fairly straightforward, fun scrambling on firm and dry rock. I was delighted to be off rubble for a while.
From the top of the lower cliffs I found myself on another rubble plateau, heading up a very muddy stream towards a distant Emerald Pass. Devan had mentioned descending “snow patches” from his traverse but I quickly realized that the snow was sitting atop a dying glacier. I was going to be ascended this glacier, and without snow. Thankfully there were enough rocks on the ice that I didn’t need crampons or icers here but I was worried for a few moments.
As I ascended the glacier to a line of cliffs above, I wondered where the route went. It was NOT obvious from my current vantage but I trusted the GPS track and the fact that Devan had descended it blind. How bad could it be? Haha. I also noted a possible line going left up the cliffs to an upper glacier that might work for CarMar if I couldn’t get to Marpole from here. Good. There were options at least. As I stepped off the glacier onto solid rock at the base of the cliffs with a rising bench that I liked, I wondered if this route will even be here in the future? If the glacier melts back from the cliffs there might not be a route here anymore. Who knows?
As I suspected, the cliffs broke down wonderfully and soon I was ascending a very steep dirt and scree couloir that broke right through all the difficult terrain. It was bloody steep! I grunted and swore my way up here until finally, 4.5 hours into my day I broke onto the upper SW ridge of Mount Marpole with threatening clouds building to the north of my position.
Without a ton of time to think about it, I started up the narrowing ridge, bypassing where I could on climber’s left just as Devan had done. Of course I knew that there was likely to be a crux near the summit – both Devan and Rick mentioned this.
The thing about “difficult” is that you always wonder if you’ll know when you’re on it and then when you are, you definitely know. This time was no different. Just under the summit I ascended a disturbingly loose bit of exposed ridge to a smooth slab. I could see from Devan’s GPS track that he ascended here but descended a different way. I knew I could ascend this section but getting back down would be an issue and there was no room here for any “issues”.
Sure enough. When I descended and poked around a bit I found what looked like an alternate route. I couldn’t actually see most of the route, but it looked like a slab traverse led to a tight gully which would break the crux and get me a bit higher – hopefully to the top. The slab traverse was like all such routes. Much more exposed and tricky than if first looked! Tiny holds with plenty of loose rock detritus all over it and fairly severe exposure (if you slipped there was no guarantee you’d stop) made things trickier than I first expected. Thankfully the gully was exactly what I was hoping for and went relatively quick and painless. Getting down was future Vern problem at this juncture.
Current Vern was happy to note that the summit was indeed attainable from my top-out point and soon I was “enjoying” the panorama. (Quotes because I was quite worried about getting back down.) With threatening skies to the north and west, the views were incredible, especially towards the Wapta Icefield and Presidents. Despite a tiny cairn, I did find an extremely old register in a rusted out can just under the summit. It was soaking wet and almost illegible so I took some photos for later deciphering. I didn’t linger in the cold wind and decided it was time for current and future Vern to merge and tackle that crux area before he started blathering and sobbing inconsolably and thing got messier than either of us wanted to deal with.
As usual, the descent wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. The crack / gully went without issue since I could stem most of it on my butt. The slab exit traverse was a little tricky, I’m not gonna lie. The 2nd half was fine – a slip wouldn’t kill you there. It was the 1st half that was the issue. I carefully tip-toed (literally) off this section and breathed a sigh of relief. Hard part over? Hmmm. At this point I decided that the traverse didn’t look horrible and even with the weather obviously collapsing and blowing in, I might as well check it out. I set a turnaround time in case things got silly and pushed forward. The first part of the ridge, past my ascent gully, was quick and relatively painless. Some exposure and plenty of loose rock but nothing I couldn’t handle. A huge gendarme / intermediate summit along the ridge was relatively easy to by-pass on the left (east) side. And then things got tricky.
I remembered Devan talking about “4th-class” terrain from CarMar to Marpole but wasn’t entirely clear where it was. Obviously the summit block was part of it but it didn’t take long before I realized that despite first impressions, the descent to a low point on CarMar’s north ridge was not going to be very easy or straightforward at all. Bummer. For some reason I was sure that I would find a route down the horribly loose, steep and exposed terrain between a false summit and CarMar’s north ridge. I didn’t really use Devan’s track here because the terrain was way too complex and convoluted. I wandered back and forth between the south ridge and west face, finding any route I could to take me lower. At one point I only had to get a my right foot another 18 inches lower and I’d be home free and I just couldn’t do it! I could see that Devan likely ascended here, and ascent wouldn’t be a problem. The problem was that I had to lower myself on sketchy holds before almost “letting go” and trusting I wouldn’t carry on down east facing cliffs below. Dang it! So close! I tried 5 times and just couldn’t do it. I’d have to find another way.
As one does in these situations, I sighed deeply, climbed back up some sketchy terrain and found another way. It was messy and impossible to describe but eventually I managed to traverse to the south ridge on exposed west face ledges and from there made the CarMar col. Phew. I was now pretty certain that I was done with tricky stuff and slogged as quick as I could up the easy north ridge of CarMar to the summit.
Clouds were racing towards me as I hurriedly snapped some dramatic photos of Marpole and the Presidents before starting my descent towards Mount Carnarvon, looming ominously to the south. I was quickly realizing that all my worries about terrain being bigger and more complex than first seeming was true on this traverse. I was confident that there was an “easy” descent from the Carnarvon col but that didn’t mean it would feel “easy”!
As I started down what first looked like scree slopes, I realized with some despair that I was in for some pain ahead. The next hour or so crept by at a snail’s pace as I carefully picked and prodded my way down the worst that Rockies rubble can get. Steep, loose and hardpack slopes led all the way back to my ascent track. It was gross. There’s no other way to describe it truthfully.
After descending mercifully soft earth through the tree island, I was back on the nasty crap all the way past the waterfalls and into the valley far below. Again – there is no way to make this section seem like fun. It’s just not. Don’t get me wrong! The landscape here is beautiful and having completed a fairly complicated traverse with wild views, I was in a great mood overall – I just forgot how happy I was for a few hours of the descent and so will you if you ever follow me up here. C’est la vie. The cost of entry can be hard sometimes – in this case literally concrete hard.
From the Emerald Basin everything improved again. A few last looks back at the impossibly foreshortened terrain and wondering at the different colored rocks, cliffs and even waterfalls and I turned my back on an dramatically beautiful little corner of the Rockies and returned to civilization along the sparkling waters of Emerald Lake.
This is one of those trips that sticks with you for a while. Despite being horribly loose and full of disgusting hardpack terrain, there is so much beauty and visceral landscapes here that you can’t help but want more. Emerald waters lead to wild rivers and cascading waterfalls from glaciers desperately clinging to dark cliffs impossibly high above the valley floor. Majestic mountain goats balance impossible rock faces as clouds race overhead and glaciers melt below. And despite the odds (and appearance), a route opens up through this landscape, in front of the determined scrambler making his way slowly through the landscape to summits with wide ranging panoramas in every direction. This is the sort of day that reminds me why I still love scrambling after 25 years of doing it. There aren’t many of these days each year, but I’m very satisfied that I managed to experience this one. And on Friday the 13th besides! 😉
Postscript
After getting home I managed to decipher only a few words on the old summit register. I could make out “Bruce” and “Phil Kemp”. Despite the odds against me, I actually found an electronic record of their descent from a family ACC camp at the Elizabeth Parker Hut in 1977! How cool is that? Here’s a quote from the article.
Another long day was spent on Mt Marpole. The north-east arête, by the guidebook, is “one hour on rock”. Which is not unfair, if one ignores the rather alarming garbage crossed to reach the rock. The summit cairn, like much of the rest of the mountain, had mostly collapsed. We found the summit records nearby, and were happy to learn that the south-west ridge approach was usual. Descent by this route was much easier and safer, though it meant a longer tramp back over Emerald Pass.
I can only imagine the long tramp back over Emerald Pass. Unfortunately any “summit records” that they might have added their names to are now faded pages in a wet journal. I can’t imagine this mountain is very popular anymore, but who knows? All I know, is that it was pretty neat to intersect with two climbers that I’ve never met, who stood where I did 47 years earlier and found themselves “enjoying” the same terrain that I did.
