Return to Indian Ridge
Indian Ridge Stats
2 July 2006
Hank and I returned to Indian ridge on a daytrip from Edmonton for the fantastic ridgewalk offered by the traverse. Visible from Indian Ridge are some of the giants of the Canadian Rockies (Mt. Robson, Mt Edith Cavell, Mt. Fryatt, I think I could even see some of the mountains of the Columbia Icefields).
After catching the first Tram up the cable way, we quickly made it to the summit of the Whistlers. After descending from the Whistler towards Indian Ridge we stashed a litre of water in a convenient snowpatch and continued up the trail.
One bump, two bump, three bump, short scramble, summit bump. At the summit we took some time to eat, take pictures, and seriously considered a nap.
Once underway again, we were determined to find the route as described in the Scrambles in the Canadian Rockies guidebook. That particular route had eluded us the first time we traversed this mountain (and every other party I've seen or met on Indian Ridge).
And find it we did. The trail is faint and steep off the west side, but it is there and is safer than exposed scree ledges on the east side of the mountain. Because we felt it is safer (and no one we met could find it), Hank built a small cairn indicating where the trail drops off the buttress to the south of the notch.
Here I have just spotted the trail a bit further on.
Red dot is where we left the ridge crest.
Where the route drops off to the west side.
This sure is better than the east side.
From here, look at rocks resembling planks of wood and continue down scrambling the entire ridge until you hit grey scree, make a run for the valley bottom and head back over to the Whistlers.
Surveying the scramble down to the grey scree
The water we had stashed in the snow was more than welcome on this near 30 degree day.
The altimeter said this was a total ascent/descent of 1038m from the top tram station and back, and we had a total moving time of 5:08, with some serious lounging and chatting with a Norwegian and a couple from Denver our total round trip time was 8:00.
2 July 2006
Hank and I returned to Indian ridge on a daytrip from Edmonton for the fantastic ridgewalk offered by the traverse. Visible from Indian Ridge are some of the giants of the Canadian Rockies (Mt. Robson, Mt Edith Cavell, Mt. Fryatt, I think I could even see some of the mountains of the Columbia Icefields).
After catching the first Tram up the cable way, we quickly made it to the summit of the Whistlers. After descending from the Whistler towards Indian Ridge we stashed a litre of water in a convenient snowpatch and continued up the trail.
One bump, two bump, three bump, short scramble, summit bump. At the summit we took some time to eat, take pictures, and seriously considered a nap.
Once underway again, we were determined to find the route as described in the Scrambles in the Canadian Rockies guidebook. That particular route had eluded us the first time we traversed this mountain (and every other party I've seen or met on Indian Ridge).
And find it we did. The trail is faint and steep off the west side, but it is there and is safer than exposed scree ledges on the east side of the mountain. Because we felt it is safer (and no one we met could find it), Hank built a small cairn indicating where the trail drops off the buttress to the south of the notch.
Here I have just spotted the trail a bit further on.
Red dot is where we left the ridge crest.
Where the route drops off to the west side.
This sure is better than the east side.
From here, look at rocks resembling planks of wood and continue down scrambling the entire ridge until you hit grey scree, make a run for the valley bottom and head back over to the Whistlers.
Surveying the scramble down to the grey scree
The water we had stashed in the snow was more than welcome on this near 30 degree day.
The altimeter said this was a total ascent/descent of 1038m from the top tram station and back, and we had a total moving time of 5:08, with some serious lounging and chatting with a Norwegian and a couple from Denver our total round trip time was 8:00.
posted by Troy at 11:52 AM
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