Mt Inglismaldie 102777 Scramble on 20-Sep-2026
Participants: Scott, Stephanie, Serena
Trip Stats:
Distance: 17.8km, time: 12h 40min, elevation gain 1590m
A cautionary tale…
This “trial” is as Kane suggests, washed out by the floods of 2013, and it sees very little foot traffic throughout the year due to the closure until September 15th. Coincidentally, there were a few groups that had gone up at the beginning of September choosing to ignore the closure.
After speaking with Doug Lutz briefly about the peak, he was gracious enough to share his track, helping us to find his “near perfect” line to the end of the creek bed. “Near perfect,” is an oxymoron, if you decide to take this peak on prepare yourself for a long day of log hopping, creek crossing, bush bashing, and groveling up loose rock. While Doug’s track helped us to avoid any major bushwhacking, the trail is far from a nice approach.
The trail begins in the forest with some light log hopping to get you warmed up for the day’s festivities. Vern Dewitt suggests that there is a faint trail that he was able to follow; however, following the 2013 floods, much of this trail has disappeared. Making our way through the woods and past the marsh land (which is why the restriction is in place, to protect this area), we then entered the lower creek bed, and began to follow it as it curved and turned through the woods. As Vern suggests, you want to attempt this peak when the creek bed is dry, as you spend a significant part of the day in the creek and crossing over it. Rushing waters through the creek would create and immediate road block, and while there was some water in the creek from the recent snowfall, there was nothing that posed major difficulties for the group.
The log hopping in the creek begins almost immediately, and a significant amount of time is spent, crossing the creek from left to right and back again to get on the banks into the trees trying to pick up a faint trail, which in places was still present, and made for some easier walking.
In places the carnage from the flood was significant, and care needed to be taken to cross the creek and not fall through the carnage of logs. Fortunately, there was often flagging in the trees helping us to look ahead to determine where it was best to cross the creek.
As we hiked further through the creek trying to stay on the banks this required bashing through trees, and collecting our fair share of pine needles as we went. It took 3.5 hours to work our way through the creek and finally get to the rocks, where we needed to push up and to climbers left to get past the lower rock band. Fortunately, at this point we were well past the trees, and we were all grateful to finally be on rock, and in the sunshine.
Past the lower rock band, we began the long steady push to the summit block. At this point (and once out of the creek), we had gained roughly 750m of elevation, and there was only 850-900m more of elevation to gain. The lower part of the accent to the summit block was a steady climb and for the most part the terrain was good and the rock was stable, helping us to gain elevation quickly. However, once we reached the summit block, the rock terrain turned to lose rubbly rock and scree and the going became significantly more challenging and much slower.
Once at the base of the summit block, we made the mistake of pushing to high and needed to drop back down to traverse to climbers left around the lowest rock band, taking us to the backside of the summit block, where we were met with some lingering snow from the recent snowfall, but it was short lived and we were able to traverse across with care. Once past the snow we entered the gully, cautiously scrambling up to the summit ridge, as the terrain was very loose and rockfall was a real hazard. Given the lingering snow, we needed to take a slightly different route to the ridge, but we were able to make our way up, although coming down it would have not been fun.
On the ridge, it was a quick hike over to the summit, and we were met with some of the most amazing views in Banff. Note, this is the only redeeming factor of this scramble.
Given the low winds and beautiful blue skies, we took our time on the summit enjoying the views, and going through the summit register which was placed there in 1994. We celebrated when we saw the entry from July 7, 2002, where a party of skilled Ramblers made it to the summit. It was a great feeling to see the greats of the Ramblers who had made it up before us many years ago. Manfred Czechak, Alda Sigvaldason, Gerald Stchouwer, Norman Acquroff, David Mulligan, Andrew Lapinas, David Neame, Greg Deubler, and Rita Polt, Serena’s mother!
A very happy scrambler, taking the time to enjoy the summit register, where her mom had made the summit 24 years ago!
After enjoying our lengthy summit stay, we began the long decent back down to the creek bed. However, rather than returning the same way, we decided to follow the “near perfect” route by Doug Lutz, which traversed along the ridge to skiers right and then down into the third gully.
At first the gully offered some lovely scree to ski down and help to speed our decent, but that quickly disappeared, and we began needing to circumvent slab and cliff bands, pushing back towards skiers left to get back to the long and open gully towards the bottom. The lower we went, the more rock moved under our feet, which slowed our decent, and began to take its toll on our knees. While we all agreed that this line of decent was better, it was no walk in the park, and we were all grateful to be back at the base of the gully, where we took a much-needed break to give our feet and knees a break.
After our break, we began the long traverse back into the creek, where the log hopping Olympics once again began. Having gone through the creek in the morning, we did a better job of finding or making trails on the banks to try and speed our decent out of the trees, but there was not much luck. We finally reached the lower part of the canyon, where we needed to butt scootch down steep slab to get out towards the open creek once more and back to the woods and for the final cool down with the log hopping.
Using all available daylight, we made it back to the vehicle and were we all very happy to have this peak behind us, and we all agreed that following the flood, this peak is reserved for Kane tick checkers, and we will not be returning.
While the views were outstanding, and some of the best we have seen, you will work immensely for them. If you would like to give it a go at the Log-Hopping-Olympics, this is the peak for you, but don’t say you weren’t warned!