Nigel Peak

 September 10, 2022

We camped at the Icefield campsite. We got a beautiful view of the peak from our campsite as the sun was going down.

We were supposed to wake up at 6am but somehow slept through our alarm and for a total of 11h. We woke up at around 8am and slowly got ready for the trip thinking it was going to take somewhere between 5-7h with no issues. We started at around 9:30am.







We made our way to a meadow leading up to the base of the scree slope we needed to walk up.




































The slope was so steep that with almost every step you slid back a bit. I was very stressed and scared the whole way up. At times I thought about bailing but we had just read Mark Twight’s book about extreme alpinism and “failing upwards” and I felt like I was being overly sensitive about the hike. Kai was more confident and was able to walk up most of the time upright… I had to get on my hands about halfway up the scree slope towards the ridge.



Once on the ridge, we walked along the ridge towards the peak.

It was a relief to be on relatively flat terrain.












We scrambled up with no issues.
                                                  
































On the way down, we took another path following Giant’s Gate’s gpx. We went down a scree slope into a valley. At this point we were both sick of scree slopes. I cursed loudly at some point and also snapped at Kai for talking to me while I almost tripped (“maybe we should just not talk”) even though my stress and irrational fear of the scree slope was to blame.


We walked towards Wilcox Lake, and gained the ridge again from a lower point to make our way to the meadow leading to Wilcox Pass trail.

We made it out in one piece but decided to avoid scree slopes for the rest of the season.



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