With a good weather window on Saturday August 29th, Colin, Dylan and I wanted to summit Red Pillar, Argus mountain, and Mount Harmston all in a single day.
The hike up to the tarns below peak 1712 on Aug.28 was much better than described in island alpine. The old logging road around Ooshinow lake is in decent condition and the ascent up to the ridgeline was not as full of blowdown as expected. After some afternoon rain we had a lovely sunset and early night.
Aug. 29 was summit day and we started moving as soon as the sun was on the route. We made quick work to Red Pillar and charged up the South Ridge to the summit from our basecamp in a little over 2 hours. We lost time on the descent navigating the various rappels down the west face in an attempt to directly access the glacier.
However with a little perseverance and caffeine we were down and across the glacier and rambling up Argus’ South west ridge by the early afternoon.
From the summit we descended the northeast Gully of Argus which was almost entirely free of snow making for a fast descent. Once at the bottom we charged down across the scree and talus fields towards the skijump ramp of Harmston summiting it around 5PM.
With daylight running out, we hurried to retrace our steps, summiting Argus for the Second time just before 7PM and returning to the glacier before 8PM. We were across the glacier before sundown and spent a couple of hours scrambling up the exposed rocks of the glacial moraine leading up to the west ridge of red pillar. We followed the red pillar by-pass back to the red pillar trail and were back at our camp below peak 1712 before midnight.
All in all it was great day out in the mountains and an incredibly satisfying way to see the summits of these great glacial lined peaks!
August 30th saw us descending back to Ooshinow lake to our car. We want to give a huge thank you the Gate Key wardens. Access to the alpine facilitated by these keys made this whole trip possible.