Leaving Calgary early Saturday we had a good forecast and things looked promising. We left the trailhead at Sunwapta warden cabin around 11:00 am and slogged our way up to the camp at the pass at GR 787172. The route is well described in Bill Corbett's book on the 11,000 'ers. On descent, two days later, we learnt we should have not gone as far right of the waterfalls as we did. We also should have traversed just above the lower cliff band, as opposed to heading straight up to below the second cliff band and following it. At the pass we found a tent with a young couple already established. It turned out there were mutual mountaineering acquaintances between our parties as 3 of our party and Greg of the other party had an affinity with the Old Goats. Greg, had been on the recent successful Mount Logan expedition involving Old Goats.

There was quite a rain storm in the night with lots of rain and wind. The exposed bleak environs of the pass made us wish we had 4-season tents. Dawn, however, was fine with an almost cloudless sky .... so we set off to try and climb Mount Brazeau. Initially travel on the glacier was fine and we followed the broken trail made by Greg and partner.

Things got sloppier underneath Henry Mcleod with your heavyweight scribe post holing thigh deep in the slop. We reversed the rope with lightweight Jonathan establishing an easier track. We did eventually get on better snow after this section. The weather was gradually worsening and we did discuss switching the objective to Mount Henry Mcleod but we decided to keep going. On reaching the mountain we opted to kick steps up the snow initially and then gained the ridge and scrambled up to the summit in the mist and worsening weather. We did n't hang around long as we heard a couple of cracks of thunder and clearly a storm was moving in.

Initially we could follow our up track but as the storm and snow continued we lost the trail and were breaking trail in fresh snow. We again reversed the rope and when we got to the sloppy section Jonathan was again at the front. Through this section there followed a tense time as we fell through into holes and struggled to find solid ice. Jonathan at one time went in up to his eyeballs (literally). The whole group, especially Jonathan, kept their cool and we patiently worked our way through sometimes on all fours, jumping holes etc. ... We were always able to get ourselves out of the holes without using the rope ... but as one of the group remarked later that evening "too much excitement for me". Needless to say we did get through this section and using a GPS waypoint taken on the way up found the exit off the glacier.

Back at camp another rainstorm hit ... though it did clear a bit later in the evening. When planning the trip we had considerd moving camp onto the glacier to try Warren but we nixed that as heavy overnight packs in the thinly bridged section would not be prudent. We decided that John would wake up at first light and if it was a bluebird mountain day we would try Henry Mcleod the next day (maybe we could get the views we had missed from Brazeau). If not a bluebird day John would go back to sleep and we would head down to mosquito country later to try and dry out. John woke at 4:45 am to light snow and overcast so later in the day we headed down to the Poboktan Waterfall camp with a view to trying Poboktan mountain on our fourth day. All enjoyed the luxury of picnic tables, dry camp etc.

After a dry night we headed up Poboktan mountain in cloudy with sunny breaks weather. Though a 1500-1600m scree slog the views made it worthwhile - including a view of Brazeau.

We found the register in the substantial cairn with very few entries since it was placed in 1989. The last 3 entries were current Ramblers Bob and James in 2003, a party in 2007 and then our entry. We suspect that the peak sees more ascents than recorded as the register was hard to find and the peak is a straightforward OT5 if you like scree! We had a cloud level just above 11,000 feet to the immediate west but you could see from Forbes in the south to Edith Cavell in the north and an array of remote peaks around Southesk to the east - a great view - will put the trip into the Ramblers' database. The descent was very fast with great scree and , if you did n't mind getting wet, the opportunity to glissade on snow patches.

The following night the rain came in hard again but being more sheltered we stayed dry. We tentatively planned to hike out, car camp on the last night and do a scramble near the highway on the way home. We hiked out in the rain with the Rockies looking very like Scotland. We got back to the car in 4 hours around noon. For Arnold and me putting up a wet tent and spending the afternoon in the rain vs. heading back to a hot shower in Calgary did not win out. David and Jonathan were heading west to do more mountaineering so we said our goodbyes at a very busy Icefield centre.

Thanks again to David, Arnold and Jonathan for perseverance, determination, patience, good humour and coolness under pressure from coordinator John. I am due good weather on one of these Rambler mountaineering trips I hope.