Vermilion Peak

It's been a rough summer for getting out into the mountains near Canmore.

Aside from the flooding, rain has been consistently present almost every weekend, making it difficult to plan things out in advance. Aki and I have gotten out when we could, but it has almost always been last minute things based on the ever-changing weather forecast.

Vermilion Peak is a very popular area for ski touring, but we've never managed to summit due to the presence of large cornices along the summit ridge. As it had been very warm the past couple of weeks, we were hoping that most of the snow would be gone

Vertebrae and hip bone of some animal

The approach in the summer is a bit more direct than in the winter, owing to large shoulders on the highway. Parking along the road in the winter is tricky along 93S as it is not a large highway and there's always a lot of snow.

The avalanche runout is full of wildflowers

The ascent is also easier than in the winter, as walking straight up the avalanche chute is a lot less scary when there isn't any snow. We found a pretty good trail that cut through the flora and navigated two rockbands.

Once we reached treeline, we weren't sure how far right to go before trying to scramble up to the summit ridge. In the end, we only scrambled for about 50m before topping out and discovering that there was an even easier ascent further down the slope. We used this on the way back down.

About 100m from the summit, the terrain became much more exposed and rotten as the surface was akin to walking on filo pastries angled at 45 degrees. Much of the rock was easily broken by hand.

Summit cairn, with The Rockwall in the background

We ran into the only other person on the peak, I took some photos, then headed back down the ridge.

Looking northeast toward Stanley Peak (closer) and Storm Mountain (further, left)

The hike back down was hard on the knees, as the route is always angled quite steeply. We had a bit over 1200m of elevation gain in 4km. A couple of metres of snow and some skis would have been nice.

Well-camouflaged grouse

I'm glad to have finally seen the summit, but can see why it would be a tricky peak to bag in the winter.

http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/213143443/3101909