Elevation Gain: 1,328m
Distance: 16.9km
Total Time: 9 hours 43 minutes
Date: April 13th, 2025
After a long approach in the day before, Andrea and I were camped out at the western side of Bluemantle Peak. Our plan was to get on to the Icemantle Glacier for the day and climb up the tallest summit: Greenmantle. A party of 5, that we never ran into had cut a skin track all the way onto the glacier so that morning we didn’t have much in the way of route finding to worry about. It was a perfect sunny and glorious day and so we set off from camp around 9 in the morning. The first order of business was climbing up around 350m to the upper shoulder of Three Bears Mountain and then to traverse around the north east side.
Both of us were feeling the previous days effort, but we cruised up without much issue. The short traverse across the steep NE side proved to be tricky with a rock hard slope, but we managed without tumbling down the face. As we wrapped around to the north side we caught a face full of panoramic glacier views. The size was deceiving and the landscape was breathtaking. To our left a long bench system seemed to offer a reasonable route up to Greenmantle.
Andrea lead the way, but just as we reached the half way point, we had some uncertainty about whether it would go. Andrea was feeling tired at this point and didn’t want to go all the way to find out we’d have to turn back. Meanwhile, I had read in the summer time it’s quite common to connect Three Bears with Greenmantle via their common ridge. That seemed like a reasonable alternative and so we committed to our grave route finding mistake and headed up towards Three Bears.
The route up was through a broad low angle snowfield where we then crested onto the south side and a hanging glacier awaited us. Looming above the glacier was a massive cornice that threatened most approach options. We decided to skin up a slightly steeper slope to avoid it all together. That landed us on the south east ridge and we skinned and boot packed our way to the last summit section.
Here large cornices hung precariously onto the summit block and so I opted to don crampons and an ice axe to facilitate staying lower on the steeper but more solid slopes and rock. With a few sections of scrambling I was able to avoid the hazards and we soon both stood on the summit. Looking towards Greenmantle it was clear immediately that it would not be happening on this day. Between us and the summit stood a long ridge system of cornices that would force us onto vertical rock to avoid them. I was a bit disappointed to have come all this way and not reach the main prize, but we had immaculate weather and conditions. In the grand scheme of things it was no loss at all.
We left the summit and headed for some dry rock to hang out and soak in the views for awhile. To the south west the massive expanse of the Misty Icefield captured our imagination. We could just spot the party of 5 making their way up to Snowcap Peak. Their tiny dots gave scale to the mass of rock and snow in front of us. Yet another area added to the list for exploration!
