September 19th, 2025. Icefields Parkway, AB
Round Trip: 10 Hours, 12km, Elevation Gain: 1500m
Moderate Scramble
Further Reading: Andrew Nugara’s (2017) More Scrambles in the Canadian Rockies 3rd Edition
Encouraged by recent ascents up Mount Ethelbert and Mount Bell, I felt recovered enough from July’s shoulder injury to get more hands on with our next scramble. We had previously eyed Mount Noyes in early July but instead settled on Noseeum due to inclement weather around Noyes that day. With a very warm and dry September the +3000m peaks remained snow free late into the season and Mount Noyes returned to our radar. Bri and I were joined by our colleague Tore who had previously joined us on Fossil Mountain, and like us, was keen for a proper scramble. Mount Noyes certainly delivered on that and was very fitting of a moderate scrambling rating.
We followed the scrambling route from Nugara’s (2017) More Scrambles however took an alternative approach that Tore sourced from All Trails. This approach initially follows along Silverhorn Creek before contouring northeast up a forested slope with light bushwhacking along a very faint foot trail. Travelling northeast, the only notable highlight during this approach was a brief break in the trees up a rocky outcropping which we referred to as “the corner”. This spot provided our first decent view of the day as well as a few hands on scrambling moves, though was short lived and we resumed our plod through the trees. We next traversed along a broad forested ridge northwards, dipping in and out of a sub-alpine meadow eventually topping out on another ridge south and above the drainage used in the More Scrambles approach.
Above the bowl we could loosely see the route from More Scrambles though were skeptical of the mentioned approach to the lower headwall’s right-side corner, looker’s right of the waterfall via a scree ramp. It looked horrendously loose and exposed from afar so after dropping into the bowl we instead tried bashing up a slope further to the looker’s left. Most likely this slope would have eventually led us to the correct route spot but became steeper than expected towards the top. I wondered if this was the alternative descent route mentioned in More Scrambles and stubbornly wanted to plod onwards. From this higher vantage however, Bri noted that the More Scrambles route up the right-hand side of the head wall now appeared more obvious and less intimidating than the slope we were currently on. Tore agreed with Bri, so I was out numbered 2-1 and reluctantly agreed to descend back into the bowl and scramble the standard route.
Though it felt quite time consuming, this brief detour likely only added 20 minutes or so to the day, and returning to the headwall proved the right move. The ramp up the headwall proved quite straightforward and as predicted was horrendously loose. The traverse across the headwall itself was well marked with cairns and easy enough to scramble, albeit a bit exposed at times.
Above the headwall we hiked towards a set of ledges due south of the summit block. It was tempting to try scrambling these ledges head-on but we stuck to the standard route by only scrambling up the first few meters of these ledges before side-traversing to the climber’s left (north). From here it was now sustained moderate scrambling up loose ‘rotten’ terrain and it was now that the views were really starting to pop. A faint trail followed up through the rotten talus and scree, funneling inwards towards a narrow weakness in a set of steep ledges.
Half an hour below the summit we hit the crux of the route, presented by an archway formed from a large boulder wedged between ledges. We first had to crawl under and up past the boulder before picking our way up exposed ledges on either side. It is these ledges above the archway that are the crux of the route. We mostly stuck to the climber’s left where the ledges tended to be a bit wider, minor route finding kept things at a moderate scrambling level. The gully above the crux fans outwards on both sides but remains steep all the way to the summit. Once above the first several ledges the footing improved and it was a straightforward push from above the crux to the summit.
We reached the summit around 12:45pm taking a little over 5 hours from the car. Another stunning peak from the Icefields Parkway area. We were pleasantly surprised to the see the older black tube styled register canister at the summit, with the first entry being from 1988. Another group briefly joined us at the summit, whom we had spotted earlier around the lower headwall and acknowledged that we would need to spread out on the descent as to minimize rockfall. We assumed from that conversation that the other group would stay up on the summit for a while to give us a head start back down the slope. Unfortunately, they didn’t stay at the summit for long which made for a hazardous downclimb with lots of rocks being knocked down. Luckily all three of us were wearing helmets and were able to shout back up the slope to alert the other group of how much debris they were dislodging.
We managed to team up with that other group for the crux downclimb as to avoid more rockfall, after which our group took the lead. The cooperation and coordination with the other group was much better at the crux with everyone taking that section in turn. We lost sight of them after the crux area, oddly enough, and didn’t see them again until after descending the lower headwall. To our horror they had misjudged where they were in relation to the lower headwall and were several ledges above the scree ramp. They were out of earshot and we anxiously watched them for a time worried that they would attempt downclimbing from a precarious spot. Thankfully, after a few minutes the group leader figured out that they were cliffed-out and managed to safely backtrack the group to the correct spot. Once we saw them back on the main route, we continued out the way we can in. We had learnt from that other group on the summit that they had taken the approach from More Scrambles and from what we could see took the same way out. The rest of our return journey was uneventful and we made it back to the car by 5:28pm. Weirdly enough, the round trip time for this adventure was exactly10 hours total car-to-car.
Steep Sheep 