Mount Sparrowhawk

On May 21, we summited Mount Sparrowhawk.  That's six peaks of the goal for 20 Peaks in 2023 completed.  Sparrowhawk was the most challenging scramble so far this year for a couple reasons.     

First, although this scramble had a little less height gain than Grotto, a lot of the height gain on this scramble was through scree, talus and deep snow.  Grotto had trails.  Even through scree, there was always a nice trail to follow.  Sparrowhawk required some route finding and, despite our best efforts to find easy ways around the challenging terrain, there was a lot of churning up scree and post-holing through the deep snow.

Second, Sparrowhawk is more remote and less travelled than Grotto.  This led to the lack of well defined trail and the need for more route finding.  It also made it feel more adventurous.  We were the only people on this peak even though it was Sunday of May long weekend.

This mountain is just south of Little Lougheed, a smaller summit we did a four weeks earlier.  We saw Sparrowhawk from the top of Little Lougheed and wondered if there was a scramble route on it.  When we found it in our guide books, we decided to go for it.