On Saturday, August 4, 2012 I was joined by the illustrious Sonny Bou for a jaunt up Ribbon Peak and hopefully Bogart Tower. Ribbon Peak has been on my radar for a few years already, mainly due to a trip report from Andrew Nugara and consequently it’s appearance in his scrambles book. For some reason or another I really like the Memorial Lakes area and I’d been up there 2 or 3 times previous and never realized the scrambling objectives that are in the area.
After reading Bob Spirko’s and So Nakagawa’s trip reports on Mount Lougheed, I really wanted to give it a go in 2012. For some reason it’s already been a pretty popular peak with other’s this year so I knew it was in good shape. When Wietse and Kevin Papke were throwing around the idea of heading out on Sunday, July 22nd I proposed peaks II and III of Mount Lougheed and they quickly agreed. Why didn’t I also include peak I and do the traverse? I’m not sure. I wasn’t really in the mood to challenge the “5th class terrain” just under peak II and didn’t have the energy for the whole traverse. I’ll do peak I as a separate scramble another day. Kevin already had peak I too, so he wasn’t motivated to repeat it either.
After almost 2 months without a summit and a long family vacation which saw me drive over 5000 kilometers in 2.5 weeks, I was more than ready to get out to the solitude of the Rocky Mountains again! Since I had just driven 10 hours the day before, coming back from visiting family in the Vancouver area, I decided that I would do something fairly low key on Thursday, July 19. I have wanted to hike Windtower for a long time already and this seemed like the perfect day to do just that, so I did.
On Wednesday, September 29 2010 I was joined by Wietse and Johan on a scramble up Mount Kent. Kent is described by Andrew Nugara as a moderate scramble on slabs and scree with a rewarding view considering its modest height. We found Nugara’s description very accurate. Following his directions we reached the summit with no major issues.
I decided to end a 4 day peak bagging party (Monday – Pilot / Brett, Tuesday – Burstall / Storm, Wednesday – Fox) with a jaunt up Mount Bogart. (NOTE: Since the floods of 2013, the approach route and even the route itself may have changed significantly so beware that the GPS track will be off.)
Heart Mountain is an easy but fun scramble – and extremely popular. Since there was still no snow Jeff and I tackled this one in November 2001 and I repeated it along with Grant MacEwan again in January of 2009 as the same loop route.
Five years ago I read about a little front range peak called Mary Barclay’s Peak in a trip report that Frank Nelson posted on the RMBooks web forums. For some reason it sounded like a trip I wanted to do but I never got around to actually trying it till I read about it again in Andrew Nugara’s new book, More Scrambles in the Canadian Rockies.
On Friday, July 06 2007, JW, Wietse and I decided to escape the madness that is Calgary on Stampede Parade day and bag another peak instead. We chose Galatea because we thought we could still get lucky with a good glissade and I’ve wanted to scramble that mountain for 3 years already.
On Friday, May 11 2007 Jason Wilcox kicked giant steps up Mount Lawson’s steep eastern slopes while Wietse and I followed him.
On Saturday, March 25 2006 I headed down to K-country to do a front range scramble. One mountain that I’ve wanted to do for a while already was Mount Lorette.
I had decided on Friday afternoon that I would post something to the web board to see if anyone would be interested in joining me for an attempt at South Kidd the next day, Saturday November 19, 2005.
So what does a 3am wake-up time, 14km biking, 22km walking, 4 litres of Gatorade, 5 granola bars, a dozen gummy bears and some peanut M+M’s give you?
On July 10 2004, Wes, Ed and I headed up the Centennial Ridge trail with Mount Collembola, not Mount Allan, being our objective.
What a day! With the weather reports predicting a perfect scrambling day on Saturday, Sonny and I hooked up to do the north peak of Mount Kidd.
I woke up on a lovely morning in February and decided that work could wait. I was going to bag a peak and that was the end of it!
After bagging Tyrwhitt and Pocaterra the day before, Jon, Kev and I were ready for something a little tamer on this particular day.
On a beautiful, sunny, late August day we set off with five guys to scramble The Tower in K-Country near Rummel Lake.
Mount Allan is probably one of the closest you can get to a scramble and still call it a hike! I’ve done this one twice now – and loved it both times.
Mount Sparrowhawk was my first mountain ‘nemesis’. It’s funny looking back, because now I realize it’s only a fairly easy hike that can be done in under 5 hours round trip.
Hanneke, Jeff, Reanne and I did Read’s Tower in August 2002. The weather was supposed to be really bad but we decided that since we had a babysitter and everything we would go anyway.
Buller was a very fun mountain. It isn’t scrambled that often and there is no clear trail to the summit. Part of the scramble was bushwhacking and part of it was clear climbing on shitty scree and slab slopes.
