Indian Ridge Traverse
Indian Ridge Stats
31 July 2005, scrambling with Hank.
After catching the bus out of Lake O'Hara Hank and I said goodbye to the others as we all went our separate ways. Hank and my separate way took us up the icefields parkway to Jasper for a night in one of the the huge car-camping grounds.
The next morning we took the 2nd flight of the day up the Whistlers cableway. From the top station we hiked the easy, maintained trail up to the Whistlers Summit. Then we ditched the sidewalk and headed SE through the alpine meadow towards the eastern tip of Indian Ridge.
Indian Ridge, summit at left. The notch is just visible near the high-point on the right of the ridge (click on picture to open).
Sometime before the summit. The top of Marmot Mtn right by the tip of my ice ax, Mt Edith Cavell at centre in the distance.
At the summit register. One of the booklets was full so I grabbed it and sent it to the Whyte Museum.
I believe that the orange mountain in the background is unnamed. Regardless, it has spectacular coloration was not uncommon in the valley south of Indian Ridge.
Ok, this is the tricky part of the traverse.
This is the buttress that makes up the left hand side of the notch when looking at the ridge from the Whistlers. The notch itself is at the right of this picture and is insurmountable to a scrambler. The left hand side of this buttress is readily accessible from the summit.
The route description indicated that we should drop down onto the other side (west) of the mountain to get around the notch, then regain the ridge and complete the traverse.
What happened was: We first crossed a wiggly chockstone to examine the drop off at the notch, we realized there indeed was no way we'd get down that in once piece so we turned around and explored the W side of the mountain for half an hour or more looking for the route mentioned in our guidebook. We did not find one. Reluctant to turn around we explored the east side of the buttress and found that it could be bypassed on this side on wide, considerably sloped, loose scree ledges.
So that's the way we went. After you get back onto the ridge, just follow it down, cross the meadow, hike up to the Whistlers, and jam your sweaty-been-living-in-the-mountains-for-five-days self into one of the cable cars with 30 other people and go home. Easy.
Here is another picture I took of Hawk Mtn on the drive back to Edmonton.
31 July 2005, scrambling with Hank.
After catching the bus out of Lake O'Hara Hank and I said goodbye to the others as we all went our separate ways. Hank and my separate way took us up the icefields parkway to Jasper for a night in one of the the huge car-camping grounds.
The next morning we took the 2nd flight of the day up the Whistlers cableway. From the top station we hiked the easy, maintained trail up to the Whistlers Summit. Then we ditched the sidewalk and headed SE through the alpine meadow towards the eastern tip of Indian Ridge.
Indian Ridge, summit at left. The notch is just visible near the high-point on the right of the ridge (click on picture to open).
Sometime before the summit. The top of Marmot Mtn right by the tip of my ice ax, Mt Edith Cavell at centre in the distance.
At the summit register. One of the booklets was full so I grabbed it and sent it to the Whyte Museum.
I believe that the orange mountain in the background is unnamed. Regardless, it has spectacular coloration was not uncommon in the valley south of Indian Ridge.
Ok, this is the tricky part of the traverse.
This is the buttress that makes up the left hand side of the notch when looking at the ridge from the Whistlers. The notch itself is at the right of this picture and is insurmountable to a scrambler. The left hand side of this buttress is readily accessible from the summit.
The route description indicated that we should drop down onto the other side (west) of the mountain to get around the notch, then regain the ridge and complete the traverse.
What happened was: We first crossed a wiggly chockstone to examine the drop off at the notch, we realized there indeed was no way we'd get down that in once piece so we turned around and explored the W side of the mountain for half an hour or more looking for the route mentioned in our guidebook. We did not find one. Reluctant to turn around we explored the east side of the buttress and found that it could be bypassed on this side on wide, considerably sloped, loose scree ledges.
So that's the way we went. After you get back onto the ridge, just follow it down, cross the meadow, hike up to the Whistlers, and jam your sweaty-been-living-in-the-mountains-for-five-days self into one of the cable cars with 30 other people and go home. Easy.
Here is another picture I took of Hawk Mtn on the drive back to Edmonton.
posted by Troy at 10:13 PM
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