Bucephalus Peak
August 23, 2015
2763m
Mt. Robson Provincial Park, BC
Bucephalus Peak is one of those satellite peaks of the nearby much-bigger Mt. Fitzwilliam. For peak-baggers it made perfect sense to combine with the ascent of the bigger one as it’s merely an 1-hour detour. Maury and I had more ambitious plans so went up and over this summit after ascending Mt. Fitzwilliam in the morning.
The traverse route from Fitzwilliam to Clairvaux. GPX DL
From Fitzwilliam/Bucephalus col it appeared we had to traverse up and over one minor unnamed bump to get to Bucephalus Peak. We decided against that so picked a rising traverse line to bypass that bump. Unfortunately the boulders were a lot more unstable on the side (vs. on the ridge) and adding the fresh snow and the moss the travelling was painfully slow. I had to be super careful and couldn’t trust any single boulder… But we made through, and the terrain got a lot easier once back onto the connecting ridge, but again, we had to negotiate endless boulders to reach this summit.
Bucephalus Peak from partway down Fitzwilliam
Side-hilling on loose boulders to bypass the first bump
Back onto the ridge crest now
Looking over Bucephalus’s shoulder towards Mt. Clairvaux – our ultimate destination
Maury ascending the typical terrain
Looking back at Mt. Fitzwilliam
And, the first bump on the connecting ridge
Summit Panorama. Click to view large size.
Roche Noire
Basillica Mountain and Curia Mountain
The summit of Mt. Fitzwilliam
Looking down into Fitzwilliam Basin
Looking ahead to the ridge traverse. Ramparts behind
Maury on the summit of Bucephalus Peak
Me on the summit of Bucephalus Peak
We were doing very good on time and Maury and I were still high on motivation so after a bit of discussion we decided to extend our trip to bag the 3rd peak. Descending the connecting ridge from Bucephalus to Frontier was mostly easy/moderate scrambling with one detour to skier’s right (west).
Descending the S. Ridge of Bucephalus Peak
Frontier Peak ahead, our 3rd objective in this day
Looking back at Bucephalus Peak
From the connecting col Frontier Peak looked just like what we had been doing so far, so off we went.
Steven's Peak-bagging Journey 