Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

April 19, 2015

3330m

Columbia Icefield, AB

The nickname “Androlumbia” was assigned to the unnamed 3330-meter summit immediately SW of Mount Andromeda by my friend, Rafel Kazmierczak a couple years ago. In my opinion it adequately describes this peak as close to Mt. Andromeda but also part of the Columbia Icefield, so I’ll use this name. This is not an impressive peak by size compared with its neighbours, but is listed as a near-11,000er in Bill Corbett’s 11,000ers book and is a sexy-looking objective viewing from the S. Ridge of Mt. Andromeda. After finishing the ascent I also realized it offers probably one of the most enjoyable ski runs on the Columbia. The climb isn’t easy neither and involves numerous crevasses as well as a corniced summit ridge. So in the end I think it deserves more attention.

This wasn’t our original plan in this past weekend but after successfully finishing Mt. Columbia and then Snow Dome, Ben, Vern and I found ourselves short on energy and time. Our original plan was for Vern to climb Mt. Andromeda but after some discussions we redirected our attention to this peak. It’s overall much shorter than Andromeda so even by starting at 4:30 pm we’d still have plenty of daylight time to climb it. Since Vern didn’t do Snow Dome he’d have plenty of energy breaking trail all the way up to the summit ridge. There really wasn’t anything tricky up there but we picked a nice line up relatively in the middle of the direct face and managed to avoid the crevasses.

I took over the lead once the snow got crustier and icier as we ditched skis and started bootpacking. The summit ridge was not difficult but did require caution not venturing too close to the edge. There were enormous cornices hanging on the east side. It was also a bit longer than expected but with the gorgeous late-afternoon view none of us was complaining and we all agreed it totally worth the effort.

And for the most important, we’d have a fantastic ski run back down the glacier. The snow condition was very good for skiing and this was one of the few times that I actually (by heart) enjoyed skiing, even though I was already very beat at this point. It took us very little time to get back to camp.

Just after we got back we realized a crow came and ate most of my food… I guess next time I wouldn’t be lazy to just leave them outside… There was still some daylight time left to hang around camp. The night was not cold and the ski-out on the following day was again, fast and fun. The ski-out was written in my Mount Columbia’s trip report.