Junction Mountain Scramble on 19-Sep-2019
The trip was advertised as a pleasant 9 hour scramble 6 to a rarely visited peak based on a description in Andrew Nugara's Scrambles book of a moderate scramble. It ended up being much longer at just a bit less than 13 hours, but a safe trip with a good group that coped very well with the unexpected parts of the trip. Bill recalled doing this trip as a back pack up the Junction creek valley maybe 20 years ago with Bob. Bob put the approach they used in the Rambler's trip database as a 5 hour SC6 trip from their camp . I think they also did Pyriform from the same camp. The Andrew Nugara ridge approach though had not been done by the Ramblers (and I think it will be a long time before it is repeated by the Ramblers! ... or the ones that were on this trip anyway).
The first challenge of the day was the pouring rain as we left Calgary that had some of us thinking about alternatives further north as weather was forecasted to be better to the north. After some discussion we decided to go to the trailhead and "take a look" which was a good call as the pavement was dry once we were south of Millarville. We had easy crossings of the Sheep river and Junction creek after leaving the cars around 7:45 am. Brian offered to be one to take his creek crossing shoes on the trip while most of the others left their shoes at the creek. Brian would then recover them at the end of the day, The first part of the trip is spent quite a bit in forest with no trail except occasional game trails. At one point, in the bush, we headed too far east but attentive Brian looking at his phone pulled us back on a correct line. Once out of the trees the ridge opens up. It is a long ridge though as I try to illustrate in the next two photos.
Pleasant ridge hiking is occasionally interrupted by small cliff bands.
Eventually though we came to a more serious obstacle. This is the crux described by Andrew Nugara and shown in the following photo.
Andrew suggests on the left(east) side of this rock band "ascending downward sloping scree ledges with an increasing drop off on your left. After several hundred metres you turn a corner where the scree ledge narrows and exposure increases .... look to the right for a good place to ascend to the ridge ..... all require a few moves of difficult and exposed scrambling". Andrew also describes a descent route on scree on the west side of this crux. Three of the group decided to take this descent route on scree as an ascent route. The other three took a look at the " few moves of difficult and exposed scrambling". In the end we all took the scree route with the three looking at the alternative reporting that route as SC7 and beyond their comfort level. We were on the summit around 2:45 pm.
We knew it was possible we may be getting out in the dark and that there was a good horse trail in Junction creek valley which would be easier to navigate by headlamp. So we headed south west from the summit down into what I suspect is a rarely visited hanging side valley of Junction creek - maybe in Scotland it would be a corrie! The initial descent on talus and scree involved bypassing some slabs with Bill and Brian selecting a good route.
The other reason for going this way was to make this a larch hike (just kidding).
Below this valley Bill's route finding got us through the bush and sometimes in the dry creek bed with occasional small dry waterfall features to get around. Eventually we intersected a horse trail fairly high on the east side of Junction creek. Then it was straightforward back to the Sheep river start. Brian and Sebastiaan (buddying up as discussed in the recent coordinator's meeting!) sped ahead to recover the creek crossing gear. The rest of us got back maybe 30 minutes behind them in the twilight around 8:15 - 8:30 pm. A couple of us did put our headlamps on but we could have managed without them - but good to have them at this time of year as the days are getting shorter. We think it may have been slightly faster to descend the ridge (i.e. our ascent route) but not by a huge margin Looking at and then backtracking from the SC7 option also cost some time. Damian's Garmin stats for the trip are 22.8km and 1,470m total elev gain. Thanks to participants: Bill,Manfred,Damian,Brian andSebastiaan from John for coping with the unadvertised trip duration and helping out with group safety, route finding and a sense of humour. Everyone contributed to the trip which,made it a successful trip for me - thanks again.
