Glacier Mountaineering Society

Sat, Oct 2 2010 - Gunsight Mountain or Mt Edwards (View Original Event Details)

Coordinator(s):		Tim Anderson
Participants:		Tim Anderson, Don Arthur, Alan Wiley, Franz Barthel, Joe Schletz, Frank Wesolovski, Stephen Smith

Write Up:
I put this climb on the calendar Wednesday at Noon, after I was 100% sure the nice weather forecast was going to hold.
Even though it was posted with only 2 days notice, I still ended up with a crew of seven.

It ended the curse, after an entire summer of bad weather, getting rained, snowed, or blown off of almost every mountain I climbed; we finally had good weather, the sun shone all day with just a light breeze.

We hit the Sperry Trail at 7am. When we reached Comeau Pass we had a decision to make. I had listed this as Gunsight or Edwards, which ever looked better. None on the climb, myself included, had done either of these mountains. Both looked good. Enthusiasm was high so at this point it looked like we may to both. We elected to do Gunsight first.

Things on Gunsight did not look the way I had imagined from description in the Climbers Guide. It described walking on scree below and to the east of the permanent snow field.
In reality it is not scree, its a long rib of rock covered with boulders and small 3-4foot cliffs. That rib would be very exerting; instead we decided to walk up the snow next to that rib, much easier, though crampons would have made it even nicer. Once we reached the eastern edge of the snow field we scrambled over boulders up to the low point in the saddle between the east and west summit; then followed the ridge up to the west summit.

At the summit we found the PVC tube with the log in it. Was fun finding the names of several other GMS members who had signed it earlier this summer.
The views from the top were fantastic. There was a strange haze in the air to the south making the mountain ranges there look like a water color painting.
The trip down was quick, especially the glissade down the snow field.
By the time we reached Comeau pass again enthusiasm for bagging both peaks had waned.

Before we headed down a momma goat and baby came by and decided to pose for our cameras.

We reached the parking lot back at McDonald Lake around 5pm.
Recalculating the trip was a little longer that originally estimated; turned out to be a little over 22 miles round trip with over 6000ft of elevation.

Have some photos from this event that you'd like to share in our photo album? Please forward them to Tim Anderson at twamontana@gmail.com. Please note that we prefer to receive the photos in approximately 640x480 or 750x500 pixels - do NOT send original high-res photos. If you have a LOT of photos, please submit up to twenty of your favorites (only) for a day event, or up to forty of your favourites for a multi-day event. Thank you.