Mount Cline (and Mount Owen) - September 1 2024

Cline Range, Saskatchewan River Crossing, Alberta
3374m

For the last weekend of our annual Rockies trip, our (myself + Logan's) eyes were definitely hunting for an 11000er prize. The original objective of Edith Cavell was out due to the Jasper Fire bringing closures to most of the park, that peak included. Cline was one of the peaks on our radar, and had some attractive aspects to it. Namely, it is under 30km/2500m elevation gain round-trip (making it feasible for a day-trip), the route is mainly just hiking except for the notches, which we expected to be well-exposed to the sun to avoid any wetness in the important spots, and it was within a couple hours of our Airbnb in Golden. That sealed the deal for us, so after spending Saturday doing some more touristy stuff (and some last-minute roadside car repair, eating into our sleep/prep time a bit...), we set out a bit before 7am.

We drove straight to Saskatchewan River Crossing, where we discovered some gas so heavily marked up we couldn't stomach the thought of refueling there, so we accepted returning to Golden fairly low to avoid that (don't plan on fueling up here if possible). I also took way too long for my final bathroom stop thanks to a long queue for the single stall available 🙃 By the time we were parked at the trailhead (just a faint dirt road to a flat area on the north side of Hwy 11, just make sure to slow down when the bridge over Thompson Creek appears, it's immediately after that) and geared up, it was a touch past 9:15am.

Looking south towards Mount Murchison
Many subpeaks of Cline as seen from the parking
The nice trail starting just off the highway

The trail along the east shores of Thompson Creek is excellent, to the point that AllTrails shows the route as bikeable, which I'd believe (though it extends that rating to the entire trail, which certainly is NOT the case). Given the size of the creekbed, it seems the flow can get quite extreme, but when we were there, it was fairly benign, and all crossings were quite simple+straightforward. The first of these was 1km in, where the trail turns to the west side of the creek. One can find an interesting-looking mini-waterfall and pool here, which we both remarked would probably make for an excellent cold dip on a hot day. Sadly, we did not have the luxury of time to waste, and expected a dark return, so we could not confirm this.

Thompson Creek is no small creek, seemingly
That'd be an awesome place to cool off during a heat wave or something

The super-mellow trail continues along the creek for a while, weaving in and out of the sometimes-burnt forest until about 3 clicks, where it finally starts to gain elevation at a meaningful pace. Usually I'm happy to go at a mellow slope angle, but with over 2000m to gain, "wasting kilometres" walking flat just meant more pain later, so I was glad to spread the love amongst as many clicks as we could.

Finally, a bit of an incline

At about 1:15 into the day, we reached a fork, where the trail clearly split sharply uphill to climber's left, or went straight ahead. We had GPX tracks going both ways, and since forward seemed to "continue the trail", and was actually flagged, we decided to follow that direction. This was a mistake, largely. We DID get to see some pretty waterfalls in an open meadow, but we also wasted about half an hour and gained an extra ~75m of elevation to do so. The trail kinda just went towards the waterfall and source cliffs it was pouring from, and our GPX ended up just showing a bushwhack back towards the main trail, so we just turned around to follow a real trail up the steep slope instead. I guess if you have time+energy to kill this could be worthwhile, but with our relatively late start for a big day, it wasn't an ideal use of time.

Pretty waterfall(s) were undercut by the time+energy spent getting to them
The real route takes a steep gully up to the treed bench on the cliff band, then traverses it
That's probably a p100, but still not Cline itself
This is the carin at which one should just fork left

One we got back on track, we ascended a steep, loose dirt gully (it had a nearly-dry creek in the centre) for about 200m of elevation, near the top of which it cut across and dipped into some trees, which after gaining the final bit of elevation, the trail started to cut across, on the bench we spotted from the valley earlier. I told myself near the start of the climb we'd take a break once we got into the shade of the trees, but I wasn't prepared for 200m of climbing before that 😅, so when we finally got to the top, I was quite happy. Despite my continued colitis-related issues (which I normally "solve" on-trail by refusing to eat+drink until I'm about to conk), I knew this day would be a big slog, so I insisted on regular breaks to drink and even snack, knowing having to go to the bathroom a few times would be worse than being low on calories+water on such a big day, at elevation. Granted, my food for the day was a few granola bars and a pouch of baby food (glorified applesauce), but hey, for me, that's a lot!

Cutting across the centre of the gully
Finally resting a bit in the trees

After enjoying some shade, we made the traverse (still on a decent trail) along the bench until we reached the first of what would be many talus-filled sidehills of the day. This one, at least, largely had a trail carved in to the talus, so it wasn't too bad, though near the end of it, past the first treed section, the trail kinda disappeared on us, and picking it back up at the next patch of trees was a bit tedious.

The first of many talus sidehills
Nice views though. Bet that peak right-of-centre would be a great ski
Looking SE along Hwy 11 and the Saskatchewan River. Mount Peskeet is the snow-capped peak right-of-centre

In about 45-50 minutes or so, we finally got across this first slope, and crested above the section of trees we'd been staring at, which guarded the "next section" of the hike.

The next goal was the trees above the darker grey cliffs
From there, we could see Mount Owen (in between the two foreground towers), but still not Cline. We did note the small amount of snow visible near the top, relieved it was thin-looking enough to probably not interfere with the crux

After that, we wandered up random talus for about 25 minutes until we arrived below a small headwall, which presented us with the first scrambling opportunity of the day. From afar, it looked fairly steep and potentially challenging, but up-close, it was much easier, and we found our way up with basic class 2 scrambling, sticking just to climber's right of the obvious gully where water would drain in higher-snowpack months. There was a cairn or two, but one need not stay right on them if you don't want to, just "getting up" in that general area will suffice.

Approaching the first scramble of the day
Just a few moves, but hey, still counts. They were easy enough Logan kept his poles out for the process (he is a normal person who puts them away in harder terrain, unlike myself)
Above the scramble, back to walking along the valley floor
More "still not Mount Cline" views

Above the headwall, there wasn't much loose debris, and the walking was basically right on the floor of the small valley carved by the drainage of the alpine lakes marking the halfway point, which are also a common bivy site. We reached the base of them about 4 hours into the day, and got to the far side about 15 minutes later by skirting around the right side, doing our best to stay low/minimize undulation while avoiding getting sucked into wet/muddy spots.

First sight of the lakes!
A bit of a better view
The money shot of the larger lake

We rested for a few extra minutes before starting up past the lakes. Our hope was to keep a pace of about 250m of vert/hour, at least until the crux, and we were fairly close to that pace. We were happy and expecting to hike out in the dark, so with the terrain thus far being quite simple, we were fine if things were a bit slower, and it was a relief to know even halfway up, things were still all chill terrain. Especially with a disproportionate amount of distance covered in that first half, we expected to get a bit more efficient in the second half with respect to elevation, so we weren't panicking. That was clearly not the orthodox approach, though, as we noted a couple people hanging around their tents at the same time, presumably already having summited and packing up camp. Oh well, at least we got to sleep in real beds!

We took this little ramp up to climber's left along the headwall above the lakes to gain access to the upper slopes

The next 100m+ of gain took us about 20 minutes of slogging up the loose ramp running climber's left across the headwall guarding the upper half of the mountain. It was, at least, just a hike, and unlike the rest of the imposing headwall, a fairly benign route, so I was glad that little weakness existed. Once we topped it out and turned right towards the peak, all semblance of a trail seemed to disappear, and we just had a long slog up an open alpine slope to get to our next benchmark.

Almost out of the weakness in the headwall
Turning the corner, the trail snaking up to Mount Owen visible in the distance. Cline STILL refused to show itself
A little zoom in to the trail on Mount Owen
Logan chilling for a bit before we started the next slog
A rare non-summit selfie. Not sure why, but I took one 🤷

For the next 80 minutes, we just trudged up the open SW slopes of Mount Owen until about 2900m, gaining ~500m in the process. There isn't much to say about this part of the hike, really, you can just walk more or less anywhere as long as you're heading up, and the terrain is basically all just "old glacier bed", with patches of drainage channels (largely dry), bare rock scraped by old ice, and largely-stable rocks embedded into the ground. I just tossed my earphones in and we ground it out, taking breaks every 100m of elevation or so to do things in bite-sized chunks.

Hanging out partway up the grind
Mount Wilson, and the icefield of the same name, with Outram+Forbes to the left
At the spot where the hard rock turns to scree, and the trails up Owen we saw at the bottom of the long slope get into focus, ~2900m

At that point, we made a bit of a navigational oversight by just following the obvious trails in the scree, and basically just followed the ridge up Owen, not realising that we were heading up and over Owen instead of getting on the glacier (or at least former glacier) that heads towards Cline. By the time we realised this, we were most of the way up Owen already, so we figured we'd just summit it, and try to traverse over, as retracing our steps would take precious time, which was not exactly abundant.

A couple punches left to top out Owen

I dropped a small amount of gear (bear spray, an empty bottle, and my water filter) at the last big cairn on the ridge, which ended up being a relevant factor later on in the day, then we continued the trudge up. We definitely slowed down near the top, even Logan, who'd to that point been going strong even with the rope (albeit a thin 30m, but still, something) in his pack. It took us about an hour to get to the ~3100m summit of Mount Owen, which we reached just before 4:30pm. We did encounter the snow we saw from below, but it was neither problematic, nor necessary, to even step on.

False summit of Mount Owen
That's what Mount Cline looks like! Owen's summit to the right
Final slog to the summit

We saw a register on the summit, but Logan reported it to be soaked and unusable, making me regret leaving an empty water bottle at my gear stash. Oh well, live and repeat the same habits til you die, I guess 🤷

The apparently now-useless register on Mount Owen

We took some summit pictures, but overall didn't linger long, since the hour wasn't getting earlier, and we had an unknown downclimb of about 100m to the Owen-Cline col, and then another ~350m to ascend before we could summit Cline.

Cline as seen from Owen
Looking NW, Stewart is the spiky boi just left of centre, with Brazeau (another 11000er) in the background, right in the middle
Mount Columbia just behind Mount Saskatchewan right-of-centre, with Bryce left of them. Amery is left of that, but isn't an 11000er, it's just closer. Alexandra and the Lyells make the cut, though. Right of Columbia are the many 11000ers of the Columbia Icefields, leading all the way to Mounts Alberta and Woolley/Diadem
Mount Wilson in the foreground, the Lyells to the right, and Forbes (an ultra and 11000er) to the left. Barnard is the snowy peak on the far left that falls just shy of the 11000er and ribu marks)
Looking down the Icefields Parkway, Murchison is the big massif on the left side, just shy of 11000er status. Directly right of it are Howse+White Pyramid
Looking SE, you can see Mount Hector (ultra + 11000er) in the far background, right in the middle. The Louise/O'Hara 11000ers are faintly visible on the horizon left of Murchison. Corona ridge is the centre foreground set of peaks
To the east, we're getting closer to the edge of the Rockies. Whelk Peak is the highest peak in the background, in the middle
Resolute and Lioness peaks, both decent adventures sharing the same trailhead. The latter looks skiable, I'd bet
Team photo on Owen

With the photo shoot out of the way, it was time to get moving fairly quickly. The first bit of downclimbing was simple, just walking down along scree-covered slopes with a few ledges to step down, making at most class 2 moves. However, we soon got majorly cliffed out sticking to the direct col route, and had to start moving to skier's left to find gentler slopes down.

At first, things looked pretty alright
But we soon needed to make detours like this heading more west/left to avoid giant cliffs
If only we could just teleport down to the glacier where we were "supposed" to be 😅
Still... we made some decent progress

Logan was not as confident in this terrain, seemingly, so we took our time getting down through the ledges, with lots of scouting ahead to find out if we could go ahead or had to skirt more left to get down. Eventually, we hit a spot where going direct was just sheer drops of 10m+, and we "just had to go directly down towards the trail". On the plus side, though, it was just one gully to get down before it was all easy terrain to the glacier, so that was encouraging. I even found a nice, protected, flat ledge above it to rest on while Logan (who's a bit more cavalier when sending rocks down) tried his hand at descending.

We eventually found ourselves above this gully, guarding the simple terrain leading to the trail below

This gully ended up being slightly wet and also quite narrow after the first couple moves, though, to the point that Logan didn't want to descend, and after I tried, I felt the same way. So, we went to the slopes to skier's right in the shot above, and attempted to downclimb from there into the lower part of the gully, past the tight+slippery crux. Logan ended up getting about halfway down to a decent ledge using some very climber-y moves (jams and the like). Perhaps one day I'll gain a greater appreciation for such things, but when I tried to replicate those moves, I couldn't bring myself to trust them over the huge exposure. So, I instead lowered my pack to Logan, clipping it to a pole, then headed back to the gully, hoping that packless, I could squeeze myself in tight enough to stay stable as I got past the wet steps and into the easier terrain.

Logan chilling on his ledge
Looking up the narrow crack I jammed myself into, the hardest parts aren't really visible, but it was definitely some difficult downclimbing
Nice and easy from here, though!

Once I was down at the bottom of the gully, Logan lowered both our packs to me, but before he could get moving, things took a turn for the worse. He ended up hurling pretty thoroughly (thankfully avoiding me, at least), which was definitely not what you want nearly 2000m above your car, still 350m below the summit, and on seemingly the crux downclimb of the day. After a few minutes to calm down, breathe, and sip a bit of water, he managed to lower both our packs to me, and finish his downclimb into the gully. Once we got a bit further down to the pole he'd yeeted below earlier (see if you can spot it in the picture above!), we took a good break for him to collect himself and see how he was doing, and figure out our plan from that point.

By the time we got sorted, it was about 6:20pm, not long before when we'd really wanted to be on the summit, turning around. Logan was feeling a bit better, but not enough to push for the summit (quite a reasonable decision). I was doing fine, a bit worried about time, but otherwise feeling spry. Given how far we were from home, the investment to get to this point, and the non-technical nature of the terrain we'd encountered thus far (the downclimb we'd done from Owen aside, everything else was just hiking, with a couple class 2 moves in easy terrain), I was willing to push for the summit, as long as I could get past the notches and anything else technical before dark. A little extra suffering in the dark while hiking back would be a worthwhile price, given the 10+ hours of driving each way and long hike in I'd need to repeat to come back here, I figured. So, after asking a million times and making sure it'd be okay, I handed Logan the car keys, and we agreed he'd head back ahead of me, and I'd push for the summit. So, after swapping the keys for the rope, we parted ways, and I set my eyes towards Cline.

Eyes on the prize now, with a ticking clock to beat if this was going to be "just a little bit of an epic"

Of course, not a minute after we split up, as I was sidehilling across a horrid moraine to get over to the col, I slipped on a loose section and smacked my right hand up pretty good, necessitating a couple band-aids to get it back into fighting shape 🙃 It turns out I also bruised a rib doing that (even though I just fell down from standing height, guess rocks can be pointy and hard from any height), though I'd not even notice that until the following morning. With that delay, it took about half an hour to get across the moraine and to the Owen-Cline col proper.

Easy scrambling at the col
Very ledgy rock, typical easy Rockies scrambling down here

I got to the low point and started making my way up just before 7pm. Given the official sunset was around 8:30pm, with a bit of extra buffer given the nearly 1300m prominence of Cline, that was still fine, if not ideal. Thankfully, the return trip would follow the actual trail, and not be on as steep of a sidehill, making travel a bit easier.

Turning the corner on the ridge, the route now largely visible to the top

A few minutes later (basically exactly at 7pm, actually), I finally reached the infamous notches, which had actually turned a friend back a few weeks ago. They're rated at anywhere between 5.2 and 5.4 depending on who you ask, so I didn't expect to need the gear we'd hauled, but "you never know", and it'd definitely suck to get all the way there and not have the ability to continue, so it was a good idea to bring, if nothing else, the gear to rap down and belay followers up the far sides.

At the start of the first notch
That is indeed quite the gap
The right side makes it a bit less ridiculous

The downclimb on the first notch was trivial, really, and easily led to the little tower (the top of which is visible above) in the middle of the notch. From there, the climb out the other side was steeper and more exposed, but I managed it without too much fuss, and popped out on the useful side fairly quickly. The exposure is definitely real here, though, a fall will kill you, no two ways about it. Thankfully, the rock is quite solid.

Easy downclimb into the notch
It's a good chasm if you fall here, though
The rock is quite textured and juggy, though, so not a big deal for experienced scramblers IMO
Looking along the far side wall towards the peak

Once I got onto the other side, I hastily decided that the middle tower must define the midpoint of 2 notches, and then reasoned that it would make sense to clip all my climbing gear into the bolts at the top of the notch, so that I wouldn't have to haul it the rest of the way to the summit, since the crux was "over". Of course, that was not the case, and a few seconds after I left my gear, I found the second notch, the one with the infamous "leap" required to get to the other side.

Yep, that's a gap
No trivial way across this one

As I recall, on the way across the second notch, it's a bit of a leap down, which means more momentum, but you're also not worrying about "can I make it across" (with the implication of not doing so being falling down the chasm to your death), so that helps balance it out. I could've gone and got my rope, but with the flatness of the ledges, quality holds, and general "inwards" stance you could land with, I felt comfortable making the small leap, so I did. The climb up is a bit harder on this side, with narrower ledges, and more weight over the exposure, so in a multi-person party with less comfortable gap-yeeters, you may want to belay the first person down and back up, so they can set a rope on the far side for people to get up.

Since I was happy enough getting across under my own power without pro, I just got to restart the slog back up the mountain, with a bit over 300m left to gain (the notches are quite close to the col).

It felt like I was almost there for quite a while 😅

The final push was pretty tiring, and took about 45 minutes. Which, thinking about it, isn't that bad for 300m+ of elevation, but given how tired I was feeling, along with the time crunch, it felt worse than it was. Every time I thought I was close, a bit more mountain would appear 😅

Some optional snow I bypassed on the way up
Still a little bit more... about 15 minutes more, actually
This, finally, was actually right below the top

I crawled my way onto the summit basically right at 8pm, and quickly took my photos before making my way down. I briefly looked for a summit register, but wasn't able to find one, and didn't have the time to dig around, so no idea if it needs one or not. I was just happy to get it with enough time to redo the notches in the light. The wind was also fairly strong and quite cool up that high, so I didn't feel like hanging around just because of that (though I did at least have plenty of layers, so I wasn't cold; strong winds are simply annoying all on their own).

Looking NE, Resolute (Lion+Lioness peaks) in the foreground. Abraham Lake visible to the left as well
Looking north, the peaks to the left in the foreground are the Whitegoat Peaks, the highest of which is Dasent Peak. Hangman Peak is the higher peak in the centre, Allstones Peak is the large massif to the right in the back
Troll Peak and the other Whitegoats in the foreground, to the right. Behind, Mount Stewart is the pointy peak left-of-centre, and Brazeau is an 11000er right of it, way in the background
To the west in this super-well-exposed shot 🙃, the Michele Lakes sit in the foreground. Lots of big peaks are in the background, with Mount Columbia being right below the sun, with Mount Saskatchewan right in front of it. To the right we can look along the icefields all the way past them to Mounts Alberta+Woolley. On the left, we can see all the way to Tsar, Bryce, and even the Lyells
Mount Wilson in the foreground. The Lyells behind on the right. Forbes is the sharp pyramid left of centre, with the Freshfield Icefield peaks left of it
Looking south, Mount Murchison is the rocky massif left of the road. Immediately right are Howse+White Pyramid. Mount Mummery stands out left of the Freshfield Group, also just below 11000er status
Looking SE, Mount Hector stands out in the back, just right of the cairn. Willingdon is barely visible on the left side. The Louise/O'Hara group is difficult to make our right of Hector
One more 11000er done!

After taking my photos, I didn't waste much time in starting to haul ass downhill, as basically every minute I could spend moving with light would pay significant dividends once it got dark, as there was a lot of vague, rocky terrain between me and the dirt trail by Thompson Creek below.

Starting to hoof it down

The scree at the top made for fast travel, and I quickly dropped past the snow patch and towards the barer rock more typical near the notches. I did have to stop for a few sunset photos, though, as it was quite beautiful, despite the mental pressure to get moving.

Had to appreciate the views a bit while they were still there
A few minutes above the notches still

I got back to the notches at about 8:30, and thankfully with some careful downclimbing, the jump back across the first notch (first from the uphill side, at least) was easier than on the way up, despite going up a bit. I could almost just lean a pole over and step across. Climbing up the downhill side was easier than the uphill side from the way up, as well.

Somehow, I leapt across here. It gets less ridiculous looking once you're inside
Looking directly across

10 minutes later, I was done with both notches (the lower of the 2 notches was easier, though my backpack did make my typical facing-out downclimbing a bit more challenging. One can always face in to make that problem go away, though). With the real crux done, I was now just hoping to get as far as I could across the moraine with light, hoping to get to some semblance of trail across it before it got dark, and I'd just have to wander across the loose rocks, which would be an arduous process, to put it mildly.

Across the notches, gear packed up, ready to get as far as I could
More setting sun
Looking back up at the notches

A couple minutes later, I found myself near the bottom of the col, and followed some footsteps in the dirt that dropped down to the glacier. This technically might've resulted in a bit of extra elevation gain, but walking along the flat glacier would be way faster than the (easy) scrambling to stay right on the ridge, so it was definitely the right choice.

Dropping down to the glacier
Microspikes on!

I slapped my spikes on for the brief crossing, but it was rocky enough I could've got away without them. This is definitely a piece of ice on its last legs 🙁 After a few minutes of walking across it, the clock struck 9pm, I ran out of ice, and started wandering through the moraine towards the pass SW of Mount Owen.

Time to start the long, tedious moraine slog
Looking back at Cline

The moraine had a few cairns scattered about, but for the life of me, even with light, I couldn't find a good trail through it. I'm sure one exists, but I wasn't going to spend time wandering up and down trying to find it, so I just kept heading in vaguely the right direction, dealing with the somewhat loose ground below me. It wasn't the worse I've experienced, and I actually got through in about 40 minutes, just as my light was truly fading, and the headlamp needed to come out. I briefly considered making the scree slog over towards my gear stash, but given the hour, that thought went away quickly, and I wrote those few items off as a donation to whoever goes up Owen next. Hopefully that bottle turns into a register, at least. The other stuff is just useful enough that I'm sure someone will want to keep 'em just for themselves.

At the pass, looking at the unnamed peak to the NW
Time for 500m of this!

With that section dispatched, it was time to lose the ~500m that would take me around the corner above the lakes. I remembered from our way up that we saw some more scree-like terrain to climber's left, so I aimed a bit that way, and found some looser/smaller rocks at the top, but those quickly ran out. So, most of the descent was spent just tediously walking down the mostly-rock slopes, without much terrain of note, and only a couple class 2 scrambling sections to get down ledges I'd have avoided with daylight. That section took about 70 minutes (and also brought the first bathroom break of the day, which was honestly later than expected, so while still annoying, not too bad for me).

I had a bit of trouble finding the ramp down to the lakes (and also needed a second bathroom break), so that took 25 minutes, despite losing only about 100m of elevation. Once I got to the lakes, though, the travel would be fairly simple, if still vague given the lack of trail for a few kilometres. On the plus side, when I stopped and turned my light off, the stars were very pretty!

My phone camera's best attempt to capture the night sky. It REALLY sucks at that

In the vague nothingness, it took about 2 hours of wandering to cover the ~3km from the lakes to the treed traverse above the steep gully guarding the "actually good trail" to the trailhead. At times, I picked up a trail in the treed sections, and near the end of the moraine traverse, I did manage to pick up the good path through it, but I also followed some bad cairns that dropped elevation too fast below 2200m, and those ended up wasting some time, I'd bet.

Is that a trail??
Not really, but this is!

Once I got to that final steep gully, it took about 25 minutes to drop down to the main trail, where I was quite excited to finally be on easy-to-navigate ground! As I was wandering my way down, I noticed a couple of red lights in the distance, which I couldn't figure out if they were hikers alpine starting their way up, Logan heading out slowly, or just car headlights from the parking lot. I swear they seemed to be moving, but I never figured out what they were 🤷

The final 4.5km were much more efficient, taking only 75 minutes to grind out (with one more bathroom break partway through). I was finally comfortable enough to turn on the music and just enjoy the walk out, so I did just that, and arrived at the car at a super-casual 3:15am 😅

It turns out, once I woke Logan up, that our estimation was pretty accurate, it took me around an extra 3 hours to get back after he got there. With daylight, I'm sure the trip could've been many hours less, but with things as they were, it was an 18 hour day for me 😁😬. After I got my gear tossed in the car, we had a very slow drive home, with a couple nap stops required to stay focused on the road. I'm usually quite good in that regard, but given I STARTED the day feeling like I would need to do that, after 18 hours of hiking, it was inevitable.

Once we got home basically just before sunrise, I messaged our (awesome) Airbnb host to see if we could get an extra day, then we conked the hell out, setting alarms to be able to pack ourselves out for checkout if we needed to. Thankfully, we got the extra day, which allowed for some extra sleep and time to refill on calories. I also dropped by the ER to make sure my ribs weren't broken, as they were hurting quite a bit after I woke up (guess it took a long time to let the adrenaline dissipate). No issues there, so armed with some mild painkillers to help me sleep as I healed (mostly good at the time of writing), we were ready for the drive home on Tuesday instead of Monday 🙂

Overall, this was a pretty cool way to end the trip with a bang. Logan getting sick, and our time spent downclimbing Owen definitely made this a bit more of an epic than it needed to be, but I still am happy with the outcome, I think it was worth the extra suffering to get it done. Though I'll be happy to have some more bite-sized trips once I'm back home...

GPX Track + Map

27km, 2300m elevation gain