Goat Mountain

Goat Mountain – August 13, 2007

Mountain height:           2420 m
Elevation gain:              1070 m
Ascent time:                  4:30
Descent time:                4:20

Scrambling with Mark.

A day where everything seemed to backfire. Surprisingly, it also turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable trip on a wonderful mountain.

We wanted to save this trip for a “not-so-good” weather day, and the “variable cloud” predicted on the one of weather stations definitely fit the bill. Since the views would be secondary to the actual scrambling/climbing, we weren’t too concerned about a few clouds. Unfortunately, we got more than a few. In fact, above 2000 m there was nothing but cloud – ie. there were no views at all!

This route – up to the Yamnuska/Goat col, up to the Goat ridge, traverse the ridge to the summit and then down to Loder Peak and Door Jamb - was suggested to us by two excellent sources. After stashing a couple of bikes at the bottom of Door Jamb, we drove to the Yamnuska parking lot and made our way to the west side of Mount Yamnuska. The cloud ceiling was pretty low, but we were confident these early morning clouds would dissipate. They didn’t and when we arrived at the Yam/Goat col, there was absolutely nothing to see. This, of course, meant we couldn’t see which direction to go. Luckily, after heading west for a few hundred metres we stumbled onto a well-defined trail that pointed us in the right direction. The crux of the trip ensued as Mark led us up fairly steep terrain to the ridge. The rock throughout was very good – a foreshadowing of things to come.

Once on the ridge, the route-finding was pretty straightforward: basically stay on the ridge or you’ll die. Actually it wasn’t that bad at all, and far less exposed than we were expecting. Perhaps the fact that we could hardly see 30 m in front of us, let alone the butt-clenching drop on the east side, attributed to our lack of “fear” on the ridge. Though we short roped the ridge, it could easily be scrambled without a rope. At one point we came upon an unusually placed bolt at the bottom of a slab. I scrambled up the slab to the surprise of double rappel rings at the top. The slab was moderate, perhaps one or two moves of difficult scrambling, but hardly required this kind of hardware. The remainder of the ascent was very enjoyable on fantastic rock. Our summit stay was no more than 2 minutes as we could see nothing and it had started to rain.

The descent, or traverse to Loder Peak, started off well. All we had to do was follow the ridge – academic if you can see what’s in front of you, but more challenging than expected in very low visibility. At one point, I decided to check our location using GPS and we were both surprised to discover that we were not on the ridge. We were on “a” ridge, but not “the” ridge. Trying to traverse back to the correct ridge spelled potential disaster, given the low visibility. With the weather continuing to deteriorate, we had little choice but to stay on our present ridge in order to lose elevation to a point below the clouds. I was very tentative about this route choice. Mark and I had both seen this side of the mountain from our trip up Little and Bigger Goat, earlier this year and severe drop-offs and cliffbands were characteristic of the face.

The grade on this ridge was surprisingly gentle and we lost elevation quickly. I was 90% sure that we would end up at the top of a cliff and have to backtrack, but the clouds lifted for a brief moment and we were both severely relieved to see trees and a drainage below. Once in the drainage, we followed it out to Jura Creek and then back to highway 1A. The thirty minute bike was not the perfect way to end the day: uphill, against the wind, and in the rain. Mark had an easy go of it, but I complained and whined all the way back.

A terrific day, even in the less-than ideal weather, on a great mountain. We’ll definitely be returning in better weather to complete the traverse and check out the views.