Elevation Gain: 7,389m
Distance: 80km
Total Time: 12 days
Date: June 30th to July 12th, 2025
On the 11th day of our Kapella Headwaters traverse, Andrea and I woke up to dreary conditions. We were posted up at the base of a large wind scoop on a tilted snowy camp site. Most of our gear already soaked and the fresh grizzly tracks just beyond our tent were top of mind. The night before we had rushed down off of Peak 7400 to the south as the weather quickly closed in. Now we had a dilemma to face. The next day an afternoon window, albeit still rainy, would open up and might allow us to fly out. Otherwise, we’d need to stay put in our dilapidated camp site for at least 2 more days, while the next system rolled through. The desire to leave far outweighed the desire to stay, but we knew that would me an extended day on exposed ridges getting soaked by the rain. Our plan of attack was to get to pleasant heather meadows just east of our pick up spot at Kimsquit Lake. Standing between us and this site were three summits: “Hindsight Mountain”, “Tipso Peak” and Peak 7400 (yes another one) east of Kimsquit. In Mark and Mike’s trip into this area, there was some ambiguity about which of those three summits were climbed. They had mentioned climbing Foresight Mountain to the north and then Peak 7400 but made no mention of the other two. We surely thought they would have climbed Tipso Peak and likely skipped “Hindsight Mountain” and so there was some desire to not bypass Hindsight. In any event it looked to be a straight forward walk up with a touch of scrambling near the top. Although the clouds obfuscated the upper reaches of the mountain.
Committed to getting to greener grasses, we packed up and started our ascent up tame boulders on the south side of Hindsight. To my surprise the conditions actually improved. My pants dried out, the sun briefly broke through and it was shaping up to be an amenable outing. However, that quickly changed as we rose up through the cloud layer. The terrain steepened and the black lichen covered rock became down right treacherous. As we climbed higher and higher, the weather deteriorated further and we were soon contending with blowing gusts and a driving rain. Within the hour I was properly soaked to the core.
Close to the summit, the ridge narrowed into sections of 4th class. The visibility was down to 30m or so and we couldn’t make out better alternatives. We made several hair raising moves through the steep rock which was often loose or a proverbial ice rink. The crux was a section of slab with a loose quartz dyke and a deep void of sky on either side. We made delicate moves up in our heavy packs and let out a huge sigh of relief when we reached tamer ground on the summit ridge.
Andrea found some shelter out of the wind in between a cornice and the north ridge and we slunk in to figure out the next plan. Neither one of us wanted to contend with that terrain anymore, but we were now in the summit and had to get off. We couldn’t wait any thing out either as we were positively soaked. This was getting to a dangerous point, but there was some solace in that we had a shelter and one layer of dry clothes to work with in our bags. With that we pressed on to the west side.
Ahead was a section of knife edged and slick rock to get off the summit. The visibility was nil and I was having a hard time making out any other options. Eventually we spotted a snow finger that might allow us to bypass the ridge. We took a chance and descended down that and then around the knife edge where at last some relaxed terrain appeared before us. As we descended it felt like the crux was behind us and we reached the snowy col between Tipso Peak and Peak 7400 with great relief. It was at this point that the name “Hindsight Mountain” came to fruition. Although we’d later find out that Mark and Mike had climbed hindsight, but not the taller and more prominent Tipso Peak; much to our surprise.
From the col we head up to Tipso Peak next…