Mount Wynn

Mount Wynn and GR088024

July 18, 2010

Mountain heights:
    Wynn:                                2561 m
    GR088024:                        2801 m
Total elevation gain:              approx. 1400 m
Ascent time to Wynn:             3:50
Traverse time to GR088024:  2:05
Descent time:                        3:15

Solo scramble.

After a magnificent day on Henkel and Crowfeet two days earlier, I tried very hard to convince myself that this trip would be a dud. I tried, but failed. Wynn did lack the wild colours of Henkel’s ascent slopes, but the summit view was great and the traverse to GR088024 fantastic.

Off to a late start, the first part of the trip was a race against the clouds. They were building up quite heavily in the north and east, while skies to the west remained clear. Unfortunately, I lost the race and ended up at the summit of Wynn in the shadow of a massive cloud. However, the view was still excellent, especially towards Swiftcurrent Lake, Josephine Lake, and the Mount Wilbur area. Yellow Mountain to the north looked as though it was being devoured by vicious storm clouds.

Since the skies to the south and west remained clear, I decided to continue following the ridge in those directions. This ridge goes all the way to 10,000er Mount Siyeh, but I had no intention of attempting that Herculean undertaking. While it is not an excessively long trip going to Siyeh, if you don’t have a vehicle at Siyeh Bend to get you back to Many Glacier, you do have to return the same way, which is excessively long.

The first section of the traverse was fairly mundane, however, gaining elevation to the GR was wonderful. Apparently there is an easy trail up the left side of the peak, but that was completely plastered with steep snow. As such I had to scramble pretty much right up the centre of the ridge. This involved some difficult, but never too exposed scrambling and was a blast on fairly solid red argillite. The bad news – I forgot to charge my camera battery and could only capture a handful of images of this terrific peak.

The summit view was outstanding and had me actually considering continuing on to Siyeh. Thankfully, I quickly came to my senses and instead just took a long break to absorb the magnificent panorama. Although the aforementioned lakes and many peaks seen from Wynn’s apex were now out of visual range, that loss was more than compensated for by the multitude of awe-inspiring mountains to the south. Especially noteworthy were Little Chief, Going-To-The-Sun, Matahpi, and the more distant, but awesome forms of Stimson and Jackson.

I did manage to find an easier route down the GR, but near the bottom it required crossing the steep, snow slopes I was trying to avoid on ascent. My trusty ice axe came in handy here. Once at the bottom of the GR, it was unnecessary to go all the way back to Wynn. Instead, I descended scree slopes directly towards Cracker Lake Trail. Several rock-bands lower down required some route-finding, but the descent was otherwise quite easy and time-saving.

The 8 km hike back to the car should have been dead-easy, but it turned out to be quite miserable, compliments of a plague of caterpillar like creatures that were hanging from threads they had spun from tree branches. They were small and hard to see and I kept walking into them. Every five seconds I was brushing one of the crawlers off my clothing. I’m not terribly squeamish about bugs, but this was just plain creepy, especially the ones that were at face level. I slowed my pace to try to avoid them, but they were everywhere. The experience was definitely a first for me in the mountains and not one I hope to ever repeat, but probably will.

Besides the traumatic bug experience, an excellent and extremely worthwhile trip.

The southeast side of Apikuni reflected in Sherburne Lake