Postcards from Alberta

Win-Win on Wynn mountain (plus a gear review of my $2 nylon poncho). Scrambling with James Y.

Photo 1. Siyeh is the peak on the left; Allen is on the right; Cracker lake in background.

James and I had tossed around a few different ideas during the week for a hike and only made the final decision to scramble up Wynn mountain while driving down to the park in the morning... Our ascent of Wynn was a 'winning' situation because most of the other peaks were engulfed in clouds while Wynn, as a front range peak, was clear most of the day. Also, I tweaked my knee quite badly about three weeks back and was worried about pushing it too hard and possibly having to turn back before the summit… but the day turned out to be a perfect (albeit very robust) test of my knee, which performed really well.

We thought about doing a variation of the route in the climber’s guide by wading the stream instead of proceeding further down the trail to the bridge. This would have involved ascending one of the favourable looking chutes on the NW face, but the stream crossing looked a bit dicy - not to mention cold! Deciding against wading the stream, we carried further up the trail towards Cracker lake and took the next bridge crossing and basically ended up following Gord Edward’s route to a tee. That last bridge crossing on Canyon creek has seen better days… part of the bridge was engulfed in water due to a sag in one of the logs (see photo below). Due to the high streamflow from snowmelt, the bridge was a few feet short of dry land, so there was a bit of stream crossing built into the day. We were able to make it across without getting our feet wet or removing our boots, although I came pretty close to falling on my face on the way back.

Photo 2. The bridge's railing is more of a decoration than something you would actually want to lean against

Once across the bridge, there was a bit of bushwhacking and some snow slopes to avoid or ascend with crampons/ice axe, but scrambling-wise I never encountered anything harder than class II.

The views actually cleared right up completely for an hour and there were awesome views over to Cracker Lake and of the impressive ridgewalk from Wynn to Siyeh. Edwards refers to the ridgewalk as the Skyline Experience. What a tremendous route that must be! Across to the west, Mt. Allen was powdered with snow and there was a nice vista across the valleys to the north and west that included views of such peaks as Grinell, Wilbur, Henkel and Apikuni.

Unfortunately the clouds caught up to us just as we neared the summit, and moved in and started to obscure all the surrounding peaks just 30 minutes before we made it to the top (I hadn’t taken more than a couple of pictures to that point, wanting to save my battery for the summit).

Photo 3. Summit shot. Speaking of shooting stuff, I shot a bear banger in summit celebration. I've been carrying those things in my pocket for like 9 years and wanted to see what would happen. Not unlike a roman candle... it was pretty cool!

I hinted at a gear review of my $2 nylon poncho, so here it is: “Definitely worth the two bucks”. (As we drove down to the park in the morning, I realized that I had forgotten to bring any sort of shell along, so I snagged an emergency rain coat at the general store in Babb on the drive down). The nylon poncho was a bit breezy as a windbreaker as there are no sleeves, but really the thing does not breath so it’s a question of being a bit uncomfortable wearing a poncho or sweating like nuts in one of those disposable rain coats that has arms. So rain poncho all the way! Plus the thing is actually half ass robust and can be reused, compared to those one-step-above-a-plastic-garbage-bag disposable raincoats that usually have full arms.

Photo 4. Call me Orange Crush. Fanta man, perhaps? Just don't call me later for dinner! (Hang loose surfers/secret satanic hand signal.)

It was raining lightly most of the day from 3 PM onwards, but not hard enough to necessitate any raingear, so really I got lucky overall on the day as I only used the poncho at the summit as a windbreaker while laying about around enjoying the views.

Descending, we found a nice scree slope on the other side of the ridge… this descent route led us into a valley that connected to the stream leading to the Canyon creek bridge crossing. 9 hours car to car… all in all another fantastic day in the park!

Photo 5. A rainbow above Mt. Wynn at the end of the day.

Photo 6. Believe it or not, here is the view towards Grinell Point just 5 minutes after I took the photo of Wynn with the rainbow! It was like this most of the day... cloudy and rainy to the west and south and north of us, while on Wynn and to the east, we were winning with nice weather