First Rock Pile with summit
October 10th Friday 2014
Today we set out from The Boom Lake Trail parking for Mt Bell Shoulder Ridge. This is about 8.0 km from Hwy #1 on Hwy #93 to Radium. Drive passed Storm Mountain Lodge, or stop in for coffee and breakfast. The parking is on your right.
The object for the day’s hike was to find a way up on to the shoulder ridge of Mt Bell. Lee had seen this ridge while walking to O’Brien Lake the previous year. This is a great hike to see the larches in the fall, but it was too late in October see them this year.
To get to O’Brien Lake hike up the Boom Lake trail for about 1.5 Km and turn up the signed trail to O’Brien Lake and Taylor Lake. The trail is well-defined but not very well maintained. We were looking for a point at about 2215 m at the first rock pile to determine the best route.
Gully we took up at 2 cnd rock pile
Finding the first rock pile to be shall we say too rocky we went further on to the second rock pile. This was about 60 m lower down the trail. Although we took this route in the photo above it turned out to be a poor chose.
Looking down the Gully
Re-Built summit Cairn
We now have a better route with less scree and rubble photo below. Courtesy of Lee.
Route up or down by the Tarn
After lunch at the summit cairn we went to check out the ridge on the other side of the col. Photo below. As we got higher the view of Boom Lake and the glacier came into view.
Distance traveled up the higher ridge
The black arrow points to where the summit of Mt Bell could be.
On the way back we checked out another route. At the flat area after the climb up from the Boom Lake trail. We walk through the trees until reaching the rocks. There is a route up this way and it would bring you up to the cairn and then back down the route on Lees photo.
Distance return 12.75 km Time return 7 hrs ( inc 30 min lunch ) Elevation Accumulated gain 1065 m Elevation to Summit 725 m Summit height 2462 m
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