Kent Ridge Outlier III

Kent Ridge North Outlier III

January 4, 2010

Mountain height:         2550 m
Elevation gain:            700 m
Ascent time:                2:35
Descent time:              1:30

Solo snowshoeing.

With yet another miserable forecast in hand, I set out to snowshoe the official Sawmill snowshoe trail. However, the weather, though far from perfect, was better than expected when I arrived at the Sawmill area. As such, I changed the objective to another of Mount Kent’s multiple outliers, east and slightly north of the parking lot.

Opting to take a more direct line, instead of sifting through the maze of cutlines, and old logging roads, I left the trail to do some off-trail snowshoeing – bad idea! The trail-breaking was viciously strenuous. After about 20 minutes of energy-zapping work, with little gain, I quickly decided against continuing and turned north, towards the outlier of Kent Ridge North – a trip twice completed in December of 2004 – the first time in bad weather and then a week later with perfect weather.

Fortuitously, I intercepted a good trail – I’m assuming that broken by Tony Daffern several weeks earlier, and then reinforced by Bob, Dinah, and Sonny around Christmas time. Of course, this made very easy work of the ascent.

Once out of the trees the rapidly changing weather became the highlight and focus of the remainder of the trip. Although I wouldn’t put the ascent in my favourite category of “Above the clouds”, it did fit into the next best thing – “Above some of the clouds”. Initially the valley below was filled with cloud. They quickly dissipated, but new clouds started to form, swirling around nearby peaks. Had the sky above those clouds been completely clear, this phenomenon would have been thoroughly breath-taking. As well as the fascinating cloud scenery, the cornices lining the ridge were outstanding.

Overall, an unexpectedly scenic day out.

The south ridge of the outlier