Yukness Mountain | 2010.07.17

Million thanks and kisses to Andrea who booked the bus to Lake O’Hara without even asking if we wanted to go. Scrambling Yukness Mountain ranked number 1 in my list. We had the perfect weather to enjoy this very special place for entire day. By the way, million punches to Shaun who forced me to drive HIS car!!

We were little worried about the time available for us because our bus was the last bus to O’Hara. We started hiking at 11:00 am and the last bus to parking was 6:30 pm, so we had about 7.5 hours to complete Yukness. (According to Kane’s book this should take 6 to 9 hours.) We hasted to Yukness. I don’t even know which trails we took, I was only following the two ladies, Andrea and Heather. Knowing their pace I knew it would be hard to keep up and it was. I think they were trying to kill me. o(TﾍTo)

From Opabin Lake, there were so many cairns to indicate trail. We followed Kane’s route going up the gully until we hit cliff. This cliff can be avoided by taking ledges near waypoint “Red Paint” which a small rock was painted red to show hikers the way up (page 25). Or you can scramble up the cliff if you are comfortable. After the cliff we traversed to the south peak, the true peak. Kane describes to stay low from the col but we ignored his description and went to the ridge top which offered us magnificent view. At the end of this ridge, there was a huge cairn (page 8, waypoint “Big Cairn”). I believe this cairn was made by people who ignored Kane’s route like us but got stuck because to go forward, now it was no longer moderate scramble, but rather exposed difficult scramble. So be careful if you can’t do difficult scramble, you really have to find and follow Kane’s route. By scrambling up steep terrain (page 10) we ended up at the top of the iconic pinnacle in Kane’s book (page 11). After the pinnacle, trail fades little so look for cairns. The way is to walk steep sidehill till the summit (page 12).

Despite Kane’s 6-9 hour estimate, we made the summit in 2.5 hours and we had a lot of extra time, so we took a nice long break then decided to go to the north summit. We went back the same way to the ridge and from there pretty much we followed a trail to the north summit. Unlike south summit there were no difficulties.


* Grid References (GR) is based on WGS84 which can be considered as NAD83 (The difference is inciginificant)

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