Sentry Mountain
January 30, 2005
Mountain height: 2,435
m
Elevation gain: 1,050
m
Ascent time: 4:45
Descent time: 2:55
Scrambling and a little mountaineering with
Mark.
Although we did make the summit of Sentry
(eventually!), this mountain definitely warrants a return trip. Clear weather
to see the more of the splendid view, less ice to enable us to stay on the
ridge throughout, and several hours of additional daylight to attempt the south
summit would all probably contribute to a better overall experience, although
I'm certainly not complaining about this one.
From the road, the ascent looked as though
it would be problem-free – very little snow, warm and fairly decent weather. Of
course, looks can be very deceiving, especially in the mountains, and
especially in the coldest month of the year.
Thankfully, we reconsidered our initial
plan to travel light (no rope, harnesses, or heavy winter wear) and pretty much
took everything. Within an hour, I was wearing my Gore-Tex gloves, three layers
of clothing and my balaclava, due to a cold and constant west wind, that didn’t
let up for one minute of the 8+ hour day. Another hour and our 10 m rope came
out, and further up we were forced to use the 30 m rope - yet another reminder
that you can’t be too prepared when scrambling in the winter months.
The first section of the mountain lived up
to our expectations and was very easy and straightforward. At the first
highpoint, the view of the false summit block and intervening ridge was
terrific. The ridge started to narrow and travel, as well as the scenery,
became increasingly more interesting and exciting. Unfortunately, we also
started to see the worst thing possible on the ground beneath our feet – ice….and
lots of it! We were forced to crawl across a couple of mildly exposed sections
that we normally would have simply walked over. We also roped up to traverse
these parts. Even the brief detour around the notch that Kane mentions became a
challenge, as again we had to descend rock covered in a thin layer of ice.
More elevation….more ice! With the false
summit block much closer now, we could see that the entire thing was covered in
a layer of ice. There was no way we were going anywhere near it and so we opted
to leave the ridge and traverse snow and ice-free scree slopes to the right, in
hopes of circumventing the icy terrain. Fortunately, we were able to make our
way around the block (enjoying some beautiful rock scenery along the way) and
plodded back up to the ridge. Unfortunately, that first false summit block was
only a minor taste of what was ahead and after continuing very slowly and
cautiously along the ridge for a short distance, we found ourselves confronted
with an even scarier looking wall of ice-covered rock. We looked at a couple of
routes, but they both appeared to be suicidal and so our options were to call
it a day, backtrack down dicey terrain at least several hundred vertical metres
and find a way around the right side, or get down to the scree slope just below
to find an easier way around.
With time
becoming an issue, we chose the
third option and quickly set up to rappel down to the scree, where the
cliffband was the lowest. We were lucky to find a huge jutting outcrop
of rock
to place a sling around and did the short rappel with ease. This proved
to be
the last obstacle of the day and after traversing around the dangerous
block, a
20 minute grind up snowy scree slopes brought us mercifully to the
summit.
Given that we both thought that we would fail on numerous occasions
during the
trying ascent, this was actually a pretty sweet summit to achieve. The
only
downside was that after spending almost the entire ascent seeing the
summit
bathed in beautiful sunlight, by the time we arrived, cloud at about
2,500 m
had moved in, denying us the terrific view we were expecting. We sat at
the summit, shivering in the bitter cold, for 30 minutes before we
decided that the
clouds were not going to grant us a better view.
The descent was very easy. Perhaps part of the
reason we persisted in making the summit was that we could always see an easier
descent route and so were never too worried about descending some of the “iffy”
terrain we had come up. Naturally, the sun came out and once again lit up the
summit, when we were far enough down to completely rule out going back up. We could have descended
easy scree slopes almost to the bottom, but chose to traverse left and gain the
ridge again, just for fun and to see more of the eye-catching scenery of the
mountain. Right before regaining the ridge, a short, but tricky little climbing
section caused us a little angst. It was only about two moves, but not easy in
scrambling boots and thick gloves. Overall, a great day - we got way more than
we bargained for on this trip, but isn’t that what makes the mountains great?!
LOG
