Blumlisalp Mountain
July 21, 2020
2159m
Clendinning Area, BC
Blumlisalp Mountain is rather a small bump but locates in the heart of South Coast. I did not expect much from this peak when Alex, Vlad and I did the 10-day Clendinning area traverse but while traversing across the ridge I noticed some immense rugged U-shape valleys to the west. Later at home I found out that this small peak sits on the quadruple divide point among Little Toba River that drains into Toba Inlet, Hunaechin Creek that drains into Jervis Inlet, Sims Creek that drains eastwards into Elaho River and eventually the Howe Sound, and Clendinning Glacier.
This was the 4th day of our traverse and we had pushed through the Clendinning Glacier area. We woke up with cloudy skies and took our time breaking camp. We had little idea where we wanted to be at the end of this day, but ideally as close to Mt. Tinniswood as possible to facilitate an ascent of that giant on the following day. The first stretch was to descend into Pivotal/Blumlisalp col followed by a tiring plod up the NE Ridge of Blumlisalp Mountain. The descent into the col was mostly on snow but we had to do some route-finding in micro-terrain. A few steep spots were bypassed on the north side of the ridge on snow. From the col the plod onto the false summit of Blumlisalp Mountain was easy, but tiring with the heavy packs.
We ditched the backpacks and went for the true summit, which was only marginally higher. The peak was labelled on the false summit on the government’s topo maps, but bivouac.com identifies the next bump as higher so we had to check that out. The traverse to the higher bump took about 20 minutes each way and was trivial. The true summit had a fun boulder problem that involved one or two moves.
The highlight of this peak came after the summit as we descended the long and gradual south ridge into Blumlisalp/Hammerstein saddle. As mentioned above I did not expect much from this section as we were just losing elevation, but the views westwards into Hunaechin Creek valley completely opened up with some incredibly rugged terrain. The last 100 m descent into the low point involved some route-finding and a bit of class 3 scrambling but the general idea was to stay skier’s right to avoid difficulties. And then our next objective would be Hammerstein Peak.