After leaving the summit of Table Top Peak, Wietse and I followed a delightful ridge towards the twin summits of Whistable Peaks. Dave McMurray named the more southerly of the twin peaks, "Eagle Peak" but Wietse and I politely decided to rename it due to a plethora of peaks already named after that majestic bird of prey.
Table Top is located south of Table Mountain and the two Whistable Peaks are between Table Top and Whistler Mountain. Despite not having official names, we enjoyed the gorgeous views and sublime weather as we sat on top of each of them on our way towards the extremely under whelming apex of Whistler Mountain.
After staring wistfully to the east at the dry terrain around Whistler Mountain the week before while hiking and scrambling the snowy and long Lys Ridge with Phil Richards, I was back near Beaver Mines Lake with Wietse on Saturday, October 29th to try something else in the area.
After scrambling to the summit of West Castle Mountain, Phil Richards and I had a decision to make. Should we continue the long (long!) traverse to the south end of Lys Ridge, or turn back and call it a day?
Sunday, October 23 2016 didn't go quite as planned. Originally Phil Richards and I were planning on scrambling Centre Peak from the west. Both Caudron and Centre Peak are easily ascended from the west, but to get close to them requires driving 9km along a back country road that heads north from just east of the Crowsnest Pass Golf Course off of the Crowsnest Highway. Immediately on turning up this road, we started getting bad vibes.
When I scrambled Southfork Mountain and Barnaby Ridge in September of 2016, I was very pleasantly surprised by the gorgeous approach hike to the three Southfork Lakes and the sublime upper alpine meadows around the lakes themselves.
After getting over a serious lack of motivation and summiting Southfork Mountain, I decided to give myself an hour towards Barnaby Ridge to see where that would take me. The weather seemed to be clearing a bit but the wind was pretty strong so I bundled up in my Gore-tex layers and trundled off, south along Barnaby Ridge towards it's unseen summit.
I've been interested in Southfork Mountain and the traverse to (or from) Barnaby Ridge for a while now since reading multiple trip reports on it over the years. It seemed to be the type of trip that is more effort than you expect - which describes a lot of the Castle Wilderness Area peaks and trips that I've done over the years.
After easily hiking to the top of Mount Baldy near Beauvais Lake in the Castle Wilderness, we turned our attention towards Mount Albert - it's slightly higher neighbor to the southeast.
After scrambling Prairie Bluff and hiking Mount Backus the day before, the kids and I woke up on Sunday in the mood for a nice hike but not much else. Naturally we wanted a summit but we didn't want to work too hard for it. ;) As it turns out, we got TWO summits for the effort of HALF a summit.
After scrambling Prairie Bluff in the morning, we found ourselves with plenty of time for a short objective on our way to setting up camp for the night at the Beaver Mines Recreation Area in the Castle Wilderness. I had a trip report on Mount Backus from Bob Spirko who snowshoed it in March of 2014. Backus was located along the highway leading to Beaver Mines, so it made perfect sense to try it.
After squandering a perfectly good weekend, followed by a disappointing May long weekend, I was more than ready for some time away from the rat race in Calgary by the time the last weekend of May rolled around. Both my kids were also ready for a break and with Hanneke home studying and writing assignments, we decided that a two day trip to the Castle / Crown area was just the ticket for us.
Mount Yarrow is an unofficial peak on the southeast end of Spread Eagle (Roche) Mountain. It looked pretty close from the summit of Spread Eagle and I thought maybe 15 minutes would cover the traverse time to its summit. As with most ridge traverses though, I underestimated the terrain that's hidden in its curves!
Ridge traverses are usually awesome and Victoria Ridge is no exception to this rule. With light winds and cool temperatures I moved pretty quickly, south from the summit of Victoria Peak, really enjoying the views west towards Castle Mountain - although smoky haze did ruin them a bit.
Friday, November 7 2008 found me with a free day. I was just finished my contract with the City of Calgary and waiting to start my new one with a different company. Part of me wanted to get out and do something but the other, equally motivated part of me wasn't motivated to do anything but sleep in!
July 30 2008 was a very weird day in the mountains. And not just because it was a Wednesday or the fact that I was with Kevin Papke on a mountain either. No, there were many things that conspired to make this day a very different one than I had originally planned.
My name is Vern Dewit. I moved to Calgary, Alberta (Canada) in 1999 and since then I've fallen in love with the spectacular scenery and grand vistas that open up as you scramble up above treeline on a beautiful fall morning, or make your first cast on some back country stream as the sun throws its golden warmth on surrounding peaks.
