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St. Eloi Mountain | 2010-11-13
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The reason why I chose to go for St. Eloi Mountain? Well a long long time ago, a dumb person bought More Scrambles book and started marking completed peaks in the book. This dumb person being dumb, he marked St. Eloi which he has never done… So I had to do it…
I parked on a big grass opening about 20 km south of Beaver Mines. I wanted to follow Nugara’s route, however due to server wind, I decided to follow Bob Spirko’s descent route avoiding ridge walk as much as I could. My route is little different from his, but in general it’s about the same. There was an old quad trail, Syncline Brook, right at where I parked my car. I followed it pretty much all the way until waypoint “Left”. There was another fainting quad trail to right and I followed it and soon I walked across a creek. After the creek, it’s pretty much bushwhacking. I was hoping a creek from St. Eloi’s east slope would give me a nice opening path but I saw a cliff so I had to bushwhack more. I tried to follow animal trails or openings as much as I could but bushwhacking in this area was not too pleasant. Nearing Eloi / subsidiary high point (in Nugara’s book) col at GR836674 (page 4), I finally was free of bushwhacking. Once at the col, simply follow NE ridge to the summit.
Despite this peak is rated easy, I would not underestimate this one because this route involves what I call high-level bushwhacking. This means ground is slippery normally due to mud, moss, or even worse frozen moss. Yet there are many hidden poop explosives and constant harassment from branch snaps. You want to use your poles so that you won’t slip, but you don’t want to poke poop bombs. But it doesn’t matter because there is no choice. You can’t use poles because you need to use your arms to protect your face from branch snaps. Basically you have to walk like a boxer. The real danger with this is when you are guarding your face ( = not using poles), there is a big chance you will slip. Then naturally you will wide open your arms to attempt to gain balance, but this results opportunity for branches to attack your lovely face. The worst case, nasty branches snaps your face then you slip on poop bomb… Absolutely horrifying!! I thank god that it didn’t happen to me.
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