Upper and Lower Wolf Jaw

December 31, 2011

Marc, Debbie, and myself got up at 05:00. It was raining last night so we checked outside for the conditions to decide whether we were going to simply go back to bed before commiting. It was windy, very warm at plus three degrees, but clear and starry skies were overhead so we made a decision to go. The plan was to do a loop from the Garden and climb over Gothics, Armstrong, and Upper Wolf Jaw. The mountains had a different plan for us however. After an hour and a half travel along John's Brook, we began ascending the trail to Gothics, but it began raining heavily. We took shelter under some pines, and had some lunch. We decided to turn back and go for coffee. We descended to the next junction and the weather cleared. After a short discussion, Upper Wolf Jaw became our new target. As we began the ascent, it started raining again, so we took shelter in a lean-to for a while. The skies cleared again, and we began climbing again. At the Upper/Lower Wolf Jaw junction it got very icy so we switched from micro-spikes to crampons. The next 700 feet of climbing was fabulous. Lots of ice scrambles and ice slabs where we got to practice our front pointing and axe techniques. We arrived on the summit in relatively short order. Views were variable as there was dark clouds and sunshine mixed everywhere. It even started snowing on us for a few minutes while we ate a second lunch. Since the weather was so strange, we decided not to continue to Armstrong as it would be too committed if we got hit by a storm. We descended back down and then decided to climb Lower Wolf Jaw as it was only about half a mile and 600 feet vertical from the junction. This was another fun climb but far less technical than Upper. We quickly found ourselves on a second summit to a gorgeous day and spent some time relaxing around in the sunshine eating a third lunch. After a while it clouded in again so we decided to begin our descent. On the way down, we met two other people, the only others that we met all day. We remained in crampons all the way to the lean-to where we stopped for a final break and switched back to microspikes. As we had travelled the north trail along John's brook several times this trip already we decided to follow the south side trail this time. This was short lived though, as the trail had been disappeared by hurricane Irene. We scrambled down to the John's Brook washout, and tried to travel among the boulders and broken trees but this got tedious rather quickly. We decided to cross (which was somewhat tricky), and then bushwacked up the far side until we hit the north trail. The last three km went quickly. At one point we saw a herd of 8 deer beside the trail before finishing the hike after ten hours on the go. Back a the cottage we had a fabulous New Years celebration with many friends.

Summit of Upper Wolf Jaw.

Marc and I missed the turn off.

Marc and I on summit of Lower Wolf Jaw.

Debbie and I on summit of Lower Wolf Jaw.

One of the new slides thanks to Hurricane Irene.

Crossing the John's Brook washout.

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