The hike up from Lake O'Hara is notorious for the awful and ever-shifting scree. It was pretty foul but thankfully some long ribbons of old snow helped make progress a little less painful.
The hut is perched on a windy and desolate col at a location which in many ways witnessed the very birth of Canadian mountaineering over 100 years ago. You can almost feel the history here.
Away by 4:30 the next morning to pick our way up the initial part of the route in the eerie pools of light cast by our headlamps. We made a few blunders in the dark but found our way from cairn to cairn without too much trouble. The sun came up to cast a warm red glow over everything and help with the route finding.
The crampons were on for one small section but mainly we just scrambled our way over bare rock until reaching the well-known feature called The Sickle. This is a narrow snow covered dip in the ridge that required some careful downclimbing on the hard snow. It was a spectacular setting.
After The Sickle the route switched back and forth between snowy arete and easy scrambling over bare rock with a couple of short technical parts thrown into the mix.
It was wonderful stuff. On top by 9:00AM for the obligatory U2 album cover photo.
The weather crapped out on the way down. We got drenched a couple of times from horizontal rain but thankfully managed to reach the hut before the worst of it hit. We sat around eating hot soup as the rain lashed at the windows. It cleared just early enough for us to bolt back down to Lake O'Hara in time for dinner.
We had enjoyed an absolute classic mountaineering route in great conditions.
Pics on Google Photos: https://goo.gl/photos/pmBjtUCEnLRUWN2J8
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