Spine Peak

"Spine Peak"

April 5, 2010

Mountain height:         approx. 2920 m
Elevation gain:            approx. 1200 m
Ascent time:                7:30
Descent time:              3:35

Snowshoeing and mountaineering with Mark.

Over the last several years, the stunning area around Mount Saskatchewan has asserted itself as one of our favourite destinations in the Rockies. Ascents of Big Bend Peak, Mount Saskatchewan Junior, The North Tower of Mount Saskatchewan, and Castleguard Mountain all sit quite comfortably on the list of our “50 favourite trips”. Two of those trips (The North Tower and Castleguard) also belong on the list of our “5 most physically-brutalizing trips”. Due to their considerable length, I felt like walking death through most of the descents of those peaks.

Next up: “Spine Peak”. Mark gave this one its unofficial name after we completed the trip. From the spot where we started the main part of the ascent, the peak very much resembled the spine of an alligator – hence the title. Actually the summit of Spine (around GR954758) was not the original objective. We were aiming for the highpoint approximately 1.5 km south of Spine, at GR947744. We were also planning an attempt from the east, but changed the route at the last second to go from the north. Hopefully we could ascend to the valley, north of Mount Saskatchewan, immediately gain the ridge to the east, and then complete a high-level traverse south to the summit.

Getting into the valley was easy, as expected. Unfortunately, once there, the planned route took a figurative wrong turn, down into the proverbial crapper. Gaining the ridge looked to be far too steep and dangerous and so we abandoned that idea. The only course was action now was to continue south to look for another route or go up Big Bend Peak again - we chose the former.

An extremely pleasant snowshoe up the valley, followed up a long grueling and not so pleasant snowshoe through a kilometre of trees ensued and soon we were back into the open valley. Neither of us were optimistic about finding a route up to the ridge, but suddenly one presented itself. It appeared to be much safer than the route at the end of the valley and so we started up. Though the ascent was technically easy it certainly was not physically easy and took far more time and energy than predicted. The upper slopes were pretty dicey. It felt good to leave them and gain the ridge between Spine and its lower outlier of the north.

From the ridge, the remainder of the ascent didn’t look to bad, but it quickly got steep enough to warrant a change from snowshoes to crampons. There was also one rockband just before the summit that might prove problematic and so we roped up for that section. It turned out to be straightforward, but I was glad we had the rope. That summit turned out to be a false summit, with the true summit about 100 m away. While the ridgewalk to the true summit was not deathly exposed, it did feel serious because of a cornice on the left and steep slopes falling off to the right.

Like every other summit in the area, the view from the top was fantastic. Only the cloudy skies above provided an air of disappointment. The traverse south to the intended objective of GR947744 was out of the question due on the narrowness and serious on the intervening ridge. However, our original route from the south did look feasible and gave us at least one more GR in the area to go for another day.

After a 7.5 hour ascent we were hoping for a much quicker descent and one preferably nothing like the misery of the North Tower descent. We got one taking less than half our ascent time. Yet another terrific day around Mount Saskatchewan.

Big Bend Peak