July 10th, 2023. Golden / Blaeberry, British Columbia.
Round Trip: 7 Hours, Elevation Gain: 1100m
Moderate Scramble
Having just done Mount Ogden in Yoho the previous day, Scotty told me to expect a “full-on adventure” with this one. I teamed up with him and his buddy Luke for this outing, Bri felt pretty rough from Mt Ogden so sat this one out. Us three met at the Thompson Falls rec site and jumped into Scotty’s truck for travelling the Redburn FSR. It is a rough decommissioned road and the nearly 11km drive in was the sketchiest part of our day. This trip was only possible thanks to Scotty’s massively raised bush truck.
The best way to sum up Mount McBeath is… rugged. Very rugged. As for a technical rating it is mostly a Moderate scramble, save for one brief section along the summit ridge. From the final wash-out at the end of the Redburn FSR, we followed the creek on the road’s left (east) side up towards the Redburn-McBeath col. We initially stuck to the creek itself though occasionally trekked through the forest on the southeast side to avoid the steeper sections of the creek. The bushwhacking here was somewhat tolerable by comparison to other local golden peaks, thanks in part to the older tree growth. The moss underfoot proved the greater obstacle(s) by covering deep hollow spots between large deadfall – all three of us took turns falling knee or waist deep through these moss covered hollows. We crossed the creek once or twice to avoid the thicker bush areas but higher up would fully commit to the climber’s right-hand side of the drainage. It took us around 2 hours from the truck to fully escape above the vegetation, with Scotty and Luke setting a brisk pace over steep crumbly terrain.
From the lower scrubby ledges, we continued up a steep rocky terrain into the basin that feeds the creek system. Loose crumby talus galore! Below the Redburn-McBeath col the terrain briefly mellows out into a bowl. Rather than scramble up through the bowl to the col (which was an option), we turned sharply to our right and went straight up eventually encountering a small remnant glacier. Well under the glacier portion of the slope we veered slightly northeast towards the edge of the talus slope aiming right for the false summit. Luke and Scott’s GPSs showed conflicting points for McBeath’s summit and there was brief speculation that the false summit could be the high point.
Turns out the false summit was indeed just that, a false summit. A higher point further southwest along the ridge was plainly our objective. We double checked our maps and GPSs anyways, and confirmed we had roughly another 150m of vertical to gain. So, we continued along the ridge southwards. The ridge was wide enough at the beginning but eventually tapered into narrow blocky sections providing us with moderate scrambling.
In the final 20-30m of the summit ridge we encountered the “crux” of the scramble. A brief 4m section of sheer rock offering a couple movements of 3rd to 4th class scrambling that required some concentration to pick out the rock’s weak spots, and it was exposed here. Maybe teetering into difficult scrambling. The last few metres of the ridge above were a breeze by comparison, and I must say, for views this is my favourite peak around Golden. For some reason, a lower ridge to the southwest is the officially recognized Mt McBeath on most maps, yet the point we reached was clearly the highest point of the mountain, and others who have visited in the past plainly agreed with us based on the summit cairn.
A Nalgene bottle register had been placed in the summit cairn in 2019 and we were only the second team to sign it some four years later. Given the deteriorating Redburn FSR and lack of cairns on our route, and more appealing published routes in the neighbouring national parks, I would surmise this peak is seldomly visited. We retraced our exact steps for return and made it back down to the truck in 2hrs 45min as AGAIN we had to keep the summit visit brief due to threatening weather on the horizon. Great day overall with only modest suffering for a great view!
Steep Sheep 