[TR] Mount Sir Donald - Northwest Ridge 8/14/2010

[limegreen]

Trip: Mount Sir Donald - Northwest Ridge

 

Date: 8/14/2010

 

Trip Report:

With good weather was in the forecast for the first weekend since our wedding with no work, planning or injuries in the way, we hit the road for the Canadian Rockies—target: Northwest Ridge of Mt. Sir Donald. We knocked off most of the drive Friday night, and after a leisurely breakfast and grocery store stop in Revelstoke got our first glimpse of the mountain from the highway—the tallest on the right [note massive bug splats on windshield]

The hike in took a few hours—but aside from some mosquitoes and few flies, it was pretty smooth going—the trail is clearly marked and well maintained. All the way in we enjoyed beautiful scenery and outstanding views of the mountain.

We got to the bivy site around dinnertime and found a few other parties who were planning to climb the next day. After dinner we watched a party finish the descent; you don’t realize how big the mountain (10,816 ft) is until you see someone on it [can you see them?]

Try now (14x zoom)

We got up just after the sun. After scrambling the boulders and climbing the scree at the base of the mountain, we reached the path to the col (not discernable from the bivy)

From the col we could see 7-8 people ahead of us on the route (at least one solo climber and a number of roped teams) The ridge looked fantasic!

We climbed the ridge as a running belay in somewhere between 3-4 pitches.

Here is the view from partway up the first “pitch” the green dot is the poop barrel at the top of the col at the base of the route.

Oscar leads up the ridge.

The route was clean and sustained—it made for a fantastic climb! Though not a technically tough (sustained 5.2 with the occasional 5.4-5.5 move thrown in), its not often you get to climb so many consecutive vertical feet—with such glorious exposure.

On the ridge in the top third of the route; there was not enough snow to require any special effort to climb around it. You can see multiple teams approaching the summit

Summit shot. You can see smoke from the fires in the Caribou region (most of the route you couldn’t smell it, but in the top few hundred feet it started to smell like a camp fire)

Stunning views from the summit

Another team takes in the view

We took the recommended “summit bypass” descent—and wouldn’t recommend it to anyone—it was kitty-litter choss on sketchy slabs with imminent drop-offs. This was one of the nicer moments…

Eventually the unnerving chossy ledges led to the ridge, we down climbed for a while, rapped a couple times from slung boulders, downclimbed a little more, then got to the bolted raps (so nice to have a break from the downclimbing—it’s a long ridge)

a bit more downclimbing , a couple more rappels and we were at the base of the route

We’d planned to hike out that night, but were a little tired (and sunburnt) so we slept then hiked out in glorious morning weather and munching on a little natural nourishment

On the drive back we drove past an unusual fruit stand—they had a bridge for their goats.

they’d cross the bridge for food

kind of hilarious!

 

All in all, a fantastic weekend!

 

 

Gear Notes:

bivy gear to personal preference, 60 m rope (50m required for rappel), 12 alpine (more would have made it go faster, bring some tied if you want to use non-bolted raps and don’t like rapping off tat). There are plenty of opportunities to sling features and clip rap stations—BD cams .5-2 and the bigger half of the BD stopper set would be plenty sufficient. Its late enough in the season that crampons/ice axe are unnecessary

 

Approach Notes:

pleasant hike, well maintained trails, approach shoes sufficient, boots not needed

[denalidave]

Sweet! I've got to get back up there someday.

[G-spotter]

Ya that west face ledge is a pile.

 

 

[bstach]

Thanks for posting up the great pics. How long did it take you to the summit from the bivy? How long on the decent?

[Mr. Hands]

Excellent!

[limegreen]

total climbing time tent to top ~4 hrs (not counting time to eat breakfast at the top of the col while waiting for the people ahead of us to get a ways up the route before launching in)

 

total descent time ~6 hrs. we're convinced it would have been faster if we'd down climbed that first third of the descent on the route instead of taking the summit bypass