Bow Range, Yoho, BC
2703m

For the last weekend of our 2022 "Month in the Rockies", we wanted to go out with a bang. Despite my general avoidance of overnighters due to my digestive condition, I was feeling good enough that I could do a night without being miserable, and my friends tend to enjoy them, so we set out looking for a good place to be. Of course, all the official campgrounds are booked way in advance, so we had to go into "the wild" a bit. We also wanted to get some meaningful peaks for our final trip, so we set our eyes on finding 11000ers where the first day could be done sans-glacier so our third party member (Amour) could still come along and only just sleep at camp while we alpine-started the second day.

This was not easy to find, but eventually we settled on Mt Victoria (south summit) and Mt Huber. We saw they were pretty co-located, there were other peaks like this one around that were less intense, many pretty lakes to enjoy, and after a long string of phone calls, we even managed to get a bivy permit to camp above the Huber Ledges, despite the typically difficult access to the Lake O'Hara area (note: this was a miscommunication, and it turns out bivy permits are for summiting only, if only part of the party wishes to summit, then this is not supported, and they should stay home or get a permit for the campgrounds proper. We were led to believe otherwise, but with that clarification, I advise you do not try and skirt this rule, they're quite strict about this).

So, with an unfortunately small amount of sleep, we dragged ourselves out of bed Saturday "morning" and set out for the hour drive to the trailhead. There was ample parking, and after a quick gearing-up, we set out at just about 4am. At this point in the year, it is totally pitch-black, though the moon was fairly bright as moons go, and the stars quite pretty.

The next 2 hours were pretty uneventful, just walking on the semi-paved, very even, gently graded O'Hara Fire Road (we didn't get a bus spot) until we got to the campground. You could go faster, but we had a less experienced hiker in the party, overnight gear, and mountains we wanted to summit later in the day so we didn't push ourselves too hard. We did, at least, get some nice night sky views on the way.

We spent a few unsuccessful minutes trying to use the bathroom at the campsite, then continued to the lake proper, getting there in about 2 hours 25 minutes with that break included. I can understand why people love coming here, it is a pretty gorgeous place. Plus I think there's something like 7 11,000ers there, so that's pretty great too.

Once we skirted around the lake, the trail up to Wiwaxy Gap was pretty simple, about 1.6km, 500m of gain (fairly steep), but well-defined, marked, and easy to walk up. We made slow but steady progress, I think our decent road-walking time hurt our friend on this section, he was not enjoying carrying an overnight pack up the steep trail. I also needed a bathroom break partway through, though, so it wasn't the worst. We were still up before most everyone, only one person caught up to us from the campground before we topped the ridge out.

Since it was only 9:00, and we were already up at the gap, we figured getting a fun scramble in would be a good idea. We should have enough time to get to camp before the expected 6:00 storms, and maybe even have time to try Huber still before that if everything lined up. So we ditched our packs and started our way toward Wiwaxy Peak.

The first 15-20 minutes are pretty boring, just walking along the rocky ridge at a moderate grade. However, after that, things start getting fun, with a few hands-on scrambling moves to start some class 2 fun. Amour isn't much of an exposure person, so he was happy that this part was hands-on, but safe. We got to a small downclimb (a couple steps), but I saw that there was a little ledge to climber's right above it to avoid losing elevation. Plus, it was bolted, so I could feel cool scrambling it. So, naturally, that's exactly what I did. Not sure why the bolts were there to be honest, I felt secure the whole way. Maybe if it was wet it'd be a problem, but most people don't climb in the wet...

Once past that fun bit, it's more fairly secure scrambling for a few moves, until we found another fun bit of off-path scrambling. Maybe 20 metres ahead of this spot, we found a fun-looking rock climber's right of the path (which Amour too), and decided to engage in some more extra-curriculars.

Another 10 minutes of walking/class 2 scrambling brought us up to the base of a large wall. The official path goes climber's right up to this point, in some rather annoying-looking scree. We went climber's left up a small outcropping which is much more ledge-like and easier to get to the top of. Here, we spotted some fun cracks to climb up, which Amour was not a fan of, so he decided he'd head back to the bags and rest/eat while we scrambled up off the beaten path. The offical trail goes climber's left, along the ridge, but we figured we could just go straight up as long as the terrain looked good, and it seemed like so much more fun.

We settled on the crack to climber's right along the wall, stashed our poles, and started scrambling. Turns out this is another sport route, as we found bolts along the way. They were perhaps more necessary than the last one we saw, but we still felt quite secure scrambling, and the exposure was enough to make it only class 3, difficulty of the climbing aside (which we didn't find too challenging).

Once you get up the first crack, there's a second half to the chimney before you top it out and can see where you've ended up. This was also pretty easy.

After topping that out, I believe we headed climber's left to another crack/chimney feature. It was a couple minutes of choss and steep walking, but we soon got rewarded with another technical section.

From the fairly secure spot the above picture was taken from, we had to head forward up against the wall, then up the right crack, across, and into the left one. Not the easiest, by any means. Finding our way up the first crack wasn't too bad, the hardest part was getting across to climber's left to the flatter spot where you could scramble up to the ridge. We both ended up getting ourselves sitting inside the crack, and after a lot of pulled-out finger holds, getting our way across. Logan took a more traditional climber's approach using his legs and getting all contorted, and I did my usual "legs are overrated just use grip strength and forearms" method of getting through. Both worked out, at least.

Once we topped that out, it was a pretty easy scramble up to the summit ridge, and a short walk over to the summit. There were two that looked summit-y, so we went to both for good measure. We also found an anchor at the first summit, so looks like at some point we either scrambled or bypassed another climbing route. Definitely recommend this mountain for scrambling or climbing, lots of options across various levels of difficulty.

We decided to descend via the official path, since while we could downclimb what we came up, we figured this way would probably be easier. It was simple scrambling down from the summit most of the way around the big rock face. We got to one part where things narrowed a bit and looked hairy, but once you got up it, you could find good holds getting down.

Once you get down, it's a mostly horizontal traverse around the big wall to regain the trail. There, we picked up our poles, then headed back down the trail to meet back up at the gap. The whole detour to this peak was just over 2 hours, so quite good value in terms of fun:time and fun:energy, definitely a worthwhile addition to the trip.

After regrouping, we sadly had to saddle the big packs back on, and tackle the Huber Ledges to get to camp for the night.

GPX Track + Map