Mount Potts

Mount Potts

June 27, 2010

Mountain height: 2999 m
Elevation gain:    1350 m
Ascent time:       6:50
Descent time:      3:30

Mountaineering with Mark.

Mark definitely was the hero for this trip.

By sheer coincidence, we set off to attempt Mount Potts exactly one year to the day of a reconnaissance trip I completed to check out potential ascent routes. On that trip I found the possible route, as described by Rick Collier, but didn’t want to attempt it solo.

With an evening of head-banging at the Iron Maiden concert slated for later in the day, we left Calgary early and started the terrific hike up Grizzly Creek at around 7 am – “terrific” being somewhat of an understatement. As stated in several previous trip reports, the hike that parallels the creek is simply magnificent, especially in good weather conditions. The V-shaped valley is lined on both sides with phenomenal examples of rock folding and erosion on the north side of Grizzly Peak and on the south side of Opal Ridge. Below the rock lie green, grassy slopes, with the creek bisecting the valley, and the shapely forms of Mount Potts and Evan-Thomas at the head of the valley. This is a stunningly beautiful location and always worth a visit, regardless of the objective. Clear skies, with the occasional appearance of wispy clouds was cause for many interesting photos.

Deeper into the valley the grassy slopes gave way to snowy ones, yielding some equally rewarding scenery. We soon found the beautiful snow-filled gully that I thought was the correct ascent route and started up. Mark, who is way more confident than I on steep snow, led the ascent from here. With crampons, the snow gully was relatively easy to ascend (easy for me to say – I was simply following in Mark’s tracks!). It reared up to about 45 degrees for a very short section, but was otherwise around the 30-35 degree mark. However, the gully was deceivingly long, requiring a fair amount of time and energy to ascend. Thankfully the limited views along the way were fantastic. Mark took us a solid 300 vertical metres up this gully to the ridge, where we hoped the summit would be a short and easily traversed distance to the north.

The distance was definitely short (no more than 150 horizontal metres), but the traverse far from easy. Between us and the summit there lay a crumbling, narrow ridge, with cheese-grater slopes on the left and a sheer drop on the right. Once again Mark stepped up to the plate and led us both safely to the summit. A couple of short sections were narrow enough to require bum-shuffling across, but there were good belay points for each.

Unfortunately, the weather had deteriorated somewhat during the latter portion of the ascent, but the summit view was still impressive. The double summit of Mount Denny to the north brought back some good memories of that ascent with Mark, Dan, and Troy; snow-topped Fisher Peak to the east was very impressive; several 11,000 er’s were visible to the northwest, west, and southwest and would have been gorgeous under clear skies; needless to say, 3097 m Mount Evan-Thomas immediately south was the most prominent peak in the vista.

We didn’t stay too long at the summit, as the almost 7 hour ascent time was far longer than expected and I was pretty sure Iron Maiden weren’t going to wait for me to arrive before embarking on the evening’s METAL ONSLAUGHT. To our delight descending the snow gully was amazingly fast. I thought we would have to “face in” for the descent, but the soft snow was easy to plunge-step down “facing out”. The remainder of the descent was likewise easy, although we were both quite tired – Mark more so than me, given that he had broken trail up the entire snow gully on ascent. We were both pleasantly surprised to complete the descent in only about half the ascent time.

An extremely rewarding day on an obscure, but totally cool mountain.

But more importantly, how was Maiden? As expected, they kicked ass! 32 years of delivering some of the best teeth-griding, head-banging, fist thumping metal in music and they haven’t lost a single step – Bruce Dickinson and Steve Harris terrorizing the stage as if they were still teenagers.

A kick ass mountain followed by a kick ass concert!

Early morning clouds and silhouettes