Gunnery Mountain and Beyond – May 13, 2005

Mountain height:                                        2,089 m (6,852 ft)
Elevation gain:                                           570 m
Highpoint reached towards Holy Cross:    2,421 m
Elevation gain:                                           332 m

Solo scramble.

A little after-work, exploratory trip to summit insignificant Gunnery Mountain and see how far I could traverse towards the summit of Holy Cross Mountain, via the southeast ridge. To my surprise, “insignificant” Gunnery Mountain, proved to be a reasonably interesting ascent, with some terrific rock scenery on the south side of the mountain. I took the most direct route to the summit, starting immediately west of Gunnery Creek, ascending the southeast slopes. Once the grassy slopes gave way to more rocky terrain, I traversed left to discovery some beautiful formations of crumbling rock. I spent a little time exploring the interesting terrain before continuing on to Gunnery’s easily attained summit.

The summit was nothing special and so I decided to continue heading in a northwest direction towards Holy Cross Mountain. The first part of the ascent looked quite easy, however, I was fairly certain that higher up, I would be stopped by a row of significant, almost vertical rockbands. Nevertheless, you’ll never know until you try and so off I went.

Again, the ascent was far more interesting than I was expecting, with great rock scenery and some interesting scrambling. For the most part, I stayed on the ridge, occasionally traversing right to circumvent a few stepper sections. Unfortunately, the already deteriorating weather really came in at this point and it started to rain steadily, with whiteout type conditions all around – probably good timing, in retrospect, as at the same time, I reached a rockband that I could have ascended, but would have been tough to downclimb, especially on wet rock. Without hesitation, I turned around. Once back at the col between Gunnery and Holy Cross, I opted to take a longer but more gentle descent route, on a good trail, around the west side of the mountain. This avoided having to reascend Gunnery Mountain, but the descent was tedious, uninteresting, and too long, in the pouring rain (the fact that I hadn’t brought my contact lenses and my glasses were fogged up and dripping with rain water didn’t help either). Overall, a good day of exploration and I will certainly be returning, in better weather, to see if a traverse to Holy Cross is possible.    

Gunnery Mountain, as seen from Highway 40; ascent route is just right of centre  

Interesting rock on the south side of the mountain

More interesting rock

Looking towards Holy Cross Mountain from the summit of Gunnery Mountain; the obvious ascent route follows the skyline from right to left 

A closer look at the upper ridge and the rockbands enroute 

More fascinating rock scenery on the way 

Nearing the more challenging sections of scrambling

An even closer look at the rockbands

The end of the line; I didn't want to ascend this rockband alone and in the rain      

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