Thumbing through Alan Kane's excellent book I discovered I had not been up this one close to Calgary. I was fortunate to have a very good group with many old friends join me on this Rambler's trip. Good fast travel up the Galatea trail took us to the cairn Alan Kane mentions ... but I missed it in the bush ... but shortly after that I knew we should not cross yet another bridge to the south side of the creek and we back tracked to pretty quickly find the cairn in the bush. Up the drainage there are some quite flowery alpine meadows but quite steep. We regrouped to look at alternate routes to the ridge with improving views around us.

The Fortress

Mt Galatea and The Tower with Lost lake, Lilian lake and Galate lake.

It looked like you could maybe scramble on rock / snow and maybe ice straight up or to the right side of the drainage. As Alan says, though, the easiest route is on the vegetated slopes climbers left. We all chose the vegetated slopes on this day with still lots of snow up high. I found it a bit of a grunt above the vegetation on blocky talus but we all made it to the summit ridge. There was a bit of boot punch able snow to the summit.


Summit ridge South Kidd

Summit South Kidd: Jeannine,Alda, Clifton,Bill,Gary,Simon, Toshiko and Krzysztof

On descent some of us went a bit further down the ridge towards Guinn's pass to avoid the blocky talus. Bill found scraps of trail here but we were slower than the folks descending our ascent route (but they are fast!).
Of note, once back on the vegetated slope , we were descending a steep grassy slope and I was not too concerned about spreading out the group which was quite spread out. I do not think any of us, a fairly experienced group, thought there was any chance of rock fall yet an experienced member very versed in rock let loose a very dangerous rock - maybe the wet spring had affected things? Fortunately people in the group yelled and no one was hurt but it was a surprise, I think, to all of us. A salutary reminder, for me, there are dangers in any steep off trail / scrambling travel in even what seems mellow terrain. I really enjoyed the day ... but I like longish days .... around 9 hours, on this peak new to me. Nice to see a countryman of my birth being an English gentleman - actually I think he is really special as he is also from Yorkshire!


Good to see another English Gentleman in the club help with a Ladies pack!

Thanks to the good group of: Bill,Alda,Jeannine,Clifton,Gary,Simon,Toshiko and Krzysztof from John..

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