Grable Peak II

Grable Peak attempt II – January 28, 2007

Mountain height: approx. 2650 m (we came up 100 vertical metres short)
Elevation gain: 1300 m
Roundtrip time: 9 hours

Scrambling with Mark.

Armed with mountaineering gear and wearing the proper boots, we returned to take another stab at Grable Peak , three weeks after our first attempt. That attempt had failed when our scrambling boots proved to be “too little boot” for the conditions. With mountaineering boots and full-sized crampons, we hoped for more success.

With crampons, walking up frozen Grotto Creek was much easier than using the trail we had followed alongside the creek, earlier in the month. Two hours later, we started up the long ascent gully on the east side of Grable Peak . There was less snow than the previous attempt, but the sky was perfectly clear and the rock scenery that had “wowed” us last time was even more outstanding on this day. The snow that did remain in the ascent gully was hard and therefore perfect for crampons. Without them we would have been forced to look for an alternate route.

As before, the highlight of the ascent was the beautiful fin of rock on the left side of the ascent gully – even more striking with a clear sky behind it. And we had plenty of time to check out that fin, as the gully was very foreshortened and took over an hour to ascend.

Upon reaching the ridge, we quickly made our way to the slabby rockface that had repelled us last time. With full-sized crampons, the step was easy to ascend. Unfortunately, this progress was short lived, as vertical rockbands now barred the route to the summit. The only potential route was to traverse snow slopes north and ascend a different ridge. The snow on those slopes was deep and powdery and provided zero stability. The slopes also appeared to have avalanche potential and we had to abandon that idea too. We did continue up the scenic and sometimes narrow ridge until we could go no further and then turned around for the second time in three weeks on the mountain.

On descent we had the time to explore a few of the interesting features of the peak, including a narrow and fairly exposed arête. Needless to say, I inched my way to the end of the arête on my butt. Another exposed rock feature just beyond the arête also gave the trip a bit of an alpine feel, even though the travel was straightforward.

Although the retreat was a little disappointing, the beautiful, winter scenery throughout was more than enough to make it a thoroughly worthwhile and enjoyable day.