Bobac Mountain
Completed bone dry, some folks have done this with varying amounts of snow, which may make the ledge traverse easier, however, you may find yourself up against massive cornices blocking your access to the summit. The only other obvious route that has been completed is the ridge, which is a serious undertaking (exposed, loose, and difficult). A rather obscure route also exists, that involves going up the boulder field and then straight up to the peak on rather straightforward terrain. And then, yet another route exists passing on the left side of the ridge. The ledge traverse seems to be the most popular of the routes though, but is not a very enjoyable ascent. Note also that if you somehow slide down the entire ledge, you will probably die by falling off the cliff below. The rest of the ascent is a straightforward and loose scree/slab/dirt mix that adds the the fun.
Bobac Mountain is a significant peak located around the Lake Alice area. Along with Watermelon Peak, Bobac Mountain is sandwiched in between two glorious valleys: the Siffleur Valley and Dolomite Creek Valley, both of which are worth a visit. This peak is probably even less visited than its neighbor, Watermelon Peak, likely due to the odd and unenjoyable routes up. The occasional folks that do find their way to its summit often bivy near Lake Alice after making their way on the Helen Lake Trail and through the beautiful Dolomite Pass area. As far as I could find, the peak's name is a Polish word for marmot, named after the countless marmots in the area.
The access for this scramble is the Helen Lake parking lot. It is approximately a 33 km (20 minutes) drive north on the Icefields Parkway and the pull out is on the right, opposite of the Crowfoot Glacier lookout, it is hard to miss. Total driving time from the Calgary city limits is about 2 hours. The trail to the Bobac Mountain route is described in the "Lake Alice Via Helen Lake" report linked below.
This route describes the ascent from the Lake Alice bivy spot. See the full access hike from start to finish with the first and last part in "Lake Alice Via Helen Lake", linked below. Notice two main gullies leading up the slopes of Bobac (the left one may be obscured depending on your angle). Anyways, you should be aiming for the gully on the right with the rock fin/pinnacle in the middle of it. Slog up the scree slopes to just below the fin, a drainage may provide more solid footing here. Once you are close to the fin, trend right and find a flat scree ledge that begins just below a slab/cliff band forms. There may be a big cairn here. You know that you're in the right spot when all that is ahead is a wide scree slope that angles to the climber's right away from the main gully. This is the ledge. Continue up the scree and follow it until the massive ledge begins. Take care on the traverse and aim to stay at or near the top, this is where it is easiest. Continue for a while over all the "waves" in the ledge until you reach the col that grants you access to the final slopes of Bobac. Cornices may stop you here. Continue straight up the slope on scree and slab, staying slightly left of the ridge. A foreshortened walk up a couple false rolls leads you to the summit. Descend the same way. The GPS route on Gaia is far from accurate, but is shows our route approximate.
My alarm sounded at 4:55 am, and I will say I wasn't really feeling it. I thought that I heard rain outside, which would've put the brakes on any ideas of a sunrise hike. I guess it was just our tent flapping in the oddly windy morning.
We rolled out of bed and got right to it. This peak would involve running off coffee and no food, since we wanted to get going quickly and kind of wanted some food for later. Anyways, we got the coffee going, drank it, packed up, and were on our way within about 45 minutes of waking up. Of course, it was absolutely pitch black.
Doing the obvious thing, we just started hiking straight up the hill. After about 5 minutes of doing this, we cam across our first issues. Firstly, the route on our map was horribly wrong (it took the ridge), so that wasn't of much help. Secondly, we weren't in the gully. We then solved this by traversing on fun scree and finally getting into it.
This shows what we were up against pretty well. Maybe I'll save the sunrise hikes for on trail and not scree slopes.
Admittedly, the slope was a lot more steep and loose than expected (dirt loose, not piles of scree loose), but eventually we came up to the giant rock pillar that I remember from everyone's reports. Very good sign. I honestly only noticed it about 10 steps before bumping into it, since I was very focused on the unenjoyable terrain beneath me.
Right around this point, we stopped and check some pictures that we had taken from Watermelon Peak. Very useful for navigation. We spotted the pillar in the photos and then looked to see how we would get over to the ledge. It seemed that there was a break in the cliff band at climber's right, but this was slightly below the pillar and we were already above, so we opted to head straight up and to the big scree area, where we would traverse across to the ledge. Not the best plan. The route described (ideal route) is the one that goes below the pillar. Anyways, we went up some really nasty dirt, then traversed over a bit and it just got light enough for us to see where we wanted to go.
Looking down at Lake Alice as it just started to brighten up. The ideal route would've come up from the lower of the two scree ledges at lower left.
After traversing a ways, we noticed that we were on a decent sized ledge, but knew that it was the small upper one (don't go this way!). We could see the bigger ledge below, but we were already up too high and had a cliff band in the way. I ended up going to check it out and we found a nice break. We were low down enough on it to find this. If we were any higher we would've had to descend.
A lucky break in the cliff band gave us an easy option to access the lower ledge.
Now on the ledge traverse. If it was this easy the whole way we'd be laughing!
The sun was looking like it was coming up soon, so we took a little break and I prepared. Also this photo is just great. Thanks dad.
Not quite what I was expecting, but cool nonetheless. I guess smoke, clouds, and a sunrise don't interact very positively with eachother.
Watermelon Peak does look good in the morning light though.
At that point, we were only about half way on the traverse and had a lot more to go. I also have to add that the traverse is in fact not as easy as the first picture of it shows. It is very steep and really not very fun. Sticking to the top was what we found easiest, with some parts being rather quick on bigger rocks and other spots being just a steep dirt runout. I have to say, you probably wouldn't tumble all the way if you fell, but who knows. Just not falling is probably better. Remember that there is a big cliff below this ledge too.
We were both very happy to see this. After almost an hour of traversing we finally had the end in sight.
If you think the summit is the point that you can see, you would be very incorrect. These were my exact thoughts when climbing over the seemingly endless rolls on these slopes, each revealing another short slope ahead.
When we were going up this slope, I really started to feel bad. Perhaps it was the lack of food, fatigue, or lack of sleep. Over the past little while, I'd been fit enough to usually avoid this feeling, but I really slowed down on this part until I changed a few thoughts. Immediately a "conquer the moment" mindset came into mind and I decided that I would just conquer each moment on the way up to the top, and then it would seem almost effortless. It came down to just battling each moment separately, like a whole bunch of small 1 second decisions stacked in a row. If you break it down and focus on each separately, it becomes a lot more manageable. Then, soon enough, time begins to increase on the side of what you have already completed, and each moment it becomes easier to decide to keep pushing.
It actually didn't really matter if I didn't eat food that morning or have a good sleep or that we had a big day the day before. Just purely and solely focusing on each individual moment on its own (a skill in itself, I recommend meditation), I got up rather effortlessly and even passed by my dad.
And before I knew it, there I was. The summit of Bobac Mountain, my 100th summit/peak or whatever you'd like to call it. I think that was a pretty cool moment.
We really didn't get to spend much time at the top though, since the winds were absolutely gruelling. I did get a couple pictures before we left though and we did sign the register. It was in here that we found an entry from Andrew Nugara from the year before around this time. I didn't remember seeing any trip report of his for some reason though. I shrugged if off and paged through, finding a couple recognizable names and the first entry dating back to 1999.
Now, as I look through Andrew Nugara's website, I've found his report and I guess Google Search just doesn't find it relevant for people searching Bobac Mountain. This would've definitely been helpful. Thanks a lot Google. Here it is if you'd like to use it as a reference for the perhaps better route, which is the same as Rick Collier's route. If you read through, you will also find a third alternate route, also potentially easier than the ledge traverse.
Fantastic shot of an outlier and what I'm guessing was the scary ridge on Explor8ion.com. It does look scary indeed. This also shows the ledge traverse at left, as well as another option just to the left of the glacier (may be the best possible route up and down).
Sadly our views into the Siffleur, Clearwater, and Willingdon areas were very obscured by the smoke.
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WOW! The colors in this pano are crazy. I don't think I've ever seen so many purple hues from a summit before. I guess all types of conditions have good things about them, even if they're "suboptimal".
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Looking the other way. This one really isn't the best. I'm sure it would've been fantastic on a clear day, but unfortunately I don't think I'll be back to see it, unless we're looking at bring Ezra up here and doing an alternate route. I think I'll have to go over to the Mosquito area first though and bag some of those peaks for the similar view.
Observation Peak is the big rounded one, with Charlie Peak and its outliers to the left. The purply blue smoke kind of gives a mysterious aura to the peaks. I like it.
Watermelon Peak looks great as usual.
Before we head down, I do just have to add that I was absolutely thrilled for this summit. 100 was just something that I was really looking at for a while. I guess you might consider me slightly experienced at this point, especially with hiking and scrambling, although we still haven't done tons of really technically challenging stuff. But still, 100 peaks at 17 is kind of cool and it's a big accomplishment for me anyways.
We started heading down so soon after hitting the peak, which felt a little odd, but the howling winds were just killing the mood, so we were going to take a break lower down. Our descent route of the final slope was slightly at skier's right of our ascent and was very quick on some good scree skiing.
Looking back.
Ugh. I was not looking forward to this part. I guess we had to get it done though.
Partway through the traverse, the wind died and the sun came out, making for a lot more of an enjoyable descent. The scree ledge also isn't really all that bad, but if you can take a different route, I'd say go with that.
Bobac is in the sun now!
Ah yes, almost done the traverse now. We just kept heading straight down these slopes and it worked out well (this would be ideal for ascent and descent of the ledge traverse route).
Now finding our way down a good scree run to the lower ledge that leads back to the gully.
My dad then filled up his water in a little stream coming down the mountain since he used a lot of it for coffee. We still needed some for oatmeal though!
And here's the pinnacle that I talked so much about earlier.
We actually found it easier to descend slabs than the steep dirt here.
Almost back now. There wasn't really too much scree skiable terrain in the lower section, so we didn't have the easiest time, but we did make it down.
Wow. Done my 100th. That was a very type 2 fun kind of experience. I can honestly say that given our route choice, the dark, the dirt, the endless traverse and slogging, the wind, and the smoke, this may have been one the worst scrambles that I've ever done. But, it is a very good representation of basically all of our scrambles in the Rockies, so for that, I think it is the absolute perfect 100th summit. And the best part is that it was still better than being at home, plus I still enjoyed it. And that's all there really is to it. I guess we'll see what types of adventures are to come in my next 100! I'm looking forward to it.
If you'd like to see the other peaks that we did on this trip, you can see them here (Cirque) and here (Watermelon). For the rest of the adventure, you can find it here. If you're following along for the entire thing, just scroll to near the bottom and you can read the hike out. Hopefully all the info is helpful and entertaining!