Mount Henkel

Mount Henkel – July 20, 2008

Mountain height:         2673 m
Elevation gain:            1150 m
Ascent time:                4:30
Descent time:              2:30

Scrambling with Mark.

Mum always taught us that laziness never pays off. This trip proved that there are exceptions to that rule. Flipping through Gordon Edwards A Climber’s Guide to Glacier National Park, on day 2 of our second trip to GNP, a particularly phrase caught my eye: “one and half miles to the summit”. After whipping out my 8 trillion computations per second Super Computer to find out what the heck one and a half miles was, I was pleasantly surprised to find out it converted to a mere 2.4 km (odd that a British person has no concept of what a mile is!). That was music to our ears and so we set off on this short and probably mundane scramble.

Mundane-----my butt!!!! This scramble quickly joined the elite group of our top 5 favourite scrambles of all time. It was one mind-boggling scene after another; enough colours to make a clown jealous, tons of fun hands-on scrambling, and views that were second-to none.

We started off following the suggested route in the book, but deviated when the drainage we were ascending alongside caught our eyes. We went into the drainage to find an astonishing array of colourful rock. Higher up, we stayed in the drainage, when the trail took another route. The drainage was filled with huge chockstones of red and green argillite. The scrambling here was most unique and enjoyable.

At the top of the gully, the suggested route went up the centre, between two ridges, to the summit. However, the lure of the west ridge was too much for us and so we decided to go that way. We had already seen some unbelievable views of stunning Mount Wilbur and hoped for more on the ridge – we were not disappointed. As well, the initial section was a paradise of bright red argillite rock formations. The remainder of the ridge was a combination of fun route-finding, yet more phenomenal views, and a healthy dose of hands-on stuff.

After all this amazing scenery and scrambling, was the summit view going to be a let-down?? Not bloody likely!! It was hands-down one of the best summit panoramas we’d ever seen. This is taking into account that we could only identify a handful of peaks, the area being completely new to us. I remedied that shortcoming by pouring over the excellent National Geographic topo map of the area for about 20 minutes. Highlights of the view were….well, pretty much everything, but Mount Wilbur was about as beautiful and striking as any mountain can get; and Grinnell Point, Iceberg Peak, Mount Merritt, Mount Gould, the three peaks we summited the day before, Allen Mountain, Apikuni Mountain, Yellow Mountain, Altyn Peak and Chief Mountain weren’t bad either! Throw in a handful of gorgeous lakes just to drive home the point and total satisfaction is a forgone conclusion.

The descent was as equally gratifying as the trip up. We followed Edward’s alternate descent route, going down the centre of the gully, between the two ridges of Henkel. The rock was again amazing – the classic bands of alternating red and green argillite with a few surprise layers in between. The only thing now needed to make this a perfect day was ice cream waiting at the bottom….and there was! A gift store at the parking area provided refreshing soft ice cream to end an unbelievable day.