Jul 30, 2011
The weekend was fast approaching, and I haven’t found a ride yet. Almost thought I’d be spending this one in the city, when Alex posted a trip to Ben Lomond for the Vancouver Mountaineers Meetup group.
The bushwhack along the lower portion of the overgrown road was brutal and the trail hard to guess if it weren’t for the flags. A nice rocky section of the trail, and then it was crampon territory traversing the steep icy slope in the forest. We were on Ben More before we knew it, and I didn’t realize we were on a named summit before plotting my GPS track onto Google Earth!
We had a good look at the pointy peak of Ben Lomond from there: some snowy sections of the ridge looked very steep! From Ben More, it was all about finding reasonable scramble routes down and up, moats not making it any easier. Crampons on, crampons off. Repeat. Some very enjoyable scrambling and we’re on top of Ben Lomond! Views, fresh summer air, happiness…
Do we want to do Red Mountain while we’re at it? Sure, why not, it’s only 1 pm. So we drop into the saddle between the two. It is technically a much easier scramble and the snow is already soft enough to not require crampons. We enjoy a good break at the top and head back down as the clouds roll in. A feel-good, nearly 11h day with three summits and 1750m cumulative elevation gain. It was my first trip with the Meetup group and I really enjoyed it. Thanks to Alex for leading the trip!
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