August 15, 2019, Observation Peak
Distance: 8 km
Elevation gain: 1150 m
After climbing Cirque Peak just over a week ago, Fred and I decided to give its parent peak, Observation Peak, a go. Again, I mined through the different weather forecast sites because like Cirque Peak, you want to do this trek on a clear day so you can take in all those summit views. And each site indicated a primarily sunny day (highest cloud cover would be at noon and would only be 25% cover), with minimal wind (10 kms an hour). Hmmm. 🤨
Thinking this could shape up to be as grand a day as the day we had climbing Cirque Peak, I asked the boys if they wanted to join us. Nic jumped at the opportunity even though it would mean taking a day off work. Between his work, his lacrosse schedule, some planned out-of-town adventures, and of course the crappy weekend weather we seem to be having this summer, Nic hadn’t done a lot of hiking yet and so he was keen to join us. Sam opted to pass on the opportunity.
Because Observation Peak is across the road from Peyto Lake off the Icefields Parkway, and therefore involved a 2.5 to 3 hr drive, we once again rose very early and were on the road by 5:00 am. As I was still sick and Nic was operating on just a few hours of sleep, we tried to catch a nap while Fred drove. But as usual, the scenic drive kept distracting me. Of course, I had to grab a few pictures at the Bow Lake viewpoint and at Peyto Lake 😁 because even though I have many a picture of these two lakes, each time I see them, a certain type of peacefulness comes over me and I am forever amazed how the lakes look different each time I visit them 😊. That said, I was concerned by the amount of cloud cover, and while my experience told me the multiple! weather forecasts calling for sunny skies were likely wrong, I kept hoping the cloud would blow over or burn off 🤞.
Surprisingly, as we were gearing up, another party of four were starting out. The parks are busier than ever now such that it is common to see a line of cars driving in at 4:30 or 5:00 am even on a weekday.
The start of the trek has a well-defined trail that meanders through the forest and crosses a small creek. The path continues with a gentle incline and quite quickly breaks out into shrubbery such that the views start to open-up. Pausing to strip off a layer, Nic and I started to identify some of the peaks and glaciers we were seeing. From this point, we followed what we believed to be the primary trail, taking us up the avalanche gully. It wasn’t until we came back when we realized the more hiking path was up on the ridge to climber’s right. Fred and I were a good portion up the gully when we spotted cairns on the ridge and so we decided to side hill across the gully and climb a minor cliff band to get on the “right” trail. Unfortunately, traversing across the gully was extremely difficult because it was near impossible to get any type of foothold. Even when using our hands and feet, we kept sliding down. Nic had opted to continue up the gully (smart fella!) but ended up waiting about 20 minutes for us to catch up 😳.
As we were making our way up the final part of the ridge, the winds picked up and much darker clouds were moving in quickly. Just before the final scree slog to the false summit, Fred and I made the decision to stay put and have Nic summit on his own. Nic is unbelievably fast and we thought he could likely get up and back down to us before any dangerous weather unfolded. Too, to be honest, we had just done Cirque Peak on a fabulous sunny day and quite frankly had better views than Observation Peak so we were okay not to summit. I wasn’t thrilled with having the road and other infrastructure play such a dominant role in our sights this day.
It was wonderful to track Nic through my telephoto lens. While I know he is a ridiculously quick scrambler, I was still in awe of how fast he reached the false summit. Once here, he was out of sight as he hiked a much more gentle incline to the true summit. After taking a bunch of pictures, Nic hustled back down to the false summit and then made his way back to us. By this time, it was fleece, coat, hat, glove, etc., weather. Seriously, it was cold. After taking a group “selfie”, we hiked back to the car with no incident.
