Created 16-Aug-20
Modified 20-Dec-23
2020-08-15 | Cegnfs, Mount Murray, Cegnfs (again) | 3019 max | 1902 TH | 15.7km | 1875 TA | w/ Peter & David
Super Saturday (fwaa-fwaa!!) First hike with David since his bike crash. First ‘moderate’ scramble of the year. First time over 3000m in a bit. First goat sighting of the year… Good day!
Up and gone with my McDonalds coffee, boiled eggs and banana… running early I stopped for a reflection photo on Spillway Lake. Next as the dawn light snuck in a rainbow formed over Mt Black Prince! Hauled over for more photos. Was still the first one there… somewhere a clock must have been wrong. Lol
The trail toward the French glacier was so good we blew right by the drainage we wanted and had to backtrack. Might also have been the discussion ironing out the details of Presidents Choose Cluff Bars, including the shoddy packaging, bad fonts, questionable ingredients and manufacturing process. Should have taken better notes on the protein shake ideas for PC as well. It’ll come back to me I’m sure.
Minor delay, we were soon bashing up the creekbed to ‘the gates’ a deep notch through which a stream flowed. Some tricky shaley loose, garbage, most ungraceful huffing and I was past the gates and on the steep lower slopes of Cegnfs. To avoid some scree misery I instead used some outcropping, vegetation, loose talus and other ungodly crappy terrain to gain the ridge of Cegnfs. The kind of progress that the GPS registers as stopped. View from Cegnfs was amazing and a worthy objective on its own. While surveying the impossibly steep looking north face of Mt. Murray we had our first lunch break in the wind. Except David, who had somehow found a little hobbit shaped spot where (allegedly) there was no wind. Whatever.
Hello to Peters goat friends (Henry and Henrietta?) we traversed the saddle between the two peaks and started up the scree bash goat track to the west flanks of Mt Murray. There we were greeted by a chimney and just enough exposure to keep everyone sharp and Peter imploring me to lay off the egg puns which helped to pass the time on the traverse. A short summit stay and back down the chimney we decided to stop at the saddle for second lunch. My map converted into a paper airplane stayed aloft for almost a minute in the circulating thermals before finally crashing into he rock. Littering? I had a bad run of loosing maps this year – at least this one was intentional.
Re-summiting Cegnfs wasn’t really necessary, but as the traverse across the scree below the summit looked worse we muscled it out in short order. Talus and scree descent went faster when we found some really loose scree to ski down, a few legs of it three abreast roaring down the slope. Good way to take some the knee smoking descent and put it behind us. Filtering some nice cold water at the gates was our last break before bashing down the creek and regaining the trail – murdering horseflys as we went. A fine day, hard to sift the photos down to just the best.
© Clayton Ditzler
