Mt Galwey to Bellevue Hill | Scrambling in Waterton Lakes National Park

01 Mt Galwey to Bellevue Hill | 2013-06-09

Mount Galwey

Location: Waterton Lakes National Park
Activity: Scrambling
Height: 2,348 m (7,704 ft)
Elevation Gain: 900 m (2,953 ft)
Distance: 3.6 km / One Way (2.2 mi)
Avg Steepness: 14.0°
Estimated Time: 2-4 hrs
Technicality: Expert.2a
Fitness Level: Moderate

Download GPX: [Trail] Mount Galwey to Bellevue Hill.gpx
OpenStreetMap: See track recorded by GPS
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Conditions:
- Weather
Note: For stats for the entire route, please see page 16.

Quite surprisingly there is not much reports for traversing Mount Galwey to Bellevue Hill and to proof that while there is a very established trail on Galway, there was no trail I found for traverse.

To Galwey SW Ridge:
Follow the trail from parking lot.

To Galway Summit:
Here I went little adventurous. For ascent I took south aspect off-route, as far as I could. For descent I took normal route on west aspect. I found both routes worked fine.

For south aspect route. From the ridge, I walked along cliffs toward east. Soon I saw a gully and up ahead of gully I saw waves of small rockbands which I could easily scramble up (page 4). However I eventually hit a big cliff and didn't see any way out of it. So I used a ledge to traverse back to west aspect. It was easy/moderate scramble.

For west aspect route, the normal route. From the ridge switch to west slope. You should see trail there too, but when I came down this way, I had little trouble following the trail for some sections. It definitely not as established as it was up to the SW ridge.

I must say south aspect route could be more straight forward than normal route especially if you are like me who don't pay attention to trails...

The Crux:
The crux is at the window just below the summit. Where you have to use a very narrow and exposed ledge (page 9) followed by a chimney (page 14). Essentially they are directly below a pinnacle which the scramble book and others describes as mushroom. But I want to be original, so I call it dick rock. the dick rock is so huge you can see it quite far below. Once you see this enormous dick rock, you should aim for it. This gigantic dick rock will aid you to the crux. The chimney is not too bad. The first few moves are little tricky but after that it's ok. Once you clear the chimney you are pretty much at the summit.

To Bellevue Hill:
I descended almost all the way down to south ridge which I used for approach. From there I traversed to east. The rest are pretty much hiking/easy scrambling. Didn't see much trail at all but route-finding is pretty straight forward.