Gold Rush - Mount Rundle

July 10, 2024

Bill, Emily, Jyoti, and I drove back to Banff to climb Gold Rush. Emily and Jyoti decided to form a rope team, so I got to climb with Bill. We swapped leads over the pitches, but I linked pitch 3 and 4 deliberately, and then pitch 6 and 7 were also inadverendly linked because I could not find a mid-point anchor station. Was scraping the bottom of the harness for draws as I finished up the rope stretching climb, even after skipping a bolt or two. The women followed behind at a slower pace. We even got a radio call that they were taking a break for high tea at the top of pitch four.

Bill on lead

Me leading up one of the upper pitches just before the traverse

Hanging out at a belay

Bill lead pitch 10 which was a sideways traverse on an exposed slab that went into the forest. He could not determine where the climb went at that point, so anchored to a tree and belayed me over. I came over and found a well worn path past a cairn that lead to a beautiful slab with a line of bolts up it. This forest walk turned out to be pitch 11, but since it was just walking terrain, we de-roped, had some lunch as we waited a while for the others. While exploring the area we found a golf ball embedded in some forest debris... obviously a joke played by someone from this perch a couple hundred meters above a golf course.

How did that get here?

Did someone royally screw up a putt from below?

Jyoti lead the traverse and we directed her into the forest to link pitches 10 and 11, bringing Emily over where we all re-united. Bill was keen to lead the slab, so he linked the next two pitches, the slab being one of the crux pitches, while I got the last pitch which also had a crux of face climbing right at the end. The gals had lunch and then followed. Bill and I found a shady spot to lie down in to wait and both of us even fell asleep for a while! Emily lead the last three pitches and we all were on top after a successful climb of Gold Rush.

Jyoti coming across the traverse

Emily and Jyoti on top of the world!

The walk down took a long time. The 150m scramble ascent to the walk-off was slow because everyone was tired, and then the relentless scree slope was even slower as it was Jyoti and Emily's first time in dealing with this type of terrain. We made our way down carefully and sometimes a bit recklessly with some butt sliding, but we all eventually arrived at the bottom safely. The backside of Emily's pants might have sufferred a new hole or two! All in all a great day out, and my favorite climb of the trip. I was especially impressed by the rapid development of the two new climbers over the past few days.

Interesting rock on the descent

Total time: 11 hours

[Home] [Main] [Prev] [Next]