On-Top.ca

Heart Mountain

Elevation: 2135 m
Elevation Gain: 875 m
Heart Mountain was named in 1957 for the prominent limestone fold resembling a heart near its summit.
My Ascents:
June 4 2011, April 2 2010
Trailhead: Heart Creek Trailhead

During the course of a night of drinking on June 3, Lise and I decided that a trip up Heart Mountain the subsequent morning would be a good idea. The next “good idea” that I had was to continue drinking well into the morning (long after Lise had gone home to bed). Suffice to say, when Lise phoned at 8am with my wakeup call, I was not ready to go. After trying to sleep it off for another hour, I decided that the best way to burn off this hangover would be to sweat it out so I phoned Lise and told her it was “go time”! After having a hard time keeping my breakfast down on the ride out, I’m not sure what part of me thought that any of this was a good idea…

Heart Mountain is fairly unimpressive looking from the highway and the summit view is equally unimpressive. And yet, the scramble up isn’t trivial. The route is quite steep and, generally, unpleasant. All in all, I’ve decided that Heart Mountain is the most effort for the least reward in the Rockies.

We can now consider ourselves fairly warned.

All of my photos from this trip (including this selfie) are courtesy Lise since I was too hungover to operate a camera.

Tackling the crux.

Looking towards the summit from just below the crux.

Above the crux, the terrain becomes a little more enjoyable resulting in the odd smile from myself between alcohol-related dizzy spells.

Lise claws her way up the mountain.

Enjoyable sub-summit scrambling (is there any other kind?) with Doorjamb Mountain and Yamnuska beyond.

She’s not even hungover and she’s ready for this scramble to be done too!

Meandering my way up.

Every time that the route starts to get interesting, someone marred it by placing fluorescent route markers! Here I defy there marker with an unnecessarily large lunge.