Old Baldy Mountain

September 8, 2012

2728m

Kananaskis – Highway 40, AB

The unofficially named “Old Baldy Mountain” is the highest point of “the Big Traverse” described in Andrew Nugara’s More Scrambles in the Canadian Rockies book. It’s also an impressively looking mountain and should be on every scrambler’s list. If I can only do one peak out of the six in this traverse, I’d pick this one. There’re quite a few routes up this mountain. If doing the “Big Traverse” one needs to ascend it via the north ridge and descend via south ridge (moderate scramble). If you approach from highway directly up this mountain then you’ll ascend its west ridge (also a moderate scramble). Neil, Tyler and I did it as the 4th peak of “the Big Traverse”.

The Big Traverse scramble route link-up

After regaining all of the elevation from GR338442, Neil, Tyler and I started the traverse towards the 4th summit of this day. Getting to Old Baldy is the longest section of the entire traverse. The connecting ridge wasn’t a piece of cake neither and got pretty exposed at places, although not as bad as Kananskis Peak. The scrambling was mostly easy to moderate and there wasn’t much to describe here except for perseverance…