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Mount Sarrail | 2011-05-21
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Since I got my bivy, I was waiting for temperature to warm up little. Finally while peeps in the rest of the world walk around with bikinis and speedos, here in Canada it’s warm enough not to freeze to death. I took May long weekend for opportunity to test my bivy. I picked Mount Sarrail.
Upper Kananaskis Lake Circuit was still covered with snow as I suspected, so I had to use snowshoes. About 5.3 km from the parking lot I went off –trail. Because of snow, I do know if there is a trail to Hidden Lake area, but after Hidden Lake where snow was melted, I saw trails. At Hidden Lake I went closer to Mount Lyautey side and followed near Foch Creek instead of where the trail supposed to be. I thought by looking at it from the Lake, the link I took surely looked trees were less dense (page 2). But it was a mistake. After a while my way was full of low trees which made difficult to bushwhack… Once I came out of trees, where I could see Fossil Falls, it looked I was blocked by cliffs at first, but the trail continued by going up side hill to hiker’s left (still page 2 & 4).
I dropped my bivy gears at the bottom of ascent ridge to Sarrail, and switched to scrambling gear. After a long approach on soft but heavy spring condition snow with heavier pack than usual, took good amount of energy out of me. Yet I still had 900 m elevation to gain to the 3174m high summit. (x_x;)
Kane’s book described the ridge quite well. Easy scrambling with mild exposure. The first 1/3 was hiking. I think mid way on the ridge there were few spots required scrambling. With snow and cornices on the ridge, scrambling was more than easy scrambling for me. Also it was nasty that where I had to scramble was where exposure was too. Like the first 1/3, the last 1/3 was also hiking and nothing technical. It was just fighting to the summit.
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