Mount James, Amphitheatre Mountain, and Little Amp

Mount James, Amphitheatre Mountain, and "Little Amp Peak"

August 16, 2010

Mountain heights:
    James:                                    2857 m
    Amphitheater:                         2648 m
    Little Amp:                             2616 m
Total elevation gain:                   approx. 2000 m
Ascent time to James:                 4:50
Traverse time to Amphitheater:   1:45
Traverse time to Little Amp:        1:20
Descent time:                              2:55

Solo scramble.

95% hiking, 5% death-defying scrambling

It was time to explore another area of Glacier National Park’s east side (the west will have to be patient). Of the four access roads, Cut Bank was the only one I hadn’t visited.

There are several day trips from the Cut Bank Campground, and with a great weather forecast I had my eye on the highest peak – Mount James at 2857 m. The route described in Edward’s guidebook is a long 14 km one-way distance, but a walk-up all the way and first visits the scenic pass of Triple Divide. Nearby Amphitheater Mountain was also of interest to me, thanks to another excellent trip report on SummitPost by saintgrizzly. Unfortunately, neither source described a route joining the two peaks. I found that to be a little disconcerting and therefore I chose to ascend James via the normal route, instead of ascending Amphitheater first and then attempting to traverse south to James. Given the position of the Sun, going from Amphitheater to James would have been preferable, but at the time I didn’t know if that traverse was possible.

The first half of the hike to Triple Divide Pass was easy, but not terribly scenic. Things got a heck-of-a-lot better when the trail started to ascend the south side of Mount James. The Triple Divide Trail seems to be another wonderful example of a humanized goat trail. It rises effortlessly up the side of the mountain, cutting through rock-bands like a ninja cuts through bad guys with poor fighting skills. Of the multiple highlights of the trip, this was the first one. The scenery went from decent to outstanding within minutes and improved continually throughout the ascent. Medicine Grizzly Lake below Razoredge Mountain was particularly noteworthy and, of course, the red argillite trail had me salivating every step of the way!

About three hours into the trip I arrived at Triple Divide Pass, so named because immediately above the Pass sits Triple Divide Peak, the GNP equivalent to Canada’s Snow Dome – that is, its melt-waters run into three separate oceans. The view from the Pass was very good, distinctive Split Peak providing plenty of photos opportunities. However, it was nothing compared to the view from just a few hundred metres up Mount James. All of a sudden the panorama was filled with magnificent peaks. Highlights were the glaciated trio of Jackson, Blackfoot, Logan and Mount Stimson and lower neighbour Pinchot looking somewhat pyramidal.

Thank goodness for the awesome views and a cool breeze, because the actual ascent was a labourious, two hour slog. As expected the summit panorama was spell-binding. I was surprised at how many peaks I could now identify and how that adds immeasurably to your enjoyment of a particular view. Two gray, glacial lakes flowing down to a greener lake below the northeast face of James were also a pleasant surprise.

And there ends the predictable portion of the trip. The next four or so hours were filled with uncertainty, anticipation, and a little anxiety. Fortunately, the joyous moments along the way far outweighed the uneasy feeling of not knowing what’s around every corner (and there were many, many corners to negotiate on this part of the trip!).

Actually the first part of the journey north to Amphitheater went surprisingly well. I lost elevation down a scree gully and then traversed back to the north ridge of James, across tedious, but colourful slopes of rubble. Continuing down the ridge there appeared to be many cliffs below. However, each time I thought I was about to get cliffed-out, a reasonable route down would appear. Down at the col, the ascent to the summit, up lichen-covered slabs of red argillite, looked easy and it was. At an elevation 200 m inferior to that of James, the summit panorama was not as good, but “not as good” as “spell-binding” is still pretty darn respectable!

At this point, I knew I could complete the loop route by doing saintgrizzly’s route in reverse. The bad news was that the route description was sitting in my car, not in my hand. From the summit of Amphitheater an unnamed peak of comparable height interrupted the ridge heading back to the trail. I couldn’t remember if the saintgrizzly route included this peak, but I decided I would take a look at it anyway.

Getting down to the col was relatively easy, with few route-finding issues. I then started up the unnamed peak, which I will call “Little Amp Peak”, due to the fact that “Amphitheater” is such a hard word of type over and over again. Little Amp is comprised of huge slabs and blocks of argillite. Some of them are stacked neatly atop another and some have been shifted by glaciation or other geological phenomena. Lower down the slabs were very easy to walk up. Gaining elevation, the terrain became a little more serious, requiring lots of route-finding and difficult, but fun scrambling. I was careful to not upclimb anything I couldn’t downclimb, in the unsavoury event I would have to backtrack.

The “more serious” soon turned into very serious. Route-finding became a big challenge, the terrain was increasingly exposed on both sides and I was now upclimbing rock that would be at the high end of my downclimbing ability. With another person around, it wouldn’t have been an issue, but solo scrambling puts you in a completely different head space. Slipping and breaking your ankle when you are alone in a fairly remote and unknown area could have the same consequences and plummeting down a 200 m drop – ie. death! Nevertheless, this part of the trip was by far the most interesting and fascinating, as I went from one side of the ridge to the other, then right up the centre. And truth be told, the scrambling was never “death-defying”, but I bet that statement at the beginning got a few people to read through at the least to this point!

My only concern upon reaching the summit was finding an easy route down the other side of the peak. The space between the contour lines of the map seemed to indicate the strong possibility of such a route and there was in fact one. Whew! Returning the way I came would not have been impossible, but very slow and cautious. Plus, I then would have had to traverse below the peak all the way back to the ridge that was presently only a five minute descent away.

I suspected that the summit view from Little Amp might have been slightly better than that from Amphitheater. Unfortunately the Sun was in the most unfavourable position to make a judgment. This is why the entire trip would have best been done in reverse.

After the mercifully easy descent back down to the ridge, I followed it to the highpoint at the far east end. With creeks that both led to the main trail on either side of the ridge I was now confronted with day’s last decision – right or left? I vaguely recalled that the described route when left, however, I chose right for two reasons: 1. it appeared to be a straightforward scree descent to treeline; 2. my four litres of liquid was rapidly being consumed and there was a good water source below.

The descent generally went very well, though my physical condition was starting to deteriorate, due to the length of the trip, the rather high total elevation gain, and the day’s heat. After a stint of bushwhacking, the main trail was more than a welcome sight.

An excellent day of hiking and a little difficult (but not death-defying) scrambling. Like Altyn, my thanks go out to saintgrizzly for his terrific trip report and also to the late and great J. Gordon Edwards – his guidebook is truly a work of art!

Bad Marriage Mountain (you gotta' love some of the mountain names in GNP!)

The south side of Mount James

Razoredge Mountain above Medicine Grizzly Lake

Blue butterfly on yellow flower; it's going to be a great year for the St. Louis Rams
(they only have to win 2 games to DOUBLE their productivity - the optimistic spin on being 1-15 in 2009)

The only thing better than the Yellow Brick Road is a Red Argillite Trail (or RAT for short)

Triple Divide Peak looms over Triple Divide Pass

Looking at the route to the summit of James (far right) from the pass

Split Mountain

The cairn at the pass loosely mimics the profile of Split Mountain

Marmot

Mount Pinchot (left), Mount Stimson (right) and lowly Triple Divide Peak (forefront)

Norris Mountain (left), Blackfoot, Jackson, Logan (distant centre), and Split (far right)

A closer look at Blackfoot, Jackson, and Logan

An even closer look at Jackson and Logan

All of the above mountains!

Looking north to the traverse slopes to Amphitheater, the red hump is Medicine Owl Peak

The partial view to the northwest; Little Chief Mountain at the far right

The summit view to the southwest, west, and northwest

Two of the three lakes below James' northeast face

Same as above; Little Amp Peak is slightly darker protrusion near the upper left

Looking north across the route to Amphitheater (red peak on the right)

Another view to the west; small lakes kept popping up so I had to take more photos

The colourful rubble slopes I had to traverse

More colourful views on the way to Amphitheater; Divide Mountain is the light coloured peak at the top left

Same as above

More of the same mountains, but there were so captivating

Almost at the James/Amphitheater col; Amphitheater at the left and Little Amp to the right

All three of the lakes

The last gasp for this glacier; more than likely it won't survive the decade

The view to the southeast

Looking back to James

Looking forward to Little Amp (left) and the ridge back to the trail;
I went to the highpoint at the right and then descended scree slopes seen at the right