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Date |
Ascent Time |
Descent Time |
| 1st Time |
22 Jul 01 |
incomplete |
incomplete |
| 2nd Time |
14 Aug 04 |
0:40
from col |
5:25
to car |
The most painful part about this trip is crossing the Sunwapta River. There wasn't much
water when we went, but this is some really cold water. There were four crossings like
the one pictured here. One of them was deep enough to get my shorts wet. And the water
is so cold that by the time you are half way across each stream, your feet are burning numb.
We each wore old tennis shoes for the river crossing and tied our boots on the packs.
After we crossed, we left our tennis shoes tied up in trees, and got them no the way back out.
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It took us 3½ hours to get to the bivy site (GR725939). We didn't know on the way in that there is a
trail through the big bolder field, but if you find this trail, it could easily be done in 3 hours. When we
arrived at the camp, the weather was relatively clear. We had great views of Diadem, but Wooley had a cloud
around its summit. We debated going for Diadem right then, but the weather was suppose to be nice the next day,
so we opted to hang out in camp for the afternoon.
This picture shows the routes available on this peak.
The right gully is the normal route, but we saw a large cornice hanging above the gully, so we opted for the
smaller gully on the left. Unfortunately, the left gully exposes you briefly to seracs, but for only about 10 minutes.
Another option is to go up the right gully then cut across the rocks to the left gully, but for us, the rocks were covered
in ice, so we opted to take our chances with the seracs. Click here to enlarge.
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This is our camp. For your reference, our bivy site was at GR725939, which is basically just beside a
small lake. There were five of us on this trip. Myself, John, and Gerry took bivy bags. Frederic and
Cyrus shared a tent. Once the rain started, this was a miserable choice.
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Here we go. The rain had stopped for a short period of time. Despite the cloudy weather, we
thought we would be okay for weather.
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Here we see John, Frederic and Gerry cutting below the serac fall out zone. We would cut to the right and only
spend about 10 minutes in the danger area. While we were up high in the snow gully, a large serac came down,
but that was the only activity we saw.
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Soon in the gully, the rain came, which turned to snow. While it was raining, everybody had to seal
up their gore-tex clothes which caused them to sweat. Then the temperature dropped, and everybody
was hating life. Here we see Gerry ascending the gully. When we got to the point where you exit the
gully to go to the col, visibility got worse, everybody was cold and wet, and nobody wanted to continue.
At 9,700 ft, we turned around and headed back down. We stopped by the camp, had a cup of tea, packed
up, and headed out. Two hours to hike out and as we were crossing the Sunwapta again, the sun came out.
Nancy Hansen went in the next day and summited both peaks under sunny skies. I guess timing is everything.
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