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Mount Bowlen | 2012-08-18
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My friend sent me email a day before their big trip to Neil Colgan Hut and asking for one more person, so I joined. I defiantly enjoyed this one just to be there in Valley of the Ten Peaks.
Schiesser Ledges Approach:
Walked along the Moraine Lake until the south end. The trail goes farther along the lake but if you reach the first log bridge then you know you need to get off the trial. Preferably you want get off the trail little bit before the bridge, but I don't think that will make much difference since there isn't much of a trail until moraine.
Once at the moraine, we found more than one weak trails, but seemed all of them headed to Schiesser which is page 2.
Pinnacle to 1st Chain:
Page 3 shows the most confusing part of this route where we were not sure and searched around a bit but eventually we figured it out. The trail lead us to the bottom of a funny looking pinnacle which you can see in page 3, 4, and 5, and disappeared. Onec at the pinnacle, we went the other side of the ridge and traversed side slope. You can traverse all the way to a dead end or you can find a way to get on the ridge top as well. The side slope is little steep, loose, and exposed below (page 6). At the dead end or end of the ridge, you should be fairly close to wave of rock bands. Look closely you should find the first chain (page 7, and 8).
To 2nd Chain:
After the chain, we used narrow and often exposed ledges (page 10). Now the trail became solid so if you are off-route you should be able to tell immediately. After a while the trail curved to climber's left as terrain changed and soon after you should find a red arrow mark (page 11). This indicated the location of the second chain.
To Neil Colgan Hut:
After the 2nd chain it is more like easy scramble or even hike to the glacier. Make sure to stop by at the view point near the beginning of the glacier. Instead of heading to climber's right, you go left for little bit to the cliffed out outlier. It is quite a view of Lake Louise area (page 14).
We roped up for the glacier and traversed. You can kind of see it from my GPS track, actually we had to bypass the hut for 100 or 200 m, then scramble up loose scree on Mt Little. You should find trail there to which goes to the hut.
To Mount Bowlen:
From the hut, Bowlen absolutely horrendously looked loose and asking for major rock fall hazardous. It looks so terrible we even debated whether we should try or not, but turned out to be it was complete opposite. It was as loose as other peaks for first 30 m and after that it was as solid as the Canadian Rockies can be.
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