Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

July 19-20, 2026

3437m

Radium Hot Springs, BC

These are the three 11,000ers in the Commander Group of the Purcells and Jumbo Mtn. is the highest of those and also the one that boasts over 700 m prominence. The other two peaks don’t have a lot of prominence but are worthy objectives in their own. For those going after the 11,000ers it makes perfect sense to do all three of them in the same trip but to line up the weather/conditions with the availability of partner(s) isn’t a straightforward thing. The ultra-light parties could have done them in one day from the parking lot but an overnight stay high up on the glacier makes the most sense for the most of us, especially when the route “beta” wasn’t even that mature, which was the case when this trip happened. For Jumbo Mtn. there are two reported routes and two summits. In the old days (one or two decades ago) the glaciated dome was the highest point but thank to global warming the true summit is currently the rocky tower. The two summits are separated by a technical gap with unknown difficulties but the rocky tower (true summit) had a “scramble route” via the backside from Jumbo/Karnak col, and that’s the one we planned to take. In retrospect the technical difficulties to traverse from the glaciated dome summit should be no worse than “low 5th class” with plenty of cracks to put in pro, so future parties should take that as consideration.

Haldan had laid out an itinerary and the weather seemed solid, so Erica and I decided to join. The three of us together had climbed Mt. Delphine and Mt. Peter recently. Haldan would bring Sophia along and we would be travelling in two independent rope teams. There was also a recent update from “Foresty Forest”, Mackenzie Booth and “Peak Pirate” so we knew what roughly to expect. They had specifically built a new foot bridge crossing Farnham Creek and also did some trail work on the lower sections, so we appreciated their effort. They unfortunately didn’t climb the technical gap between the two Jumbo’s summits so we didn’t have that part of the “beta” dialed in. On hindsight we should have climbed the gap as that’s the easiest/safest way of tagging Jumbo Mtn., but on the other hand the lack of information made us doing a traverse of the peak, which was quite cool. Erica and I left Vancouver on Friday after work and pushed all the way to Revelstoke to settle for the night. The next morning we woke up rather leisurely and did the rest of the driving into the Purcells. The FSR portion took about 1.5 hours and the transitions were also longer than expected. I had also come prepared with a brand new coil of chicken wires and wrapping them around the vehicle also took some time. In the end we didn’t start hiking until 1:30 pm and that was almost 2 hours later than planned. Haldan and Sophia started about 4 hours earlier than us but we expected to catch them up at some point. Our plan was to tag Commander Mtn. in the evening so we didn’t have a lot of time to waste. Also worth to mention that both Erica and I were dealing with some overuse injuries with hers being slightly worse than mine, so we wouldn’t be going at our full speeds.

A bit of descending later we came to the foot bridge crossing Farnham Creek. The bridge wasn’t in the best shape but made do for the current water levels. Without the bridge the fording could also be easily done so whether the bridge’s in or not wasn’t critical for the success of this trip. The lower (flatter) part of the trail definitely had seen some recent work so we got to the base of that gigantic moraine in no time. Plodding up the crest of the morning we also had a trail to follow at times but the erosion was definitely not nothing. We had to constantly detour around into the bushes to bypass some dangerous sections on the crest of that moraine. Eventually the moraine gave way to some “easy scrambling” terrain and we followed Brandon’s GPX track traversing diagonally climber’s right on a ramp/ledge system. Above this section we came across infinitely amount of running water and took the first long break of the day. Crossing the main creek appeared difficult if not impossible and we had to ascend a ways up from their GPX track to find a spot to (barely) make it work. This was the first crux of the trip. The shoes had to be taken off, of course.