August 9th 2016. Moraine Lake / Banff National Park
Round Trip: 8 hours (Fay) + 2 hours (Little) from Neil Colgan Hut.
Height Gain: 250m from Neil Colgan Hut, 1350m from Moraine Lake
Access: Schaffer Ledges via Moraine Lake (difficult scramble)
In 2016 my friend Blake & I made the trip up to the Neil Colgan ACC Hut up on the Fay Glacier that hangs above Moraine Lake. It was our second trip up there – in 2015 we went up Mt Bowlen via Kootney. On this specific trip we ended up climbing the Schaffer Ledges in the evening of August 8th and then Mt Fay & Little on August 9th.
This is more of a trip summary rather than a full on trip report for Days 1 and 2 of the three day trip.
Follow the heavily used lake shore trail to the back of Moraine Lake. You will find that the official trail dead ends at the mouth of the stream feeding into the lake. You do not need to cross the stream. Instead leave the board walk and follow along the side of the stream. A faint trail follows along side the looker’s right hand side of the stream. This crosses a marshy flat spot before briefly going through the forest again. Bring bear spray, if ever an encounter were to happen this would be a likely spot!
Flagging at the far end of the marsh indicates the correct way across and through the trees. After a few minutes this opens up into a large boulder field left behind by the Wenkchemna Glacier. Gain the moraine and follow it to the climber’s left. This will wrap around the bottom of Mt Bowlen and lead you the start of the Ledge’s Route.
IMPORTANT: do NOT follow the moraine all the way into it’s end point. I later made this mistake in 2017 and wasted a lot of time route finding the group’s way back to the correct route. The scree slope that this moraine ends at is both steep and a shooting gallery for falling rock – to the point where us shouting back and forth to one another triggered a full on rock slide.
LOOK FOR a distinct sharp small pillar positioned in the corned of an 80 degree drop in the upper cliff bands. You’re essentially started directly below that pillar. If going the correct way, you will come across a large spray painted arrow. From here the pink dots begin. They are quite faded (as of 2017) and require some attention to follow. If you don’t see any pink dots, you are likely going the wrong way!
For those limited on time, it may be possible to climb Mt Fay in a day, especially if you take either the North Face route or West Ridge. For experienced parties it should only take 3-4 hours to ascend the ledges from the pink arrow.
In 2016 on this specific trip it only took Blake & I a total of 5 hours from Moraine Lake to reach the front porch of the Neil Colgan Hut. The scrambling should be treated as a difficult scramble. There is a fair amount of exposure and a couple spots where inexperienced parties will likely want a rope. There were fixed chains in 2016 but we didn’t find them necessary.
The section that contains the first fixed chain is the crux of the route. The ledge immediately below the chain is quite exposed and in direct line of fire for falling rocks. Spread out if you’re in a group, as there is limited space to wait under the chain. There is a second chained section shortly after this first one, but for confident scramblers the chains won’t be necessary. In 2017 the second chain was no longer there but the anchor plates were still in place for those wanting the security of a rope.
Once past the two chain sections the scrambling eases to a moderate level and eventually you top out near Peak 3-4. From here you will need to gear up and rope up for the glacier traverse across to the Little-Bowlen Col. While this area of the Fay Glacier is quite mellow, it has drastically varied between the 3 trips I’ve taken up there. The crevasses were largely snow filled on this trip and it was a quick 20 minute crossing to the slope under the ACC Hut.
The next day we got up and set out for Mt Fay. We opted to go for the classic South Face route which meant a traverse of the Fay Glacier wrapping south around the base of Mt Little. Once around the back of both mountains a very obvious slope lead us up to the summit. Some scrambling involved but it was mostly a trek up with the crampons and ice axes. The angle was never steeper than 40º.
Towards the top of the glaciated slope we started hitting a blend of talus and black ice. This was pretty rough on the crampons and the ice picks certainly came in handy. In earlier months this would probably make for a fast kick-step ascent.
From the summit we decided to return via the West Ridge 5.3. This made for a series of 4 rappelling between moderate down climbing. I opted to down climb instead of rapp’ing the 4th station as it was still categorically moderate scrambling through here.
A bit further along and we then glissade down the north aspect of the ridge. There was lots of snow pack still so it made for quick descent with only one narrow crevasse near the bottom. Once both safely down we roped back up and retraced our steps to the hut to have hot lunch and drop off some gear before scrambling up Mt Little.
For Mt Little you have two basic options. Either scramble directly up from behind the hut (it looked pretty difficult) or ascend up one of the north slopes to gain the ridge. We opted for the latter and were able to kick steps up most of the way before hitting rock. We also didn’t encounter any crevasses between the hut and the start of the this slope so lightened the load by leaving the ropes in the hut. There wasn’t much to note of the descent other than it was a fun short scramble to the top (sustained moderate).
Day 3 consisted of Mt Perren and Mt Tonsa, followed by a sketchy descent in freezing rain via the Perren Route. Trip report coming eventually…!
Steep Sheep 