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Date |
Ascent Time |
Descent Time |
| 1st Time |
27 Sep 03 |
Incomplete |
Incomplete |
Thanks to my wife for tossing my digital camera into the Atlantic Ocean, and I wasn't able to find my SLR camera, all of these pictures are Paul's.
26 Sep 03 - Getting into Skoki is pretty easy... especially if you can
catch a ride to the Temple Lodge. Getting to the Temple Lodge should take about
an hour by foot, but if you are able to catch a ride from a "Ski Louise" worker,
then it will only take about 10 minutes. Also, from the Temple lodge, the trail
is rather flat, so it's a nice and easy hike to the Hidden Lake Campground. Once
you emerge from the trees coming into Skoki, you have a great view of Richardson (R),
Pika (PK), and Ptarmigan (PT). I think Richardson and Ptarmigan would make good ski
mountaineering objectives. Pika is kind of a pain to get to. You must first go over
Richardson (like we did), or you could
grovel diagnoly up some horrible scree from the Ptarmigan side. It's much easier to
go down that scree.
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27 Sep 03 - Getting from Richardson to Pika is pretty straight forward. You
just hike down a snow slope, but you really should take your ice axe out for it. Here we
see myself approaching the Pika col. The ascent line for Pika is steep, but it isn't
difficult until you get to the summit ridge. Paul and I were concerned with the
amount of snow and ice on the route, but we figured we would go as far as we could and continually
reevaluate the situation.
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27 Sep 03 - Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the ascent getting up on
to the summit ridge. Nonetheless, here is a picture of a pissed off scrambler. The summit
is only a few feet away. In the summer, no problem, but given Mother Nature's sick sense of humour,
this really sucked. About three feet of height gain left, and I can't get over to it.
The summit ridge is much more exposed on both sides than you can tell in the picture. It was
double corniced, and just really sucked. In hindsight, I should have gone for it. Now I've got
to do the entire thing over again.
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27 Sep 03 - As I sat there sulking about not being able to tag the summit, Paul tried
to cheer me up by pointing out the really cool Wall of Jericho.
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27 Sep 03 - Still a bit upset, I decided to have a drink of gatorade. If I
had something with some 'kick' to it, I'd be drinking that instead.
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27 Sep 03 - Getting down was pretty easy. Basically, I did the 'inverted spider' move the entire
way down.
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27 Sep 03 - Once back at the Pika/Richardson col, we circled around Pika heading toward Ptarmigan.
I'm afraid I spoiled Paul's plans here. He wanted to get Ptarmigan, but I knew it could be done on skis,
and I would prefer to do it that way, so when I offered to wait for Paul, he decided not to go. Sorry Paul.
Anyway, this picture looks up toward to Pika/Richardson col. It shows typical terrain that would traverse
below Pika. It's all non-technical, but it would be a horrible idea to come up this way. Going down it was
bad enough.
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27 Sep 03 - Here is a picture of the Hidden Lake campground. It's a nice campground, and each tent spot
has a small picnic table. Pretty nice.
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