On June 29, 2025, after years of studying the ridge from the highway as we drove by, we finally climbed the South Ridge to the summit of Mount Lorette in Kananaskis. It was our first summit using a rope and trad gear. It felt great to put together skills we’ve been practicing such as movement skills, multi-pitch systems, placing trad gear and building anchors to reach a summit.
The route involves scrambling and rock climbing. It alternates between less technical scrambling or walking sections and steeper rock sections. There is a lot of exposure.
Beta Summary (details follow):
- 5.6, PD+
- We did six pitches, some folks do less. It depends on your comfort level with exposed scrambling.
- Approach: the shortest approach is crossing the Kananaskis River near Lorette Ponds but the river was high when we were there so we rode our bikes from the Troll Falls trail head.
- Pro: we found one bolted belay and another single bolt but otherwise, we placed gear. There were usually good places for gear.
- Anchors: we found one bolted, the rest we built using gear and/or natural features.
- Gear: we used cams only (up to #3), no nuts. As beginners, we brought a lot of gear and it was good to have a selection.
- Rope: We used a lighter weight alpine rope, 8.6 mm diameter. We carried 60 meters but could have gotten by with less.
- Descent: Walk-off.
Planning
This is a popular route and there is a lot of beta out there including posts and You Tube videos by people who have climbed it. Most of those people seem to scramble more and belay less than we did. Some even soloed the route. Some of the posts made the route seem pretty casual but we didn’t want to underestimate it. We took a conservative approach, packing a lot of gear and giving ourselves a lot of time.
Here are some of the posts and websites that describe the route:
- https://anugara.net/lorette.htm
- https://www.summitpost.org/south-ridge-ii-5-4/166660
- https://www.thecrag.com/en/climbing/canada/kananaskis-country/area/3155673309
Other Useful Websites:
- You Tube – search Mount Lorette South Ridge and you will find some interesting videos
Guide Books that describe the route:
- Rockies Central, The Climbers Guide to the Rocky Mountains of Canada by David P. Jones
- Selected Alpine Climbs in the Canadian Rockies by Sean Dougherty
- More Scrambles in the Canadian Rockies by Andrew Nugara describes the route that is used for the descent
Mount Lorette and the trail heads to access it are located within Bow Valley Wildland Provincial Park. A Kananaskis Conservation Pass is required to park your vehicle at either of the trail heads. Purchase your pass online here.
Time Budget
When Dan and I are doing full day climbs, I like to estimate how much time each segment of the day will take us. Then I track our progress against the budget to see if it was realistic. This helps me know for the future how long it takes us to move over different terrain. Also, if things go sideways (for example, we get off route or delayed), I know if we will have enough time to complete our objective or if we’re better off to retreat.
To create the budget, I use a framework posted on Facebook by legendary mountain guide and route-builder, Mark Klassen. He wrote, “A fastish average pace is
- one hour for every 4km horizontal
- plus one hour for every 400m elevation gain in non-roped or glacier walking terrain,
- less 10-15% for descending.
- Pitching is 20-60 mins per pitch depending on difficulty, looseness, protection/anchor availability.
- Raps 10-60 mins, same issues in play.
- Add 20-60 mins per screw up, expect one per day. Add one screw up per lack of star: no stars = 3 screw ups. I have found the best way to move fast in the mountains is to reduce screw ups and when they do happen fix them as fast as possible!”
Using this framework, I estimated our times as follows:
| SECTION | MOVEMENT | TIME |
|---|---|---|
| Approach | Bike 4 km and then hike about 1.2 km. Elevation gain about 550 meters. | 2.5 hours |
| Climbing | I estimated we would climb 4 pitches and scramble the rest. | 4 hours |
| Descent | The walk off and bike ride back totaled about 7.2 km. | 2 hours |
| TOTAL ESTIMATED TIME | 9.5 hours |
I decided to budget one hour per pitch of climbing. I thought that would give us plenty of time for route-finding, locating good places to belay and building anchors using trad gear or natural features. We had practiced these skills extensively on our last trip to Joshua Tree but this would be the first time we climbed a mountain using these skills.
This gave us a total time estimate of 9.5 hours. The guidebook by David P. Jones, mentioned above, suggests 6 – 8 hours so given that this was our first outing of this type, I felt 9.5 hours was a reasonable estimate.
We decided to start the route at 7:30 am which would get us back to the van by 5:00 pm and home in time for dinner.
Approach
The shortest approach is to park at Lorette Ponds and cross the Kananaskis River. However, the river was very high and we decided to park instead at the Troll Falls trail head, accessed from the road to Nakiska ski area. This added about 4 km to our route each way but we decided to ride our bikes for this section.
We were the first ones at the parking lot on a beautiful day in late June.
The bikes got a thorough check over before we left.
Mount Lorette is visible in the distance.
We biked along the Stoney Trail. It is a dirt road most of the way, closed to public traffic. It stays under or near the power lines. It is mostly flat or gently rolling.
After about 15 minutes of riding, we stopped to look at our route. It roughly follows the skyline from right to left.
After another 15 minutes, we spotted a cairn at the side of the trail marking a faint path heading toward the ridge. The large pine tree left of center has a pink ribbon on it.
Here we parked the bikes in the woods and headed in on foot. We hiked through the forest to the base of the ridge.
We followed the faint trail through the forest for about 20 minutes until it seemed that the trail was continuing up the valley past our route.
We left the trail and bush-whacked to the base of the ridge.
We hiked up the steep but open lower slopes.
Then we headed up into more forest where we picked up a faint trail.
We hiked through more grassy slopes and more forest, always fairly steep uphill. Finally, the trees began to open and the trail turned rocky.
We started to see where the trees ended and the climbing / scrambling section began.
The final bit of the approach to tree line.
We reached the start of the climb/scramble section after just over 2 hours of riding and hiking.
The Climb
Mount Lorette was not like other climbs we have done in that there was no definite “start climbing here” point. When we climbed Mother’s Day and Escargot Corner, two trad routes in Banff, we hiked to the start of the climb and then pulled out our gear and put on climbing shoes. We climbed the designated pitches, multi-pitch style, and then put on our approach shoes for the descent.
Mount Lorette was not so well defined. There were scrambling sections and climbing sections but there were also “should we climb or scramble this?” sections.
As we approached the start of the rock, I was eager to pull out the rope and tie in but we opted to scramble this first rock step. It turned out to be a good decision. We took the obvious cleft just left of middle in the photo and it was fun, solid scrambling.
Here Dan makes his way up that first section.
I followed, topping out on a flat-ish area above.
Looking ahead, we saw a flatter, walking section going around to the right side of the photo and past the little trees.
Coming up to the next steeper section.
Still a scramble here and no need for the rope yet.
Looking ahead, we continued to hike.
We came back onto the ridge and got to the first section that we wanted to belay. It was Dan’s turn to lead first and he set out up the steeper rock. We had practiced at home coiling the rope over our shoulders and tying it off to shorten it. This kept the rope readily accessible and made it easier to switch between climbing and scrambling.
After this, things got a little more involved. Dan brought me up and we walked for a short distance before he put me on belay and I headed up a steep section. I climbed up to the famous gendarme and I’m sorry to say, I did not stop to take a photo. There is a great shot of it on Andrew Nugara’s website here. Scroll down his trip report to see a photo of a sling over the gendarme, protecting the climbers, and another shot of a climber going over/around the gendarme.
When I was leading it, I couldn’t figure out how to protect it. Sure, I had carefully read Nugara’s trip report ahead of time but the idea to put a sling over it and clip the sling completely left my mind. Also, all thoughts of taking photos were gone. I focused fully and completely on the climbing.
After coming over the gendarme, I hiked along the ridge a short distance and put in some gear to protect Dan when he came over the gendarme after me. Then I found a place to build an anchor with three good cams and brought him up.
We felt the gendarme was tricky, mostly because of the hair-raising exposure. It had good holds and was only a little awkward.
Dan led again after that. It was a short pitch, I believe. We came to a place where the ridge went up steeply and looked a lot harder than the 5.6 grade. There was a walk-able slope that skirted around the right side of the ridge and we decided to check it out.
Coming around on the right, we found a pretty good trail leading up the slope and no obvious places to get back up onto the ridge. We continued up the trail, wondering if we were off route and would have to backtrack.
The trail led to a bay with potential climbing up onto the ridge. We decided to go for it and Dan jumped on lead again.
Here is the end of the bay and where we decided to climb back up left to get back onto the top of the ridge.
There seemed to be an obvious cleft/chimney to go up. But we were still worried we were not on route.
The climbing was awkward going up these steps and along a narrow ledge overhung by a bulging rock face. But a little further up, Dan found two bolts. He made an anchor and brought me up.
We were relieved to find the bolts as we thought that meant we were on the proper route.
Looking up at the top of the ridge from the two bolt belay. I planned to climb this cleft to get us back onto the ridge.
That turned out to be a lot more difficult that it looked from here.
In the photo below, the rope shows the line I took, first up the nice crack near the bottom. Then I had to leave the cleft and go right across slabs. This was the spiciest climbing of the day with no pro and I went slowly and carefully across to the right. You can see the rope stretching up and right across the slab in the photo. As I came around onto the slab above this point, I saw a beautiful, shiny bolt. I clipped it with relief and continued to where the climbing was easier.
In hindsight, I should have gone right and climbed that lovely crack just right of center in the photo. It probably would have offered easier passage to that bolt and more opportunities to place gear.
After that, it was easier climbing back onto the ridge and along to a good belay stance with a couple of decent cracks to build an anchor.
NOTE: Although going to the right, we found bolts and got back onto the ridge, this was not the route described by Nugara in his web post and I believe a slight variation from the first ascent described in the 1953 Canadian Alpine Journal.
Nuguara describes a gap that was bridged by a chockstone when he was there (it has apparently since fallen) and a finger crack traverse. I kept waiting to find these features but never did. I have to conclude that they were on the portion of the ridge that we bypassed by going right.
First Ascent
The first ascent of the South Ridge was in 1952 by a group from the Calgary Section of the Canadian Alpine Club led by R. C. Hind. I’ve heard stories of the bad-ass qualities of early climbers in the Canadian Rockies. First of all, they didn’t have the technical gear we have today. I’m sure Hind didn’t place any cams as he led across the ridge top. And they did first ascents of complicated routes with tricky climbing which they graded 5.5. If these people thought a route was tough, it was probably crazy-hard.
In Hind’s report on the first ascent of this route, he writes, “Last year we tried the impressive south ridge of Mt. Lorette but our party was large and we abandoned the attempt after some spectacular climbing. This year on the first day of a two-day outing a smaller party returned to the attack on May 10th. Barbara Richardson, John Dodds and I made up one rope while Len Keeling led the second with John Manry and Collin McAllister.”
Describing the climbing, he said, “An overhanging and very difficult crack, a bit to the right of the ridge, took us past an impasse onto the ridge again. Len found this not to his liking and made a variant which he said was easier but on which I cannot commend as I had already gone the only way I could see to go. The climbing continued steep and exposed on a very narrow ridge but with good rock. A hand traverse of eight feet under a huge block on the ridge, followed by a short vertical step, brought us to a fine, level grassy spot for lunch. One hour from here, on steep rock nearly all the way, brought us to the summit at 12:40, five and a half hours from the car and over three hours of good stiff climbing.”
Looking back down the ridge from my belay spot, we can see Highway 40 winding through the valley and the light green line of the Stoney Trail where we left our bikes.
We decided to pitch out this next section and Dan set out on lead. Notice his sling over the top of the highest rock in the photo. Great natural feature protection.
It was a good thing we climbed on rope because the section after the part in the photo was steep and very exposed. We would not have been comfortable scrambling unroped there.
After the short but spicy section, we came to a flat area. We saw that the next section of the ridge was hiking and scrambling.
We stopped for some lunch and then recoiled the rope on our shoulders.
One lesson we learned the hard way was not to drop the coiled rope on the ground. It becomes a tangled ball of spaghetti. It is much better, and ultimately less time consuming, to drop the coils one at a time.
A faint trail is visible on this easier part of the ridge.
This section we hiked up, staying on the right side where the loose rock met the more solid rock.
We walked these easier sections roped together for convenience. It was quick and easy to drop the coils (one at a time) and start belayed climbing rather than put the rope away and take it out again each time.
Soon we could see that there would be another steep section to climb.
We decided again to pitch it out rather than scramble.
Dan led and said he thought maybe he could have been comfortable without the rope. When I climbed up after him, I was glad for the rope. It was a bit awkward and reachy.
Above that pitch, a final easier slope led to the summit. We put away the rope and gear and hiked up.
Finally after nearly nine hours on the move, we stood on the summit.
The climbing had taken a lot longer than my budget. Instead of the four hours I had planned, we had taken six hours to do the climbing section. We climbed six pitches instead of the four I estimated.
We had moved slowly and carefully, taking our time placing gear and building anchors, and we stopped to change our shoes often, preferring to wear climbing shoes for the belayed pitches and approach shoes for the hiking parts.
I was glad we took time to make decisions. I felt that everything had gone pretty well. Also, I was glad we had left early and given ourselves a lot of daylight.
After fun and successful climbing, we lounged around on the summit for a while, finishing the food we had packed and letting the feeling of victory settle in. I had wanted this climb for a long time and it was finally complete. The sun was warm and it was good to feel that the uphill part of our day was done.
Now all that was left was a walk-off descent down a scramble route. Easy, right?
Descent
Sometimes I feel like the mountains know if I am underestimating or not giving enough respect to some aspect of a route. I have messed up descents in the past by focusing my research and planning on the climb and not paying enough attention to how we will get down.
Dan noticed the descent trail first. He pointed to a trail through the scree and talus heading down the west side of the summit ridge. At first I thought it was not our route. I had pictured the descent going along the top of the ridge and then dropping down the east side from a saddle. I think one of the trip report posts I had read described it that way.
But the trail was so well worn, and the ridge looked sketchy. We opted to drop down on the trail. This was a good decision.
The photo shows the west side of the ridge that extends north (northeast) from the summit. You can make out the trail in the rocks at the bottom of the photo as it drops down from the summit.
The trail improved a lot after this. It traversed scree and slab, taking a beautiful, easy line just below the ridge. I got so focused on following this trail that I didn’t bother checking the GaiaGPS map on my phone or the AllTrails route that I had downloaded ahead of time for the purpose of finding the proper descent trail. Oops.
Alltrails showed the route going back up a small peak and then dropping down the east side. I had walked right past that point to the next saddle. Oh dear.
The trail did seem to lead to that far saddle. When we looked down, we saw what seemed like a continuation of the trail leading down small ledges to a scree slope below. We decided to go for it.
The ledges went ok although they were covered with so much loose gravel and scree, the going was slow. In fact, it was impossible to descend without kicking off a bunch of loose rocks that slid and bounced and seemed to pick up speed on their way down the mountain before crashing over a cliff far below at the bottom of the slope. I got a shiver down my spine as I imagined myself sliding out of control, bouncing down the slope and plummeting over the cliff at the bottom.
At the bottom of the ledges, I pulled out my phone. I wanted to double check the route because this didn’t quite feel right. I quickly saw that we were off route and should be in the next gully over.
This map is from my GaiaGPS app. The light blue line is the route I had intended to follow, based on the existing route in the app. It is similar to, but not quite the same as, the AllTrails route.
The purple line is where we ended up going. Darn.
Once we realized the mistake, we made a plan to get back on route. We traversed the super slidey scree. I had a few tense moments when my feet slid out from under me and I feared I would lose control. It was bad enough that I vowed from that moment on to study the descent routes as carefully as I studied the ascent portions and to never ever underestimate a descent again.
Dan was much more steady on his feet and he led us safely around the mountain to the proper gully.
Here we have come back around onto the descent route showing on the map. The rock is much firmer here and traversing is not so difficult.
It still looked pretty steep below us so Dan hiked across to get a better view of the drop down into the gully. He could see from this angle that we were on the right track.
This is looking down the gully of the correct descent route. Still a lot of loose rock to navigate.
In the valley below, you can see Highway 40 and the pale green line of the Stoney Trail where our bikes were waiting. So close but still so far!
From this point, we put our heads down and descended the loose rock that gradually became less steep as we dropped down to the creek.
This photo is looking back up the descent gully at the point where the creek magically appears from beneath the rock and begins its flow to the valley below.
We eventually picked up a trail leading down through the rocks. It curved up along the right side of the creek (facing downhill) and stayed high, heading into the forest, instead of dropping into the rocky creek bed. It was a relief to walk on a firm forest trail and leave the loose rock.
We lost the trail in the thick underbrush and bush-whacked the last few hundred meters to the Stoney Trail. I was so happy to be on that trail. We looked forward to arriving at our bikes and cruising out the last 4 km.
One last kick in the shins. When we got to our bikes, my front tire was completely flat. I prepared myself for a long 4 km, pushing the bike. But Dan was able to ride it carefully and slowly, keeping the tire under the rim to not damage it.
The last 4 km weren’t exactly a cruise but at least we didn’t have to walk our bikes. Still, this cost us some time against our budget. We lost a lot of time as well, getting off route. The descent ended up being closer to 5 hours than the 2 hours I had expected.
Challenges & Screw Ups
The mountains can be harsh teachers. This time, we didn’t have to pay too high a price for our lessons. We made it back to the van safely with plenty of daylight.
Our obvious screw up was going the wrong way on the descent. That increased our risk and added time to our day. I had glanced at the AllTrails route that went up to the top of the small peak but I dismissed it, thinking we should be descending from a saddle, not a peak. Also, the AllTrails route and the GaiaGPS routes were slightly different, which made me believe that one or both were not accurate. Next time, I will at least go over and check out the marked routes before dismissing them.
Not screw ups but something to improve on – we should have looked more carefully at different route options. After the gendarme, when we went around to the right, we should have taken a closer look at the ridge and potential lines there. Also, my second pitch, I took a harder line than I had to. I should have spent a little more time on the bottom and looked at every possible route back onto the ridge. I was focused on climbing the cleft in front of me and did not consider other options.
Final Thoughts
The day after our climb, we sat down and talked about what went well and what didn’t. Particularly, I wanted to explore why it had taken us so long on the climbing section. If we want to climb bigger, harder routes in the future, we are going to have to move more quickly and become more efficient.
We felt that most of things we spent time on were appropriate. We just went slowly and took our time. As we climb more alpine routes and get better at it, we will get faster.
We chose to pitch out the steep sections rather than scramble and we felt in hindsight that those were good decisions.
Also, we took our time building anchors. We are new to this style of climbing. The routes we have done in the past – Mother’s Day, Escargot Corner and a couple of trad routes on Mount Yamnuska – all had bolted anchors. As we get better at building anchors and more accustomed to finding good places to stop and belay, we will get quicker.
We moved slowly and carefully over exposed sections. We stopped to change our shoes, using climbing shoes for steeper sections and then changing back into approach shoes for walking sections. All of this added to our time.
In the end, we were happy with how we climbed the route. We did not rely on luck. Although at times it felt daunting, we had the skills we needed to climb the route and we made good decisions.
We are looking forward to our next route and getting better at alpine climbing. We are considering the south peak of Mount Edith. The south ridge route is reported to have bolted belays and moderate climbing at 5.5.
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