Trip Reports - 6/30/02 Grassi Ridge, Wiwaxy Peak, Lake O’Hara, B.C., Canada

Submitted by Henry Gholz and Jan Engert

Enlarge photo of Grassi Ridge

 INTRODUCTION:

Anyone looking for alpine rock routes sooner or later checks out the Canadian Rockies. I last checked them out while hitchhiking across Canada back to Michigan from Vancouver in 1972, when I vaguely recall having a great time with some total strangers on an ascent of Mt. Louie, a classic near Banff. So when the invitation came to go to Banff in July of 2002 for the 50^th wedding anniversary of Jan’s parents, the light went on that it could be a great way to celebrate my 30^th year climbing return to the area at the same time! Fortunately Jan was game, so we added a weekend onto the beginning of the anniversary time, hoping for the best of the too often rather nasty CA Rockies weather.

A look through Dougherty’s guide yielded many potential moderate routes for us, but the one that stuck out was of Grassi Ridge on Wiwaxy Peak, at II 5.6/7 right in our range and not too high to climb right out of sea level (summit at 2703 m). Plus we found a couple of trip reports (see below) that described the scenery as totally awesome. 

Enlarge view of Lake O'Hara

The logistics turned out to be daunting, given the highly restricted access to the Lake O’Hara area. I finally made reservations at the campground in February for the one night still available during our one time window (the small lodge and wonderful lakeside cabins had all been rented well over a year earlier). This included having to make separate reservations to catch one of the 4 buses per day that run from the parking area on Highway 1 into the lake. Clearly we would be screwed if the weather didn’t work out...

An important note to make is that you can walk the c. 13 k into Lake O’Hara, but you cannot use the lodge or the campground without a reservation. Plus, you also have to have a reservation to take the bus out, and 630 PM is the last bus of the day. There are food storage units there, so if you are busing it weight is no big deal, so splurge! But it would not be fun walking the mainly uphill return to the parking area after the climb with a load. If you want to do it car-to-car, you are likely packing very light and are in great shape anyway, so go for it…

We arrived in Calgary late on a Friday (June 29), rented a car, stayed overnight, and drove through Canmore (where the CAC HQ is located) to pick up some last minute items, and drove to the Lake O’Hara (BC) turnout. The scenery on the way was awesome enough, but the weather started obscuring the heights as we drove past Banff and around Lake Louise. O’Hara is the next lake beyond Louise, separated by Mt. Victoria at the head of the Louise cirque and Abbot Pass, with its hut perched at the top of Death Col. The scenery was amazing as we drove the narrow road in the yellow school bus with a handful of others, what we could see through the mixed snow and rain. It was pretty dreadful weather, but actually wonderful after the 35 C we had left behind in DC. But the sun did come out periodically and we were rewarded with stunning views right out of the campground and up our proposed route all the way to the summit. The ridge is pretty narrow and ascends buttresses and ledges from tree line in a very stair step manner. There were a lot of families with very small kids, enjoying the wilderness experience (facilitated by the bus transportation) and feeling, they said, the first sunshine in a week. The night was cold, but no rain or snow and Sunday morning was miraculously clear.

See larger view of Wiwaxy Peak

We were up and on the trail at 0615, and at the base of the climb at 0745. From here on  we have taken the liberty of inserting some text from an excellent trip report by Robert Hayes and Pat O’Sullivan, which we have annotated based on our experience (their original report is available at www.cadvision.com/rmch/rmch/wiwaxy.htm).

After the climb we (as Robert and Pat) stayed for two nights at the Kicking Horse Lodge in Field, BC, just to the west on Highway 1. It is a wonderful small inn in a delightful town, where we joined the parade for Canada Day on Monday. Charlie is a perfect host and the kitchen is stupendous. We highly recommend it!

View larger image of Jan

 GENERAL INFORMATION:

 […condensed and with annotations incorporated. Thanks to Robert and Pat for an excellent and, we found, highly accurate report] “If you are not familiar with the area, Dougherty's guidebook is confusing, especially in regards to his black and white photo of the route.  The BEST place to study the route is right from the campground... Dougherty's picture is confusing because a) it is taken too far east of the route and doesn't adequately display the true step-like progression of it, b) the picture superimposes the second Wiwaxy peak onto the first one, making it appear in the photo that the peak is one thing when in fact it is two different rock structures separated by a large and narrow gully! c) you can't see the start of the route. 

 THE APPROACH:

Enlarge photo of Jan

You can see the start of the route from the campground at the base of the ridge, at the base of a corner facing off the left side. There is an obvious tree at the start of the final approach ramp and a fainter (smaller) tree at the base of the corner itself. From the campground, cross the road and head down through the woods on a good trail to a bridge over Cataract Creek, and turn southeast along the creek side trail a couple hundred meters to an obvious avalanche clearing and a cairn. Follow a fainter trail up the clearing to a gully (snowbound in early season) and cross over right-to-left near the base of the rocks where it narrows. Scramble up through some grassy ledges, aiming for the ramp to the prominent corner and the highest tree. Don’t go too far left looking for easier passage or you might find yourself at the airy end of a ledge below the face above. Instead look for weaknesses and move more-or-less straight up the ledges. You will see some traces of trails on the grassy flat areas.

 THE ROUTE:

The route is basically moderate-angle climbing with a few steep pitches on buttresses separated by large ledges.  We counted 12 pitches, but only about 6 technical pitches. Some are short and some involve only scrambling across long ledges. No one pitch is too long without ample places for belays, in any case.

Pitch 1:  Climb blocky (sometimes loose, but most surprisingly solid) rock in the corner for 50m (5.5) to a good belay ledge with old pitons.

Pitch 2:  Continue up the same corner (5.6) to a large grassy ledge and belay.

Pitch 3:  Climb easy rock to long huge ledge (5.4). 

Pitch 4:  Cool pitch!  It looks harder than it is... then scramble your way over big blocks to the base of the next wall (have a look down to your left - yahoo!).  Climb up the wall and when confronted with overhanging rock, step right to a beautifully cracked slab and continue up to a small ledge (5.6+).

Pitch 5:  Continue up buttress (5.5?). Enjoyable easy climbing with good holds.

Pitch 6:  Continue up buttress to huge ledge (5.4?). Ditto.

Pitch 7:  This is the crux pitch.   Dougherty's comment about loose and rotten rock on the right is correct.   But we [both teams] did it (5.6) and it was actually fun climbing if you watch for the loose stuff. It is the obvious weakness. The direct line looks quite difficult so we bypassed it (5.7). We later met two very friendly and faster moving Canmore guides, Chad Rigby and Kirsten Knechtel, who overtook us about Pitch 10 and said that Pitch 7 was in fact pretty tricky.

Pitch 8:  Another cool pitch up initially black slick looking rock with horizontal cracks, not blocky like the rest.  Continue up buttress to small ledge (5.6).

Pitch 9:  Finish a short pitch off buttress to huge ledge (5.3?)

Pitch 10:  Walk across ledge to steep wall. There was a rock shelter against the base when we were there that looked pretty permanent and blocked the wind a bit for the belayer.

Pitch 11:  Climb up a short headwall to a ledge and walk across a ledge to the next pitch.

Pitch 12: Yet another cool pitch, and the last technical one.  Climb steep wall up a vertical crack at the left side on good holds to a flake. Continue around the left and up to the ledge (5.6).

You can unrope here, although there is some scrambling across the ledge and up the final ridge to the summit (about 2 more rope lengths).

See larger view of summit photo

 DESCENT:

The descent is not always obvious. From the summit, look for cairns marking a descent trail down ledges toward the col.   Almost immediately you will find a rap station, which could be used if you're not comfortable downclimbing the first 20m; in fact we downclimbed some and then decided it would be safer and quicker to rap, so we did.   If it is at all wet here or the visibility bad, we advise you rap. Descend to the center of the obvious large col at the head of the large gully just to the east of the route (as per Dougherty). Do NOT go down this gully. Instead, turn immediately right at the far side of the col and then contour around the south (right) side of the OTHER Wiwaxy peak in front of you – look for cairns off in the distance (could be hard to see under poor conditions). We had to cross two small, but steep and icy snowfields on this traverse. Continue around and follow more cairns off some ledges to the second wide gully. This leads down skree slopes to the Wiwaxy Gap trail and eventually the trail around the lake.

See larger photo of summit

 TIME:

 [Robert and Pat: We started climbing at 9:15am and topped out at 6:50 pm.  We moved at a moderate pace (obviously not fast) with one 10 minute lunch break.    We stayed roped the whole time, but did run out quite a few pitches.  Extra time was taken since I led all but one pitch... which meant swapping ends at belay stations.]

Henry and Jan: We started climbing at 8:00 am and topped out at 2:15 pm. We were back at the campground at 4:30. We hurried a bit, given that the nice clear morning weather had deteriorated considerably to cold, windy and heavy clouds. Summits of the higher peaks in the area were mostly obscured by this time and it snowed on our last pitch and summit. It threatened to thunderstorm, but thankfully didn’t. Retreat down the route would not be too bad, but after pitch 7, it would be far easier to go up and over than to rap the route.

 RACK:

Henry led all the pitches with a rack of 1 set of stoppers, 1 set of cams to about 6 cm, and 1 set of hexes, which he used often, plus some longer slings and 1 60 m rope.  

See larger photo of Jan and Henry

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