Cascade Falls

July 28, 2026

Paul, Katharina, Sharmin and I decided to tackle Cascade Falls today on Cascade Mountain. Others went to climb Aftonroe and Raiders of the Lost Arch. Paul and Sharmin climbed on one rope while Kat and I followed immediately behind on another. This kept us all reasonably together and allowed sharing of anchors at the belay stations. Mini Hapa (5.4, 4 pitches) went by easily where Kat and I swapped leads, with me taking P1 and P3. P3 is my favorite on this climb as it crosses the waterfall after leaving the belay station.

Cascade falls from the parking lot

Paul belaying Sharmin up P3 of Mini Hapa

We took a quick break at the top of this route and then scrambled upwards a bit to find our next objective, Back to Batoche (5.6, 4 pitches). We spent a bit of time searching for the start as we wanted to avoid a second adjacent route which apparently was only partially bolted. Sharmin started climbing a bolt line he found, while Kat and I scrambled around scouting more to the left. Turns out that Sharmin had the right nose for it, since he climbed the right bolt line. Kat and I scrambled back down to the start and began our climb right behind them.

Break time at the top of Mini Hapa

This route was a little more spicy, but lots of fun. Kat led the first pitch and we swapped from there. P3 was the crux with a delicate traversing manouver, but dispatched easily by Katharina. At the top we all regrouped for a proper lunch before beginning our descent.

Belay station on Back to Batoche

Nearing the top

The whole gang at the top of Back to Batoche

View of Mt. Rundle

I had noticed that P3 was longer than the stated 30m in the guidebook, so we rapped P4 on a single rope and P3 on doubled ropes. I rapped P2 on a single rope and ended up 5m short of the anchor. Apparaently this pitch is longer than 30m too! There was a good ledge here though, so I just left the rope and explored a bit to climbers left, where I saw an easy scramble way down. We decided to simply take that. The scramble down was quite nice to the top of Mini Hapa, but from there the hike down on a spider maze of trails on steep loose shite is somewhat atrocious. We all made it down safely however after spending about six hours out. Hit the Georgetown pub on our way back to the cabin.

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