Raiders of the Lost Arch

July 29, 2026

Paul, Katharina, Sharmin, and I stuck together for another day and set off to do Raiders of the Lost Arch on Mount McGillivray. This is a four pitch 5.5 climb followed by a six pitch canyoneering descent. We set off from the parking lot in the early morning looking forward to the adventure.

Hiked up a stream and then followed a steep but very good trail through the woods. After about an hour of hiking, we entered a nasty scree gully to the base of the climb which goes right through the center of a massive limestone arch formation. We climbed in the same method as yesterday, with Paul and Sharmin on one rope and Kat and I following on a second one. Kat lead P1 and I lead P2. As I was setting up to belay, I spied another anchor to the right a couple bolts higher. P3 splits into two routes here and Paul was already leaing up the left hand route. I decided to link to this sub-anchor on the right hand route as this is the "photo anchor" for the best shot inside the Arch. After climbing up here I realized that I had forgotten my belay device setup back at the top of P2. Belayed Kat up on a munter hitch and she cleaned my ATC for me.

Hiking up the steep ascent trail

A bizarre limestone arch formation

Paul leading up P1

Money shot from the P3 photo anchor

Kat lead up the remainder of P3 from here and all of us ended up at the top of this pitch. I took onsite lead for the last pitch which was fairly long, but also very easy. Here I made a mistake on exiting the route. There was an obvious gully of pretty sustained 4th class terain right above us. I sent Katharina up on belay and she ran it out for 50m up to a tree where she belayed me up. This got us off the climb, but sent a lot of loose rock down as the rope dragged through it. Upon topping out we found the hiking trail was just off to the left of the gulley, and had we scrambled that way immediately off the top of the P4 anchor, we would avoided the mess. We figured it out in time to send Paul and Sharmin on a nasty bushwhack about half way up the gulley. Oh well, lesson learned for next time.

Raiding the arch through on the two parallel P3 routes

Sharmin seconding P3

We ate lunch at the top, hiked out to a lookout, and then down to the start of the Canyon. From here it was six rappels, interspersed with some hiking and down scrambling. Since we had two ropes, the first one down would take the second rope to setup the next rap in blocks of two between the hiking parts. This kept things moving along at a decent pace without waiting around too long for four people down each rappel. After about a six hour adventure, we stumbled our way back to the parking lot.

Hiking down to the start of Raiders Canyon

Rapping down the Canyon

Sharmin on a free haning rappel

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