This is a part of my two-week climbing trip. You can find other blog posts from this trip.
Please search for “2020rocktrip” in my blog search.
7:00AM on July 5th, I was on pitch 1 of Gimli South Ridge after 4 hours of early morning hiking. If you have not checked my previous post, check it out. It is about the story before this; Mt. Gimli/South Ridge-Vol.01.
We started climbing this route as the first group on this day. We were four of us; two climbing parties. Another party came to the base when I got to the end of first pitch.
I put every extra gears in one backpack and let my partner; Maki take it as she followed me the first pitch. It was not a good idea… As you see on the photo above, our backpack was way too big for her, even for me. She struggled climbing the first pitch. Of course, we split the gears. I put my mountain boots on my harness. Maki and I both had a pair of mountaineering boots, which were overkill for this trip.
If you plan to go there in early summer like we did, mountaineering boots would be nice for snow/wet section. If you have GoreTex approach shoes and gaiters, however, they would do the job and you can save a lots of weight. I wish I had them…
The route was completely snow free and dry. Rock quality was amazing.
This route is graded as 5.10a, but majority of this route is around 5.6 to 5.9. It has a few big ledges, which your team can lay down and take a nap. It is surely one of the best enjoyable alpine climbings in BC!
Route finding was easy except pitch 3. I had to take some time to find the line.
It goes far right and then comes back straight above where pitch 3 starts.
The crux pitch came almost at the end of whole route. It was a mini roof feature at pitch 7. It was just a couple of 10a moves to get over the roof. Having this fun section after scenic 6 pitches was so fun. This could be a five star route if this would be in a caragging area.
Here are some images I took while climbing.
After some easy 5th climbing/scrambling section, the route took us to a lower shoulder of Mount Gimli. The summit is about 100m away from here.
Maki and I came to the summit first and I took some photos of Nao and Daisuke coming up.
We all came to the summit by 5:00PM. It took us 10 hours!!! Well, it was really enjoyable climb. It was the first time alpine climbing for Nao, and it was his second time for multi pitch climbing. He did it so well!! He told us that the scariest part was the scrambling after roped up climbing.
We added our names to the summit note, but we did not have much time for enjoying the place. We had had to go down before it got dark, especially the first exposed section. Because it was early summer, descent route had tons of snow and a cornice at the top made rock section wet and slippery. It was the scariest section for me on Mount Gimli. We all took extra caution and walked slow.
It was already 8:00PM when we came the half way down. The sun was about to go down into the mountains. Luckily a pair of more experienced alpine climbers passed us on the way down and we followed their track. By the time we came back to the Gimli base camp, it was already 9:30PM and in dark.
We could have stopped and taken a rest at the camp, but we all wanted to go back to our base at the parking lot. Therefore, we rushed our way down without talking. When we got to our car, it was 11:10PM. Of course, we collapsed into our tent and slept right away.
Next morning, We celebrated the big day with coffees and apple pies while we spread our gears all over the place and dried them.
As we were packing up around 11:00AM, dark clouds covered the sky. We all looked each other and said that we were glad to push ourselves for 20 hours on the day before.
After this, we drove to Nelson and cleaned our clothings.
Main objective of our two-week long climbing trip was done by day 4!
On the next blog, we are going to be back in Skaha!!
Here is a link to get topo books of the area: Gimli Topo e-Books.
Sea to sky 