Cougar Peak attempt II – December 17, 2006        

Roundtrip time: 9 hours

Scrambling with Mark.

After a failed attempt up an experimental route on Cougar Peak earlier this year, we decided to use Bob Spirko’s route up the west slopes. All was going well, until we cleared the tree line and abandoned Bob’s route in favour of one we thought would reduce the amount of scree slogging. In an effort to avoid the scree, we traversed north to try to gain the northwest ridge. Lower down, there was, in fact no ridge at all, and the loose scree/rubble terrain was brutal to ascend. We also misjudged the location of the summit, that lie much further east than we thought.

We finally did reach the northwest ridge and started towards the top, however, the summit block appeared to be guarded by steep walls from the direction we were approaching it. As well, the wind was strong and the temperature extremely cold. Eventually the ridge narrowed to the point where a rope would have been necessary. We had the equipment, but it was way too cold to be doing anything technical and given the lateness of the day, we chose to give in to the mountain for the second time in less than a year. We’ll be returning when there is more snow, allowing good kick-stepping on the way up and a potentially terrific glissade going down.     

The beautiful display of ice along Cougar Creek

An unnamed peak northeast of Cougar Peak

A closer look at that peak

An outlier of Charles Stewart

Slogging up the west slopes

More slogging. The summit is the lower-looking point, just right of centre.

More unnamed stuff.

Mark makes his way to the ridge.

Mark on the northwest ridge.

At our highpoint of the day; summit behind. 

Where the ridge narrows

One more look at the view to the north

Descending the ridge

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