Great weather and great people made for a remarkable day in Waterton. Cell phone service does not exist in Waterton, so our fall back plan of meeting at the townsite campground entrance did work. We left the vehicles at the warden office and started the trip from the info centre. Using the nice interpretive trail from behind the info centre, we started off at 8:30am. A short distance up the trail, we branched off left to gain the ridge leading to Bear's Hump.


Bear's Hump - Crandell

This approach allowed us to do "all" of the ridge and have some fun climbing early in the trip. We worked our way up through the rock bands.


Front of Bears Hump - Crandell

The ridge was fun, easy at the start and more challenging higher up. Route finding was interesting. The first major wall to get around was conquered by a gully on the left which led up to a plateau.


Crandell, work left and use gully, short climb to regain ridge

When working up this first gully, we angled slightly to the right and came up to a short (25 foot) wall to climb (had a piton on the wall).


Crandell - Bear's Hump - short climb

The route was either on the ridge or just left of the ridge all the way up. After the Bear's Hump route intersects with Tick ridge route, the ridge becomes a narrow cockscomb. Too narrow for us, and we used the trail to the left. At some point we had to climb back up onto the ridge which was another short and exposed climb. We took a rope and it was appreciated by all. At one point we did some short roping over some of the narrow cockscomb.


Mt. Crandell - short roping

We reached the top and were greeted with excellent views. Took our time on top, before descending this fun mountain. The descent route took us farther east down open slopes and then came back around into the valley leading to the warden's station. We found the scree trail further down (Kane's descent route) and worked our way out the creek to the wardens office. A nine hour day for Charlene, Les, Damian, Evelyn and myself.

Allan