Sunriser (attempt) - Mount Rundle

July 13, 2024

The last day of camp had people scattered in various locations. Remi and Jimmy made an attempt on a 5.10 route up Ha Ling. Brian, Jake, and Lori went on to sucessfully climb McLab Slab. Bill and Jyoti went scrambling on Yamnuska. Kate, Scott, Charles, and Mike tackled a 5.9 route on Tunnel Mountain. Emily and I decided to make an attempt on Rundlehorn, an eleven pitch 5.5 retro-bolted trad route that had stymied Brian last year during the summer camp. Brian and his party had ended up rappelling down the first five pitches after getting lost. I was hoping to prove myself a better route finder.

We drove through Banff in the early morning noting the wildlife; an elk fueling up on potted plants at the gas station and a wolf strolling through the parking lot of the public washroom. We pulled into the parking area at the base of Rundle, geared up and started scrambling up the scree to the mountain. We hiked around the ridge on a well worn path and found a low angle bolted route heading upwards. This must be it!

I led the first 30m pitch up fairly easy terrain to a scree ledge. From here there were two bolt lines, one angling left and the other angling right. We could see that the second bolt on the left line had a bail sling tied to it, so we selected the right line, which Emily lead up in fine style, finding an anchor after only about 15m. She brought me up and there were no more bolts in sight. It was easy climbing up to a wide ledge, so I quested upwards, plugging in a couple cams for protection, but on reaching the ledge could not find where the route could possibly go from here. It was eventually decided that the anchor we were using must be a down route, so I down climbed back to Emily and we rappelled back down to the top of P1.

Rapping off the false start of pitch 2

For our second attempt, I lead the left bolt line, past the bail sling, and after about 40m of traversing climbing on a few bolts I found an anchor. I put a few trad pieces in as there seemed to be insufficient protection, but on looking back at the line, I noticed a few more bolts that were a couple meters below the route I had followed. Oh well!

Pitches 3 through 5 went off without any route finding hitches, though seemed to be harder than the purported grade of 5.5. Pitch 5 in particular was fairly steep, and Emily boldly pulled off this lead. I nearly took a fall while seconding this as a grapefruit size piece of the mountain I was using as a hand hold suddenly detached and sailed over my shoulder (Rock!).

Emily's impressive lead of the steep pitch 5

Up until now, the climbing seemed to match the guide book description (which did not say much other than climb 5 pitches). Pitch 6 was supposed to be a 4th class scramble, and the line of bolts above us looked to be at least 5.9! There definitely was no scrambling option from this point. Thinking maybe we "pulled a Brian" and remembering he said somthing about the mistake as going right instead of left, along with remembering that my lead of pitch 4 turned right when easier terrain existed to the left, made us think that maybe I had screwed up pitch 4. We rappelled down to the top of P4, and I went exploring down and leftwards, which turned out to be easy scrambling terrain. I searched for quite a while, finding lots of lovely slabs that begged to be climbed, but other than a dead, moldy old chalk bag half buried in the scree, I found no sign of a bolt or climbing route. Finally I gave up and Emily belayed me back to the top of P4 and we decided to retreat.

Defeated, but still smiling

The rappel to station P3 was direct but crossed a field of death blocks and a rope eating dead tree. I spent some time doing some gardenning and re-arranging the mountain to ensure we would not rain any of these down on our heads or get stuck while pulling the rope. The rappel to P2 was a traversing nightmare. I only went a little ways and spied a tree above with some tat on it. I scrambled up to the tree, cut out the rotten tat and installed a new-to-the-tree sling and quick link. From here I tried to continue to station P2, but could not find it, and the rope swing was too great so finally I just decided to head straight down and see what I could find. I did find a large block at about 25m which I slung for an anchor. As Emily was coming down to join me, I spied the P2 anchor, an easy scramble from her position. Emily put on her lead head and climbed up to the station. I asked her to put me on belay so I could get there, but as she disconnected her rappel system she fumbled the rope and it swung out of reach. I joked that as she was safely tied to the station, I was just going to continue down without her, but decided to play nice, so climbed the rope for a stretch and duplicated the traversing scramble to join her.

Beginning the retreat

Exploring downward

A bit of awkwardness on the next pitch as we rapped this annoying traverse at the same time that another party was coming up. At least we were not the only ones lost today, as this pair believed they were climbing McLab Slab! Some yoga like contortions and exciting crotch-to-face manouvers between strangers were exchanged as we passed each other. The rope ran out before the top of P1, but this explained the bail anchor we found earlier in the day, as there was just enough rope length to get there. I re-used the bail sling but re-tied it to my satisfaction, and decided we could probably rap straight down from here to the ground. I gave it a go and made it safely down with a meter or two of rope to spare.

We hit the pub on the way back to the hostel and checked the inter-webs to see what went wrong. Apparently we did not climb Rundlehorn at all, but climbed Sunriser, a six pitch route graded 5.9 with the crux pitch being the last one. Had we pulled this last pitch off, we would have joined Rundlehorn about mid way up. Talking to Brian, our description did not match his recollection and he was adamant that he was on Rundlehorn proper last year. Anyway, the Rundlehorn route remains an elusive objective for ACC Ottawa summer camps. I will be back to finish this off this unstarted business some day!

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