Thunder Mountain (2376m) - Crowsnest Pass January 29, 2015
I took the day off work to climb this mountain. On the weekend previous I had driven past it and seen that it looked relatively dry, then when I saw the forecast for snow on the weekend and that the wind would be reasonable during mid-week I requested the time off so I could go get it. I had been thinking about climbing this mountain as a winter ascent since Nugara's 2nd edition came out, and obsessing since the warm weather started.
There isn't much of a trail on this mountain. The macro route finding is easy, just follow the ridge to the summit. The micro route finding is a bit tricky in one or two places. To begin with you must gain the ridge by going up the dirt road tracks and across a flat area to the ridge. Once there you continue along as you will, through a semi-treed area till you get to the first steeper treed slope. In this section you must keep to the climbers left side/rib to avoid cliffs. There is a trail (and some sub-trails) through here, which start on a rocky rib. On descent it can be a bit hard to find and follow the trail, but as long as you are to the right you probably won't have problems.
After that you cross an area with minimal elevation gain and a few large boulders scattered over the end. Then there is the second steeper treed slope, this one had quite a bit of snow cover. I heard there is a trail through it, that starts more or less in the middle. I found some of it on the way down, and it is actually a bit more to climbers right rather than the middle. On that side there was less snow and travel was easier.
Then the ridge narrows significantly and you continue along it past two outcrops. You can go over both, or to the left of the first, and to the left or right of the second. Due to snow on the east side of the ridge (from the wind) I mainly climbed over both. Neither was very hard scrambling and the dry rock was fun.
After the second outcrop you are faced with another steeper section.
Here in the summer I believe you take a trail off to climbers left that goes back onto the ridge as it widens again. I was worried about having to ascend the snow in the trees as it is quite steep (no photo), however the snow only had a very thin wind crust and was completely faceted underneath. It was relatively easy to kick steps through until I could get back onto dry rock. I went climbers left for a few meters before ascending a few more and traversing back climbers right, for some easy/moderate scrambling till I had ascended up to were the ridge widened again. I was much happier on the dry rock than the snow for sure.
The rest of the ascent to the false summit is a plod up scree/rubble. There is somewhat of a trail here.
Then you get to the false summit and look at the last bit of ridge to go. All I could think of though was that the weather station wasn't featured in any trip reports that I looked at before leaving. I believe it was built last summer?
Once again the ridge narrows, sometimes again down to only one foot width of space once the snow on the east side has taken up some of the room. It isn't a problem though, there is only two little steps in the ridge which are both easy to scramble when the main portion of the rock is dry.
Then you are just left with the final ascent of scree/rubble slopes to the true summit. There is a trail leading around the last rock outcrop on the ridge. After following it a bit, I turned back climbers left onto the ridge to avoid snow and followed it to the summit.
The summit consists of two, almost equally high points. The first with the weather station and the second with the cairn. I didn't bother looking for a register as the wind was kind of bad at this point. I took my photos, ate a bar, and continued down.
Overall this was a great day and a great scramble. Easy enough to do in winter, enough ridge and a few scrambly sections to keep interest. I really enjoyed it. It would be good in the summer too, but not on a very windy day!
