Scrambling
With the warm weather this weekend, it looks like the front ranges getting in good shape for scrambling. Of course, mountains with out that direct south westerly exposure still look to have a fair bit of snow on them. For instance, this last weekend I was up in Kanaskis, and ended up on the middle buttress on Mount Lorette. While this wasn't the popular rock route on the mountain, it did look reasonably similar in character - lots of knife edge ridge, and entrapping decent gullies on either side.
Lorette from the road. The main ridge is out of sight to the left.
As you can see from the pictures, not much snow to worry about.
Mike Orr about halfway up the route
So how were the conditions else where?
posted by chris g @ 4/11/2005 09:12:00 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Did you guys cross the Kananaskis river to get to the ridge? On saturday a friend and i climbed two routes on Bears hump. One was an attempt at leaning column (we thought we had already counted one of the obvious corners.) Then finally leaning column after we counted the correct four trees at the base of the route. We had a blast, but it seemed harder than i thought a gear 5.4 would be. Also there is alot of loose rock on the ledges. Is that just waterton? How is the rock compared to kananaskis
Posted by nathan shenton
It always tooke me a while to find the correct corner systems. If there was a bolt on the brown dolomite at the base, then you were on leaning column. The rock is a little bit loose after this, however it is mostly sitting on the ledges as you say. The actually stuff you climb on is decent (for the rockies). Of course people may think other wise. Personally, I just think it takes some time to get used to things.
Obviously the rock on the crags in Banff is much better. In the mountains, I don't know if that is the case. Some routes certainly are much better, but for the general alpine routes, I would say it is a bit more blocky on the ledges, but a little less friable through out. I think the certainly think the hump has nicer rock than the middle buttress we did on Lorette. The knife edge on Crandell would be comparable. More blocky, but easier to read.
As for the grade, I think they are old style grading. Before everyone was climbing 12's, I think the grades at the low end were stiffer than they would now get rated. After all, if you climb hard, it can be difficult to quantify the difference between a 5.5 and a 5.7.
Posted by chris goble
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