Monday was a holiday in the U.S., Labor Day, so Lynn and I headed for the Park again, this time to climb Piegan Mountain. Now this was a first for us: attempting a summit on our own, without a trail, and knowing that we were going to have some challenging climbing spots. We weren't totally in the dark; Warren has climbed this before and the route is described in a climbing book we have. Still, there is a lot you have to figure out on your own.
We started out climbing up along Lunch Creek toward Mount Pollock. In the photo you can see a diagonal line in the hillside below and to the right of Pollock that goes up to a saddle below Piegan, which is to the right (and not in the photo). This was our route; wait til you see it up close! I'll call it "the cleft."
First we had to work our way up to it, climbing around waterfalls and walking through alpine meadows of the summer's last blooms.
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| Saxifrage |
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| Yellow Monkeyflower |
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Looking back from where we've come so far:
the dark green U at the end of the gravelly rock is where we started.
I think you can see the road where we left our car.
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So after a couple of hours we get up to "the cleft" and it is a matter of working our way up huge boulders and loose rock for another couple of hours! The outcome was that we got up to the saddle and said, "that's good enough!" Continuing to climb up Piegan was just too daunting and once again the wind was very strong and worrisome. We walked down the other side to Piegan Pass and hit a trail back to the road.
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| Looking up "the cleft." |
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| resting at the mouth of the cleft. |
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| Looking back down at the cleft |
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| Our view from the saddle. |
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| From the other side, looking back at the saddle and Piegan, the mountain we didn't climb. |
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| Back on the trail on the way back down. Mt Siyeh in the background. |
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| Blue gentian welcomed us back down in the forest. |
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| Fireweed leaves turning with the approaching autumn. |
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