Home»Outings in the Canadian Rockies»Summits and Such»59. Tiara Peak

• November 24th 2007
• Tiara Peak
• Height 2533 m or 8308ft/ Height Gain 800m or 2624ft
• Time: 7:00 - 14:30
• Climbed with Vern

Last week when I was doing Belmore Brown I was thinking of doing Tiara peak as well. But Phil wasn't up for it so I had to return this week. Luckily Vern was willing to come along and he could bag both peaks in one day.

With an early start using our head lamps we were quickly on our way to the base of BB where I would head up the ridge of Tiara while Vern was bagging Belmore Brown. By the time I gained the ridge (and lost my crampon bag due to stupidity and strong winds) Vern almost caught up to me, that guy is a machine. After a quick break we headed towards the cliffs of Tiara.

Because the slopes were getting steeper and the snow harder we pulled out our crampons and went slowly along the cliffs. After that it was an easy scramble to the summit. Hard cold winds made us take some pictures and quickly leave to find some shelter again.

On our way down we decided to take Andrews alternate descend, bad choice! While the snow was still hard at first it turned into soft facetted snow lower down. When I was glissading I triggered a small avalanche and we decided to get out of that gully (terrain trap) as soon as possible. Luckily nobody got hurt and once we reached tree line we slowed down a bit. The walk out was long but nice.