Tunnel Mountain via Gooseberry (7p 5.8) - August 29 2024
Vermilion Range, Banff, British Columbia
1692m
Against my barest peakbagger instincts, I allowed myself to take a gorgeous weather window on the final Thursday of our trip to the Rockies this summer, and get suckered into spending it rock climbing! Thankfully I managed to at least rein in Logan+Michael enough to get that rock climbing to end on a p100 mountain, so I could still claim some amount of productivity for the day 😁
We had a few ideas in the Banff/Lake Louise area, but after the Lake Louise ones got nixed due to shuttles and parking being too much of a hassle, we ended up deciding that Tunnel Mountain, and the Gooseberry route up would suit our needs well. For me, "it is a peak", and the grade (5.8) was within my abilities as a "couple times a year" sort of climber (despite living in Squamish, yes, I know, I'm a disgrace). For Logan+Michael, it is a 7-pitch trad (though heavily bolted) climb considered by some to be a classic, with great views, so they were stoked on that. Plus, since Logan brought Jessica (his wife) along for the car ride (she's not so adventurous as to join us for the climb. At least not yet, if Logan has his way), she had plenty to do in the tourist-forward town of Banff. So after dropping her off armed with his credit card 🤣, we got ourselves parked on Tunnel Mountain Drive, geared up, and started the short approach to the start of the climb just before 1pm. I guess that's one nice thing about a mountain that's 90% covered by a 7-pitch climb, it's not that long!
The approach was pretty short, just a quick jaunt through the open field immediately beside the road, then you just work your way through the maze of biker and climber trails approaching the mountain. We more or less just walked in the general direction of the mountain, trusting that there would be a trail at the base going around it, which turned out to be true. In under 15 minutes, we'd found the identifying "GB" and arrow scratched into the rock, indicating the start of the climb.
Once we got to the base, we got all our gear ready, and figured out our strategy for 3-man climbing. Our decided-upon methodology ended up being the leader would climb normally, then I'd follow tied in some comfortable medium of available rope length vs distance apart from the final party member, who'd be simul-climbing with me. This worked since all I had to do was follow (I'm not a terrible climber, but am also far from identifying as a rock climber, and hadn't lead climbed or multi-pitched before this), and the grade was easy enough for Michael and Logan that they'd not be worried about having to simul-climb behind me, and I wasn't worried they'd be taking falls and yanking me down. As with any system, there are upsides and downsides. This worked for us, replicate such things at your own risk, in your own situation. The ideal is definitely 2 ropes for belaying each climber, but we had 1, and that's how we made it work without taking way longer belaying one-at-a-time.
The first pitch was quite easy, and I would probably have tried scrambling it if it was the crux of a standard peakbagging route. I did quickly figure out that this wouldn't be one of the routes I could just blast through in my trail runners, though, so after we reached the next belay station, I swapped into my climbing shoes (I try to avoid them just for comfort reasons, and have climbed most of my routes in just approach shoes, but this seemed to be a small-hold-heavy route, and I had to accept that reality before I got into harder terrain where I might regret not having swapped already).
The second pitch took the longest, by far, as some inconsistent beta led Logan way too far left onto an alternative route on the wall, which was definitely above the 5.6 that we were supposed to be on. After quite a bit of time figuring that out and getting him down from the end of his route, he got to the correct anchor, and we started following up. This ended up still being one of the alternate routes, which was graded at a fairly stiff 5.9 (IMO). I ended up cheating a bit and standing on a bolt or two, as I had Michael below me on terrain hard enough that he couldn't just sit there and wait for me to figure things out. Even still, it was definitely a heart-pounder to try and figure things out on that pitch 😅
Once I got to the veggie-belay I'm sure probably isn't how the route designers wanted you to top out, I felt way better (that's more of a scrambler's hold than micro-divots in slabby rocks), and clambered my way to the bottom of pitch #3.
Apparently (we didn't really figure this out until much later), Michael didn't want to be outdone in the apparently time-honoured tradition of "make Tareef climb harder stuff than he signed up for" (started by my buddy Nick while just cragging around back home), and on pitch 3, he responded in kind by leading up, but taking the 5.10a variation that goes climber's left of the dihedral the route is apparently supposed to stay on, and instead gets funkier right on the face. Thinking back, that lines up with what was going on in my head at the time, because I had a bear of a time trying to unclip those draws from the dihedral, which I was clinging to for dear life, as it felt much more comfortable than the face 😅 I actually had Logan come up behind me to get one or two of them which were probably in the crux of the 5.10a part of that variation, so sadly I cannot claim a new "hardest outdoor route", as I did my darnedest to stay on the 5.8 route instead.
The next pitch (#4) was a very simple/easy one, short enough that we could climb one-at-a-time without having to reset belay, as I could just get up, unclip, then let Michael follow, since it's only 25m (and our rope was a 60m). That was fairly uneventful, and marked us officially being more than halfway! Well, the climb itself was uneventful, I think this was the pitch where my rest spot below the belay ledge (big enough for 2, not 3) crumbled on me as I got up to start climbing, and gave us all quite the loud scare (thankfully nobody below to be in harm's way). I was fine anyways, but was still glad to be clipped in to a couple of bolts above. The rock here was great by Rockies standards, but was still in the Rockies, after all 😅
Pitch #5 was probably my favourite of the bunch, one of the 5.8 pitches, but this time we actually stayed on 5.8 terrain, and it was just super-fun; challenging but not enough to make me think I was gonna take a massive fall, but also definitely more than just scrambling. Lots of small holds, thin ledges, and just enough to create a challenge without making me start questioning my life choices. Exactly what I'd want out of an alpine rock route 🙂 (even if this is almost just cragging, given the super-short approach, it tops out on a summit, so I'm counting it 🤣).
After that, we'd actually caught up to the group ahead of us, so there was a bit of a wait before pitch 6 got going. There were a couple moves I thought were on the harder end of 5.7, but overall it was pretty easy without much fuss. It was also quite short, and we blasted through it faster than the guided party ahead of us, so we had another good wait on top before we could the final, seventh pitch.
Pitch 7 has a few options to it, but after some deliberation, we decided to just go with the obvious chimney and keep things at known quantities. Michael decided to place some gear for the first time on this supposed trad route, mostly just for the sake of it. The first cam ended up being damaged, with one lobe's cable not being connected properly, so when I followed and tried to remove it, I got maybe 85% of the way there, but since I didn't want to get it stuck and be one of those people in the local climbing Facebook group (stuck cam posts are all-too-common in Squamish, at least), plus my arms were getting tired in that position, I let Logan finish the job when he came up behind me. The second cam further into the dirty crack was fully functional and much easier to clean, and otherwise the pitch was fairly simple, and we topped out just below the forest, with an obvious trail over to the main hiking route to get to the true summit 🙂
After coiling the rope, swapping shoes, etc. we made the short (<5 minutes) walk to the true summit, enjoyed some views off the west side of the mountain, then started making our hike down.
Being the closest peak to Banff, and only a few kilometres with under 300m gain, this is a VERY popular hike, so the main trail was basically a highway, making travel quite simple. The summit has a small sign nearby, and is on the town side of the mountain's fairly flat plateau.
We walked down to the road in 20 minutes, at which point I offered my taxi services in exchange for Logan+Michael leading all day, and made the ~1.5km walk back to our car (sadly no trail comes down to where we started the day) solo while they waited at the trailhead for a pickup. I got to have a short phone convo w/ my mom+sister for way back, though, so it went by quickly, after which I picked the others up, and we met up in town to grab some dinner before heading back to Golden for the night 🙂
Overall, this was quite a fun day 🙂 Tunnel Mountain is far from an impressive peak, but doing it this fun way definitely turns it into much more of a great outing. 10/10 recommend spicing it up in this manner if you have the gear+knowledge to do so. Otherwise, it is an easy enough hike to bring even your family or touristy friends on, should you find yourself in Banff and needing a group-friendly peak to bag.