The Wedge
 
September 6, 2003
 
Mountain height: 2665 m
Elevation gain:    1100 m
 
Scrambling with Mark. 
 
Another terrific scramble from the book that has become our “bible” over the past two years – Alan Kane’s Scrambles in the Canadian Rockies.
 
The route up The Wedge looks more intimidating than it actually is. After hiking up through forested terrain on a good trail we started the scrambling section of the ascent. Gaining the north end of the summit ridge turned out to be relatively short and heaps of fun. Heeding Kane’s warning of a short but exposed section en route to the summit, we did decide to rope up here. In June we had taken a Snow and Ice Long Weekend course, culminating in an ascent of Mount Athabasca. We followed that up by completing an introductory rock-climbing course. The terrain on The Wedge seemed to be fitting to try out some of the rope techniques we had learned.
    
The summit was eventually reached, only the slightly hazy skies detracting from an otherwise fantastic view.  
 
Perhaps the most entertaining part of the day occurred once we were nearly down to the forested section. Here we found a small, but near vertical rock band to practice our first real rappel. There are many people that lean out over the abyss when rappelling without a hint of fear or trepidation – and then there’s me! While Mark more fit into the former category, I was all fear and no guts. It took me several minutes to psych myself up to lean back into the rappel, even though we had a solid anchor set-up and a brand-new 11 mm rope. Eventually, we both got and job done and finished the trip.
 
A very exhilarating day on a terrific peak.

The summit and connecting ridge from the south highpoint



Hazy summit view to the south



Heading back to the north highpoint



My first rappel. We rapped off the pink rope and used the yellow as a totally unnecessary precaution!

The End

LOG