Watermelon Peak 2020

Thu/Fri July 30th/31st, 2020 Watermelon Peak, 3094 metres

Synopsis: 4 out of 5 stars. The climb itself was interesting enough to be enjoyable, capped with a few airy moves on the traverse to the summit block. Alice Lake makes for a beautiful biv site and you are unlikely to run into too many people once out of the Dolomite drainage. Early season made for easy work on the snow vs rubble.

An odd year and with the heat and lots of snow up high, this was plan B but it worked out to be a great couple of days.

We chose to approach Alice Lake from Helen Creek and left the car 9:30 am, a great alternative to the nearby Helen Lake trail - more direct for our purposes and definitely no crowds. We didn't see anyone until Katherine Lake.

We stopped at one of the lake just past Katherine lake for a snack and a quick swim. One other party of day trippers were enjoying the lake and we watched two park warden's (I assume) on horseback trailing a pack horse each. My guess is that they were on their way to Lake Isabella, a pretty iconic thing to see in the back country.

After dropping down into the Dolomite drainage we crossed the creek 3 times, which was 2 times more than necessary and did take a little extra time switching to flip flops and back to boots. After heading north on the main trail we broke to the east to climb the humps up and over to Lake Alice.

In the end it was 6 hours to Alice Lake at a very easy pace and given the weather we chose to enjoy the beautiful afternoon and climb in the morning. It was warm enough to hang around in shirt sleeves and go for a swim or two.  There was just enough wind to keep the bugs at bay for most of the evening.

Next morning up and on the road at 9:30, a leisurely start. You can't really see the route from camp but once through the boulder field it becomes pretty evident. We took the ridge on the climbers left of the small glacier and avoided it altogether. Afterwards enjoyed snow slopes all the way to shortly before the false summit.

False summit to real involved a bit of an airy ridge walk (1 pepper by SM's measurement) and straightforward ascent using snow patches where possible, up in 2 1/2 hours. Enjoyed 1/2 hour on summit in shirt sleeves. Not a lot of activity in the summit register, we were first party of 2020 and only 3 parties in 2019. Great views in all directions, lucky enough to have a blue bird.

2 hours down largely following our footsteps. 

Sara Mae and I hung out in camp for an hour having some itchy ban and a swim. Decided on an alternative out and gained a large bench to the east of Cirque Peak and followed it North, made the col overlooking the highway at 2700 metres in 3 hours, another 2 1/2 hours down finding our way down cliff bands and eventually finding an old trail in the bush. Hit the highway and walked down to Bow Lake to hitch a ride back, not tough even in these COVID times.

Good times!