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.
At 7:00 AM on July 5th, I found myself on Pitch 1 of the classic Mount Gimli South Ridge after a grueling 4-hour early morning approach hike. We were the very first climbing group to step onto the route that morning. There were four of us in total, split cleanly into two independent climbing parties. Just as I reached the anchors at the end of the first pitch, the next group arrived at the staging area below.
If you have not checked my previous post, check it out. It is about the story before this; Mt. Gimli/South Ridge-Vol.01.
To move faster, I decided to pack all of our extra team gear into one single backpack and let my partner, Maki, carry it while cleaning the first pitch. Looking back, it was definitely not a good idea…
As you can see in the photo below, our multi-pitch pack was way too big and bulky for her—honestly, it would have been too large for me to climb with, too! She struggled quite a bit navigating the vertical terrain on Pitch 1 under that heavy load. Moving forward, we made sure to split the hardware more evenly.
For the technical gear, I clipped my heavy mountain boots directly onto my harness loops. Both Maki and I had brought thick mountaineering boots for the approach, which turned out to be total overkill for a July trip.
Local Beta Tip: If you plan to climb Mount Gimli in early summer like we did, mountaineering boots can be nice for the wet snow sections. However, if you pack lightweight Gore-Tex approach shoes paired with running gaiters, they will easily do the job. You will save a massive amount of pack weight on the approach trail—I deeply wish I had worn approach shoes instead!
Snow Free Enjoyable Climb
The entire South Ridge route was completely dry and snow-free. The rock quality in the Valhalla range is absolutely incredible—solid, textured, and incredibly fun to climb. The route is officially graded as 5.10a, but the vast majority of the climbing stays around the comfortable 5.6 to 5.9 range. It features several big, flat stone ledges where your team can easily lie down and take a quick alpine nap in the sun. It is easily one of the most enjoyable alpine rock climbs in all of British Columbia!
Rout Finding
Route finding along the ridge line was straightforward, except for Pitch 3. I had to take a few minutes at the anchors to scout out the correct line. From the pitch start, the route trends far out to the right before cutting back sharply left to line up straight above the belay station.
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 the scenic 6 pitches was great. This could be a five-star route if it were in a caragging area.
Here are some images I took while climbing.
After some easy 5th-class 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 a 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 to enjoy the place. We had to go down before it got dark, especially the first exposed section. Because it was early summer, the 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 slowly.
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 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.
The next morning, we celebrated the big day with coffee 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 at each other and said that we were glad to push ourselves for 20 hours the day before.
After this, we drove to Nelson and cleaned our clothes.
The main objective of our two-week-long climbing trip was achieved 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 