Rainy Ridge

The
Calgary Stampeders winners of the 96th Grey Cup

Rainy Ridge attempt – November 23, 2008

(colours in honour the Stampeders)

Roundtrip time: 7:45

Scrambling with Mark.

It figures that the one perfect weather day of the week would fall on the same day as the Grey Cup. With the Calgary Stampeders playing in that game, we needed to be back in Calgary by 4 pm. Ever since Mark and I had ascended Barnaby Ridge, several weeks before, I had had Rainy Ridge on the brain and we were waiting for a good weather to make an attempt. This mountain would seem like an illogical objective for a short day, given its 300+ km distance from Calgary. Therefore, we set out the evening before and camped at the trailhead.

Leaving camp just after 5 am, we were able to bike the first few kilometres along the wide, ATV trail. Even by headlamp, the remainder of the approach was fairly straightforward, thanks to Robert Kershaw’s route description in Exploring the Castle and the pronounced trail.

Upon reaching Middle Kootenay Pass, we turned east, up the long and convoluted-looking west ridge of Rainy Ridge. Early morning sun on the low clouds made for some interesting views on the way up and, as usual, the variety of rock colours and twisted, dead trees provided tons of terrific scenery around us. Unfortunately, after reaching a couple of highpoints, we arrived at a rock-band that appeared to be fairly serious, covered with new snow. The air temperature was bone-chilling, courtesy of the fierce Castle wind and neither of us had any desire to do anything technical. We tried to skirt around the band, but that led to a dead-end.

Throughout the attempt of Rainy, we did notice that the ridge to the west of Middle Kootenay Pass appeared to offer an easy ascent to an unnamed summit south of Mount Haig. Rainy Ridge was not going to happen and so we turned around, heading back to the Pass. The descent was very scenic, as the sun had finally ascended enough to light up the surroundings.

Reaching the first highpoint, west of the Pass, was very easy, though a little foreshortened. It took longer than expected and our turn around time passed. This side of the Pass was definitely more scenic. In hindsight, we should have turned right when we first reached the Pass, instead of left up Rainy Ridge.

The view from the first summit was excellent, with a less-pronounced, but still pleasant repeat of the half sun/half shadow views of our trip up Big Bend Peak, a month earlier. Tombstone Mountain and the unnamed peaks to the west and north were quite striking with their new snow.

We then hurried over to the second summit, in the faint hope that the third and highest summit could be reached very quickly after that. This view was likewise excellent, but getting to the highest summit would mean that we would miss the entire Grey Cup. Since the mountain is not going anywhere, but the Stampeders winning ways could go south at any time, we opted to turn around at this point in order to catch the BIG GAME.

For descent, we didn’t re-ascend the first summit, but side sloped around the southwest side of the peak. This fortuitously put us on a very unique slope of extremely fine, brown scree that felt like we were on the beach (except for the sub-zero temperatures!) The remainder of the descent was very easy and the bike ride good fun.

No major summit, but an excellent day of fantastic scenery in one of our favourite areas in the world. Of course, seeing the Stampeders beat the Montreal Alouettes, 22 - 15, was a perfect end to the day.