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Date |
Ascent Time |
Descent Time |
| 1st Time |
11 Oct 03 |
3:51 |
3:15 |
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This trip was done with a bunch of web authors. To gain their perspective of the
same trip, check out their websites:
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11 Oct 03 - After leaving the Lake O'Hara parking lot, we hiked up the Lake O'Hara Rd,
which is closed to regular cars. Normally, it has a bus service, which will take you non-stop
up the 11km road, but the buses stop running at the end of September. Regardless, we hiked up the
road for about 2km until we found a signed trail on the left for Ross Lake. We hiked this trail
for about five minutes, until we came across an open drainage, cluttered with those ankle-tripping
bushes. After tripping our way up the snowy grassy hill, we eventually emerged from the trees and
found ourselves at the bottom of a huge scree slope, seen here. It had taken us about an hour to
get to this point, so we decided it was a good spot for a quick rest break and a quick bite to eat.
From this point, we marched (slipped) our way up the scree slope to gain the north ridge of Narao.
This is the horrible kind of scree. You can't scree ski on the way down, and it's not solid enough
to ascend quickly.
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11 Oct 03 - This is somewhere on the north ridge enroute to the summit. As you can tell,
the weather kind of sucked. Here we see Sonny in the background. I'm not sure what he's pointing
at, but I'm pretty sure he's not trying to do the Saturday Night Fever dance. In the foreground, we
see Vern making adjustments to his camera.
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11 Oct 03 - At a few places along the north ridge, we had to detour to our right. Under
dry conditions, I'm sure you could tackle the ridge head-on, but not today. We ascended this
snow-filled chimney. If you look closely, you can see Peter on the rock above the chimney.
Frank is at the top of the chimney, Vern is at the base of it, and Sonny is a couple of feet
behind Vern.
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11 Oct 03 - This is probably the crux of the trip. Because of the icy conditions, we couldn't
tackle the rockband head-on, so we had to traverse an exposed snow slope, climb up a snow gully and
gain the right sky-line ridge. From there, we got back onto the ridge proper. This picture doesn't
show exactly how steep the snow slope was, but the next picture will give you a better idea.
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11 Oct 03 - Here we see everybody on the snowslope about to head up the gully. In the lead, we
see Frank, followed by Peter, then Vern, then Sonny. I like to stay in the back, so that if the entire
slope slid, I would know not to go that way. Pretty good plan huh.
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11 Oct 03 - After we got back onto the ridge proper, there is a false summit in front of you.
This is actually the north summit, which is a large flat area, with cairns at each end of it. On the
south end of it, you see the true summit, which requires you to drop down a bit to a low saddle, then scramble
back up more boulders and large scree.
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11 Oct 03 - Here we are at the south (true) summit. From left to right, we have Vern, Frank, Peter, Me and Sunny.
I'm wearing my skiing touque because I couldn't find my normal touque. Oh well. Nobody said I was normal.
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