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Mighty MOG Gets First Ascent
By Dougald MacDonald
Rob Owens and Eamonn Walsh have climbed another big “alpine cragging” route in the Canadian Rockies—and possibly made the first ascent of a peak little more than 30 minutes’ drive from Banff. The two climbed the north face of an 8,793-foot peak in the Chickadee Valley, off the Radium Highway, via a 2,000-vertical-foot mixed route that Owens had spotted while ski touring last spring. Their route linked ice and mixed pitches to a snow ledge, where they traversed right to the central weakness in the face. This steep gully contained two M6+ crux pitches, plus one short section that they aid-climbed for speed but likely would have gone free at M8 or so. Owens described the outing as “an awesome day, ice splatterings on every pitch but only two ice screws used on the entire route. A couple of hard pitches with lots of easier mixed (M4) in between, which allowed us to get to the top and down in 16 hours.” They graded the climb IV+ M6+ A1.
The two found no cairns or other evidence of a prior ascent on the peak, nor did guidebooks mention it, so they they’ve tentatively named it Mt. MOG, for “Men of Girth.” “I thing this style of alpine climbing, i.e., lesser-known, lower-elevation peaks with still decent-sized faces, is really catching on up here,” Owens said. “For many of the still active but seasoned veterans of the M-generation, this is a great alternative to bolting yet another mixed route.” This season, Owens and Steve Holeczi climbed a similar route, the 12-pitch Zeitgeist (IV+ M7- WI5 R), on a previously ignored face on Mt. Bell.
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