Little Yoho Traverse (McArthur, Pollinger, Kiwetinok, Little Kerr, Kerr)
Completed in dry conditions, turns into mountaineering and/or harder scrambling with snow. Our route choice was a counter clockwise loop from the Little Yoho Valley that bypassed the crux on Mount Pollinger and descended via a different route from Mount Kerr. Our route choice worked very well, but the opposite direction is more common and likely very similar in difficulty. Completing all five peaks is a big day no matter how you do it, so be prepared. There is usually snow on the ridge in case of a water shortage and Kiwetinok Lake and the creek coming down from it can also serve as water fill up stations. It is also worth noting that theoretically you make this a third class scramble by avoiding every single bit of fourth class terrain, but this may tack on a lot of precious time, which is why it is rated Class IV. Most of this trip is just hiking, but there are many scrambling sections. You probably won't be seeing anyone else on this day, but a helmet is still advisable on much of this terrain in case of a fall or natural rockfall, as many sections have very loose rock.
This 5 peak traverse (or some would call it 4) is a classic Yoho scramble that is very commonly done by scramblers in the Yoho Valley area. All of the summits are situated at the end of the Little Yoho Valley by Kiwetinok Pass, and a hike in and out via the Yoho Valley or Iceline Trail is required. Each of the summit routes are fairly well described in Alan Kane's Scrambles in the Canadian Rockies and in various blog posts, which makes it easy to find information about this trip. Now, beginning the history with Mount McArthur, the loftiest of the traverse, and named after James J. McArthur, an early land surveyor. This impressive peak has endless views from the summit and the massive Glacier des Poilus on its NE side. Mount Pollinger is the next "peak" of the traverse and is really just a bump on the side of Mount McArthur, making it a little odd that it is officially named. Mount Kiwetinok is the hardest peak of the traverse in the technical aspect, and was once one of the hardest in the Kane scrambles due to its mountaineering nature. However, there is no longer a glacier on its NW face, so the entire ascent can be completed on rock in late season, making the scramble a lot easier on a technical basis. Kiwetinok is a native word that means "north" or "on the north side", so my guess is that it was named like this since it is on the north side of the valley (and then the lake and pass were named afterward). Mount Kerr is a double summit (well actually triple, but the other one is even less significant and less well known) visible from much of the Little Yoho Valley and may be the most popular ascent of this traverse. Since the two main summits are actually very distinct, and the lower summit may even have upwards of 100m of prominence, I have taken the liberty of separating them into two summits, Little Kerr and Mount Kerr.
The Takakkaw Falls parking lot is situated a 13 km drive up the Yoho Valley Road (about 15 minutes) and the total driving time from the Calgary city limits is about 2:15 hours. The Yoho Valley Road is closed from October 10th to June 14th, so be mindful of this when planning your trip. From the parking lot, you can choose to take either the Iceline Trail or the Yoho Valley Trail to access the starting point at the Little Yoho Valley campground. The Iceline Trail is the scenic approach, but has more distance and elevation and is detailed in another trip report. For the Yoho Valley Trail approach, head north from the Takakkaw Falls parking lot and hike the long trail to the Laughing Falls campground. Just after the campground take a left and continue up to the Yoho Valley where you will soon take another left and then for the next intersection you continue straight until you arrive at the Stanley Mitchell Hut.
This route describes our counter clockwise loop for the 5 peak traverse. From the Stanley Mitchell Hut, cross the creek and take a right turn towards Kiwetinok Pass. Ascend on the good trail, crossing some small creeks, until the big scree slopes on your right are very close. After crossing a large creek area, pull out your GPS and make sure you're turning off at the right place. Head straight up a creek bed and and gain the slope. There will be some cliff bands at climber's left and once you are above them, trend left until you are above the headwall. Take a second to admire the view behind you of the Presidents before continuing up the cirque over plenty of annoying talus and rock. As you get continue, notice the vertical line separating the brown and gray rock. Head towards this line, but stay slightly to the right of it. Near the end of the valley, start gaining to the right on an easy moraine. From here, there are two options, a quick ascent straight up to the col on some third and fourth class steps (surprisingly quick, but loose and tough to get up), or continue and traverse on easier terrain to the right, finding the weaknesses in the the cliff bands at climber's left, and ascending on scree. Both routes come out on the ridge at a certain point and follow it on fairly easy terrain to the summit. Descend the same way, and continue on the ridge to the col with Mount Pollinger. There is a crux option or crux bypass (climber's left), both of which are exposed, but the bypass is a lot easier (although possibly not able to be completed with snow). After Pollinger, continue on the ridge to the col with Mount Kiwetinok, where things get a lot more tricky. Whether on snow or rock, the consensus is to go up and to the climber's left from the col, finding a weakness to traverse left and up where there are many huge boulders. From here, there are countless options all on loose and exposed terrain, although much of it is not that technically difficult. The general approach for this part is a combination of traversing to the climbers's left and scrambling up weaknesses in the many cliffbands, until reaching the summit ridge. There may be cairns, but if there aren't, do yourself a favour and build some as you ascend so that you can retrace your steps. Depending on where you top out on the ridge, the summit may be directly ahead, or a short and easy, but exposed ridgewalk away. Descend the same way to the col and then find an easy way down scree towards the lake (the GPS is helpful here). Stay further to the right than you'd like and aim straight towards the pass, this is the easiest way. After making your way through scree and boulders, walk straight across the pass and directly up the ridge for your last objective of the day. Head up a well cairned trail with many scrambling sections (bypass usually at climber's right if necessary) until you reach the Little Kerr summit. Continue on the ridge to the true summit, avoiding obstacles usually at left now until the col. As you begin gaining your final summit of the day, trend right around large cliff bands on rubble and then as the terrain eases, begin back to the left and up to the summit. Descent the same way to the col. From here, either go back up Little Kerr and descent via the Kiwetinok Pass Trail, or drop down NE directly from the col on dirt and scree. Head directly toward the President, until you note a tarn appearing below a gully to your left. Head down the gully to the tarn and the cross around the left side of this tarn. At this point, you are safe to begin angling back to the Kiwetinok Pass Trail in the valley below. There will be some cairns leading down a short cliff band (third-fourth class). After this, you are pretty much safe to trend to skier's left and down to the valley on scree. Cross the creek at any point and rejoin the Kiwetinok Pass Trail. Head back on the good trail to your starting point (if it is the campground, keep an eye out for a big tree spanning the creek, so that you don't have to go all the way back around to the hut).
At the start of this day, we only anticipated to be doing Mount McArthur, Mount Pollinger, and Mount Kerr, but the day would end up turning out to be perfect and the weather would hold until past sunset, so we took advantage and added Kiwetinok Peak on to the day to make a heroic day.
We got into the campground at around 10:00 am after hiking in with our heavy packs on the Iceline Trail (well worth it) and set up our tent, along with having a big snack. It was a bit later than I'd anticipated, so we tried to get out of there as soon as possible.
Unlike Alberta, this campground didn't really have designated spots and I'm sure there were some people there without permits. It's a big campground, but sadly there aren't many tables in the food area (which is scary close to some of the tent pads) and they have the bear hangers not bear bins, which was also a bummer.
Anyways, enough complaining. We'd be dealing with all that later in the rain, but for now it was perfect weather. We set off up the Kiwetinok Pass Trail just after 11:00 am after using our handy tree log crossing right out of the campground and were immediately stopped by some old folks to chat for a few minutes. These two thought that there was still a glacier on this side of McArthur and that we wouldn't be able to complete it, but I assured them that there wasn't. They also mentioned something about a traverse from Whaleback and Isolated over to McArthur, which I had seen in my prior research as well (mountaineering).
After hiking up the trail for just a little bit, we came out on to the moraine area, which is where I'm assuming the turnoff for the Presidents is.
Some views to the Presidents opened up very quickly. I will be doing them one day.
There's a couple creek crossings like this before the turnoff that can be jumped over.
Here's the turnoff point for McArthur. We went straight up the drainage and contoured the orange cliffy bit on the climber's right, before heading back left above it and gaining straight to the top of the headwall.
We took this rocky drainage up in the bottom section and it was pretty fast.
As you get close to the top of the headwall, make sure to take a second to look back at the Presidents!
Nice looking rock at the end of a ridge coming from Mount Pollinger.
We took a quick breather to soak in the early views and then got right back to it. We still had a longgg day ahead, so we had to cut the breaks to a minimum in case of rain in the evening (forecasted).
The different colours at the end of the basin were very cool indeed, but the basin is actually quite long, so you better be good at rock hopping. For the flat(ish) part of the basin, we stayed at the bottom, before trending right and heading up a moraine that isn't visible in the picture. We then made our way straight up to the col around the very center of the image.
I found this very nice crystal somewhere in the valley here. It currently sitting face up and obvious on top of a big rock if anyone would like to visit it.
After coming to the end of the cirque, we opted to just scramble straight up here.
We could've also traversed on this scree ledge and then gone straight up the obvious scree cliff band weakness.
This direct 4th class step was our choice of ascent.
After getting on top of this cliff band, it was surprisingly quick to get to the ridge and once I got there I had the most insane adrenaline rush ever as the views opened up all around me.
The views of the Freshfield Icefield were what really caught my eye at the start.
But this view was impressive too. I love how the ridge coming from Pollinger looks like some kind of huge scales on a giant creature
After taking tons of videos, we started up the scree slog to the Mount McArthur summit.
As we were slogging up the slope, it would only take a second to look up at the view in any direction and all my energy would return. Truly magical. My dad on the other hand, was not feeling very good on this day. Too bad I guess.
Here's me looking over a lone glaciated peak that I'd like to climb. It looks lonely by itself... I think it's called Mount Laussedat, but I could be wrong.
The slog continues over multiple bumps up Mount McArthur, but the summit is well worth it.
Before we knew it, we were at the summit!
Breathtaking summit pano into BC. You can see the Bugaboos and Purcell giants, as well as the giants around Roger's Pass. What a treat.
Looking over the Glacier de Poilus to countless more peaks. We could see Willingdon and Recondite to name a few. I'm sure you could find many more.
The Freshfield Icefield dominates the view at left, with many near 11000ers: Mount Freshfield, Mount Barnard, and Mount Mummery. A little to the right on the horizon, the pyramid of Mount Forbes is visible and then closer is Mount des Poilus and Mount Collie. I'm not exactly sure where or what Arete Peak is.
Isolated Peak and Whaleback Mountain (Day 2 objectives) look tiny from here. Over them is Mount Balfour, King of the Wapta (I will be climbing it one day) and just to its right is Mount Hector.
That lake by Yoho Peak is surprisingly quite big, but I'm not sure if it has a name.
And lastly, the Lake Louise peaks look like they are sandwiched in between the Presidents (right) and the Waputik Icefield group (left).
We stayed at this windless summit for over 30 minutes and just kept taking in the views. Here's a quote from the summit register that I really like: "It's hard to beat a Yoho Peak on a clear day" and I stand by that. This was probably the best view from a peak that I've ever had, which honestly puts it pretty high on my list even if we were to have just done it alone.
As we had lunch, we paged through the summit register and found that many people did the traverse and many the opposite way that we did. We also discussed about the rest of the day. Kiwetinok looked easy and completely dry compared to the glacier shown in Kane's book, so we figured we'd give it a shot and then hopefully have time to tack on Kerr at the end.
After some time, we reluctantly descended, but I could've easily spent the entire afternoon up there relaxing, spotting peaks, and just enjoying the view.
From the descent, we can see the rest of the peaks of our traverse. Note that Mount Pollinger really isn't a peak, but it still counts I guess.
I messed around on some snow at the col after our quick descent from Mount McArthur.
We soon came up to the crux and bypassed it on easy but exposed terrain to the left. I would've tried it, but it's even more exposed and the bypass was quicker and safer. If attempting the route with snow, the bypass option will likely be impossible, so here's what you're up against (fourth class).
A bit different, but familiar views from the summit of Mount Pollinger. The colours of the rock on Mount McArthur really caught my eye.
My dad didn't even realize this was a summit, so he just kept going while I stopped to take a couple pictures. I sped up to catch up with him as we walked down to the col for our third and hardest objective, Mount Kiwetinok.
Here was our route approximate up Kiwetinok Peak. Different than Kane's but it still worked very well. The whole thing is really a huge mix of steep, loose, and exposed second, third, and fourth class terrain.
From the col we had a beautiful view of Kiwetinok Lake and the Presidents.
For the Kiwetinok ascent, I won't show many pictures because it's very easy to get lost on the face, so your own route finding skills will be your best friend. There are also cairns if you need help on the way up, and again if you don't see any make sure to build your own so that you know how to get down. The pictures that I'll show are just meant as examples for what the terrain looks like, not really as a route that is set, because there are many viable options. And again, if you're looking to complete this ascent, make sure you've got a helmet on (loose rock) and make sure you're able to solo some fourth class.
We'd be zigzagging right and up to gain the slope, and then all the way left and out of the image.
We couldn't avoid this fourth class step on our route (it's bigger and harder than it looks). This part was pretty much right after the scree/slab bottom section.
A wide but exposed ledge that we traversed a fair ways on.
Typical loose, exposed terrain on the face.
We popped out on to the ridge a tad south of the summit, so all that was left was a short, airy walk to the true summit.
Made it! Summit 3 of the day. Just this morning I hadn't even thought I'd be up here.
Obligatory summit pano. Again, familiar scenery, but it wasn't getting old one bit.
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I like this pano because you can see the Amiskwi Valley up close, almost 1500m below.
After grabbing pictures and videos from the summit, I rejoined my dad, where we had some snacks, but made sure to save a bit of food for Mount Kerr. The summit views from here were not as good as from McArthur, but still very impressive. Before descending, we decided that since the weather was holding and it was still early, we'd be tacking on Kerr for sure, just in case we didn't get the chance to do anything the following day.
Beginning the steep and loose descent.
Back to the traverse.
After the traverse section, we didn't really follow our ascent route, instead, we found some easier weaknesses and went way over to the skier's left for a decent scree run to the col.
Back at the col, the evening red colours were already coming out at only 4:30pm!
Overall, I'm very glad that we did Kiwetinok and I think it's not really as bad as it seems. It is loose and gross, but it's very short and a worthy stop on this traverse.
Just below the col, I found a perfect water fill up waterfall coming from the snow and filled three litres up. I drank out of it right away without putting any aqua tabs in it, since the snow was right there and freshly melting, with no signs of algae or mold.
After this, we got a decent scree run to lose to fast elevation, but then ended up in a massive and slow boulder field.
It doesn't look like it, but some of these boulders are the size of houses.
The boulder field was actually very cool though, and there were tons of these stripes on the rock, something I don't think I've ever seen before. Yoho is full of surprises I guess.
We barely even slowed down at the pass and just kept powering to Mount Kerr. The view isn't even really that great here compared to what we'd seen earlier, so there was no need to stop. Our route up to Little Kerr follows a cairned "trail" just to the right of the ridge.
Typical slog. I'd gotten used to it now, but I was gassed out.
There are a couple scrambling sections on this route that I'd put at easy YDS III (somewhat loose rock, but not exposed).
We ended up losing the cairns and made our way up to the ridge as it flattened out. The first summit is very close, but Mount Kerr looks and is quite far away.
Gaining the ridge ended up being a bit of a mistake. We had to down climb this beast. Not exactly sure how we did it but yeah. This is also definitely avoidable.
The summit of Little Kerr came soon after. This is where we finished up the last of our food and as I looked over to Mount Kerr I decided that this would count as a separate peak. If I was going to count Pollinger, this one would have to count too.
Summit Pano from Little Kerr. It's cool to see all the different perspectives from the peaks around this traverse. I found it funny that there is a tiny glacier so low on this side of Mount Kerr.
We then started descending to grind out our final objective of the day under the warm evening sun, without any storms in sight. At this point I expected that the forecast would be completely wrong and that there would be no weather system rolling in, I mean just look at the blue sky right!
Most of the obstacles on the descent can be bypassed to the skier's left.
A short step on the lower section of Mount Kerr.
Theres' no way we were going to be gaining back all that elevation to return the same way! Instead, we'd be dropping down to the right from the col, and don't worry we checked pictures of what it looked like from Pollinger and it looked easy enough.
We came up against a lot of this type of terrain since we didn't circle around enough. Can you tell we're getting tired? I sure can.
After the final gruelling slog, we finally made it to the summit of Mount Kerr at 6:40 pm. The oversized cairn is so cool and the Presidents were loving the evening light.
Summit pano from Mount Kerr. Wow! The oranges and reds were really popping.
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Looking the other way was quite hazy (I believe due to the angle of the sun), but still nice.
Looking back at our entire traverse from this side now.
The pyramid shaped Mount Carnarvon is on my to-do list for scrambles.
Our entry on the register.
After a shot of fireball and some water, we got going, since we didn't want to get caught route finding down the mountain in the dark. As usual, we found an easier way down from the summit that involved easier scrambling. I kept looking over the the western outlier, really wanting to do it, but I knew that wouldn't fly, so I convinced myself that it isn't actually a peak (low prominence) and then went about the descent. From the col we dropped down on dirt and scree and made good time down to the valley below.
Here's where we descended from the col.
We then came across this ugly thing and got worried that we would get trapped over here. Luckily, there's some slippery scree at the left of the image and the slab isn't terribly steep.
We then traversed on the left side of this hidden tarn.
Looking back at Mount Kerr.
After descending that first cliff band, we started heading back around to the valley that we were aiming for. We then found our way down another small cliff band and then were on scree for the rest of the way.
Descending scree to get back to the valley. Mount Kiwetinok looks kinda scary.
We finally made it back to the valley where the Kiwetinok Trail is. Now we'd just have to find it... Mount Balfour at left and the Secretary Treasurer at right. Notice how the sky literally instantly started getting darker. The storm was coming for sure.
Finally back on the trail!
There is some beautiful scenery looking back towards Kiwetinok Pass.
The trail is very good, but has some steep sections. We made short work of it though, since we were rushing to get back before the storm.
Well, I guess the forecasters were right...
We cooked and ate dinner under this tree while it absolutely poured down around us. Frequent lighting scared me every once in a while.
After dinner, we tried to cover my bag as best as we could with both our rain covers and then hung it up. A bit wet, we crawled into our sleeping bags and I almost immediately passed out.
There was no time to reflect about our adventure this day, but looking back at it now it was probably the biggest, most epic day ever (which means it was my favourite too), I'll always have fond memories looking back on this, and it was a great way to start out our Takakkaw Falls backpacking trip.
For some reason the map and GPS disagree a bit, likely due to the topo lines on the map not being completely accurate of the height of all the peaks, but the entire day was around 27.5km with 2650m of elevation. Added up, that gives us 54 mountains units (1km = 1 unit and 100m elevation = 1 unit), which is our biggest mountain day yet.
Anyways, this one will forever be one of our epic days. If you have the scrambling skills and the grit/endurance, this trip will blow you away, but make sure to do it on a clear day.
And now for the second day of our trip.