Mount Bauerman

July 2, 2012

2409m

Waterton Lakes National Park, AB

Mt. Bauerman is a small summit near the continental divide in the north-western part of Waterton. It’s often ascended as part of a traverse from the more prominent Anderson Peak. Eric and I felt adventurous and decided to combine this traverse with the nearby Newman/Spionkop/Avion combo in one extremely long day, but time wasn’t on our side so after descending from Avion Ridge we had to hurry up.

Mt. Bauerman ascent route from Bauerman Divide

Mt. Bauerman ascent route from Twin Lakes

The crux of the trip was to get to Bauerman Divide. Note we didn’t have an ice axe so ascending that big slope felt a bit nerve wracking to me given my lack of experience on snow. The run out wasn’t bad but we didn’t want to slip neither ’cause we didn’t want to lose unnecessary elevation. We managed getting up to the divide without incidence but because I did most of the step kicking which exhausted me out for quite a bit.

We finally made to Twin Lakes. The sun was in the wrong direction so I didn't get good photos from this angle.

A view from Twin Lakes.

Looking up (towards sky) from the campground

Our route up Bauerman Divide follows one of the snow ramps

Looking back to Twin Lakes. Now I could get better photos

Another shot of Twin Lake

Twin Lake again

Eric enjoys the snow walk. Glad we didn’t need to post-hole.

It was 6:45PM when we arrived at Bauerman Divide, so we still had 4 more hours of daylight time. It’s now become a game of racing against the sunset and see whether or not we could make to Anderson Peak before dark. The lower section up Mt. Bauerman was step-kicking on good snow with light bushwhacking. Again, it was all about perseverance to get up this peak. I had to slow down quite a bit on the upper slope because I haven’t been eating much (only one chocolate bar and one muffin by this point). Eric wasn’t too fast at this point neither so I didn’t slow down the group. I had one of my A&W Papa Burgers on the summit (7:30PM).