I'm not one to write trip reports for peaks that already have a lot of beta out there or a TR or two on the web. But in this case, I feel the need to share some information / beta of a peak that seems to have very little human traffic on its slopes & summit and next to no published information as well.

I am referring to unofficially-named "Black Ridge" (GR 388/295 or Fisher S1.5). This peak is an outlier of Fisher Peak, 1.5 km to the South. It is in the Evan-Thomas pass area, and is featured as "Unnamed (3002 m)" in the Green Bible of the Rockies (Rocky Mountains of Canada: South).

While deciding on what to set my sights on for this past weekend (August 11-13, 2017), I came up with a plan to camp along the Little Elbow River (1.5 km from the Romulus Campground), bag Mount Romulus on August 11, attempt Black Ridge on August 12, and bike out on August 13. I say "attempt" Black Ridge, because I was only able to find a small snippet of beta, that being from the First Ascent record of J. Martin up this peak in 1975, from the Rocky Mountains of Canada: South book. I was not able to locate any information of this peak via online sources or any other text. And this is partly why this peak attracted me so much. Some may say it's only an outlier of a more popular peak (Fisher Peak) and maybe doesn't deserve much credit, but it found its way into a Guidebook, has a recorded first ascent, and has an unofficial name. Good enough for me.

After bagging Mount Romulus on August 11, we set off from our camp on the morning of August 12. Already, we could tell it would be a different day than what we had on Romulus as the smoky haze in the sky was very apparent, not to mention, the air reeking of smoke. Upon reaching the Romulus backcountry campground, we ditched the bikes and crossed both rivers. If you follow Gillean Daffern's Kananaskis Country Trail Guide (Volume 2 - the red one) you should be able to locate what she calls the "High Line" trail from Romulus campground to Evan-Thomas Pass. I will admit, though, this route to Evan-Thomas Pass will leaving you looking for the correct trail at times. More on that later.

You'll stay on the High Line trail, pass the Mount Romulus ascent drainage, and continue high up on the slopes north and above the north fork of the Little Elbow River. You pass a multitude of drainages (some rocky, some avalanche slopes with deadfall) and have to piece together the trail at times. You'll also potentially doubt yourself at times because this trail is very overgrown at times. You will have battle wounds on your arms and legs from the number of branches reaching out over the trail. Once you finally reach a willowy meadow as described by Daffern, you should be able to pick up a well-beaten path for the remainder of your approach to Evan-Thomas Pass. More on this well-beaten path later on. Also, make noise if you head up here as we saw grizzly digs and up-turned rocks along the way. It also seems like a quiet area, with not that much traffic other than the odd horse party (some old horse droppings here and there).

Once we reached the general area of Evan-Thomas Pass (we weren't interested in the pass proper, more-so our ascent drainage up toward Black Ridge) we peeled off to refill our water stocks at the north fork of the Little Elbow River, and began making our way up the ascent drainage. I had plotted what I believed to be the correct drainage from the First Ascent information written in the guidebook. It is written as such (I also have a picture of the page in my Flickr album - link below): "Skied to pass at head of Evans-Thomas Creek, then contoured E into cirque between SW & S ridges. Then on foot, easy climb on snow to summit." With this info in-hand, we grovelled our way up the rocky drainage.

Once further up the drainage, we reached some small but slabby dry waterfalls. We were able to scramble up these with ease, until we reached a mini-canyon that we didn't bother finding a way through. We bypassed this on climber's right on some smooth slabs, reaching the alpine meadows above. Here we saw marmots cruising around and found an old Bighorn Sheep ram horn. More importantly, though, this is where we planned our scramble route from. We could have slogged our way up to the south ridge from the cirque, and followed this ridge to the false summit, then true summit, however upon inspection of this ridge route the day before from the summit of Mount Romulus, it didn't look all that friendly. Therefore, we decided to head up on a ramp route trending north-east from the meadows on ribs, ledges, slab and scree to a saddle just below the false summit on the SW ridge of our objective. The scramble up this ramp took longer than expected, with a bit of route-finding required to keep the scrambling difficulty at "moderate", but eventually, we reached the saddle just below the false summit. From here, the summit and its cairn were apparent, and off to the north-east of where we stood.

We ascended the SW ridge for a bit before peeling off to climber's left to bypass the false summit. Here we could have ascended slab, rubble and scree-covered slab to reach the ridge-proper, but I decided to use a break in the steep & smooth slabs to traverse and find myself just below the summit. This break in the slab was a little ledge that is obvious from above and we also used it on our descent to return back to the saddle. You definitely would not want to take a spill here however, as it would be a long ride down on a long, smooth slab. It's obvious in my Flickr photo album.

Upon traversing the slab, we ground our way up some rubble and more slab to reach the summit ridge, and within a minute, the true summit itself. As we were being mauled by noseeum flies, we quickly took apart the cairn looking for a register but found nothing apart from a 1974 Canadian quarter coin sandwiched neatly between two flat rocks. According to the "Green Bible", the first ascent was claimed by J. Martin in 1975. Was this left by him? Who knows, but it's kind of cool to think so. Regardless, I left the first ascent information and our summit log entry in the cairn for future parties to contribute to. The views were terrible unfortunately, as the smoke from the forest fire(s) led to a thick haze in the air (we could barely see the Opal Range immediately to the west, across the Evan-Thomas valley). Another interesting note is that the guidebook lists this summit as 3002 meters, however my GPS recording at the summit pegged it as 2919 meters. I've also seen maps which label the summit elevation in the 2600 m range, while the top map contour lines clearly show it as being greater than 2850 m.

The descent was uneventful, as we re-traced our ascent route until back at Evan-Thomas Pass. From here we made our way back on the good trail until we reached the willowy meadow again. Here, there appeared to be another trail coming into the meadow that we did not come in on. I assumed this was might be the correct "high line" trail as described by Daffern, as we had issues at times with the trail we took on the way in, and it lined up with a pre-loaded track I had uploaded to my GPS. So we followed it. It stayed well below our approach trail, and made a bee-line down toward the north fork of the Little Elbow River. The trail was good for a ways, until (in typical fashion) we reached a portion that was completely washed out, most likely due to the big flood. From here, we decided to forego tramping through the river, and instead slogged up a steep river-bank and met up with our approach trail again. From here, we once again pieced the trail together with the help of my GPS recording from earlier, and made our way back to camp.

Stats from the day: 24.3 km total travel (from our camp >1 km east of Romulus campground). Gross elevation gain (including all ups / downs): 1982 meters, round-trip. Summit elevation: 2919 meters. Total time: 10 hours & 35 minutes. Scramble difficulty: moderate.

As promised, the link to my Flickr album with photos of this trip is here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsm6ug4ve

GPS track can be provided. Send me a message.

This sounds like an entertaining trip! I've not been up the Little Elbow valley before, but I do remember looking over maps at the many side valleys and ridges in the area.