Scrambling with Mark.

The south ridge of Mount Mary Barclay is a surprisingly enjoyable, scenic, and interesting scramble - a far cry from our labourious and uninspiring attempt of the mountain's north ridge, last month. The approach is short (although an unpleasant crossing of the Kananaskis River is required), the ridge provides interesting terrain and a great view south, down Highway 40, there's some steep and mildy exposed hands-on scrambling right before the summit, and there's also plenty of opportunity for variation and extensions for the return route.

The first obstacle of the trip is to get across the Kananaskis River and I'll be the first to admit that river crossings are my least favourite aspect of mountain trips. I'll do anything to avoid that icy, bone-chilling cold on my feet, including wrapping garbage bags around my legs to prevent water from getting in. That's exactly what we did and it actually worked for about 5 seconds. After that, the water came rushing in and we completed the thankfully short crossing with no protection. Not bad though.....it limited my whining, blubbering, and crying at the end to about 2 minutes, instead of the usual 10!

A short hike and we found ourselves at the foot of a long valley with Mount Mary Barclay on our right. Since I had forgotten what the ascent instructions were at this point (from Frank and Peter's website - http://robson3954.tripod.com/frankandpetersmountains/id34.html - we weren't actually planning to attempt this mountain this day), we decided to head up the mountain and gain the ridge right away, as opposed to hiking up the valley and ascending easy scree slopes to the west of the summit. It was a good decision and proved to be the most entertaining and enjoyable route.

From a distance, the final section of the ridge, right before the summit, looked to be quite steep and we were skeptical that it could be scrambled up. As we got closer, however, the perspective changed and although still fairly steep, it looked more promising. The ridgewalk to the summit block was very pleasant, highlighted by great views of Mounts McDougall, Kidd, Bogart, Lawson, Inflexible, The Wedge, and Wasootch Tower and Ridge. For the final push to the summit, we roped up, although in retrospect it was unnecessary. This was for the most enjoyable part of the scramble, and the only difficult section. The ridge narrowed considerably and exposure increased on both sides, though nothing too hair-raising. 5 minutes later, we were on the summit, enjoying the warm weather and a very respectable summit panorama.

After a short break, we continued along the ridge in a northwest direction. This route was certainly far easier than descending the south ridge, as it was less steep and had no exposure. The plan was to descend easy scree slopes into the valley and then follow the dried-up creek out to the starting point. As we descended, however, it became clear that there was great potential for extending the trip by continuing along the ridge towards Heart Mountain. The ridgewalk was easy and very enjoyable. When we arrived at GR319529, we decided to call it a day. With another car parked at Heart Creek and a couple of extra hours, I'm sure a traverse all the way to the summit of Heart Mountain would have been possible. We'll definitely put it on our "to-do" list.