Mount Sarrail Scramble

take advantage of the early season conditions and make your trip more fun

Mount Sarrail Scramble

Notable Visited Landmarks

Lakes

  • Hidden Lake
  • Kananaskis Lake, Upper

Mountains

Introduction

Mount Sarrail is a 25km, 1550m elevation gain out and back trip within Peter Lougheed Provincial Park of Kananaskis Country. As the route to the summit requires virtually no bushwhacking or loose terrain and the views along the way are great, as long as you have good weather the outing will be very pleasant.

We went on July 14, 2020 (year 1 of the covid), most of the trip was class 1 or class 2 but judging from the summit register we were the first group to ascend that year and we did have to deal with some large cornices along the West ridge making the trip a little more difficult. These sections were also the most fun part of the day, so I recommend going relatively early in the season, so you still get some travel on snow.

If you go early in the season so you have to deal with the snow, you should at least bring microspikes and poles or ice axes. Crampons are not necessary, and we didn’t bring them, but they also couldn’t hurt as an upgrade from microspikes.

GPS route from the day, stats are off from lack of points in this track

Approach

Park at the Upper Kananaskis Lake day use area and start on trail heading West along the southern shore of the lake, the first 5km or so you will be on this trail along the shore of the lake where you will be in the trees and you won’t be gaining any elevation. This first hour or so will be quite boring but occasionally you will be able to see through the trees and get a look at Upper Kananaskis Lake.

Opening in the trees with a good view of the Upper Kananaskis Lake

You will come to a trail that is unmarked taking you up the slope to your left, it is important that you find this trail because otherwise you will just be bushwhacking towards Hidden Lake. You start gaining elevation on the trail, and there is some deadfall so the going will get a bit tougher for about 20min or so until you get to Hidden Lake.

Photo taken later in the day of Kayla on the trail leading to Hidden lake as seen from the Upper Kananaskis Lake trail from the side you will be approaching from

You won’t actually want to go down to the lake, instead follow the trail South and then eventually South-West along the shore of the lake. Once the trail takes you past the lake it will start gaining elevation and you will start to get a view of Hidden Lake and eventually the Upper Kananaskis Lake. The trees will start to subside, and you will see a large waterfall in the distance, there will be a couple snow patches that you will have to cross which were hard when we were there but there were steps kicked in so we didn’t need microspikes.

Gaining elevation, looking back at Hidden Lake and Upper Kananaskis Lake barely visible in the distance

Large waterfall in the distance

After a large patch of snow relatively close to the waterfall you will come to a small class 2 scrambling section that will almost mark the end of the on-trail travel. A couple hundred meters after this section we broke off to our left and started ascending patches of rock upwards.

Large snow patch visible with waterfall behind

Kayla and Dad on the large snow patch

Kayla on the class 2 scrambling section, Dad waiting 

We broke off from the trail and started ascending rock

Ascent

Once we got a bit further up we saw that we would need to ascend on snow to get to the ridge, so we headed towards climber’s right to the section that looked like it would have the smallest amount of snow. This was just before the ridge started to cliff off. The snow was pretty hard, so we actually stayed on it to assist our ascent even once we had access to the ridge.

We see that we will need to ascend snow to gain the ridge

We find a patch with little snow right before the ridge starts to cliff off

Dad and Kayla ascending the hard snow even though we could access the ridge at this point

Eventually we did have to get off the snow though, and the terrain on the ridge was easy going as well. As you can imagine the views got better as we got higher up, and the ridge actually continued to stay mellow until we were high enough to start running into snow.

Eventually we had to get off the snow and onto the ridge

The terrain on the ridge was incredibly easy

The first little section of snow on the ridge was small and right after a small drop, you could do a controlled step down into it. The next patch of snow was again at a part of the ridge where there was a small drop and this one lasted 3 or 4 steps.

First intersection of snow on the ridge, it’s 1 easy step down

Next intersection of snow on the ridge requires a couple steps

The next patch of snow came after another drop, I went on the snow since I brought an ice axe but Dad and Kayla were more reluctant so they bypassed it climber’s right and joined me on the ridge about 20m after, it soon became clear that the snow would be unavoidable so Dad and Kayla joined me on it and we continued to ascend.

I went on the snow here but Dad and Kayla decided to bypass it to the right

Dad making his way back to the ridge

Eventually we came to the crux of the trip, the ridge was overtaken by snow and there was clearly a cornice on the right side which was the safer side for the cornice to be on though. Still a fall wouldn’t have been good, so we took precautions. A short while after the snow ended and we followed the class 2 rock to the summit of Sarrail.

The ridge is overtaken with a cornice

Dad and Kayla following me around cornices

Views from the summit were fantastic, but you have to explore around a bit to get all the views from the summit, like you can see the Kananaskis lakes if you go to the North end of the summit and you can see Rawson Lake if you go down a bit to the South.

Dad exploring to the South of the summit

View North-West from the summit

Kananaskis Lakes from the northern end of the summit

Kayla following me to the northern end of the summit

A lot of snow and rock

Descent

Our descent was essentially the same as our ascent. We started heading down the ridge and put the microspikes back on when we got back to the snow. We followed our tracks in the snow and eventually got back to the 1.5m climb that marked the end of the snow.

Back at the snow section, we followed our previous tracks around the cornices to the left

Kayla and Dad about to be off the snow

We followed the easy ridge back towards the snow patch that we ascended to reach the ridge. On this snow we slid quite a bit, most of it controlled but one part of it uncontrolled since Kayla didn’t have an ice axe or poles.

Once off the snow we took a nice break before heading back to the trail and then heading back to the parking lot.

Sliding down snow

Trip statistics