hiking

Mount Cook (Armchair Traverse) - October 16 2022

Peak #1 of the Armchair Traverse. Not as much fun as the next half, but a good peak to check off the list nonetheless

Tareef Dedhar

Oct 19, 2022 • 6 min read

Mount Cook as seen from the lake

Wedge Group, Whistler, British Columbia
2676m

This weekend was looking like one of the last scramble-friendly ones of the year, if not the last. So I knew I needed to take full advantage. I spent Saturday doing some climbing practice w/ Logan, which was quite fun, but that only meant Sunday needed to be multi-peak day to compensate. So, we reached out, got some people together, and decided the now-infamous Armchair Traverse would be both fun, and a great opportunity to poke some fun at some recent drama in the local peakbagging community (some controversy regarding a party where one was unprepared, and may or may not have been left behind...). We had a party of four, though one dropped out due to work, and the other had to make very last-minute plans to get dropped off the night before and crash at my place. In the end, it was me, Logan, and Nikita departing my place at quarter to six, headed up to Wedgemount Lake.

The drive was pretty uneventful, and the road is pretty tame, although rather potholed. You can make it up in most anything as long as you avoid the bad holes. After a few begrudging minutes getting ready in the cool October morning air, we got ourselves ready and set out just past quarter to seven. I (finally) got my replacement shoes from Salomon after my previous purchase from them decided to eat my feet more than protect them, and I was excited to hopefully have a smooth break-in after all the recent shoe trouble I've had. Nikita, meanwhile, didn't quite have all her gear, including headlamp, so she had to rely on sharing the light from me and Logan, but thankfully it wasn't a big deal in the simple terrain of the Wedgemount Lake trail.

We made a decent pace through the trail, taking a few breaks but largely making good chunks of progress. Logan led for about half, and I did for the other, trying to keep a measured pace knowing we basically had to repeat the effort done up to the lake again past it to get up to the scramble. We were especially wary since we had done this trail once before last summer during the heat dome, and struggled up in over 4 hours. This time, though, we fared much better, and made it to the lake in 2:40. Definitely not FKT contenders, but we were pretty happy with that result, and didn't feel totally gassed from doing so either, so objective achieved. Getting through about 1200m of elevation gain in under 3 hours felt good to me.

Gully before the lake, stick climber's right as much as possible for the "best dirt"

Once at the lake, we breaked for about half an hour. I'd probably not have chosen to take quite that long, but the group seemed in good spirits and we were enjoying conversation in the sun with nice views, so I didn't force the issue.

The lake looks very matte, but still looks quite glacial

That spire which I hope is Rethel's summit looks pretty dope

Looking past one of many campers to Weart

Sadly no chiropractor to give me a massage, but Logan will have to do (if you know, you know)

After the aforementioned chatting, pictures, and shitposting, we made our way up toward Cook. Unlike the excellently-maintained and marked lake trail, this dies pretty soon after you leave the lake. It is at first a dirt trail right beside the lake, which quickly turns up to climber's left into a grassy slope covering a bunch of rocks, to a small rock garden preceding a small cliff section. Me and Nikita took a couple minutes looking at the map that was posted in the campground, and Logan took the opportunity to scoot to the top of the cliff bands quickly, while we laboured behind a bit slower. The cliff bands are nothing serious, we did a bit of scrambling right at the beginning, but that wasn't really necessary I suspect, and the rest is mostly just walking through them vs scrambling up.

Once partway up we got to see the lake above the lake at the foot of Wedgemount Glacier

Great views from Wedge all the way through to Rethel. I have vague plans to attempt a winter traverse of the three at some point...

Once up at the top of the cliffy bits, we got good views of Wedge unobscured

After this section (ends at about 2175m), it's just talus all the way to the top. Not big enough to be boulders, in some parts I'd say just rocks, rarely small enough to be scree, often just perfect to be annoying. To this point, I'd expected to be the bottleneck based on my experience with my party members, and that'd largely been true, though nobody had really pushed far ahead indicating a great desire to get ahead, which was a relief. However, to my surprise, in this section, things changed a bit. Logan didn't seem to push ahead of me meaningfully, we actually caught up to some trail runners that had passed us previously, and Nikita started falling back slowly as we went through each "section" of the walk up. We took a few more breaks and slowed down just a bit to get up, cresting the ridge just under 6 hours in.

Logan choosing the more-stable larger rocks vs the small dirt patches, which were just loose and slippery with the angle of the slope

An hour later the terrain looks the same, but Nikita seems to hate life and everything about it

Sadly, the ridge wasn't quite the summit, and we had a bit under half an hour of most-flat traverse and one small descent+ascent to reach the true summit just about 6.5 hours in. Not quite the pace I was aiming for (I was hoping for 6 or less), but also not dreadful. A 40-minute break was taken here. That meant we departed the summit just before 2pm, leaving only 4.5 hours before dark to get through all the scrambling and descent. But that was a problem for future Tareef. For now, we were enjoying the views.