How to get there:
The closest town is Cochrane, about 50 kilometer north. From Cochrane, head south
on Hwy. 7, descend until you reach the valley floor and a road junction near
location S47.51325, W72.8649. Turn right here. Continue on this much smaller road,
the road crosses the river on a rather
narrow suspension bridge, then enters
a small forest. There is good parking near location S47.49845, W72.95216. This is
a good trailhead.
Route description:
A signed trail begins very close to the parking, going left among big trees.
Follow this trail as it crosses the river and starts ascending. After a bit
you arrive at a resting place with a wooden bench. This is a critical waypoint.
Carefully look right and locate a small path marked with a few smaller cairns, that
traverse right. This is the beginning of a cairned route that runs all the way up
to near a small lake
(Laguna), high on the route to this summit.
Follow this cairned path. If the path disappears, it is definitely GOOD ADVICE to
backtrack immediately and look more closely. The trail will cross the creek on a
man made bridge. Overall, the trail ascends fairly steeply, while staying pretty
close to the creek on its right hand side when looking uphill.
There are sections where it still may be difficult to see the trail and/or cairns.
In such places continue uphill avoiding steepish cliffs as well as bush, most likely
you will again locate a cairn and get back on the route.
After a long ascent, where the route has been quite a bit away (right) from the creek,
the path will again run towards the creek and indeed crosses
it just below a waterfall.
Continue into the valley, but ascend a bit left (uphill) in the beginning. Next, aim for the
best slope more or less straight ahead. Higher up, the slope eases and the route is closing in
on what looks like the final hill. Ascend it, but stay a bit right of the very highest, since
the true summit is still a considerable distance ahead. Once up on the more level area, move left and
follow the highest ridge, slightly narrow for a while before entering the final slope that now
will connect to the summit.
A track is posted on Peakbagger.
Comments:
My friend Rob had been here and provided valuable information that I took into
account when planning this trip. Thus, I knew it would be a long day and extensive
bushwack should be expected.
We left our hotel in Cochrane early in the morning, but the drive took some time, we were
ready to walk by 0730. The trail up to the wooden bench rest area went well.
The view back down was just about to open up.
There, we did
discover the tiny trail with some cairns, good news! we continued that way with high hopes
to avoid the bushwack. Everything went well in the beginning, we crossed the creek on a nicely
made bridge, this trail was clearly well estabished.
Unfortunately, we soon lost the trail and ended up in bad bush. This was so bad that I decided
to turn around and walk back to the last cairn. This helped a little, but the last cairn was
possibly not on the main trail as we discovered when descending. We still avoided the worst
bush and after some more uphill walking, we again discovered a route with cairns.
After 3.5 hours of steady uphill, we finally were about to cross the creek below a nice
waterfall. I knew we still had a long way to go and that the trip would be a full day.
A brief rest and some cold, fresh water was nice before we carried on.
Ascending out of the basin, I could see what looked like a summit ahead. i had long forgotten the
details from the map and certainly slightly disappointed when I
understood that the summit was
still not anywhere near.
We arrived at the summit
at 1320, so 5:50 up, a pretty long and hard ascent.
A rest was definitely most welcome. And what fantastic scenery on a near perfect day! No wind, blue sky
all around. How many days in a year is the weather like this? Most likely, very few. We were extremely
lucky to experience this. Patagonia 360 degrees with peaks and glaciers in every direction.
There are two competing highest points up here with a short 50 meter walk separation.
The second point
with no cairn may possibly be a few centimeter higher?
Impossible to say without more accurate
measurements. We were both over there, but honestly, to me this is of no importance at all. Imagine
coming to the cairn in fog and without prior knowledge. To possibly not touch that other point would
not matter to me. But I respect that people have different opinions. To me, it is the journey, all
the way from Norway that matters, the summit is just this little kick of motivation that leads to
such a great day in Patagonia.
We spent a full 40 minutes on the summit. Just so many moments to soak in. No desire to leave.
Eventually, we did understand that many hours remained and that we better start going.
The descent was nice
and not too hard. We followed the cairns more consistently, the route does
follow the creek more closely than our route of ascent. We were down in 4 hours.
A 10.5 hour outing with 1700 meter of ascent. Many thanks again to Michael, he certainly could
have completed this in less time.
