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Date |
Ascent Time |
Descent Time |
| 1st Time |
16 Jul 05 |
Incomplete |
Incomplete |
About a month prior, Blair and I hiked down the Snowshoe Trail heading west from the Red Rock
Canyon parking lot. We were in search of possible alpine routes. One of the ones we spotted
was the north ridge of Blakiston (see here). Our basic route ascended the gully/drainage in
the lower center of the picture. We would then traverse left across the scree slope to get to
the technical rock. The route appears to be very non-committing. It looks like you could get
off the route almost anywhere, go right and scramble back down. The route has three main
sections of rock climbing with some ridge walking in between. On This particular day,
there was a 90% chance of thunderstorms, so we picked this route due to it's non-committing
nature.
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From the Red Rock Canyon parking lot, we followed the Blakiston Falls Trail, which runs between
Mts Blakiston and Anderson. Five minutes into the trail, there is a left branch, which we took.
This brings you to Blakiston Creek, one of the crux parts of the trip. We spent 45 minutes
looking for a feasible place to cross this creek, but eventually settled right where the trail
intersects the creek. We took off our boots, rolled up our pants, and waded across. It was
Kevin's bachelor party, so we made him go first.
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After some horrendous bushwhacking through wet forest and shoulder-high thick weeds, we emerged
into our intended drainage. Just above the waterfall, at the very bottom of the first picture,
we came across two big rams.
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One of the rams kept running back and forth across the snow, as if to discourage us from continuing
through. Well, I've never been one to listen to sheep, especially in Waterton.
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After the sheep incident, we had to endur some horrible scree. Not only does this picture show
the gentle angle of the slope, but it also shows the storms coming in from the southwest.
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The storms to the west, coming in on the north side of Mt. Anderson were even darker. It looked like we
were going to get wet.
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Being the dumb people that we are, we continued to go up in hopes that the approaching storm, heading
right toward us, would somehow miss us. We got to the point (seen here) where technical climbing begins.
If you look closely in the middle of the picture, you can see Blair looking for the best place to head up.
If he goes too far right, it will be just a scramble. If he goes too far left, the wall is pretty blank
and vertical. We were looking for something in the 5.6 range.
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This is Kevin taking a pee break. The lower slopes have a lot of these little 4ft chimneys, which are
evidently great for taking a leak.
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Well, as you can imagine, the storm rolled in. Kevin and I quickly found an overhang to tuck under. We
ended up sitting here nearly 45 minutes waiting for the storm to pass.
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Here is a closer look at Kevin and I enjoying life... at least we were dry (for this moment). Eventually,
we gave up on the storm passing and headed down. For descent, we figured it was easy to head down a NW drainage
that leads directly to Blakiston Falls. This turned out to be a bad decision. We should have returned the way
we went up. On the NW side, the creek crossing is much worse, plus, the rain was really coming down. By the time
we got back to the truck, we were so wet, we had water running down areas that just didn't feel comfortable.
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