Bastille Mountain - Scramble

Mt. Delphine

July 22 Raff and I had big plans to day trip the gorgeous Purcell 11,000'er, Mount Delphine, but big washouts on the logging roads in upper McDonald Creek changed our plans.
After a lot of thought and discussion, we decided to drive back to Invermere, load up on coffee, and head out to Jumbo Pass.  The weather was perfect, and the sky completely clear, so a trip up to the beautiful Jumbo Pass area sounded like a great plan. Raff has been to Jumbo Pass before, and even had ascended Bastille Mountain before, and we had climbed Commander Mountain and Jumbo Mountain together back in 2010; so I was very keen to see the south side of the Jumbo Mtn. area.

Bastille Mtn.

Again using "Hikes Around Invermere and the Columbia River Valley" by Aaron Cameron and Matt Gunn for road directions, approach and scrambling beta; we parked at the Jumbo Pass parking area and we setting out at 2:45pm.  Same time as our start time on Indian Head Mtn. the day before. Great trail gave us quick time to the pass.  We had a quick lunch then blasted up to the small col west of the 4 peaks of Bastille Mtn. The views all around from Jumbo Pass and Bastille are mind blowingly beautiful; very, very scenic region.  We took lots and lots of photo breaks and dreamt of climbing the surrounding beauties.

Karnak and Jumbo

We seeked out the toughest scrambling and there were definite sections of difficult scrambling, but overall the scramble is moderate, with lots of easy plodding.  The first two summits were chossy crap loose near rock and did present some tough scrambling on the ridge.  The next two highest summits had much better rock quality and provided some fun scrambling. 

Incredible views throughout the scramble, highly recommend a clear day for this peak.  We took about 200 summits photos ;-) and headed back to Jumbo Pass and the parking area with ease.  All in, just under 6 hours car to car.