Grable Peak

Grable Peak attempt – January 6, 2007

Mountain height: approx. 2650 m (we came up 150 vertical metres short)
Elevation gain: 1200 m
Roundtrip time: 9 hours

Scrambling with Mark.

No, we didn’t discover a new mountain in the Canadian Rockies – I just decided to give this one a title, instead of my usual GR……… Since the intended objective at GR219622, connects Grotto Mountain to Mount Fable, Grable Peak seemed to fit (or at least it was preferable to Fotto or Frotto Peak!). This very distinctive–looking peak is readily seen from the Trans-Canada Highway, lying to the east of massive Grotto Mountain. We had talked about making an attempt pretty much every time we drove by it, so this was a little overdue.

Our big mistake of the day came before we even got out of the car, when I suggested we go in our scrambling boots, as opposed to our mountaineering boots. My rationale, that I had encountered very little snow on nearby Wendell Mountain three days earlier and therefore we wouldn’t need full mountaineering boots, turned out to be erroneous.

The attempt was preceded by a long, but most interesting hike through Grotto Canyon and up Grotto Creek. The creek is lined with impressive vertical walls of water-worn rock and also has a couple of icefalls and an abundance of interesting friction slabs. About an hour and a half up the creek, our objective finally became visible. We didn’t have a planned ascent route, but a couple of potential routes did become apparent. The first approached the peak from west side and that’s the one we set out to do. However, a short distance up the drainage, a shorter and more direct route presented itself and so we veered off to the east, hoping to gain the ridge east of the summit.

This turned out to be a good route, up scree and snow slopes. As well, we could now see the other route and it was blocked by a cliff band that would have quickly terminated our progress up the west side. Initially, the east side slopes were gentle and easily ascended, but higher up they were steeper and required crampons and an ice axe to ascend safely. With our scrambling boots we had only the mini six-point crampons instead of our 12-point set for mountaineering boots. The six-point were sufficient for now, but unfortunately our scrambling boots were not sufficient to keep our feet warm. Usually this would not have presented a problem, however, both Mark and I had suffered minor cases of frostbite on our toes a week earlier on Bow Peak and re-freezing the toes while they were still in the recovery process was not at all wise. Halfway up the ascent slope Mark’s feet were already cold and mine were starting to get that way. This was obviously a big concern.

We eventually arrived at the top of the slope to an impressive view of Mount Fable, Gap Peak and the ridge that connects them. Cougar Peak, a mountain whose summit eluded us twice in 2006, was also visible. Starting towards the summit, about 200 vertical metres above us, we soon encountered steep, slabby terrain that would push the ascent into the realm of mountaineering. Now, the six-point crampons were a problem. They were insufficient to give us any sense of security on the snow-covered slabs. We made an effort to ascend the slabs in order to get a view of the remainder of the ascent, but there were too many factors going against us at this point and we opted to back down.

The descent was quite easy and we managed to glissade a short section, though our Crazy Carpets would have allowed a very long glissade. We’ll definitely be returning to finish the job on this one.