Little Lawson Peak

"Little Lawson Peak"

December 13, 2009

Mountain height:         2370 m
Elevation gain:            600 m
Ascent time:                3:30
Descent time:              2:00

Snowshoeing with Mark.

The original objective for the day was Hogarth Lakes. Recovering from a back injury, I was looking for an easy and stress-free trip. With almost no elevation gain, the route around the lakes fit the bill. Needless to say, that plan changed as we drove around the end of Mount Lawson’s long south ridge. Mark spotted a potential route to the ridge and then up to the first major summit.

This turned out to be a terrific route. Though the ridge was treed almost all the way to the top, this did shield us from the wind. Even at a very low velocity, with the ambient air temperature around -25 Celsius, any wind put the wind chill factor well into the minus thirties.

Views from the ridge were also unexpectedly terrific, even in the expectedly dismal weather. The upper section of the ridge required a little extra care, as it narrowed for one short section, but otherwise the entire ascent was easy and very enjoyable.

With the Opal Range in its entirety stretched out to the east and the Lower Kananaskis Lake to the south, the summit view would have been outstanding on a clear day. The skies started to clear a little to the east, but it was too cold to hang around and wait. We settled for a wonderfully fast and easy descent. The coldest part of the day actually occurred while walking north along Highway 742 back to the car. It turns out that this was one of the coldest days on record in the area.

A surprisingly terrific trip, though we may return when the skies are clear.

The very cloudy view to the south