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Narao Peak Attempt | 2011-03-06
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Above stats is up to where I stopped.
Back to Back to Narao Peak, however this time I went for the summit with snowshoe approach not yoyo skiing like last week . From the previous visit, I figured out that gaining to ridge above treeline is steep but dry, so despite this one is rated moderate I was confident that at least I would be able to go high enough to enjoy the day. So failure in my mind, I headed out to Yoho.
In general, there isn’t much route-finding required. From Lake O’Hara parking lot, follow Lake O’Hara road for 2 km (waypoint Trail Sign). You will see trail sign on left (east) of the road. I am guessing there is a trail but this is winter, trail was obviously covered by snow so I simply followed the same track I used from last week to go up to treeline which is about 500 m elevation from the parking. I tried to keep up with the expectation of snowshoers from skiers by making sure destroying the track. Either you are skiing or snowshoeing, waypoint Big Rock is a good place to have snack and enjoy the magnificent Cathedral Mountain. From here to the north end of ridge, I had to navigate myself to avoid few snow deposits just to be safe beside that I could mostly walk on shallow snow or rocks. When I got to the ridge top, I was wowed by the other side’s scenery. From here on it was pretty much hike with wow view for a while until ridge became more challenging towards the summit. I was still able to scramble up or find another way but at last around 2800 m, I got blocked by snow. Only choice I had was a line with difficult scrambling. I tried and I was able to scramble up as long as I could still grab rocks, but still I got blocked by snow, so I turned around.
Despite this ended as attempt as I thought this might, I still recommend Narao Peak. In my opinion, Narao is one of my favorite winter scrambles so far.
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