Elevation: 2702 m / 8863 ft
Degree of Difficulty:
Moderate, with a long hike through a forest.
Time to Complete Round Trip: 7 - 9 hours
The hike to the mountain is at first pleasant; however the return hike is exhausting. Cache water along the way to avoid desert mouth. I was up here during some of the worst forest fires ever witnessed in British Columbia (late summer 2003). The smokey haze was thick, and the pictures below don't do justice to the conditions.
Where to Park:
Drive into good 'ole Exshaw, find Windridge road (very easy to spot since Exshaw is so small), turn left on Mount Lorette Drive and immediately park beside the foot bridge. The big Exshaw factory is directly in front of you.
The Route (see photos below):
Cross the bridge and follow an above-ground pipe northward, which will lead you to a dam. Climb above the dam and follow the creek path. Don't steal my water bottle that I left cleverly hidden. So cleverly that I forgot about the blasted thing. If you find it, email me (markisle@shaw.ca) I was quite fond of the thing.
Anyway, after a little more than an hour, look for a cairn on your left that takes you away from the creek and into an ever-widening valley. Plod along this for an eternity until you round the southwest side of Fable. Ignore Kane's incessant blabbering-on about Gap peak; that just confused the heck out of me.
Head up the avalanche gully to the Fable col.
Someone or something built a nifty little windbreak with scree rocks. Admire this, then head on up the slabby rock. Most of the route is straightforward from here. Occasionally you'll peak over an edge and have to backtrack a few feet to find the easiest way.
One cool feature is the vertical limbo you'll have to complete, through a very narrow crack.
Beyond that crack is a ledge with a drop on your right. I never worry about these except for the loose pebbly junk that always seems to be present when one is beside an airy drop. Next time I'm going to bring a broom. Someone might hurt themselves.
When at the summit cairn, look ahead and behind you. What is the highest point on the summit ridge? It all looked pretty equal in height and I wasn't sure, so I built the cairn up to assure that I was standing at the highest point.
A friend gave me this orange shirt.
It is a good shirt.
This shirt has been to some neat places like HERE.
(That almost sounds like a haiku)
I wore a white shirt for the grunt work, but donned the ceremonial orange shirt for the summit photos.
Gap, Gap, Gap . . . (oh shutup, Kane). Yeah, a traverse to an "unnamed" lesser peak called "Gap" is great for you uber-supermen types, but for me and mine, we'll call it a day at the summit, then head back for beer and hotdogs. By the way, the real Gap mountain is in the Highwood area, south Kananaskis (click HERE)
