High on Mount Daly – descending – 7 hours into a 12 hour day. Yoho
Lower Niles meadows – good trail to right leads up to upper meadows. Yoho
Mount Daly Scramble Crux Yoho Park 2017 LH weakness Difficult and RH Moderate
Do not underestimate Mt Daly. There is no trail after Niles col and you sidehill down and across broken rock, snow and a small glacier. need to have crampons or microspikes to cross in morning or go down and around. The up past the pyramid is reasonably solid but the scree fan is steep loose dirt or hardpan with unstable broken quartzite rock. We went to left to shorten slog but not pleasant. The big ledge is good but does have one step over gap which is worse coming back as both sides are slanted. Two ways up –first weakness(left) is difficult and second (right) is moderate with lots of loose rock on black ledges. To access the RH weakness need to do the one long step over gap.
Broken Quartzite is terrible rolly scree and above the black ledges are large unstable blocky quartizte boulders most of way up to ridge. The rest of the way to first summit is just smaller broken rock but it never gets easy except for snow patches.
Second summit(North) may be same height or lower but does have cairn and register. Some M/D downclimbs and exposure on ridge.
We hiked into upper meadows ~ leisurely 4 hours and bivied – great tent spots on grass with running water. Dave did Niles in < 2.5 RT(we had done it before)
Next day – Sat did Daly and out – 12 hours.
Picked fri/sat partly based on smoke animation on Enviro Canada site as predicted north winds/flow and smoke was all cleared out for both days.
About 30 km RT and 1500 m – camp to Daly was 1070 m with loss and regain of 90 m and regain of 100 m on way out.
Pics – most are Dave or Wietse – thanks
