Helena Ridge to Stuart Knob

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Hummm, Seems every time I go out with Raff, some strange things happen. Last time was coincidentally Great Divide trips on that weekend, this time both Sat and Sun were coincidentally plan B’s and both trips were long ones.

So a day after Elbow 4 peak traverse which was over 34 km / 2250 m, I went to Helena Ridge – Stuart Knob traverse which cracked 27.5 km / 1690 m…

To Rockbound Lake:
A long long boring journey… No view, no ambush from guerillas, no bikini girls, No nO NO NOTHING at all. It’s more like pain walking on the trail… Skiing down must be fun however.

To Helena Ridge:
There are few trails to get to upper flat of this uniquely shaped range, but probably we took the most used one. We followed a trail on lake shore on right side and found another trail going up a grassy/bushy slope. This trail led us at the bottom of a gully which goes to Helena (page 8).

To Stuart Knob:
We went back the same way until we were lower than cliff bands, then traversed south slope of Helena to connecting ridge. Rubble on the sidehill was very unpleasant and it was very hard to walk. It was one of these that size of rock didn’t matter. They were all hard and loose and rock falls can be triggered very easily. There might be a possible way to avoid this. I think there is a possibility that you can actually come down from east slope from the summit. This way you can minimize loose rock walk. See page 19 for high rez picture. You can easily get around rockbands except 1 rockband which I am not sure.

To the knob, we had to ascent similar hard and loose rubble slope… Snow made it little easier for us… The knob is sounded by rockband, so you need to go climber’s left (SW) to go around to the back side (page 26). Back side is just a rubble slope, you should be able to get to the summit block with no difficulty. The crux would be scrambling up this summit block. Just one move of moderate scrambling (page 27). By the way Gem Trek map is pointing the summit on wrong place. It is at GR724873.

Descent:
We followed a trail and went down to flat then find our way back to the gully we took to go up Helena. Then we returned to the never ending trail.

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Greg took more difficult line.

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Traversing hard & loose sidehill of Helena…